LIGHT MODE
DARK MODE
Most popular
The Florentine
Art and culture from Florence, Italy, focusing on exhibitions, museums, artisans and more.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Florence is its ability to hide-sometimes in plain sight-many of its most special treasures. Take the church and monastery of San Marco. Founded in the thirteenth century, the complex was enlarged in 1437, when Dominican monks from Fiesole moved there
It has been a long time since my last ‘Mosaics'. My lengthy leave of absence, however, was not a result of writer's block. I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and in 2008 I was fighting for my life. As my doctor said, I was ‘cut (surgery), poisoned (
It's easy to miss many of Florence's most delightful treasures. Walk along via Porta Rossa, for example, looking in the shop windows, and the facade of the Palazzo Davanzati, built around 1450 for a family of wool merchants, will blend into the city's familiar background of dark
The Italian political cartoonist Giorgio Forattini always depicted Giovanni Spadolini, the first non-Christian Democrat prime minister in the history of the Italian Republic, as an impish, corpulent cupid, gradually making him more and more naked as his political powers increased. But Spadolini was not just a politician. He was
On a slope a few hundred metres outside the medieval city gate of San Niccolò, I sit secluded among olive and cypress trees, contemplating the panorama of Florence spread out before me, in the company of the Queen of Denmark, William Shakespeare and the Princess of Monaco-just some
Until I read Stay Close: A mother's story of her son's addiction, the phrase ‘heroin user' conjured scrawny addicts shooting up in back alleys and cheap motel rooms; malnourished models getting their buzz in posh clubs. This book shattered my naïve image and showed me
Family, fame, feuding, passion, litigation and homicide. All the ingredients of a successful Hollywood soapie like are, instead, the backdrop to the story of one of Italy's best known luxury label clans: the Gucci family. The patriarch of this dynasty was Guccio Gucci. A native of Florence, Guccio was
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's death, the Galleria dell'Accademia will exhibit a collection of his work. This exhibition, which runs until September 27, 2009, is a landmark one for the Accademia: it is the first time the museum will show the photographic
Feigning madness in Milos Foreman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won Jack Nicholson an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1976. Based on a novel of the same name written in 1962 by Ken Kesey, who had worked as an aide on the night
On September 3, 1982, Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and his 32-year-old bride of less than two months, Emanuela Setti Carraro, were gunned down with almost military precision by mob hitmen ...
The uniforms foretold the terrible story of what was to come. When Benito Mussolini, the Italian prime minister, rushed down Platform 16 at Santa Maria Novella Station at 2pm on 9 May, 1938 to meet Adolf Hitler, the German chancellor, both men were wearing military dress. Florence was the last
The Book of Unholy Mischief is foodie heaven. Elle Newmark's historical thriller set in fifteenth-century Venice simply oozes food and recipes from every page. The story is narrated in retrospect by its main character, Luciano, who at the start of the book is a young scrap of a
To watch an original clip of modugno singing nel blu, dipinto di blu, go to Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-dvi0ugelc. At the beginning of January 1951, the first annual Festival della Canzone ...
‘Impulse alone does not make a work of art.’ These are the words of one of Italy’s most internationally renowned twentieth-century artists. Despite receiving many accolades from the international art ...
Where is the line between genius and madness? How does madness influence art? How has the relationship between art and madness changed throughout the centuries? These are the questions visitors are asked to consider at an exhibit in Siena's Santa Maria della Scala Museum: Genio e Follia: Il giorno
Be good. Mind your parents. Appreciate the paradise that your home is. Or else you'll end up like the miserable souls in the netherworld. With Dante's Inferno as her guide, Virginia Jewiss has written a cautionary tale for children. Although there's no missing the message of
I remember my first Italian boyfriend, who suggested taking his car and ‘going parking' one evening. I felt like I had suddenly been plunged into an episode of ‘Happy Days' with Ralph Malph trying oh-so-subtly to put his arm around a girl at the drive-
The twentieth century's great conductor, Arturo Toscanini, was born in Parma on March 25, 1867, the son of a music-loving tailor who spent much of his time fighting in Giuseppe Garibaldi's republican forces. Blessed with a prodigious memory-which would later enable him to remember the entire
What could men like Al Capone, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astair, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Sinatra, Pope John XXIII and Robert Redford possibly have in ...
In its short history, the Republic of Italy has only once almost had a woman prime minister. That woman was Leonilde Iotti, or Nilde, as everyone called her, who, in ...
Tina Turner and Janis Joplin performing together at Madison Square Garden: the image is forever captured, thanks to photographer Amalie R. Rothschild. From 1968-1971, while a graduate student at New York University, Rothschild, worked as a freelance photographer and became known as the unofficial house photographer at the
What do a 33,600 euro bottle of wine and a restored bronze pharisee have in common? The answer is Friends of Florence. When Friends member Michael Corliss paid an astronomical sum for a nine-liter bottle of Ornellaia at a Christie's auction in November 2007, he knew his
Where do you go if your attempt to overthrow the legitimate government in Italy fails? To have a plate of spaghetti, where else? This is exactly what happened when the coup d'etat planned by Junio Valerio Borghese, the heroic World War II naval commander and post-war, right-wing
