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...

History of the Italian Regions

The name Italia, probably a Graecized form of Italic Vitelia (='calf land'), was originally restricted to the southern half of the 'toe' but was gradually extended. By 450 B.C. It meant the region subsequently inhabited by the Bruttii; by 400 it embraced Lucania as well. Campania was included after ...

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 ...

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...

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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...

Italians and Coffee: a guide to the "culto del caffè"

Italians have not invented coffee, yet the passion they have for it makes the rest of world believe they discovered it. Around the end of the sixteen century, it was Venice where coffee was first introduced. Thanks to its trade relationship with the Eastern countries. Initially, coffee was considere...

What would the world be like without Nutella: The Ferrero Family

"Che mondo sarebbe senza nutella" is the official slogan of the wonderful hazelnut cream known as Nutella, appreciated by many and eaten worldwide. Few know that its invention was totally random and born out of necessity. HistoryIn 1946, at the end of WWII, chocolate was so expensive nobody could af...