Traditionally confetti are almonds from Avola, a town in Sicily’s province of Syracuse, encased in a hard outer shell of sugar. A symbol of good fortune and prosperity, they’re ubiquitous at all Italian celebrations, most frequent in the spring and summer, but of course not exclusively.  At baptisms the confetti’s...

Since mid-February four new titles about pizza have appeared on bookstores’ shelves or to order on the internet. They all tell the stories of the owner-pizzaioli’ and their restaurants, and each volume contains several recipes, some traditional and others unique. We the Pizza: Slangin’ Pies and Savin’ Lives ($28.67) was...

On display until July 6 is “Caravaggio 2025”, 24 of this hot-tempered painter’s 60 authenticated masterpieces. It’s exhibited in Rome’s Palazzo Barberini, once the home of Antonio Barberini, Caravaggio’s most ardent collector and the nephew of Maffeo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII (1623-44).  After purchase, four have never left Palazzo Barberini:...

Consecrated on August 5, 434, Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major) is the earliest Marian sanctuary in the West. It’s home to the Salus Populi Romani, the world’s most important Marian icon likely painted by St. Luke the Evangelist, and to a silver, gold and crystal reliquary containing parts of...

Water has always been an integral part of Rome’s landscape and culture from its ancient aqueducts and Imperial baths to its majestic Renaissance and Baroque fountains commissioned by her ruling popes, and since the mid-19th century, her “nasoni”, or drinking fountains. Thus, thanks to her over 2,000 fountains--plus some 2,500...

The financier bought the manuscript of A Christmas Carol in the 1890’s. Every Christmas the staff advance the story by one page

On November 29 the first museum in the world dedicated to England’s great Romantic-era poet Lord George Gordon Byron opened in Ravenna. It’s an appropriate date since 2024 is the 200th anniversary of his death on April 19 probably from rheumatic fever, in Missolonghi, Greece where he, a champion of...

The Museo Egizio boasts the world's only collection that represents all periods of Ancient Egyptian history

The once closed-off space opened on October 31st, with the authorization of the Holy See

Ristorante Spirito DiVino/ This beautiful medieval house with a loggia and arches at Via Genovesi 31A once belonged to the Jewish Italian lexicographer Nathan ben Jechiel (1035-1106), who began his sad life as a peddler of linens. He turned to scholarship and religion after four of his five sons died...