Several years ago, I booked a winery tour in Montalcino that turned out to be as entertaining as it was enlightening. Laura R. Gray, an Oxford literature graduate turned wine exper ...
Hiro Shikata arrived in Italy in 1995, after working in kitchens in Japan and an Italian restaurant in Singapore. After a stage in Sicily, he travelled up the boot and soon found h ...
Tuscany’s unsalted bread is not for everybody – some love it, some don’t. A new mill and bakery south of Siena is making everybody happy. The Mulinum Buonconvento encourages ...
Halfway between Siena and Florence, there is a little farm that seems to have been sitting on its hill forever. Fattoria Corzano e Paterno produces excellent wine and olive oil, an ...
The first thing I do when I arrive in Venice? I head out for a glass of wine and a plate of sarde in saor. The sweet and sour preparation of sardines – often served on a slic ...
Are you a pescatarian? Or do you travel with friends who are vegetarians but you’d still like to try the famous fegato alla Veneziana (calf’s liver Venetian style)? Osteria La ...
What do Syria and Tuscany have in common? Well, probably several things, but for sure a passion for great food! A few weeks ago, I partook in a Tuscan-Syrian lunch at the Chimera d ...
Take my word for it: most Italian food lovers own dozens of cookbooks, restaurant guides, treatises on the history of Italian cuisine, and what have you. And I’m no exception to ...
If I say point-blank “Italian street food”, you’ll probably reply “pizza”, won’t you? Or, if you’re very Italian street smart, you might retaliate with “focaccia” ...
Even though my work is firmly rooted in the bel paese, it never ceases to offer me opportunities to meet new people from every corner of the world and learn about their customs and ...
At the junction of Umbria and Tuscany lies the Val di Chiana, a wide fertile valley boasting lovely medieval villages, beautiful rural landscapes and the eponymous Chianina cattle ...
Why on earth did I think that Italy no longer held any secrets for me?… I came down with a bump when my beloved sister Victoria Trauttmansdorff made me discover a gem of a li ...
When I drop by a village bar in Italy, I often see, hanging on the wall, a black and white photo showing the town’s central piazza filled with lively locals – a scene which unf ...
A few months ago, I could have given you a thousand good reasons to visit Sicily – if you needed any. But this number, in my book, has recently gone up to one thousand and one, l ...
San Gimignano… A lovely Tuscan town famous for its 13 medieval “tower houses” – and which I invited you, in a previous article, to visit in the much quieter wintertime. But ...
Every once in a while – and always when I’m embarking on a New Year – I feel the urge to gorge myself on a delicious cecina, a chickpea flatbread which is the typical street ...
I did it, at long last! Wandering about the streets of Rome on Italy’s iconic motor scooter, the Vespa! I had been dreaming of this since I had first seen, as a child, the 1953 r ...
Do you still remember the time when TripAdvisor and the like did not exist? When it was creatures of flesh and blood – and not applications and algorithms – who pointed and ste ...
They are everywhere… Over the last twenty years, the monotonous Monobloc – a lightweight stackable polypropene chair, often white in colour – has proliferated like mushrooms ...
I have always loved wandering in the aisles of markets, covered or open-air ones. So when I found out, in Giulia Scarpaleggia’s excellent cookbook, From the Markets of Tuscany, t ...
“I really like the way you’ve furnished your bar, Francesco. No wonder people keep flocking in. — Thanks for the compliment, Katharina. I think I’ve been lucky. — Lucky, ...
The luxury of loving Italy… These are the very last words of Italian Hours, a collection of essays which the great Henry James wrote about the bel paese more than a century ago, ...
During the time when I was working on the renovation of our Palazzo Ca’nova, I took countless walks in the area around it, just to explore, stretch my legs, get some fresh air… ...
Good news, I’m starting to be “with it” as far as social media are concerned. You may remember the article I posted in late August about the Trust & Travel Instagram acco ...
You may remember, dear readers, that I recently wrote an article about the festive sagre, these celebrations held in myriad villages and towns in Italy, all year round, and during ...
– No kidding, Chiara: Sandri has reopened? – Yes, Katharina. I was there just last week! – When did it reopen? – Well, a couple of years ago, I think…” My jaw dropp ...
“Designers want me to dress like Spring, in billowing things. I don’t feel like Spring. I feel like a warm red Autumn…” These words – which I can easily relate to – ...
Good news: all roads lead to Rome and, in some cases, will take you back to your starting point before the end of the day! I experienced this two or three times last summer. After ...
Shortly after starting to work at Italy’s oldest winery, during the first years I spent in the bel paese, I was already dreaming of touring the bucolic Chianti region on one of t ...
Today, I would like to tell you about one of my favourite desserts: il caffè in forchetta. It is absolutely divine, terribly addictive, and it can only be found in the Val d’Orc ...
