Its inauguration postponed several times because of Covid, Garum: The Library and Museum of Cooking finally opened on May 26. The website www.atlasoscura.com lists 81 museums worldwide devoted to the history of food, but none includes a research library. Stove and Kitchenware Garum gets its name from a liquid sauce...

Decorating eggshells, especially those of ostriches, predates the Christian tradition by at least 3,000 years. The ancient Sumerians and Egyptians commonly placed decorated eggs, or their representations in gold and silver, in graves. Thus, the Christian adaptation of decorating eggs can be traced to the early Christians of Mesopotamia, who...

A small temporary exhibition will be on view until May 22 at Rome’s Borghese Gallery. “Guido Reni and Rome: Nature and Devotion” is the first exhibition dedicated to Reni in the last 30 years. Reni's Atalanta and Hippomenes. Photo: Courtesy of the Ministry of Culture Like the artworks of the...

“Baci” Perugina chocolates, a Made-In-Italy icon, are celebrating their 100th birthday this year. “Baci” means “kisses” and their birth and history are appropriately the product of a secret love story between their creator Luisa Spagnoli and businessman/politician Giovanni Buitoni, 14 years her junior. Baci in the making. Photo courtesy of...

 Melania G. Mazzucco is one of Italy’s most distinguished and award-winning authors.  She writes fiction, scholarly tomes, art historical essays, and historical novels.  Her first international success was Vita (2003) about a brother, Diamante (based on Mazzucco’s paternal grandfather) and his sister Vita, who, at only ages 12 and 9,...

In the last paragraph of my article, Merry Christmas from the Vatican: a Cookbook to Bring Joy in a Sad Year, published here on December 9, 2020, its author Thomas Kelly wrote: “David and I are working on another Vatican cookbook to be published by The Sophia Institute, but it’s...

But it’s not only about celebrities, “I held a course for women in jail on how to make perfumes; we sold them in some of Torino’s exclusive profumerie. This project moved me deeply because inmates aren’t allowed to wear perfume. One woman, a Sicilian, fainted after we produced an orange...

Several works in “man-made Hell” are “food for thought”, even if none “touch on Covid-19 as there is not yet enough detachment from the experience of isolation,” explained Clair in an interview with The Art Newspaper. “Nonetheless Inferno is timely because the century we’re living in has become Hell.”

Marisa Laurito, the Artistic Director of the new Teatro Trianon Viviani since 2020, exclaims, “It was outrageous that until now Naples didn’t have a theater dedicated to performing its rich popular musical tradition. In Portugal there’s the fado; in Vienna the waltz; in Spain the flamenco; in New York Broadway’s...

Disney distorted the personality of the central character, replaced the message at the heart of the fable, and changed the setting…but Pinocchio is a story with many, many, levels of cultural, social, political, culinary and religious (particularly the “prodigal son” and resurrection) significance. It’s a text far more complex than...