Past Italia: La Chiesa di San Pietro

St Peter‘s (La Chiesa di San Pietro)  in Portovenere stands on a promontory overlooking the Gulf of Poets Saint Peter’s at Portovenere is built on the site of a 5th-century church, and before that an earlier, pagan temple dedicated to Venus. It was consecrated in 1198 but its bands of black and white Carrara marble (the […]

Past Italia: Arezzo Cathedral

The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Donatus in Arezzo, Tuscany, boasts a long history and some eye-catching architecture La Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Donato is the city cathedral of Arezzo, Tuscany. The façade is a 20th-century reconstruction, and the clock tower was added then too, but the rest of the church was built between the […]

Past Italia: Pasta in Italy

This image of a 19th-century factory in Naples illustrates just how fundamental pasta is to Italian cuisine Where or when pasta originated is something we will never know. A lot of the problem lies in what we mean by “pasta”, but the modern Italian pasta we know and love today (ie, that which is made […]

Past Italia: Brisighella

An unusual clock tower overlooks the land surrounding a small town in the province of Ravenna… What is now the Torre dell’Orologio of Brisighella was originally built in 1290 under the orders of the condottiero Maghinardo Pagani as part of the town’s (nominally) defensive fortifications. Damaged and reconstructed several times, the tower we see today […]

San Giorgio – Past Italia!

If you visit Ascoli Piceno in the heart of Le Marche you’ll find a wealth of incredible religious artworks by a Renaissance artist who fell in love with the region This detail of San Giorgio is part of the stunning polyptych found  in the Holy Sacrament Chapel in the cathedral in Ascoli Piceno. The art is the […]