High-school blues

Seen some long faces on Italian teens (and their parents) recently? Summer's the season when young students all over Italy learn the hard lesson of ‘too little, too late.' At the end of each year, high school students (aged 14 and …

Lights...Cake...Action!

Is the wedding season in Tuscany!   You've seen the happy couples in piazza della Signoria and piazza Duomo, and if you haven't, you definitely will. Each year for the past 20 years, an average of 1500 couples have said ‘I do' in …

Unexpected fans

  October 27, 1954 was a perfectly normal autumn day in Florence-until about 2.20 in the afternoon, that is. Looking skywards in the area around …

Instant English

When, in the mid 1980s, I applied to university to read business studies, I was persuaded by the literature at the time that the English language was dead, about to be replaced by German, Spanish or French. If I was not fluent in at …

A landmark en passant

More than 120 years after its 1877 closure, the ‘English Cemetery' of Florence had fallen into a derelict state. Tombstones were unstable and cypresses were falling.   Permission for a restoration project was officially granted in 1997, when the city of Florence also …

The escape of an unloved French man

On the side where Palazzo Vecchio faces via della Ninna, a small wooden door set into the massive square stones of the palazzo leads over a once secret stairway two floors up and back in time to when the Duke of …

First the farmer sows the seed ...

These days, Tuscany is everything but flexible in its effort to pull the local economy out of the doldrums. Traditional manufacturing sectors are on their knees, and the mainstays of the Tuscan economy, especially tourism, are suffering. Tourism has been hit …

A landmark en passant

For a great number of Florentines the familiar small, walled oval hill on piazzale Donatello is little more than a roundabout. Granted, it is a rather mysterious roundabout, higher than most, revealing peaks of elegant cypresses and glimpses of marble tombstones, …

Academia aperitivo

It was the late 1860s, and the city of Milan was asserting itself as a power player in the unification of Italy, laying the foundations of railroads and of Italian independence. But while the state of Italy unfolded, a quieter force …

The nightlife wall

The first thing you should know is that I'm a 16-year-old Italian student at the International School of Florence (ISF). The second thing you should know is that I love this city and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.   However, being …

What a load of tripe!

Florence's tradition of tripe dates as far back as the 1400s, and in 2010, it's still a growing industry. Everyone has seen the mobile kiosks in Florence's streets and piazzas advertising trippa and lampredotto in large, bold lettering. The number of these …

A quest for the truth

I don't remember exactly when my Italian mother-in-law told me that her grandfather was murdered. I've known my husband's mother for almost 30 years, so it must have been during the early part of my romance with her Florentine son that …

Babbo inglese

I was in the COOP carrying a basket in one hand and steering a buggy (‘stroller' to our American readers) with the other. Having already loaded the basket with heavy items upstairs, I now needed to bag and weigh the fruits …

March of the condemned

Via dei Malcontenti (‘street of the unhappy') leads from via delle Casine to Piazza Piave and constitutes an exception among Florentine street names, as it neither originates from resident families (like via Strozzi, via Cerretani, Piazza Peruzzi, etc.), nor from artisans …

Pushing through the pain

The Tuscan economy is hurting, and it's hurting bad. Given, these days nearly every sector and industry in every country is in pain. But Tuscany has its very own personal agony.   Why are things so bad for the region economically? The global …