Seeing will be believing

Raise your hand if you have ever seen someone in Rome get a fine for not picking up after his or her dog, or for letting it run free without a leash. Raise your hand if you have ever gotten a ticket for double-parking your car (I got one recently when I ran into a […]

La scoperta di acqua calda

The Italians use the above expression – the discovery of hot water – when they want to poke fun at importance given to something that to most people is pretty obvious. This is what many of us could say about the recent announcement that voting for both this June’s local elections and next October’s popular […]

The last of Italy’s postwar giants is dead

Marco Pannella, the founder of the Italian Radical Party and a long-time warrior for civil rights in Italy and elsewhere, died yesterday at the age of 86. Many young Italians of today probably don’t even know who he was. Or, if they do know his name, they may have come away with an image of […]