NEWS FROM : ITALY  

The furniture and object designer F. Taylor Colantonio, dressed in a red-trimmed poet’s blouse, gives a gentle shove to a fluted Doric column in his small, theatrically furnished loft in the Campo de’ Fiori neighborhood of Rome. The column wobbles loose from the wall, revealing itself suddenly to be light as Styrofoam, phony as a stage set. “Everyt...

Usually, bell towers have a square or rectangular base and have a parallelepipedal shape, often featuring some sort of cone-shaped tip. But many Byzantine bell towers are actually cylindrical, with flat tops. The Caorle Cathedral bell tower has a mixture of the two different styles. It’s not only one of the few remaining cylindrical bell towers in...

After a rough stretch, things are finally starting to look up again for Roma’s American president. James Pallotta’s joy of reaching the Champions League semifinals last season quickly turned to despair when nine people were arrested in June for alleged corruption involving the club’s long-delayed plans to build a new stadium. Then, as Roma failed t...

Have you ever heard of The Museum of Gold in Arezzo dedicated to preserving the art and craftsmanship of the goldsmith? What about the Museum of Paper Mache (Museo della Cartapesta) in Salento, that celebrates the art form unique to the people of Lecce, or the Museum of Soundscape in Riva in the northern region of Piedmont which allows you to go ba...

Opportunità di affari, storie di successo, servizi di consulenza e assistenza sulla rotta che collega la Sicilia agli Stati Uniti. Numeri e nomi di chi ha saputo cogliere nel rapporto con gli States le opportunità di una svolta vincente per la propria attività d’impresa. Casi emersi nel corso della prima conferenza nazionale delle Camere di Commerc...

Remote, rugged, rural and not as sexy as its Italian counterparts in Sicily, Rome or Florence, Puglia has been somewhat of a wallflower. But perhaps not for much longer. A recent real estate story in the New York Times featured a one-story villa compound outside San Vito dei Normanni—about 15 miles west of Brindisi, a port city of just over 400,000...

Creative footwear is an essential part of designer collections in Milan. As a shoe obsessive, I recently attended Micam, Europe’s biggest footwear trade show held at Fiera Milano Rho. The 87thedition attracted approximately 45,000 visitors throughout the three-day event. By far the largest proportion of guests were from Italy and other European cou...

The Motogiro, a timed race for classic production motorcycles, has opened up registration for this year’s event, which will be the 30th anniversary of the ride as it was when it was reinstated as a timed event instead of a race. The roots of the Motogiro can be traced back to 1914, right around the time of the first production motorcycles, but didn...

Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio (1571-1610), is the most famous Italian painter of the baroque period, and the art trade is always looking for lost works by this fiercely original and timeless artist. But new attributions provoke fierce debates. On Thursday, the art dealer Eric Turquin unveiled a spectacularly well-preserved 17th-c...

The 2019 Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index has been released, and Italy is the second healthiest country in the world. “The boot,” which was ranked no. 1 in 2017 in the biannual index, only fell one slot (Spain took top honors). Researchers attribute part of the positive health trend to a Mediterranean diet, supplemented with extra-virgin olive oi...

Whether you’re hunkered down under the polar vortex in North America or are bracing for the predicted snowfall in Europe, you are officially passing through what is known as “i giorni della merla” (the days of the blackbird), the period straddling the end of January and beginning of February that is traditionally considered the coldest of the year....

In our market in Montalcino last week, the Winter array of radicchios were on full display. Tucked in alongside the Winter squashes and bright piles of oranges, were piles of radicchio with long tender leaves that curl upon themselves, and others plump and round that looked like small cabbages. Radicchio, part of the chicory family, is much more co...