Taking a short break from Tuscany in August, visitors are well advised to avoid the crowded beaches and head to Spoleto, arguably one of the most musical towns in all of Italy. In August, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM Spoleto) takes over where the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi (June/July) leaves off. […]
A couple of days every week a phenomenon overwhelms even the most hardened Florentine. It is know to some as the “boat people” scrooge. It happens on the days when gigantic cruise ships dock at Livorno. Thousands of pastel-clad tourists shod in flip-flops are unloaded and stuffed into dozens of buses, which transport them to
GUEST POST by HOLLY from ESCAPIO.COM Tuscany evokes images of rolling hills, sumptuous cuisine and breathtaking architecture. There is a wealth of compelling history to be discovered in the cities and countryside alike. Visitors can experience the luxury of living in historic palaces, castles and villas in unique Tuscan and Florentine hotels. No matter if
The taxi drivers of London are the best in the world. New York and San Francisco have excellent cabbies. Even Washington, DC, where they rarely know how to find an address, the taxi cab drivers are polite and want to give good service. But in Italy, cab drivers are a protected class who seem to
“A Sunflower Year?” asked Francesca as we drove through the rolling Tuscan hills southwest of Siena. I pointed out to this Florentine that some years there were no sunflowers to be found in Tuscany, but in others the golden flowers created the Tuscan landscape of movies and postcards and tourists’ fantasies. 2010 is a Sunflower
Just over a year ago, the Bardini Museum in Florence opened to the public again after long and accurate restoration work aimed at re-establishing the configuration that its founder, the antiquarian Stefano Bardini, had originally given the exhibition. Bardini trained as a painter and became famous as a restorer and art dealer. He created a
CONGRATULATIONS!!! JUDY WITTS has published the 2,000th copy of her new cookbook SECRETS FROM MY TUSCAN KITCHEN. To celebrate 25 years in Italy, Judy Witts Francini of Divina Cucina self-published the collection of recipes she used for the past 20 years at her cooking school in Florence and wrote about in her blog Over a Tuscan
The mayor says he’s going to fix it, but he doesn’t seem to have time while he’s throwing White Night festivities and Blue Night parties and stopping the bus system in its track by creating the fabulous pedestrian zone around the Duomo. He’s having equal trouble with potholes. But potholes and graffiti aren’t sexy and
Graffiti is known worldwide, but word itself has nothing to do with scrawls on walls. In Italy, the words sgraffito and sgraffiti come from the Italian word sgraffiare (“to scratch”), ultimately from the Greek γράφειν (gráphein), meaning “to write”. Graffiti, the bane of all modern cities in the form of spray paint, in its original
The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana) in the cloister of the Church of San Lorenzo is not a library where the visitor to Florence can hang out in comfy chairs, but it is one of the most important libraries in Florence – well worth a visit. The Laurentian was designed by Michelangelo and houses one