"I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, I found out three things: first, the streets weren't paved with gold; second, they weren't paved at all; and third, I was expected to pave them. This well-known quote, said by an Italian immigrant to America, reminds us that life in the new world wasn't easy for o...

Many small Italian towns are slowly emptying and as a solution, their mayors have been offering some of the historical homes at only 1 euro. It sounds like a joke, but it is definitely not. Due to the lack of job and opportunities, the youngest, professionals and even families have been often moving to the biggest cities, both in Italy and abroad....

There’s a greater sense of ‘going native’ on holiday when you take the decision to travel like a local, not to hire a car or join a package holiday, but to let the train take the strain. Of course, it all looks straightforward, but occasionally things can go wrong – and even if the challenge is quite fun, a few tips can save confusion and frustrati...

There is no doubt that religious festivals represent a large part of the traditional Italian heritage. An expression of faith, of course, but also events with a strong social significance and bond of belonging to the community, especially in the South: Leonardo Sciascia, in "Corda Pazza" (Mad rope), about religious festivals wrote that in Sicily th...

Sardinia, cradle of history and special traditions, holds within also plenty of culinary secrets. Let’s ideally travel to the west of the island. We are in the enchanting area of Marmilla, a small region at the very edges of the Campidano, where soft, rolling hills dominate the landscape, punctuated here and there by typical giare, basalt plateaux...

Negli anni quaranta una giovanissima Judy Garland, protagonista della pellicola cult Il Mago di Oz, rendeva immortale con la sua splendida voce un brano meraviglioso. Il titolo del pezzo è “Over the Rainbow”, letteralmente “Oltre l’arcobaleno” ed è proprio da questo fenomeno ottico e meteorologico che si parte da bambini quando si spiegano i colori...

In the small Sardinian town of Nuoro, there are very few people who still know how to make what many say is the rarest type of pasta in Italy and perhaps the whole world… Su filindeu (in Sardinian dialect), and in Italian, Fili di Dio, can be translated as either wires, yarns or threads of God. You might think of this pasta as the elevated and rare...

Teatri, musei, gallerie, biblioteche: l'Italia è un immenso giacimento culturale. Misurando la quantità dei siti culturali il portale Holidu ha fatto una classifica delle città perfette da questo punto di vista, quasi un Grand Tour delle 10 città con più cultura d’Italia. Come disse Elio Vittorini “La cultura non è professione per pochi: è una cond...

Frances Mayes has spent years traveling through Italy and writing about it in her best-selling books like Under the Tuscan Sun. Her latest book, See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover is a travelogue about all the undiscovered and overlooked gems in Italy, which she reveals to us here. Writing See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in...

The Phoenicians used the gulf as their trading centre and built the wonderful city of Tharros; the most important evidence of the ancient Nuragic culture is still evident in this territory such as mysterious sacred wells, imposing nuraghi (megalithic edifices) and the fascinating Giganti (giants) of Monte’ and Prama. The Gulf also features a sea wi...