The Taste of Italy

Cremona, city of history, architecture and music

Cremona - Bronze statue of Antonio Stradivari

Early history Just at one-hour distance from Milan you can find the small town of Cremona. As the capital city of the province of Lombardy, Cremona has around 72.000 inhabitants. The historic town is situated near the Po river in the middle of the Po valley (Pianura Padana) and has an long history, dating from 400 BC when Cremona is first mentioned...

Cremona, city of history, architecture and music

Giovanni Caboto, navigator and explorer

Giovanni Caboto, son of Giulio, was born in Gaeta, Italy, around 1451 AD. After the Aragonese defeated the Angevins in 1461, his family took refuge in Venice where the young Giovanni grew up, got married to Mattea about 1870 and had three children: Ludovico, Sebastiano, and Sancto. His dream was to ...

La leggenda della Bella Antonella

There is an ancient legend for lovers, in Salerno: the story of the beautiful Antonella.Antonella was one of the bridesmaids of Queen Margherita of Durazzo. One day the son of Margherita, Ladislaus, while returning from war stopped to greet his mother, along with several warriors, including Raimondo...

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San Gennaro between miracles and reality

It's said Italy was a country of Saints, poets and navigators. There's no more trace of the poets and navigators but, fortunately, there are traces of the Saints. All the Italian towns are voted to a Saint and one of these is San Gennaro, well-known for his miracle. Who was San Gennaro? San Gennaro ...

The Italian emigration

The greatest exodus of modern history has been that of the Italians. Since 1861, more than twenty-four million departures have been recorded. In the space of just over a century a number almost equivalent to the amount of the population at the time of the unification of Italy emigrated abroad. It wa...

Interview with Petra Reski about her book "Rita Atria, a Sicilian rebel"

In 2009 the book Rita Atria, a Sicilian rebel got publish, written by Petra Reski, a german journalist, who also wrote the non-fiction novel Mafia. Rita Atria is a pentita, someone that breaks with her or his (criminal) background and will serve as a state witness. A mortal sin within the Mafia stru...

The marvelous life of Padre Pio

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was a presbyter of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin who was born on May 23, 1887, in Pietrelcina, Italy, to die 81 years later on September 23, 1968, in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. The Catholic Church recognized him as a Saint on June 16th 2002, on which the aforementione...