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When I travel, I often do so with a theme. For example, I try to find the best wine bars in a location, or the cutest museums, or the best sunsets. On one of my many trips to Italy, the “theme” was leaning towers. Who hasn’t heard of the most famous one, the leaning tower of the beautiful city of Pisa? But, as I discovered, there are several more l...

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The Veneto wine region of northeast Italy is best known for its sparkling Proseccos. But this region (whose capital is Venice) produces a variety of magnificent sparkling wines that differ in terms of both the grapes and the production techniques used to make them. In Veneto, wine tourists can visit wineries steeped in history and culture while the...

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Unique in the world because of its natural beauty, the Belpaese has been inhabited since time immemorial, and has seen the birth on its territory varied many towns, villages and cities, that over the millennia have grown, evolved and expanded, but always respecting and preserving the original places of meeting and social gathering. Today these anci...

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The University of Padua has elected Daniela Mapelli as its new rector, the first woman to hold the top post at the institution since it was founded in 1222. Mapelli, a professor of psychology, begins her six-year term on 1 October, just in time for the university's 800th anniversary next year. A native of Lecco in northern Italy, the 55-year-old Ma...

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Heads up Bainbridge Islanders, famed Italian glass artist Lino Tagliapietra’s work is on display and available for purchase at a local small art studio run by his grandson, Jacopo Vecchiato. The showroom is an extension of the Seattle gallery Lino Tagliapietra Inc, of which Vecchiato has been president for nine years. Currently, space is only open...

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The crafts of glassmaking, bookbinding, and gondola-building have changed little over the centuries in this city, which is celebrating its 1,600th anniversary this year. Artisans ply their skills according to precise guild specifications that predate the Italian Renaissance. “There are rules that govern color combinations and proportions,” says Ste...

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His name was Giovanni Ricamatori, in this absurd year there would be his first retrospective in his native Udine in Friuli Venezia Giulia, until the end of next week. Like many other artists already discussed, he was part of Raphael's workshop and like many of his colleagues Giovanni was the founder of a genre, the Grotesque and more generally the...

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Young, daughter of immigrants, bisexual, volleyball player by profession, indeed the best female volleyball player Italy has ever had. Paola Egonu is the picture of the Italy that includes, that offers an opportunity to everyone, at least in sports. And the twenty-two year old from Cittadella, a town of twenty thousand inhabitants in the province o...

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Radicchio: Yes, it’s a thing at the moment. It has its own newly formed association, an annual festival and even a poster and lapel pin for sale on Etsy. Yet many American gardeners have never tried growing this cultivated form of chicory. Right about now is the time to get seeds and add it to the list of vegetables to sow around the solstice — as...

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An ancient Roman building has been found during excavations at a former cinema in the northern Italian city of Verona in what has been described as a “miniature Pompeii”. The discovery was made during excavations in the basement of Astra cinema, which is undergoing renovation after lying abandoned for more than 20 years.  With its “magnificent fres...

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