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The Florentine
Opera tenor Andrea Bocelli is a global superstar who today would rank high up in any list of famous living Italians. As classical music’s top-selling artist, with over 80 million ...
A short street named for Italian World War I patriot Cesare Battisti runs between two of the most important piazze in Florence, San Marco and Santissima Annunziata. Most of us ...
After four years in the fashion wilderness, designer John Galliano finally returned to the catwalks, first in London and then in Paris. Formerly head designer for Christian Dior, in 2011 ...
In May 2015, using the Italian verb rottamare (‘to scrap’)—a catchphrase that Matteo Renzi used in his election campaign to indicate it was time for the old guard of politicians to make way for the new—Oscar Farinetti, founder and owner of the up-market
On July 20, 2015, 80-year-old Italian avant-garde fashion designer Elio Fiorucci died at his home in Milan. After a funeral at Milan’s basilica of San Carlo, a stone’s throw from his historic shop near piazza San Babila, his remains were interred at the
If you have had the chance to pass through the Campo di Marte train station, you might have noticed an old factory nearby and wondered what’s made there and who’s behind it. The answer is Farmaceutica Menarini, the profits of which left Massimiliana Landini Aleotti and
There are many places one might easily turn to learn about the art of Ottone Rosai. Here, my task is not to critique the artistic or literary works of this Florentine painter, engraver and author, but rather to tell you about his troubled, turbulent life, which played out against the
In recent months, unrest has been high in Figline Valdarno, a town in the triangle formed by Florence, Arezzo and Siena. After 52 years, the Pirelli factory located there, which specialises in the manufacture of steel cord, the metal belt that is the fundamental strengthening element for radial rubber tyres,
If you enjoy a taste of panforte margherita this holiday, you should thank two people. The first is Queen Margherita (1851–1926), wife of King Umberto I of Savoy, who was so popular that, in June 1889, in celebration of her visit to Naples, Raffaele Esposito, a cook at
The cover of coffee maker Lavazza’s calendar for 2014 features a photo of the Spanish avant-garde chef Ferran Adrià. Seven other of the world’s top chefs also appear in the ...
The man dubbed by The New Yorker as the ‘Italian Ralph Lauren,’ Diego Della Valle has been a familiar face at the Artemio Franchi soccer stadium in Campo di Marte since he and his younger brother, Andrea, bought the ACF Fiorentina football club in 2002, rescuing it from
On August 11, 2013, during the celebrations of the 69th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Florence, Rabbi Joseph Levi announced that he hoped the late Gino Bartali, one of Italy’s most famous and popular cycling champions from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s, would soon be
Given to the city by the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze in 1996, the bronze statue of St. John the Baptist, Florence’s protector and patron saint, sculpted by Giuliano Vangi ...
Mathematician, philosopher and theologian, Elena Cornaro Piscopia was the first woman ever to be awarded a university degree. It was conferred on her at the University of Padua on June 25, 1678, but her story was rediscovered only a century or so ago. Although famous during her lifetime, not only
Following the premature death of his beloved first wife, Anna Fitz Gerald, on December 11, 1883, Giovanni Meyer, a fabulously wealthy banker set about fulfilling her last wish: that Florence should have ‘a hospital, which could house a certain number of sick children, especially those with congenital or acquired
What do blistered feet, a hot desert in America and a young Italian winemaker have in common? The answer is a footwear revolution. The man behind it, Mario Moretti Polegato, has often told the story about how he was in Reno, Nevada’s second largest city, in 1992, promoting
Official statistics showed that nearly 2 million passengers passed through Amerigo Vespucci Airport at Peretola during 2011, ranking it 42nd out of the 143 in the Airport Council International's classification of main European airports. With all of these people coming and going to Florence, I wonder how many of
In over half a century since his last book appeared, only vestiges of the Florence that novelist, playwright and poet Vasco Pratolini described in his books remain, but that in ...
Situated on the right bank of the Arno river is one of the most elegant squares in Florence: piazza Ognissanti. It is home to two of the city’s finest hotels, the St. Regis and the Excelsior, and Palazzo Lenzi, now home to the Honorary French Consulate and the
The bankruptcy of the dairy products multinational corporation Parmalat in December 2003, sent shock waves throughout global financial markets. In what was to prove the biggest corporate fraud so far in European history, Parmalat finished up in a black hole of 14 billion euro of debt, eight times more than
Even though the age-old debate about whether cooking is an art or a science rages on, when Italian chef and restaurant owner Gualtiero Marchesi, founder of Italy's nuova cucina (‘new cuisine'), says it is both, you can believe him. The first non-Frenchman to receive the coveted
It probably isn't that much fun coming second at anything, but when, over the past several years, the prestigious American business magazine Forbes has ranked you as the second richest man in Italy, with an estimated worth of 11.5 billion dollars, you can't complain all that much.
Economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith maintained that ‘in central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much ...
Anglo-American biographer and author Iris Origo took up writing after the untimely death of her seven-year-old son in 1933.
