ART + CULTURE

Art and culture from Florence, Italy, focusing on exhibitions, museums, artisans and more.

ART + CULTURE

Life on both sides of the pond

Life in Italy and life in the U.S. are two completely different worlds. When I was a little kid, living in Northern California, I thought there was no other place like home. I thought all of my future lay within the country that I was standing in. I was

ART + CULTURE

All the world’s a playground

‘A paradise of exiles’ is how Percy Bysshe Shelley described Florence, hinting  at the anomaly of a city that exiled its most famous writer – Dante, creator of ‘Paradise’ – ...

ART + CULTURE

Arte di Ora: the art of now

Some people say Florence is stuck in the cinquecento, in other words, the Renaissance. And to be totally honest, they’re right. Florence may be the city that inspired the Renaissance, giving birth to artistic genius unlike any other epoch; and it may hold one-fifth of the world&

ART + CULTURE

Ancient pulsing lands

Aboriginal Australian Art has a universal theme: dreaming. This concept permeatesAboriginal culture, from ritual to contemporary art. The term refers to the time of creation when Aboriginal people and all of Nature came to be as they are: eternally interconnected with supernatural ancestors who impregnated the world they created with

ART + CULTURE

When tourism was young…

Buskers on the bridge, gelati and late-night street-eating. For the Grand Tourist, evidently niente cambia.   Many travel agents today offer enticing holidays to Europe promising sun or snow, beautiful cities and breath/taking countryside. A relatively recent enterprise one may think, yet it was thanks to Thomas

ART + CULTURE

Looking for Mr Right? He lives on Via Ricasoli

Florence continues to be one of the most popular tourist destinations in Italy and Michelangelo’s David the masterpiece everyone wants to see. This is not new. The gigantic scale of the statue has been a source of wonder since Florentines first saw it in 1504. Indeed its size

ART + CULTURE

Mythologica et Erotica

“A joy for the eyes, this exhibition warms the heart and opens the mind to dreams” This is how Antonio Paolucci, Superintendent of the Arts in Florence, described the exhibition ...

ART + CULTURE

Brancacci chapel junkie

As an English speaking traveller who has journeyed the length and breadth of Italy over the past four decades—from Viareggio to Brindisi, from Trieste to Catanzaro, and many stops in between—there is one sight that has always had a particularly powerful, literally stunning effect on me

ART + CULTURE

Bernard Berenson

Enamoured expatriates of Florence

ART + CULTURE

Art communes with nature

Historically, Tuscany is a region that has always been attractive to artists because of its rich cultural heritage, luminous light, and landscape. The sculpture gardens created during the 1980s and 1990s at the Villa Gori near Pistoia, the Giardino dei Tarrocchi at Pescia Fiorentina, or the Giardino di Spoerri at

ART + CULTURE

DH. Lawrence

Enamoured expatriates of Florence

ART + CULTURE

Coal to newcastle

The walls of Nuovo San Giovanni Hospital in Scandicci are more welcoming this week thanks to the recent visit of volunteers working with the Atlanta based Foundation for Hospital Art. This is the third time the Foundation has painted at San Giovanni. General Electric Elfuns, and members of the American

ART + CULTURE

John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley

Enamoured expatriates of Florence

ART + CULTURE

Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Peter Tchaikovsky

Enamoured expatriates of Florence

ART + CULTURE

Guitar playing that burns

Music-lovers detecting distinctly American, red hot licks, funky chops and classic West Coast riffs behind Italian folk hero Vasco Rossi’s rock and Peppino D’Agostino’s finger-style acoustic compositions aren’t imagining things:  generating much of the juice, these days, is California-

ART + CULTURE

Vernon Lee, also known as Violet Paget

Enamoured expatriates of Florence

ART + CULTURE

Up and down, and around, the hills of Florence

You can easily go by car, but the best way is to go by foot, as San Zanobi did in the 4th century CE. Starting from Piazza Vingone, where the route of Bus 27 ends, you take Via di Casignano and climb along a winding road lined with stone walls,

ART + CULTURE

Florence as a capital city 1865-1870

The political situation arising from the decision to move the capital to Florence.

ART + CULTURE

Medici Money

‘Bank,’ Italian banco, (later banca), a bench, table, or board, something to write on, to count over, to divide two people engaged in a transaction. That was all the furniture ...

ART + CULTURE

Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Enamoured expatriated of Florence

ART + CULTURE

Pietrasanta: where masterpieces are moulded

“The hands of the craftsmen give life to marble, bronze, iron, glass or clay: inert raw material takes on expression and feeling. To enter their studios, workshops and foundries always ...

ART + CULTURE

Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Florence is a city with a rich musical past. During the mid-15th century, it was one of the most exciting places in the world to be living and working as a musician thanks to the work of a group of intellectuals known as the Florentine Camerata. They had begun

ART + CULTURE

The Medici story of a European dynasty

THE DAWN OF POWER   During the 12th and 13th centuries the renewed splendor of urban life in Florence—and its accompanying economic promise—lured many people, nobility and peasant stock alike, from the surrounding countryside. Among those who arrived seeking fortune in the city were the Medici,

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