An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
From The Atlantic: In Italy, Eating Gets Graded.
The day my daughter’s kindergarten teacher called me into her Italian classroom to tell me my child was failing lunch, I knew I had run up against the great continental culinary divide. As an American married to an Italian, I’ve lived off and on in Italy for years, [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology, religion on Feb 13th, 2009
From ansa.it: Rome catacombs to reveal secrets.
Rome’s underground network of catacombs is set to reveal more secrets thanks to the creation of a new laser mapping tool.
A team of 10 researchers, led by archaeologist Norbert Zimmermann from the Vienna Academy of Sciences, has produced a scanner that is able to create a three-dimensional model of [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology, religion on Feb 4th, 2009
From discovery.com: Pagan Cult Mosaic Found Under Cathedral.
A Roman mosaic floor filled with scenes depicting pagan rites and oriental gods has emerged from the ground of a Catholic church in Italy, archaeologists announced.
View a slide show of the mosaic here.
The mosaic pavement, which measures 13 square meters (140 square feet) and dates to the fourth [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Oct 17th, 2008
From The Independent: Found: Tomb of the general who inspired ‘Gladiator’.
Natural disaster makes for great archaelogy. Pompeii and Herculaneum we owe to the fury of Vesuvius – and today Italy’s Culture Ministry announced the dramatic discovery of the ruins of the tomb of the general who was the inspiration for the patrician-turned-vengeful gladiator played by [...]
One of my fantasies has come true, but alas — for somebody else, not for me. Slashfood explains:
When a woman in Marino, a small Italian town south of Rome, turned on her kitchen tap, she got a spurt of wine instead of water. "Miracolo!" she shouted, and ran outside to tell others.
Word quickly spread, and [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Oct 1st, 2008
From the New York Times: Archaeologists Unveil Majestic Roman Ruins That Rival Riches of Pompeii.
The ruins of Ostia, an ancient Roman port, have never captured the public imagination in the same way as those of Pompeii, perhaps because Ostia met with a less cataclysmic fate.
Yet past archaeological digs here have yielded evidence of majestic public [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Sep 17th, 2008
From the Times: How the barbarians drove Romans to build Venice.
The hidden ruins of an ancient lagoon city that was the ancestor of Venice have been unearthed by scientists using satellite imaging. The outlines are clearly visible about three feet below the earth in what is now open countryside. [continue]
From The Telegraph: Italians vote for ugliest English words.
For years it was the French who worked themselves into a lather over their native tongue being infected by English.
Now it is their southern neighbours across the Alps who are wringing their hands at the growing incursion of Anglo-Saxon words and phrases into every day use.
From ‘il [...]
Posted in Italy on Sep 3rd, 2008
From the BBC: Sicily mayor offers bargain homes.
A small town in western Sicily has come up with a revolutionary solution to solve its property problems.
They are offering houses in the town, which sits between two rivers, for just a single euro (81 pence; $1.44).
The idea is the brainchild of mayor Vittorio Sgarbi, convinced it is [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Sep 1st, 2008
From philly.com: Beyond Pompeii: Places swallowed by Vesuvius.
Over several centuries, millions of tourists have visited Pompeii to acquaint themselves with the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that began on Aug. 24, 79 A.D. But while it’s the most famous eruption site, the ancient Roman city 15 miles south of Naples isn’t the best place to [...]
Posted in Italy on May 31st, 2008
Dear heavens! These people kayaked through Venice. Part of me wants to shout "sacrilege!" and part of me wishes I’d thought of doing that. From the New York Times: On Venice’s Grand Canal in a Kayak.
They helped fleeing Romans evade Attila the Hun and held a glittering city aloft for more than 1,500 years. But [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on May 29th, 2008
From The Telegraph: Thousand-year-old Lombard warrior skeleton discovered buried with horse in Italy.
Italian archaeologists have discovered a perfectly preserved skeleton of a 1400-year-old Lombard warrior, buried with his horse.
The skeleton, which was found in a park at Testona, near Turin, is of a 25-year-old Lombard who died of a fever. Unusually, his horse was buried [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on May 8th, 2008
From scotsman.com: Italian builders uncover 2,000-year-old tombs.
Archaeologists were yesterday celebrating the discovery of 27 2,000-year-old tombs in Italy’s "Valley of the Dead". (…)
Archaeologists say there is also a "good chance" that there may well be other tombs waiting to be discovered. The tombs were discovered at Tarquinia, 50 miles north of Rome in an area [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Mar 20th, 2008
From the Guardian: Ancient Artifacts Seized Near Rome.
Police seized some 1,000 ancient artifacts from a wealthy Italian man’s country house outside Rome that were stolen from one of Emperor Trajan’s villas, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Authorities contend the artifacts, which were being used to decorate the man’s weekend residence, were ripped off the walls of what is [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Feb 7th, 2008
From the Telegraph: Medici philosopher’s mystery death is solved.
After 500 years, one of Renaissance Italy’s most enduring murder mysteries has been solved by forensic scientists.
Ever since Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a mystical and mercurial philosopher at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, suddenly became sick and died in 1494, it has been rumoured that foul [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Nov 20th, 2007
From the International Herald Tribune: Newly unearthed cave may be linked to myth of Rome’s founding.
Italian archaeologists have inched closer to unearthing the secrets behind one of Western civilization’s most enduring legends.
On Tuesday, the government released photographs of a deep cavern where some archaeologists claim that ancient Romans honored Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Aug 30th, 2007
From the BBC: Venice lagoon reveals grim secrets.
The Venetian authorities are surveying two ancient ships found beside the lost island of San Marco in Boccalama that disappeared beneath the rising lagoon over 500 years ago.
The island — the site of an abandoned 11th century monastery — became a mass grave for scores of thousands of [...]
One of the things I miss about Italy is the bocconcini made from water buffalo milk — mozzarella di bufala. It’s splendid, and almost impossible to get in Canada, from what I’ve seen. (Of course you can buy bocconcini at most supermarkets here, but that stuff is almost certainly made from cows’ milk. What’s worse [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Jun 12th, 2007
From the New York Times: More Clues in the Legend (or Is It Fact?) of Romulus.
The story of Romulus and Remus is almost as old as Rome. The orphan
twins were suckled by a she-wolf in a cave on the banks of the Tiber.
Romulus grew up to found Rome in 753 B. C.
Historians have long since [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on Jun 1st, 2007
From Monsters and Critics: Roman temple found under president’s house.
An Italian archaeologist says he believes that the presidential palace in Rome is sitting on top of a temple to the Roman god Quirinus.
Andrea Carandini, a professor at Rome University, used radar scans to look for structures in the grounds of the Palazzo del Quirinale, the [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on May 15th, 2007
From the BBC: Cracks threaten Rome’s majesty.
The Emperor Augustus said he found Rome a city of brick – and he left it a city of marble.
But 2,000 years on, the cracks in his legacy are beginning to show.
The Forum, the Colosseum and the palaces of the Palatine Hill still stand as proud testament to the [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on May 15th, 2007
From the Guardian: Roman remains threaten metro.
A planned hi-tech driverless underground railway line set to bring desperately needed transport links to the historic heart of Rome has run into a minefield of Roman remains.
Planners aim to send the new C line under the city centre at a depth of 30 metres, well beneath the archaeological [...]
Posted in Italy, history & archaeology on May 11th, 2007
From discovery.com: Roman Towns Built With Astronomy
Ancient Romans built their towns using astronomically aligned grids, an Italian study has concluded.
Published recently on the physics Web site, www.arXiv.org, maintained at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the research examined the orientation of virtually all Roman towns in Italy.
"It emerged that these towns were not laid out [...]
Stephen Wiltshire is an autistic savant. Here he’s shown drawing the Eternal City, having seen it once from a helicopter.
You’ll want to see Stephen Wiltshire’s website, too – read about his life, his gallery, his books, and take another look at the Rome panorama he drew.
Posted in DNA, Italy, history & archaeology on Apr 3rd, 2007
From the New York Times: DNA Boosts Herodotus’ Account of Etruscans as Migrants to Italy.
Geneticists have added an edge to a 2,500-year-old debate over the origin of the Etruscans, a people whose brilliant and mysterious civilization dominated northwestern Italy for centuries until the rise of the Roman republic in 510 B.C. Several new findings support [...]