I’d read an article recently about ten “must-see” small-town stops between Umbria and Florence. The author had clearly never been to Certaldo. On an early February trip to Pisa, Pino and I…
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Umbria’s’ mountainous Valnerina – Nera River Valley – unveils splendors at every curve in the road: And at the foot of tiny mountain village Piedivalle, a small restaurant in a pre-fab now…
Poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (1910) called the area around Pisa’s Duomo (cathedral), a “prato dei miracoli” (“a field of miracles”). You know you’re gazing on miracles if you stroll around that piazza in the silence…
Last-minute shopping forays, hours of cooking up a feast, gift-wrapping marathons, and a furious flurry of holiday party preparations: a few moments of Christmastime for many. But in some tiny mountain villages…
What an extraordinary marriage of the modern and the medieval in Todi on December 8th. The stately 13th-c civic palace of this Umbrian hilltown gem served as stunning backdrop for a show…
In the Greco-Roman ancient world – and even in ancient Egypt – edicole flanked imposing city entrances or temples (or were located inside the temples), and held images of the divinita’ minori (“minor deities”); the…
A late eighteenth-century hilltop monastery near San Marcello in the Marches region is undergoing an astounding resurrection. And all thanks to the restoration skills of Pino’s team, Impresa Edile Giuseppe Alagna, on…
Pino often has quite a jaunt to bid on stone restoration work in distant sites. If I’m not booked for a tour on the day he’s headed to an area I’ve never…
Enroute to a wedding celebration near Reggello, south of Florence, we stopped for an espresso in a whisper of a town along the winding road skirting vineyards and olive groves, Cascia di…
A highpoint of springtime in Umbria – indeed, of all of central Italy – is Assisi’s stunning early May medieval festival, Calendimaggio, welcoming the arrival of spring in four days of glorious…