Don’t start the new year with a resolution to diet. Instead, head to your nearest bookstore or click on the internet to purchase the two recently-published must-haves for every Italophiles’ library and kitchen shelf. On October 28, Il Talismano della Felicità by Ada Boni, the most iconic and beloved Italian cookbook ever published, was translated and [...]
By Mother Martha Pizza, specifically the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiulo or pizza chef, was inscribed on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in December 2017. This year four new titles about pizza appeared on bookstores’ shelves or to order on the internet. They all recount the owner pizzaiuoli and their restaurants’ stories; each volume contains [...]
By Mother Martha Confetti are traditionally almonds from Avola in Sicily’s province of Syracuse coated in a hard outer shell of sugar. They are ubiquitous at many Italian (but not only) celebrations as a symbol of good fortune and prosperity. At baptisms the confetti are obviously pink or blue; at first communions, confirmations and weddings, white; [...]
By Mother Martha In 2004 Egeria di Nallo, a prolific author and professor of anthropology, political science, sociology and marketing at the University of Bologna, with a group of commmitted citizens, founded the Association for the Protection and Enhancement of Italy’s Culinary Gastronomic Heritage under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture and the University of [...]
By Mother Martha In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first ordinary Jubilee, or Holy Year, with the Papal Bull, “Antiquorum Habet Fida Relatio.” Since then, they have taken place either every 50 or every 25 years. 2025’s Holy Year is the 27th. It began on Christmas Eve 2024 and will last through Epiphany, January 6, [...]
By Mother Martha On July 31, UNESCO proclaimed the Via Appia, or Appian Way, Italy’s 60th World Heritage Site. Running about 500 miles from Rome south to Brindisi and lined with cypresses and umbrella pines, the Via Appia was begun in 312 BC by its namesake, the blind Censor Apppius Claudius Caecus, for military reasons. Nicknamed [...]
The entrance to the famous restaurant With a double article about the history of books in this issue’s “Of Books, Art, and People,” what more appropriate time to suggest a visit to Rome’s Caffè Greco! Here for more than 200 years the great minds of art, literature, and music have been meeting around [...]
L'Orto Di Maramao, a "rural" oasis in central Rome During the Middle Ages, Campo de’ Fiori (“Field of Flowers”), today Rome’s oldest open-air fruit-and-vegetable market, was the commercial and touristic center of the city as well as the site of public executions. The most notorious was that of the Dominican poet, philosopher, mathematician and [...]
We all know that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Indeed, Rome is a layer-cake of history built on seven hills, and it is appropriately nicknamed “The Eternal City” because visitors can see monuments and art from almost every period of her c. 2,700-year history: Ancient Greek, Republican Rome, Imperial Rome, Medieval (if not so much), [...]
When I first arrived in Rome in 1972 as a young bride, there were no ethnic restaurants except French “Charlie’s Saucerie” between the Colosseum and St. John Lateran, Japanese “Hamasei” near Piazza di Spagna, and the “Cantina Tirolese” near St. Peter’s, a favorite with Cardinal Ratzinger before he was elected Pope. All three are still in [...]
