Italian art, architecture, craftsmanship, cinema, fashion and world-famous design.
62 Kilometres of Beauty, History and Everyday Life Walk through Bologna on a rainy morning and you may realise, after several streets, that you have forgotten to open your umbrella. In summer, the same route can be crossed while avoiding…
WHERE CLAY BECOMES ITALIAN ART In the green heart of Umbria, a few miles south of Perugia, there is a small hill town whose name has travelled much farther than its streets. Deruta may appear quiet and modest from a…
There are buildings designed to dominate the landscape, rising above cities and announcing their presence from miles away. The Tempio del Valadier does precisely the opposite. It hides inside a mountain, protected by an immense limestone cave in the wild…
A few minutes from Piazza del Popolo, behind the dignified façade of an early twentieth-century villa, Rome hides a room filled with giants. Enormous white figures stand beneath high ceilings, stretch their arms towards the light, embrace one another, raise…
Hidden among the green hills of Umbria, in the tiny medieval village of Monte Castello di Vibio, there is a theatre so small that entering it feels almost like stepping inside an exquisitely crafted music box. It has a stage,…
In the heart of Cesena, a graceful city in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, there is a door that does something extraordinary: it takes visitors back more than five centuries. Beyond it lies the Biblioteca Malatestiana, one of the most remarkable libraries…
There are periods in history that seem practical, sensible, even a little dull. And then there are periods like the 1920s, when Italy apparently looked at the modern world and decided that if life had to move forward, it might…
ItalyStories.com Raphael, born Raffaello Sanzio in Urbino in 1483, has long stood as one of the clearest embodiments of Renaissance harmony. If Leonardo da Vinci represents mystery and restless inquiry, and Michelangelo embodies titanic force, Raphael appears as the master…
ItalyStories.com Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452 in the Tuscan town of Vinci, occupies a place in cultural history that goes far beyond the achievements of an extraordinary painter. He has become the emblem of universal genius, the Renaissance mind…
ItalyStories.com Michelangelo Buonarroti, born in 1475 in Caprese and raised largely in Florence, stands as one of the most formidable creative figures in the history of art. Sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, he embodied the Renaissance ideal of the universally…