Welcome to my little corner of Italy.
Before visiting the Museo San Paolo housed in Reggio Calabria’s Palazzo della Cultura, I was under the impression that it was just the usual collection of a couple pieces of silver, a few religious paintings and an old frock. How many times have I paid the Euro and gone through a side door past a heavy velour curtain to view a handful of dusty antiques with dubious value? Well, this wasn’t one of those occasions.Read More
Intriguing, eclectic, thought provoking – a few words I would use to describe the Palazzo della Cultura, a new museum in Reggio Calabria that is definitely worth the visit.
Life is funny. When I began to study the Italian language as an adult and made my first attempts at conversation, I would never have imagined that one day I would be capable of giving full-fledged presentations in Italian or would appear on Italian TV. Read More
It was a little later than I had wanted to arrive, but there were still a good ten minutes before the presentation was to begin. Rounding the hallway, I could see the aula magna or assembly hall, full of students, waiting rather patiently, I thought, for a school event. I entered through the doors in front with the idea of making sure my memory stick worked in the computer. And at that moment, there was a sort of a hush and the students all stood up at the same time. There were over 100 of them. It wasn’t a wave, like at a sporting event, nor was it in any way a straggly rising. They were all looking directly at me.Read More
Using her hand like a shovel, Maria scooped up a goodly portion of mud and unceremoniously thwocked it onto my elbows, diving back into the gooey substance for my wrists, my feet and knees. Then, with multiple plops of the thick, grayish mud onto the table’s raised backrest, she instructed me to lie back onto the numerous piles of the hot, sticky matter. I was in room 36 of the Terme Caronte or the Caronte Spa, located in Lamezia Terme, a Calabrian town whose name reflects the presence of the curative properties of its water and mud. Read More
Intrepid is the word that comes to mind when characterizing women travelers in remote regions. Take Mrs. and Miss Lowe, two proper British ladies, a mother and daughter team that tramped all over the “continent” in the middle of the 19th-century to both the horror and delight of those around them. I enjoyed traveling back in time in a vicarious trip through South Italy by way of Emily Lowe’s (the daughter’s) charming book of 1859, entitled Unprotected Females in Sicily, Calabria, and on the Top of Mount Aetna. Read More
Amantea is blessed with an unusually mild climate, and that’s something Italians are really able to appreciate – good beach weather. In Amantea, summer can begin as early as April and last into November. Thus, the town’s long sandy beach is popular. In fact, Amantea boasts eight beautiful miles of shoreline along the Tyrrhenian Sea, a narrow coastal terrain, just a little over a mile wide before climbing the adjacent hillside. Read More
The devastation of the recent earthquake in Amatrice reminds me of the precariousness of life. The town had been preparing for its annual festival celebrating the world-renowned sauce that bears its name – the “amatriciana” would instead be celebrated all over the world. The region of Calabria is likewise no stranger to hardship, and in times of uncertainty past peoples have turned to faith. Even today, the Santa Maria Madre della Consolazione with the annual Festival of the Madonna della Consolazione, as she is commonly called, is celebrated every year in Reggio Calabria, the region’s largest city. Read More
This month marks my two-year anniversary of blogging about Italy, mostly Calabria, the region in the toe of the peninsula, and I would like to reflect a moment on what I feel makes something worth blogging or writing about. As with my book, I’ve put my all into my Italy blog and when people ask me, “When are you going to write your next book?” I’ve found myself responding, “At this point I’m busy with my blog.” Read More
I was utterly charmed the first time I saw Pranzo di Ferragosto just after its release in the early fall of 2008. I remember seeing it in Rome at the multiplex in Piazza Barberini with friends from Rieti, where I was staying. The film wasn’t expected to be a huge draw and hadn’t been programmed in Rieti, so we drove the 80-kilometers to Rome – a trip well worth the effort. I was enchanted, as were the critics, and Pranzo di Ferragosto was distinguished with a number of important Italian film awards. Luckily, an English-language subtitled version would also be produced and it was released in the United States about a year and a half later with the title Mid-August Lunch. Read More