“I believe the time has come,” Schmidt said, “for state museums to perform an act of courage and return paintings to the churches for which they were originally created… " . However, this decision is neither popular nor logistically simple for many reasons. For some experts, it's unimaginable.

At the end of April, about a week after his press conference with Stampa Estera on Facebook, Eike Schmidt, Director of the Uffizi Galleries, announced the purchase of a very rare print: a panoramic view of Renaissance Florence dating to 1601. “The Uffizi”,” he explained, “had recently bought it from...

A virtual tour can never replace a real-life one.  “It’s the same for sports events or movies,” Schmidt explained. “Watching a game on TV is not the same emotionally as going to the stadium.....” Schmidt doesn’t expect a deluge of foreign visitors during 2020. He speculates that the visitors will...

According to legend, the icon of the Madonna, known as Salus Populi Romani was painted by St. Luke himself and brought from Jerusalem to Rome by St. Helena during the 4th century. Like the Salus Populi Romani, the miraculous crucifix’s origin is not known; it’s probably Tuscan and may date...

On loan from 55 different private collections and museums, never before have so many works by Raphael been displayed in a single exhibition. Architect, draughtsman, painter, poet and archaeologist who died of mysterious causes at the young age of 37, who knows what he might have accomplished had he lived...

From March 9-29 additional “Acqua Alta” salvaged book art, under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, will be on display in the windows of Milan’s prestigious book store Libreria Bocca in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and offered for sale to the general public.

One of the first cities in Italy to serve coffee and bring it to prominence, for the past few centuries Venice, and in particular Piazza San Marco, has been like a magnet, drawing flocks of celebrities who wished to pay homage to its beauty. Today a whopping 20 million tourists...

On May 29th, 1606 during a brawl in Piazza Navona, Caravaggio (1571-1610) murdered the pimp from Terni, Ranuccio Tomassoni, who had VIP clients: nobles, notaries, cardinals.  The painter was sentenced to death.  To avoid papal justice, this hot-headed and often violent master of chiaroscuro escaped to Naples, which was outside...

Vittorio Bonacini, the owner of Hotel Tintoretto, informed us journalists that, “Venice’s 274 hotels (400, if you include Mestre and other mainland environs too)--75% of which belong to AVA--are usually sold out between New Year’s Day and the Epiphany, but this year our bookings are less than 50%.  We have...