Last week, I had a glass of wine with friends who had spent their August holidays in Tuscany. Unsurprisingly, a great part of our conversation centered on their Italian respite: ...
In our last article, as you may remember, we embarked on a hibernal visit to Vicenza. This week, we shall continue, and conclude, our impassioned tour of the “City of Palladio” ...
How about starting with a quick quiz? Here are the clues… It is a relatively small but very cosmopolitan Italian city. More than two thousand years old. Lying about 60 kilometers ...
Oscar Peterson once said: “I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.” I have always loved the piano; ...
“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 ...
The Kiss… The Tomb of the Poet… Nine Astrological Aspects… Cathedral no 6… The Grass Sofas… The Eternal Lunch… An Island in an Island… The Beauty and the Beast… Mak ...
Cogito ergo sum… Fluctuat nec mergitur… Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant… How is your Latin these days? You don’t have, I guess, that many opportunities to practice ...
Few Italian artists have captured the colours of the Veneto Renaissance, its luminous spaces and its splendid architecture as effectively as Paolo Veronese (1528-1588). A series of ...
I used to get a little confused with the thousands of museums and archaeological sites which Italy can boast, particularly with their policies concerning entrance fees, opening hou ...
“As I sit at the piano, says Mark Springer, the feeling takes hold of me and I start to play a melody which is very direct. It shifts interestingly between major and minor ...
It was in July 2000, I remember, in the late afternoon. I was sitting in a Tuscan bar with a good friend of mine. I was leafing through a local newspaper when I came upon a heading ...
“Have you ever been to the Arte Sella biodegradable exhibition, Katharina? – The what? Biodegradable exhibition?! Where on earth is that being held? And for how ...
Last year, I went to spend a few days at our Villa dell’Orso in Sardinia. Featured in our Trust&Travel rental catalogue, this villa is situated at the northern tip of Sardini ...
Victor Hugo once wrote: “Dear God, how beauty varies in nature and art! In a woman the flesh must be like marble, and in a statue the marble must be like flesh.” ...
“You are going to love the place, I told my sister, after my brother and I picked her up at the Venice airport. – I’m sure I will, she replied. Judging from the ...
I have mentioned Tuscany’s highest mountain, Mount Amiata (1738m), several times in some of my previous articles. I have never told you, however, about its neighbouring Monte Lab ...
My father and I were simply mesmerized, like under a spell. We looked at each other with a funny smile, and then stood up to join the applauding audience. ...
“So, what wonder are you promising us today, Katharina? my brother asked me on the fourth day of our family holiday at the Villa Valmarana. – Well, today I suggest we get roman ...
True, I may have a slight tendency to use superlatives when I write, talk or dream about Italy. Superlatives which, however, needless to say, are always well-founded and fully just ...
Off the beaten track… This is where I need to venture once in a while. And usually I don’t regret it: more often than not I get to run into something that makes a strong, p ...
“I’m really fond of these plates, Katharina. Where did you get them? – A little less than a thousand kilometers from here. – Let me guess… In Italy, right?” Yes, in Ita ...
Villa… A word that calls to mind images and lifestyles which very few people would turn their back on. Here is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines “villa”: A countr ...
“I like the silence of a church, before the service begins, better than any preaching.” ...
The last time I ran into Mrs. Loiseau, one of my Paris neighbours – I introduced her to you in my very first article, – she was wearing flashy sling back shoes which she had j ...
It was a very special day indeed. Special evening, I should say. It was high summer. The Italian sky was slowly turning into gold and copper, as it so often does at the end of the ...
This week’s topic is once again related to a “rare” item I purchased for a song many years ago. Not at a flea market this time, but at a charity sale. A set of six modernist ...
“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” This beautiful phrase hasn’t just come right off the top of my head – even though I think it might have if I had been laz ...
Here we are for the third and final episode of the Origo family epic. Historically, a dark and trying one for both the family and the country. From June 1943 to June 1944, Italy ke ...
In my last post, I undertook to tell you the story – well, to outline the story, I should say – of the Origo family. A family who has played a key part in my life, as I said. S ...
I was only 19. And already in love with Italy. Images and Shadows, an autobiography by Anglo-Irish author Iris Origo, kept me company during the long hours I spent on the Tuscan be ...
