Italian cuisine: Pizza-Making and Italian-American Heritage Month
It’s no coincidence that National Pizza Month falls in October, a month that the US celebrates Italian-American Heritage. The ritual of pizza-making (along with pasta and sauce making) is much more important than a means to satisfy hunger — it’s a link to our past and a patrimony to pass down to future generations. When we bake, we also lose our w...
Italian books: Gomorrah
Gomorrah is a book written by Roberto Saviano and published in 2006, which became a major bestseller in Italy. It is an inside and non-fictional story which recounts how the organized crime network known as Camorra - more powerful and violent than the Mafia - operates and rules in the city of Naples with its international influence and illegal busi...
Italian little Italies: Orta San Giulio, God's watercolor
Arriving from Gozzano, the lakefront that heralds Orta is full of 19th-century neoclassical mansions with gardens blooming with azaleas and camellias. One enters the village among elegant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mansions with open loggias on the gardens sloping down to the lake. Piazza Motta is a living room enclosed on three sides by p...
ICA: The Elective Residency Visa
Italy is one of the most attractive destinations in the EU; it is known for its cultural heritage, beautiful landscapes, mild weather and some of the most celebrated food and beverages, among other reasons. It comes as no surprise that many retirees look to Italy as one of their top options to spend their golden years; in fact, Italy is even simple...
Italian flavors: Sardinia Oil
The introduction of olive cultivation in Sardinia is attributable to populations of Minoan origin who refined the local olives with repeated pruning and grafting in the period between the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Thanks to the establishment of several important areas of olive groves in south-central Sardinia, olive growing underwent signif...
Italian culture and history: Ferrara and the Po River Delta
Ferrara, in Emilia-Romagna, with its invaluable testimonies from the Renaissance, is one of 55 Italian sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, inserted in 1995. The Po Delta Regional Park, a highly precious natural ecosystem, was inserted on the List in 1999 for being a unique cultural landscape and example of intelligent human construction within n...
Italian handcrafts: Tuscan tanning
Tanning was one of the earliest human activities. The first evidence of leather being used for clothes, sandals or the creation of objects such as water containers and boats comes from the writings of the Sumerians. The art of tanning was present in antiquity amongst cultures such as the Babylonians, Hittites, Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Shiites, Gr...
Italian language: SLIM, L’italiano e I giovani. Come scusa? Non ti followo
It’s October and once again it’s time for the Settimana della lingua italiana nel mondo, the Week of Italian Language in the World. The Settimana della lingua italiana nel mondo is a worldwide event that takes place every year and has the goal of promoting the Italian language abroad. It’s organized by all the major institutions for the Italian lan...
IT and US: 1492. Diary of the first trip
Let's start by saying that there were not three of them. The caravels, I mean. This is an enduring myth that has entered powerfully into the imagination. Three like the Wise Men, like the Musketeers, like the oranges of the fairy tale. Wanting to be precise, two caravels and a nao: a large trading ship. But it matters little: myth is built on simpl...
Italian wine: Cooperatives in Valpolicella with Cantina di Soave
I’ve long been a fan of the wines of the Veneto for such a wide variety of options they provide for consumers. Some years back I had the luxury of touring the Valpolicella wine appellation on a couple of press trips so got to get a deep dive understanding of what these wines are all about. Such a beautiful place to tour as well. I based myself o...
Italian good news: Boom of benefit companies in Italy
Boom of benefit companies in Italy: this is the outcome of the report that annually tracks the number of businesses that are born and die in our country. Monitoring this data is not only useful to understand how our economic fabric is progressing, but it is also essential to understand the trends and behavior that entrepreneurs adopt from year to y...
Italian gardens and parks: S'Abba Frisca Park-museum
The privately owned museum is located in Dorgali, within a park full of waters fed by the spring "S'Abba frisca" (in Italian “acqua fresca”, as to say fresh water). The main theme of the park-museum is summarized in two itineraries: naturalistic and ethnographic. The itinerary begins with the presentation of plant species: narrow-leafed bonewort, c...