Of all the Roman ruins that populate what is now a pleasant landscape of pine trees and meadows, under the distant gaze of the Alban Hills, the Villa of the Quintilii is perhaps the most impressive – almost a city in miniature, covering up to 24 hectares. Lying on the ancient Appian Way as it runs south-east from Rome, the villa had its own theatre...

And on the menu at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), an entirely edible battery. Researchers in Milan have developed the rechargeable prototype out of common-place food stuffs with the hopes of revolutionising ingestible medical devices. "The core of the device is represented by a couple of electrodes... To have it working we are using two...

Assessing the habitability of Jupiter's moons: this is the main goal of Esa's new Juice (the acronym stands for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) space mission, with a strong Italian footprint. Of the 10 instruments aboard the probe, four, in fact, are Italian. After launching from Esa's Kourou base in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 launcher, Juice wil...

Following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the city of Herculaneum was hit by a cloud of ash so hot that it incinerated the bodies and vitrified the brains of everyone present, according to analysis of carbonized wood samples carried out by a team of geologists led by Guido Giordano of Roma Tre University and anthropologist Pier Paolo Petro...

Between the 1st century B.C. and 3rd century A.D., the Italian coastal town of Baia was a hot spot for vacationing Roman aristocracy and imperial families. Now, the once bustling city is mostly submerged, including what was once a spa crafted with mosaic and marble floors. The spa, known as Terme del Lacus, opened to the public in the summer of 202...

One morning in July, a girl is dragged away from her homeland, reduced to slavery, and sold by human traffickers. From the wild plateaus of the Caucasus to the Black Sea, from Constantinople to Venice, from Florence to Vinci. When she arrives in Italy, everything has been taken from her – her body, her dreams, her future, her land, and her ancient...

Starts on Thursday, April 13 · 6pm PDT. Italian Cultural Institute Los Angeles 1023 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, CA. In this talk celebrating Italian Research Day, Italian scientists and scholars from the local research community - Pietro Perona, Martin Monti, Matteo Pellegrini, and Massimo Ciavolella - will discuss their work and how it enables a s...

Tomb and urn images shed light on the intricacies of Etruscan and Roman civilization at least 2,000 years ago, reviving it for modern times. A 2,500-year-old Etruscan tomb in the Italian city of Tarquinia has walls covered in paintings of brightly colored dancers and musicians. A 1st-century funerary urn of a woman who died in nearby Rome depicts a...

Instinctively, you say: “Galileo!” Upon reflection, you probably remember it was Hans. But what if I told you that the person who invented the telescope was the one and only Leonardo da Vinci? This is the conclusion researchers came to, after consulting documents kept at the Ambrosiana Library in Milan and at the Académie Française, in Paris.  Let’...

The great Renaissance masters added egg yolk to their oil paints in order to protect their masterpieces against yellowing and humidity and to prevent the formation of cracks during drying, according to research published in Nature Communications and led by Italian scientists. "So far, scientific investigations of paintings have mostly been aimed at...