“I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.” — Robert Louis Stevenson Like many who have fallen for Italy, I too never weary of churches. I am not shy in professing my love of all things Duomo, but, a dire…
Category: Art & Culture
Ghosts of Florence and Other Spooky Spots in Italy
Although I have thankfully never encountered a ghost during my late-night/early-morning wanderings, in a country as old as Italy they are bound to be there, lurking in shadowed vicoli (alleys), peering down from finestre (windows), nascosto in piena vista (hiding in plain sight). Such is the case for these popular spots for visitors to Florence…perhaps you’ve “haunted” some…
Uno Strumento di Pace
An Instrument of Peace This post is dedicated to longtime reader Bonnie, who recently asked me to publish the entire Simple Prayer for Peace by St. Francis in Italian. “One of the ways I study Italian is by learning prayers,” she shared, which reminded me of how much I enjoy that method of learning as…
Snapshots from Florence: The Ponte Vecchio
Il Ponte Vecchio “Water under the bridge” is a common English saying. In Italian one would say acqua passata non macina più, literally translated as water gone no longer roils. Regardless the language, the water under this famous bridge is the river Arno, which it has spanned for centuries. The Ponte Vecchio is one of my…
12 Things You May Not Know About The Last Supper
There were exactly two things I knew for sure about the Last Supper: 1. It was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. 2. It was somewhere in Milan. (Clearly, I’m not an art historian.) This capolavoro (masterpiece) had long been on my wish list of Things to See in Italy, but mostly just to check it off the…
Of Masterpieces and Mysticism
In the Presence of The Last Supper Traffic was still light on this Friday summer morning in Milan, and after just a few quick turns our taxi came to a stop on lively Corso Magenta. “Questa è la chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie? Con Il Cenacolo?” (Is this the Santa Maria delle Grazie church? With…
7 Reasons to Love Italian
We study Italian because we want to, not because we need to. Because the music of the language moves us to learn it, to engage in this “impracticality”, to throw some of our precious time to the wind and do something simple for the pleasure of being able to pronounce words like piacere. –From “Why…
Prayers & Piazzas 