Transported in Time: Queens Man Collects Vespa Scooters
Rosario Di Giovanna says his vintage scooters keep him young. The 71-year-old says they transport him back in time, to when he was a young man growing up in Sicily. “All the time. Every time I drive them, the memory goes back. And I enjoy myself,” said Rosario Di Giovanna, an Elmhurst Resident. Elmhurst, Queens is a far cry from the Italian country...
Roman Household Spirits: Manes, Panes and Lares
To the ancient Romans, everything was imbued with a divine spirit (numen, plural: numina) which gave it life. Even supposedly inanimate objects like rocks and trees possessed a numen, a belief which no doubt grew out of the early religious practice of animism. There were spirits of a place, of rivers and springs, hills and valleys, the home - and e...
Our restaurant critic is going back to Italy with 2 top chefs. And you're invited.
It was only a few months into my tenure as the Free Press restaurant critic when I realized that — wait — maybe my job was actually, improbably, somehow even better than I imagined. I was sitting in a conference room with two of my editors who wanted to check in to see how I was settling in. During our wide-ranging conversation, I casually mentione...
Italy’s Best Coffee Houses
Is there anything quite as quintessential as a cup of coffee, part of a culture in Italy as commonplace as the Colosseum in Rome, or Venice’s Grand Canal. Italians certainly didn’t invent the concept of coffee but as coffee houses in Venice started to serve this addictive black drink it soon became popular in other areas of Italy; namely Turin, Ver...
Fox Lane's Raffaella Pirone Wins National Italian Teaching Award
Fox Lane High School Italian teacher Raffaella Pirone recently became the first teacher from New York to receive the national Coccia-Inserra Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Teaching of Italian (K-12). "This annual prestigious recognition of outstanding and creative teaching is funded by Coccia Foundation and the Inserra families under th...
Andrea Doria Survivor Rings Recovered Brass Bell at Columbus Day Parade
On October 14, during the Columbus Day Parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Pierette Domenica Simpson, survivor of the fatal Andrea Doria shipwreck, was invited to honor Christopher Columbus as well as the casualties of the Andrea Doria while aboard lifeboat #1 stopped on the red carpet in front of the event reporters. The first ring was for Christ...
Ten ways to get your tongue tied in Italian
So you think you've mastered your double consonants, you've got your vowels down pat and you roll your Rs like a pro? Test your Italian pronunciation with these tongue twisters. From crazy long words to some choice scioglilingua (literally 'tongue loosener', the Italian word for a tongue twister), here are ten ways to give your mouth a workout in...
Tindari: a Sicilian gem between myth and legend
Tindari was founded by Dionysius I of Syracuse in 396 BC, and its name comes from Ancient Greek: Τύνδαρις, in honor of Tyndareus, king of Sparta. In 257 BC, it was the theater of a historic battle where Cartagena’s fleet was chased away by the Romans, led by consul Aulus Atilius Calatinus. Today, the town is a gem of art, set in the unique landscap...
Adventures in Italian cuisine
“Life is a combination of magic and pasta,” the 20th-century Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini famously said. Of all magic in the world, pasta, and Italian cuisine as a whole, is high on the list. When I studied in Bologna, Italy (yes, the city where “bologna” originated, known in Italy as “mortadella,” and having only a slight resemblance to what...
How Italian Labor Shaped Chicago
"Author Peter Pero pays tribute to Italian-American heritage, but the focus is not on Columbus, Mother Cabrini, or Michaelangelo. Instead, he looks to the working men and women of Italian Chicago who have built our city, brick-by-brick. They funded our churches, built Chicago's skyline, and raised generations of children from immigrant succession t...
Sette Artisti Italiani al Miami New Media Festival
Il Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma ha ospitato con successo la tappa italiana della più grande coalizione creativa di videoarte del mondo, il Miami New Media Festival (MNMF). Così, in occasione della quarta edizione della settimana romana dedicata all’arte contemporanea, la Rome Art Week (RAW), dal 22 al 27 ottobre sono stati proiettati quattro...
Italy’s Treasures: Giorgio Vasari 1511-1574
Without Giorgio Vasari’s life work we would not have the insight into the art scene of the Renaissance that we have today. In fact, it is accepted that it was Vasari who first used the term ‘Renaissance’ and also the reference to ‘Gothic’. It can be said that he was the first art historian, writing the biographies of hundreds of known artists, gath...