Italy is a fascinating country, but an infuriating one as well. As someone who has now spent more than half of her life here, much of which was spent working as a foreign correspondent and later as a reporter for an Italian newspaper, I feel that I know the country inside and out. The purpose of this blog, which I set up to accompany the book of the same name I wrote in 2013, is to report and comment on facts, events, proposals and even rumors. I hope you enjoy it.
What was Francois Hollande thinking? Did the French president really think the Vatican was going to accredit a diplomat believed to be homosexual as France’s new ambassador to the Holy See? Pope Francis may be a reformer on some issues – I mean, it was downright incredible that earlier this year he told Filipino Catholics […]
When I first moved into Piazza S. Egidio 14, years and years ago, the storefront downstairs was an old coffee-bar and a latteria, that is, a place where you could get fresh milk every day that was run by a slow-moving, grey-haired man named Umberto. It then became a more chic establishment named Il Mago […]
Italians (with the exception of Mussolini, perhaps) have never been chauvinists. Unlike the French, they have never tried to ban the use of foreign words, forcing people to call ordinataire what almost the entire world knows as a computer. But, says a small group of purists here, enough is enough. And they are right. Using […]
Starting March 1, the Italian transport company, ATAC, is making available three new types of city public transport tickets, those lasting 24, 48 and 72 hours. The usual BIT ticket (€1.5) that is valid for 100 minutes and the CIS (valid until midnight of the seventh day after being stamped has now been joined by […]
Which country in Europe has the most earthquakes? Italy. Which country in Europe has the most landslides? Italy. And which country is failing to produce qualified geologists at the highest rate? You guessed it. Italy. These questions were posed, recently, on the front page of the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, by one of its […]
Lots of finger-pointing going here on after the shameful behavior by rampaging, drunk Dutch soccer hooligans, whose rioting in Rome’s famous Piazza di Spagna ended in irreparable damage to Bernini’s marble “Barcaccia”. The not-very popular mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, understandably upset by the inability of Italian police to isolate the offenders and stop their […]
Italian health minister Beatrice Lorenzin, whom by the way I generally consider a pretty sharp lady, says Italy’s lowest number ever of live births means the country is “dying” and that something must be done. I’m not so sure that there is anything really new about this nor whether it is really Italy’s biggest problem […]
Vigili urbani, the Italian expression for city police officers, are supposed to be vigilant. Rome city police are, as a whole, anything but and are regarded with scorn by a large part of the city population. However, on February 12, they reached the height (depths?) of paradox when 10,000 of them staged a massive demonstration in […]
I am not one of those people who delight in lambasting the Italian justice system at every turn (except for its excruciating slowness, of which I myself have been a victim). But to sentence the Concordia captain, Francesco Schettino, to only 16 years in jail appears totally ridiculous. Thirty-two people died in the January 2012 […]
Hurrah for Pope Francis’ Vatican which has now set up a free daily shower service (Sundays excluded) for Rome’s homeless people and this right behind the gloriously columned arcades build by Renaissance architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. And that’s not all. Starting on February 16, and on every following Monday, volunteers working for the […]
Hard to believe, but the Rome city government is planning, for the first time ever, to create a red light district here in Rome, probably on one street in the EUR area of Rome which is already inundated by half-naked prostitutes selling their wares. The experiment, to begin in April of this year, is being […]
This was the headline on a story in today’s Il Tempo, one of Rome’s two major dailies, but it’s an issue that’s been on the minds of many of us for some time now, particularly if your vehicle is, like mine, of the two-wheeled variety. Rome’s streets have been a mess for some time now, […]
