Mario Matassa welcomed an exciting new development in Castell’Arquato, Emilia Romagna a couple of years ago – a milk machine that certainly seems to have moo-ved many of the locals to a fever pitch of excitement A few years ago the credit crunch – or crisi in Italian–was hitting hard. Italians hardly need an excuse […]
Lake Como is the the backdrop for the dramatic story of a herd of Haflinger horses and their struggle for survival. It’s a story – that without the help of some very special people – could so easily have ended in tragedy. Jan Mazzoni reports on The Horses of Bisbino… It’s early morning in the […]
Patricia Cleveland-Peck investigates the restoration that has transformed Palazzo Papadopoli into the Aman Canal Grande Hotel in Venice… It really all comes down to the writer Andrea di Robilant: if he hadn’t written the book A Venetian Affair, which tells the story of a doomed love between a Venetian nobleman and an English girl in […]
A summer night’s dusk falls on the Grand Canal in Milan and the cafés that line the waterside prepare themselves for another evening’s brisk trade, but it wasn’t always so peaceful… Today, this is just a beautiful place to be, but these waterways were once the very arteries of Milan, carrying the city’s lifeblood around […]
Every August the people of Messina draw a 40-foot statue through their streets, and they have been doing this for 600 years. The edifice represents the final resting place of the Virgin Mary… The still photograph doesn’t do it justice. Giuseppe Pitre, the revered Sicilian writer, who died 100 years ago this year, witnessed the […]
The Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, visited the Alessi factory in Omegna just over a week ago and praised Italy’s prime design production. Adapted from Alessi While travelling through Piedmont to experience the region’s productivity first-hand, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi paid a visit to Alessi’s facilities at Crusinallo. He was welcomed into the Headquarters, near Lake Orta by […]
A calling point for pilgrims from the north on their way to Rome, Lucca Cattedrale or Cathedral is the resting place of one of the most important holy images of the Middle Ages… Saint Martin’s Cathedral in Lucca is famed for housing the Holy Face of Lucca (Il Volto Santo di Lucca), a large wooden crucifix […]
In the post-war years, young Totò spends his spare time at the local cinema, where Alfredo the projectionist teaches him what he knows about film, love and life It was a flop when it first came out but now, more than 25 years since its initial release, Giuseppe Tornatore’s film is considered a masterpiece… The […]
Think of transport in Venice and you think of the gondola, but this is a relationship that has been developed in large part by the city’s tourism industry. As a working boat, there are better options. Though it is now recognized the world over as the typical boat of Venice, the gondola is in fact […]
Called the “Square Coliseum”, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana was intended by Benito Mussolini as the centrepiece of the 1942 Esposizione Universale Roma When I first saw it, in the distance at the far end of a wide avenue, it seemed like a mirage: a bright white cube, made of rows and columns of arches. […]