I just spent a great weekend in southern Tuscany, so good that I wanted to share it for those who don’t know this neck of the woods. ACCOMMODATION I stayed in the abbazia di Spineto…. continue ›
Sarteano weekend – Southern Tuscany
Posts By: Freya
Italian Easter: it’s not about the chicken or the egg, but the egg, the dove & the pastiera!
La colomba pasquale / the Easter Dove During this past Easter, I discovered yet another regional speciality. The pagnotta (left), made only during this Christian celebration, originated from a little place called Sarsina (province of Forlì/Cesena),…. continue ›
Happy new year Florence!
The 25th of March is an important date for Catholics around the world as it celebrates the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, the incarnation of Christ who is born nine months later on 25th…. continue ›
Artemisia Gentileschi – a pioneer female artist
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) depicted Judith from the Old Testament at least four times in painting; she quite possibly had painted more of this subject but as not all of her oeuvre has survived, we cannot…. continue ›
Lions and tigers…. oh my!
Anotomical models in wax made between 1770-1850. La Specola, the oldest science museum in the world, should be the newest addition to a visitor’s Florentine itinerary. Opened to the public in 1775 by Grand Duke…. continue ›
Girolamo Savonarola: the friar who played with fire
The Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, originally from Ferrara, was hanged and burnt in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence on the 23rd May 1494. Every year, on the morning of the anniversary of his…. continue ›
Coffee cool
I recently did a tour for a great group of Aussie high school teenagers. When speaking with their lovely (and cool) English teacher who was accompanying them through Europe, she told me an amusing…. continue ›
Ospedale degli Innocenti
Florence is the home of the first orphanage in the world. A structure entirely dedicated to the care and maintenance for the foundlings, or the ‘Innocents’ of the city. In the early fifteenth century two of…. continue ›
Il mio bel giovanni
John the Baptist is the patron saint of Florence and his day of celebration is coming up very soon, on the 24th June, a public holiday for the Florentines. You can recognise St John the Baptist in visual imagery as…. continue ›
The Tarot garden – a slice of heaven
One of my favourite places to visit in the whole of Italy is the Giardino dei Tarocchi created by the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), begun in 1978. I cried when I visited this place…. continue ›