“Giugno, la falce in pugno” (“June, the scythe in the fist”), says an old Italian proverb, re-echoing the days of scything hay manually. Times have changed: at Peppe and Gentile’s farm two…
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He could only hobble across the stage, head of fuzzy white hair bobbing, sax clutched in a strong gnarled fist. The knees and hips of Sonny Rollins – soon to be eighty-two…
Fuori dal mondo – “out of this world” – is what you feel as you step off the ferry onto this tiny Mediterranean island. The turquoise/emerald water of the island coves is…
Italy’s recent loss to Spain in the European cup was “meritata” as countless Italian newscasters and fans all over the country admitted in interviews. But what a glorious show of Italian passione…
“It’s written on the wall” is the most apt expression to describe a wander through Visso, medieval hilltown not far from Norcia, close to the Sibilline mountains. As you walk through this…
Now over eighty, Raffaello started painting his maiolica masterpieces as a young boy. Massimo started young on the potter’s wheel, too, creating the vases, pitchers, urns Raffaello still decorates. At a young…
When you come down the hill from Norcia and round that curve, you’ll understand what a mozzafiato view is. Only mozzafiato (literally, “cutting off, truncating your breath”, and more visceral than the…
The Peppucci family vineyards blanket the sumptuous curves of the gentle hill landscapes outside Todi. And no vineyard view is more wondrous than a sunset one. One late June evening – while…
In the early thirteenth century, San Francesco di Assisi left behind the woes of the world for forty days of isolation and contemplation on a tranquil island in the middle of Lake…
Passione takes hold of one early in Italy: passione for good food, for soccer, for the frescoes in your town church, for music, for one’s village festival – and even for flowers.…