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A Guest Post by fellow traveler, Janette Turner:One summer I traveled to Italy with my husband’s business school and set out on a side trip to Venice. My companion was another wife amusing herself while her spouse was in class. As I sat in the back seat of a student’s…
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It was disturbing to gaze into the vacant eyes of a 5500-year-old man who could possibly be one of my most distant ancestors. Otzi, as he is known after the location where he turned up, is sleeping in the northern Italian city of Bolzano between Verona and the Brenner…
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Low clouds and mist enveloped Rome. It was cold. Even worse, the city was in chaos with demonstrations by flag-waving groups loudly protesting against the construction of a high-speed rail line in the north of Italy. Most of the demonstraters were dressed in jeans and sweaters but a group looking…
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Oracles & sibyls, those fascinating forecasters, were popular with ancient Greeks and Romans who wanted to learn their fates. I’m never quite clear on the difference between the two but my classical dictionary says that an oracle transmits the response of a god to a question asked by a worshipper. A…
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The narrow road from crowded Amalfi twists and turns while it ascends to Ravello, my idea of heaven on earth. Reaching the town requires effort as it does to reach paradise, in this case not by good works but by skillful driving. Looking down into the deep Valley of the…
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I have a friend who lives in a small town an hour north of Rome. Her home is on Via Etrusca, a perfect name for visualizing the area’s continuing Etruscan influence even though the Romans had finished them off by the Third Century BC. The town, set high on a…
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“Cigni, cigni…cigni,” “Swans, swans, swans,” the little boy cried out as he carried his pail holding yesterday’s bread to feed them and their cygnets gliding around the mill pond’s still waters leaving small wakes trailing behind. We were staying at a hotel converted from a 15th century water mill…
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A book recommendation for all Italophiles: The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour. The author is a British historian who has a long association with Italy beginning in childhood and continuing to the extent that he resided in all Italy’s 20 regions to research the book: a revisionist look at the history…