Earlier this month Turin, Italy, went off. The red carpet was rolled out for the Italian president, fireworks were lit, two museums opened, and a portion of new metro started rolling. All that was just the pre-party. Similar bashes happened on March 17, 1911, and 1961 — the anniversary of [...]

By Jude Polotan Poor Giordano Bruno. Ten years before Galileo would take the same stance, this former Dominican friar had the temerity to assert that the sun and not the Earth was the center of the universe, earning him a spot front and center in Rome’s Campo di’ Fiore, where [...]

David Farley’s Quest to Find the Carna Vera Sacra — The Foreskin of Christ By Luke Armstrong We travel for different reasons. The sun and sand. Adventure. To discover something new. To leave something old behind. To conquer fears. To conquer mountains. To learn. To drink. To sober up. To [...]

Okay ladies, when’s the last time your man sent you a really nice text, let alone composed a visual poem for you, expressing his love using the timeless images of Venice to help express his wordless emotions? Guys, you can blame Rickster for getting you in trouble. Everyone else who [...]

Not content with the haute cusisine and celebrity chefs that permeate the dining scene in New York, the NYT’s Frugal Traveler, Matt Gross, headed off to Italy to barge in on some local families for a few but-gusting sit-down lunches and dinners (oh yeah, they were also complete strangers), all [...]

On a recent return to Tuscany, Danielle Pergament of the NYT discovers things are a little different in the region come the dead of winter when the tour buses have gone home and the crowds have receded from the piazzas. And what remains in the off-season when things get back [...]

Some friends of mine are planning a trip to Italy at the end of the summer, and they recently asked me, “Where should we go?”, which, if you think about it, is quite a loaded question given the scale of the country. It’s kind of like asking, “What should I [...]

I just finished reading an interview with Susan Van Allen about her new book, 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go To, the second installment in the “100 Places Every Woman Should Go To” series. Van Allen describes Italy as a woman’s haven, where they can “feel at home” [...]

This week marked the untimely passing of Giorgio Carbone, the dubiously-legitimate, yet popularly elected leader/king/sandwich-moocher of the small nation of Seborga, a 2.8 square mile parcel of land located near the French border on the Italian Riviera. Never heard of the country, you say? You’re probably not alone, though it’s [...]

If you wander around the southern Italian city of Bari, you will most likely notice intimate, cobblestoned lanes, cafe-choked piazzas, and one of Italy’s best opera houses. Somewhere between it all, is the Basilica di San Nicola, and the actual tomb containing St. Nick’s bones. Built in 1087, the castle-esqe [...]