Florence hides many unexpected jewels, but they take time for the visitor to find, visit and savour. One of these is the Indian Museum, an anthropology and ethnology section of ...
For five days between September 20 and 25, as part of Estate Fiorentina, several major Florentine cultural organisations will celebrate the 90th birthday of Sylvano Bussotti, one of the city’s ...
The son of Antonio Carletti and his wife Lucrezia Macinghi, Francesco Carletti was born in Florence in either 1573 or 1574. His father was a descendant of an old merchant ...
A friend telephoned me a month ago and said, “I’m coming by to take you to see a real piece of industrial archaeology”. He did that and so much more. ...
On November 29, 1924, aged 65, the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died of a heart attack as a result of radiation treatment he was undergoing for throat cancer at the ...
When in via della Scala, take a moment to pause outside number 50 and look at the plaque on the wall. It translates into English: In this palace which was ...
On May 15, 1896, a small, slender woman with a baby in her arms lay down across the tram track in Brozzi, a town on the outskirts of Florence. Her ...
In 1829, at the peak of his superstar fame as the composer of more than 40 operas including L’Italiana in Algeri, La Cenerentola, La gazza ladra, La donna del lago, ...
Protests about the gender equality gap in the film industry continued to rumble on as the lights of the 76th annual Venice International Film Festival went out at the end ...
The Fontana sisters, Zoe, Micol and Giovanna, were pivotal in establishing the “Made in Italy” fashion brand internationally.
On January 5, 1589, when Catherine, the great Medici-born queen and regent of France, died of pleurisy at 69 years of age in Blois, just eight months before her son, ...
Summer, spring, winter and fall: there is no better dish than a piping hot plate of spaghetti with pummarola, the rich Italian sauce made from tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive ...
The powerful Albizi family whose German roots dated to the time of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III made its considerable fortune out of importing and selling French wool and ...
After Mussolini fell and the armistice had been signed, German troops occupied Florence for almost a year between September 1943 and August 1944. A climate of fear, suspicion and betrayal ...
The name “Latini” has long been synonymous with traditional Tuscan cooking in Florence. For more than a century, four generations of the Latini family have nurtured and championed the best ...
The rich and beautiful of Italy’s fashion world, including Diego Della Valle, Nina Testa Fuerstenberg, Matteo Marzotto and Lapo Elkann, attended the funeral of Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani at ...
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,