Naples Underground: Complete Guide to Aqueducts, Bomb Shelters & Catacombs
Bring your walking shoes and a light jacket and get ready to head underground! Underneath the streets of Naples lies a labyrinth of ancient aqueducts, catacombs, and bomb shelters. It’s a hidden city worth exploring. Naples has been continuously occupied for over 2,000 years. The current city is like a stone tiramisu, with layers upon layers of his...
“Martorano’s Sicilian Slice” Opening at Rivers Casino Philadelphia on May 31
Philly foodies will get a taste of great things to come with the opening of “Martorano’s Sicilian Slice” at Rivers Casino Philadelphia. The new pizza shop by celebrity cook and South Philly native Steve Martorano and his wife, Marsha Daley-Martorano, officially opens Wednesday, May 31, at 3 p.m. Complimentary samples of Sicilian Slice pizza will be...
Italian Parmigiano Reggiano, the king of cheeses
Parmigiano Reggiano is an Italian excellence that has a history of over a thousand years. Like many other Italian cheeses it is widely used in the preparation of incredible dishes. Great to bite freely or sipping a red wine, seasoning and enters once grated in all Italian pasta sauce, both simple, stuffed or layered. Still today it is produced fo...
Radio Giant John LaBarca Passes Away, Famed For Italian House Party
John LaBarca, the jovial giant of radio who spread love for his Italian heritage with his flagship Sunday show Italian House Party on several area radio stations most prominently WICC, has passed away, according to posts on his Facebook page. He was 76. Born in Brooklyn, New York, LaBarca landed a captain’s job at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan...
This Port Town in Puglia Makes a Perfect Day Trip From Bari
The secret’s been out a while now: Puglia is hot. The region has seen incredible spikes in tourism in recent years, with 2022 bringing some 10 million visitors in the summer months alone and the full year count exceeding pre-pandemic numbers. Part of what makes Puglia such an appealing region to visit, though, is the geography and the space it give...
Family of Fresno restaurateurs honored for Italian restaurants. ‘Let no one outwork you’
Think about some of the best Italian restaurants in town and chances are, the LaRocca family had something to do with them. The family will be honored Monday with a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the Best of the Valley Restaurant Awards. The event is hosted by the Fresno chapter of the California Restaurant Association. While all sorts of re...
Italy bolsters its bid to build Europe’s next-gen “telescope”
This week, the Italian government indicated the territory of Lula (province of Nuoro) on the Tyrrhenian island as the ideal place to host the Einstein Telescope – a third-generation gravitational wave detector, capable of “observing” signals from the cosmos to shed light on the unresolved questions of cosmology, such as black holes to dark matter,...
Paolo Busti Foundation names Jim Saraceni its Outstanding Italian American
Jim Saraceni, whose grandparents immigrated to America from Italy, has strong Italian roots that have shaped his life and earned him the Paolo Busti Cultural Foundation’s award for Outstanding Italian American. Saraceni’s grandparents, Arthur and Amelia (Soccio), immigrated to America from Vasto, Italy, which is on the Adriatic Sear. They had the c...
Stuffed pasta, discovering Italian specialties
Legend has it that the tortellino was born to reproduce the navel of Venus asleep in an inn between Bologna and Modena. For sure tortellini, tortelloni and ravioli, for sauce and broth, casoncelli, agnolotti, pansoti or Italian stuffed pasta give an explosive combination of taste that has conquered the whole world. This is true, however it is calle...
Osteria Langhe Offers a Glimpse of the Piedmont Region of Italy in Chicago
It is no surprise that Italian cuisine is a staple in Chicago; much of what we know about it comes down to the core recipes we’ve grown up seeing on TV. Recipes like spaghetti and meatballs, fettuccine alfredo (which, in popular opinion, is not Italian), and lasagna are the core dishes that introduced us to Italian food. But that’s just the tip of...
Inside the Italian towns that inspired a top Disney movie
The Cinque Terre, a group of five towns along the Italian Riviera, inspired the landscapes and settings in the hit Disney film Luca. Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore were the inspiration behind the fictional town of Portorosso in the film. From the pebbled beaches and the cobbled streets to the luxurious waters, it's easy...
The Yale University Art Gallery Receives Gift of Italian Works on Paper—the Largest Private Collection of 19th-Century Italian Drawings
The Yale University Art Gallery announces the extraordinary gift/purchase of more than 190 late 18th- and 19th-century Italian drawings, watercolors, and sketchbooks from the collection of Roberta J. M. Olson and Alexander B. V. Johnson. Comprising over 400 individual sheets, this superb trove is among the finest in private hands anywhere in the w...