Delicious wheels of Pecorino cheese wrapped neatly in red radicchio, leek and green cabbage – the pride of any Italian artisan food fair or market Photo by iStock Pecorino is a ewe’s milk cheese that, although pretty well known, often falls into the shadow of the nation’s far more famous Parmesan, for virtue of the […]
Head to Via Niccolò Piccolomini and if you reach the street coming from Villa Doria Pamphili, the dome looks huge, then ‘shrinks’ as you move towards it, thanks to a strange optical illusion. Also try the top of the Aventine Hill, next to one of the city’s most beautiful examples of early Christian architecture, Santa […]
If you’ve been to Rome once, then it’s time to go again. Marina Spironetti reveals ten things you should experience on your second visit to the Eternal City… You have been to Rome. You survived the 7km or so of exhibits through the rather opulent Papal Rooms of the Vatican museums before being rewarded with […]
Espresso lovers can never go wrong in Rome. Your coffee will probably be excellent in most of the bars you find. Yet, according to locals, if you want to drink the best in the city you have to head to the Pantheon: two ‘temples’ to the coffee bean are there, situated within walking distance […]
Massimo Bottura is one the world’s most famous chefs but do his abstract ideas pay off? The restaurant Osteria Francescana, was named number one in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards this year. It is located in Modena and native, Massimo Bottura owns and runs the show. This foodie palace has been in the top five […]
Marooned like a tiny island on an outcrop of crumbling volcanic rock, the once-thriving settlement of Cività di Bagnoregio in Lazio clings to a perilous existence When you catch sight of its precarious position today, it is hard to imagine that Cività di Bagnoregio was once a large, thriving Etruscan city situated on a wide […]
Time to revisit Fra Angelico to Leonardo’ awe-inspiring exhibition from 2010 featuring Italian Renaissance drawings, but as Amanda Robinson finds out, there’s more to it than meets the eye… With 100 works from the collections of both the British Museum and the Gabinetto Disengi e Stampi Uffizi in Florence, ‘Fra Angelico to Leonardo’ is the most […]
Mauro Staccioli is an artist who likes to connect himself to the landscape – a trip to Volterra in Tuscany will introduce you to some of his remarkable works By Royal Appointment. Question: What links a world renowned fashion designer (Armani) with a Prince (Charles)? Answer: A little bum or, put another way, Culatello DOP. […]
Looking upstream into a Florence sunrise almost the colour of the city’s beloved football club’s shirt, we are, in one very real sense, looking towards the source of the Renaissance itself… The River Arno divides Florence between the north side, where most of the famous bits are, and the Oltrarno, the ‘other side’, where most […]
The slender region of Puglia dips its heel into both the Adriatic and Ionian seas, as it is located at the bottom of the peninsula’s east coast, with Molise as its neighbour in the north, Campania to the northwest and Basilicata to the west. The climate is reliably sunny, and hot and dry in the […]