Learn more about Italy

Walk into almost any supermarket in the world and Italy will be waiting for you on the shelves. A green, white and red flag on a jar of pesto made on another continent. A wedge of “Parmesan” that has never seen Emilia. A bottle of “Prosecco-style”...

I remember the first time a guide let me hold a white truffle before it went into the scale. It was heavier than I expected, cold, faintly damp, and it smelled like nothing I could name — garlic, hay, wet earth, something almost animal...

There is a version of Italy that never sits still on a map. It bubbles up, quite literally, in dozens of places between the Alps and Sicily, and it has been doing so since long before anyone thought to build a road, a temple, or a spa resort...

There is a strip of land, a little over two hundred kilometers long, running along the Via Emilia, where stuffed pasta is not simply a dish: it is an identity, a matter of local pride, a centuries-old dispute, and a domestic ritual. Emilia-Romagna...

My private Italy: dreaming twice a year in Siena To me, as well as to many Italians who love Siena and often pay a visit to the city, the Palio is a combination of colors, sounds and emotions. The colors, from yellow ocher turf lying on the...

Have you ever visited Rome? Me, I can’t even remember how many times I have been back. After a while, a strange thing happens to frequent travelers like me: you stop registering the grandeur. The Colosseum becomes just a familiar backdrop you...

There is a black and white image that, more than any other, captures the soul of an unrepeatable moment. It is the face of a young woman who emerges from a copy of the Corriere della Sera. Her eyes laugh, her hair is moved by the wind of novelty...

The Renaissance, Italy: the pinnacle of pictorial art. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael—the artists who best represent this peak. After them, one might say that no one could ever reach such heights of perfection; no artist could invent something...

Venice is the only city in the world where getting lost is the best thing that can happen to you. And yet, most visitors never do. They follow the yellow signs Per San Marco and Per Rialto, cross the same bridges as everyone else, take the same...