Before Elise Chapin and I ever met, our mothers were friends. Looking back on their era—the late 50s and 60s in Somerset County, New Jersey—their lives seems so distant from our own: debutante parties and dressmakers, fox hunting and fancy sandwiches, home economics and hired help. They were well educated, well traveled and well heeled. […]

Patti Smith sings about Piero della Francesca in “Constantine’s Dream”. Cezanne, Seurat, De Chirico, Morandi, Guston and Hockney all found inspiration in Piero’s masterpieces. Camus sees the great artist as the first existentialist; Pasolini finds in him Marxist and homoerotic ideas; Stendhal practically gave himself a syndrome because of Piero’s work. In The English Patient […]

Oonagh Stransky, The Tuscan Times correspondent in Arezzo, interviews Elisabetta Bidini, the assistant director of Casa Museo Bruschi to find out what life is like behind the walls and in the courtyards of Arezzo’s most vibrant cultural centre and museum.       Oonagh Stransky: Tell me about your role at the Casa Museo Bruschi. […]

Take out your corsets, doublets, pantaloons and gowns. Don your jester hat. Get ready for the Arezzo Saracen joust: the most riveting historical sporting event to celebrate horses, men in tights, pageantry and general bedlam since Monty Python and the Holy Grail.     Since the 1300s Arezzo has offered its citizens two jousts per […]

THE PACT Town mayor Andrea Rossi and Andrea Natalini, president of the Consortium of Vino Nobile producers, signed a pact with Qualità e Sviluppo Rurale and Marconi University in Rome to create a platform and set up a scientific laboratory in Montepulciano that would allow them to quantify how much carbon dioxide is released into […]

Most of us are used to seeing contemporary art in neutral settings—large, open spaces with abundant light and neutral décor—allowing the viewer to concentrate on the work, absorb its strength and message, be it bold or whispered.       The new exhibition at Ivan Bruschi House Museum on corso Italia in Arezzo is the complete […]

With eight of the nine botanicals used for the production of Sabatini Gin coming straight from the gardens of the Sabatini family estate in Teccognano, near Cortona, and one coming from the nearby Casentino forests, this gin captures all the essences and aromas of Tuscany.    Juniper, rosemary, lavender, thyme, iris root, coriander, wild fennel, […]

During the June 2 maxi-ponte weekend, take a day trip and get to know Arezzo. At only 1 hour 20 minutes by train from Florence Santa Maria Novella, the city offers a change of pace with something for everyone.     On Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 June, the streets will be lined with Fiera […]

A plucky team of professional art restorers in Arezzo have recently decided to open their laboratory for a rare and valuable opportunity to witness the restoration of a fourteenth-century Pietro Lorenzetti altarpiece and to talk to the restorers—an experience that would, in any other circumstance, take place behind museum walls.     RICERCA studios, headed […]

In addition to being an eclectic cabinet of curiosities with more than 10,000 objets d’art and rarities, the Ivan Bruschi House Museum also hosts contemporary art exhibitions, live art restoration projects, alternative theatre performances, jazz concerts, readings and lectures. Over the past 12 months, under the stewardship of Lucio Misuri, this small museum in the […]