In one way or another, Umbria’s June rural rites rotate around the summer solstice. The ancients believed that on the vigil of June 24th (later designated as the feast of St. John…
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La passione. It’s a recurring theme to life in Italy. As I often tell my tour guests while strolling the Umbrian hillltown gems, “If you don’t get la passione, you miss out…
Actually, there’s nothing “piccola” about la passione in Gubbio every year on June 2nd, except the size of the little ones living that passion. On May 15th, their fathers, uncles – in…
It’s official: countdown to the May 15th Corsa dei Ceri in Gubbio has started. Almost as if a gun at a starting line had been fired. Today, after a solemn High Mass…
Easter is a sacred time and in Umbria, even Easter breakfast must be sacred. Before Easter as you wander the Umbrian countryside, you might see whisps of smoke curling up out of…
A sunset private poetry-reading on the ruins of an 11th-c. Norman castle in Calabria? An unplanned pre-dinner treat on the drive down to Sicily last August. We’d booked a night at the…
We’ll be heading often to L’Aquila now: Pino’s restoration company has just won a bid to restore three buildings there, damaged in the April 6. 2009. As the job will take two…
On every Good Friday, as day gives up to night, evocative medieval street theater unfolds in the winding backstreets. The dull bounding of a drum (the bells ae “tied” from Holy Thursday…
Just below Assisi, in Santa Maria degli Angeli, the guild of St. Anthony (Compagnia di Sant’Antonio) was formed at the time of the construction of the seventeenth century Basilica, built over the…
The milling of the just-picked olives calls for a celebration. Pino called up Peppa as soon as the mill confirmed a date for the pressing of our olives: “Portiamo l’olio per la…