A model railway museum in Florence? A friend took her grandchildren and can’t recommend the new HZero museum enough. ...
The Italian coastline does not need an introduction. But have you ever explored one of the country’s rivers? After 30 years in Italy, I finally ventured onto the Ombrone River in ...
On October 5 of the year 1554, more than 250 orphans were bluntly expelled from the Republic of Siena. The city had been under siege for 9 months and its government decreed that th ...
Some day – hopefully in a not too distant future – we’ll be able to cycle along the Mediterranean coast on a dedicated bike path that will stretch from the Eternal City all t ...
Ah, springtime!… Longer days, blooming trees, twirling swallows and, above all, – I may have mentioned this to you before – my very first swim of the year in the Mediterr ...
Last week, thanks to the downloadable Mobike app, I spent a whole day whizzing through Florence on three or four bicycles – which I used one after the other, not simultaneously, ...
San Gimignano… A lovely Tuscan town famous for its 13 medieval “tower houses” – and which I invited you, in a previous article, to visit in the much quieter wintertime. But ...
At any time of the year, our Palazzo Ca’nova Borsato apartment offers a breathtaking view of the Serenissima’s Grand Canal. But during the world-famous Carnival, this view beco ...
You have always wanted to attend Siena’s famous Palio, but never did because of the dense crowds and stifling heat that come with it when it takes place, in the heart of summer? ...
They are everywhere… Over the last twenty years, the monotonous Monobloc – a lightweight stackable polypropene chair, often white in colour – has proliferated like mushrooms ...
The 2018 architecture biennale runs through to November 25. The program is based on the theme Free Space which has been put forth by Irish architects and Biennale head curators She ...
In Italy, the patronymic Corsini has long been a household name, especially in Tuscany and in Florence, where the Corsini princely family has been playing a leading role since the ...
Shortly after starting to work at Italy’s oldest winery, during the first years I spent in the bel paese, I was already dreaming of touring the bucolic Chianti region on one of t ...
Oh, look Mummy, there’s a mosquito sagra around here! Can we go? Pleeeaaase! This was two years ago, in August. My family and I were leisurely driving through the Italian provinc ...
Until a few years ago, when we happened to be sojourning, my family and I, in the Maremma, an excursion on the Isle of Giglio used to be one of our favourite day-trip options. Then ...
I have never tired of the view… During the day, the waters of the majestic lake are often peaceful and turquoise blue, and in the distance stands out the hieratic Isola Maggiore, ...
The Leaning Tower of Pisa… Who has not seen it, at least in pictures, and tried to imagine what it feels like to be at its top, precariously tilting some 50 meters above ground?! ...
I came to a dead stop and rubbed my eyes in total disbelief… My friend Rudston, here, in the heart of a remote hamlet of Sardinia? The last time I had seen him, it was in Paris m ...
Where on Earth had we landed?… A frolicsome sprite, hidden somewhere behind a decrepit stone wall, replied to me in a hushed voice: “In the depths of the Middle Ages, in a ...
A lunch at the beach… Few things in life make my family and I as contented as sharing a nice seaside meal with our best friends. My daughter and her young accomplices enjoy the b ...
It was last summer, during my very first visit to the Ca’nova Palazzo. At one point, escorted by the delightful owners of the premises, I walked into one of the spacious rooms an ...
I must have told you once or twice, in previous posts, that the Maremma Regional Park in Tuscany is one of my favourite nature reserves in the whole of Italy. ...
Some road works seem to take forever to be completed… Have you ever had that feeling? This is the case with the still unfinished Superstrada 223 linking Siena to the city of Gros ...
In my last post, we began a roundup of interesting things to do in Italy when you are parents with children. We had a close look at three of the activities which I particularly rec ...
Well I think it’s fine building jumbo planes, Or taking a ride on a cosmic train, Switch on summer from a slot machine… Do these lyrics ring a bell? They are from a great C ...
Do you remember Talamone, this little harbour town lying on the Southern coast of Tuscany? I told you about it in a previous blog post. Well, true, this was almost two years ago, s ...
“Hey, look at this one, Mummy! Is that a hippotamus? – A hippopotamus, darling. Yes, it is. – He looks angry! – Well… yes. Or he may just be yawning…” For my daug ...
– Mummy, I want to “vote” for the Leocorno, my daughter told me with big round eyes. – The Unicorn? You want to support the Unicorn team? – Yes! And George says he ...
One of my favourite places in Florence is the Mercato Centrale, also known as the Mercato di San Lorenzo, the largest food market in town. A beautiful glass and cast-iron construct ...
“A woman is like an artichoke: you must work hard to get to her heart.” You will never guess who said that… Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Yes, the French – and always gallant ...
