All Around Italy

Before this year is over, we must talk about Mantua. Every year the Italian government chooses a city to be the Italian Capital of Culture, during which the designated town enjoys the spotlight and hosts various cultural events to celebrate …

Piedmont Gavi Cortese: Between the Mountains and the Sea

Now that Dan Brown’s Inferno has exploded onto the big screen, you may be wondering what you’re in for. Personally I enjoyed it, and for one reason in particular. The spell-binding presence of a true celebrity, the Palazzo Vecchio in …

Is New York the most Italian city in the United States? For over one hundred years her harbors and airports have accepted (though not always welcomed, at first) millions of Italian immigrants who settled in enclaves across Brooklyn, the Bronx, …

Italy, a country well-known for its beauty, hides undiscovered neighborhoods far from the typical touristic routes. In Emilia Romagna, the region surrounded by Lombardy, Veneto and Tuscany, there are places that are so surreal and beautiful that when you first …

I’m a creature of the dark. No, nothing vampiresque or witchy in my statement, I just, quite simply, am naturally attracted to all that’s mysterious and saturnine. A victorian soul, if you will, charmed by the history of the unexplainable …

As if the reputation of Poveglia Island were not terrifying enough to satisfy anyone’s taste for the macabre, in 1922 government authorities had managed to add to the island’s ominous character and reputation by building an asylum for the mentally …

When visiting Rome, I like staying close to the Vatican: there’s something magic in seeing “il cupolone” first thing in the morning that I wouldn’t change for anything. There’s something else I regularly do when there, I always cross the …

“What do you miss most about Italy?” I asked my first Italian teacher in San Francisco many years ago. “La piazza,” she said so wistfully that I thought for a moment it might be someone’s name. After years of passing …

Since my Italian-American Italy has long been renowned for its miracles in stone. From Roman amphitheaters and aqueducts to Michelangelo’s David, the people from this mountainous land have produced creations that made history.    The Latins converted the untamed into …