Not far from us, Gualdo Tadino, of pre-Roman origins, perches like a silent sentinel on a forested hilltop. A few buildings miraculously survived the devastating 1751 earthquake: one was the frescoed 13th-century…
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Late afternoon on a breezy summer Sunday, Pino and I set out for Arezzo, a favorite southern Tuscan city. It was the first Sunday of the month, the day of the Fiera…
In Italian, “gusto” means “flavor” – and what flavorful rural goodness cooked up by the locals to celebrate la Festa di Sant’Anna, July 26th. And the rural people of the mountain area…
I want you to experience the Umbria I have come to know and love in over forty years here on the land, just outside Assisi. Live Umbria, “Italy’s green heart,” from the…
Even though I’ve been speaking Italian for more than half my life, words still flee me; at times, I feel that my perception of the exact translation of a word is imprecise.…
Every year for Corpus Domini (60 days after Easter), over seventy stunning floral tapestries carpet piazza and winding alleyways of medieval hilltown gem, Spello, fruit of months of flower-gathering and then all-night…
I was about twelve years old when our family made a trip to the late 18th-c Spanish Franciscan mission church San Juan Capistrano in California. On a recent Abruzzo jaunt, Pino and…
I’ve been told by more than one that you can’t truly feel the passione for the Ceri unless you join in carrying one of the three mammoth pyramidical structures, called “candlesticks.” Said…
This first “Inside Umbria” adventure for ten persons simply has to be called “a celebration”: we’re celebrating husband Pino’s superb restoration work on our Assisi farmhouse apartments, Assisi Casa Campagna, with an…
While leading his long-horned oxen and playing his organetto, Peppe de Lillo sang le pasquarelle (traditional mountain verses) in harmony with a tambourine-player, launching Cascia’s “Festa delle Tradizioni Rurali”. Medieval hilltown, Cascia,…