Mother Martha investigates restaurants, recipes and foodie culture in Rome and beyond
Roman to the core, Aldo Fabrizi (1905-1990) was an Italian actor, director, screenwriter, and comedian, best known for his role as the heroic priest in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City and as a partner of the Neapolitan actor Totò in a number of successful comedies. Aldo’s exuberant younger sister, Elena, known as “Lella,” also had a [...]
The exterior of Fragrance Hotel St Peter. For many years, Friar Tuck and I were neighbors on Via Monte del Gallo, a narrow, quiet, residential street, which winds uphill from the Italian State Railway’s St. Peter’s station at the beginning of Via Gregorio VII to the Vatican-owned, spartan, rabbit-warren hotel Casa Tra Noi (www.hotelcasatranoiroma.com). [...]
Naples, Italy. Although pizza was almost certainly born more than 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, it’s the single food most firmly associated with Italy, and particularly with Naples. The first documented pizzas were eaten in ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, where archaeologists have uncovered brick pizza ovens. But it was pizza without mozzarella and [...]
Heinz Beck. In 1993 Hans Fritz, the German director of Rome’s Cavalieri Hilton, asked Heinz Winkler, the chef, restaurateur/owner of “Tantris,” the only Munich restaurant with three Michelin stars (and still today the owner of the three-starred “Residenz Heinz Winkler” in Aschau), to recommend a talented protégé to become Executive Chef for a still-to-open Hilton [...]
Hotel Michelangelo Built in 1959 for the 1960 Summer Olympics held in Rome, 4-star Hotel Michelangelo (Via della Stazione di San Pietro 14), like “La Vittoria” and “Il Cantico” (reviewed in the previous two issues of Inside the Vatican) is on the Trastevere side of St. Peter’s Square, directly across the wide street, Via [...]
The chapel. Opened on October 4, 2012 “Il Cantico” (www.ilcantico.it) is probably the newest hotel in the area on the via Gregorio VII-Trastevere side of St. Peter’s Basilica. Located on a quiet residential side street at Via del Cottolegno 50, it’s five city blocks from “La Vittoria” and St. Peter’s Square — a 10-minute [...]
Pope Francis is pictured cooking in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in an undated file photo. Surrounded on three sides by the Alps including Monviso where the Po River rises, Piemonte or Piedmont is a region of northwest Italy, bordered on the west by France, on the east by Lombardy, on the north by Val D’Aosta [...]
Claudio Di Bartolomeo and his tall son, Leonardo. Opened in 1919, less than a year after the World War I armistice with Italy on the winning side, La Vittoria (“The Victory”) at Via delle Fornaci 15, is the oldest restaurant on the Trastevere/Janiculum side of Vatican City (to the left as one looks toward [...]
Stefano and Jenny, the managers of the Taverna Latina, say: “Very often the things that give us greatest satisfaction are those pleasantly unexpected. The pleasure of discovery we leave to our new customers, because our habitual clients know our place well; those who find us never leave us.” The Taverna Latina is situated beyond the Basilica [...]
Heading north from Rome, leaving the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, on an outcrop of volcanic tufa is the medieval village of Ceri. A ring of crenelated walls surrounds the ancient dwellings, the Church of Mary Immaculate, a place of pilgrimage, and the Torlonia Palace, all facing the village square. Ceri is an ideal starting point [...]
