The footbridge is an arduous perpendicular climb. It feels never ending. But then approaching the halfway point you look up and there, seemingly suspended above the clouds, lies a fairytale village perched on a tufaceous stone cleft at 443 meters above sea level. It sits regally on a rocky crest overlooking verdant valleys and rocky
I think that for my whole life, at least from the time that I started losing myself in books, I looked for a place that existed in my imagination; a place of well-defined shapes but blurred colours and indistinct shadows; a place of real tangible structures but illusory backdrops----where the irrefutable world might coexist with
It’s Sunday morning. An early breakfast of a brioche and a cappuccino at the bar facing the Duomo, and we’re off by taxi to the Stazione Centrale, Milano’s inner city train station. One last look over my shoulder as we pull away stays with me as a snapshot in black and white of looming spires
The shortest follies are the best, according to Pierre Charron. I would have to agree with him. Last year in December I took a short trip to Bologna with my son, and I am still reveling in the delightful memories of that adventure. So when the opportunity came up again one late fall day this
I remember climbing on the backrest of an old settee in order to look out of our third floor window at Piazza dell’Unità to see the other children already on their way to the Sala Cinematografica Cola Di Rienzo (today, a Bingo palace) for the costume parade. It was not the first time I too
It's almost Carnevale. Tuesday, February 17, to be exact, will mark the last day before the Lenten season begins. In Italy, like in many other places around the world it is a time of frivolity,, fun and fantasy. The Carnival of Venice comes to mind: a moment in time when all the exhausting cares of
The Sassi of Matera, I read in the guide book, were developed by its inhabitants over the centuries in a manner that is now called "Spontaneous Architecture". It seems to conform to the natural environment, and yet in the mess of stone, it is wonderfully exciting to discover sophisticated and elegant styles of architecture in
The silence is interminable. Its echo, heavy and primordial, resounds throughout the valley. There is an absence of time and space here, in this “anthill” city, in this forgotten tombstone of another society. I stand mesmerized, on the parapet above the canyon where the old city lies. The view, or perhaps the idea that I’ve