Welcome to my little corner of Italy.
What would traveling to Italy post-Covid be like, I thought, as my departure date approached. I was going from stay-at-home to full-out international travel. In my mind, a big hurdle was the trip itself. Traveling to Europe from the west coast of the United States was a long haul without a mask, but with one? Read More
Squillace, Calabria has been around for a long time. The history goes way back – think Ulysses. But for this post, I will focus on more recent epochs and highlight a time-honored artistic tradition with Squillace’s wonderful ceramics.
Sometimes you miss a movie when it first comes out, but when it finally lands on your radar, how delightful it can be! Thus is the case with the Italian film Asino Vola. Released in 2015, Donkey Flies is one of those rare movies that can be enjoyed by the entire family. Read More
Calabrians have an infinite number of sayings and proverbs, and with all the different languages, dialects and neighborhood variations, I cannot begin to scratch the surface of the verbal expressiveness. So here are just a few proverbi calabresi to whet your linguistic whistle. Animals are the common thread. Read More
Welcome to the waterfalls of San Fele, located in the Province of Potenza (PZ) in northwest Basilicata! The sign announcing the cascate begs for a photo with San Fele’s historic center nestled between the mountains in the distance. A lovely woodlands trail leads to numerous waterfalls, natural cascades in the hilly zone surrounding Mount Vulture, Basilicata’s extinct volcano. Read More
The people have spoken. Tropea, Calabria has just been voted the Borgo dei Borghi, the Village of the Villages, in a contest that asked Italians to choose the most beautiful amongst the Borghi più belli d’Italia, or Italy’s most beautiful villages. A difficult choice, to be sure, but Tropea isn’t called la Perla del Mediterraneo for nothing. Let’s have a look at this Pearl of the Mediterranean! Read More
At the end of a copious Italian meal, you will invariably be offered something to drink, a digestivo, such as a liquore, possibly an amaro, or a brandy, perhaps a grappa… These beverages with a rather high alcoholic content aid in digestion, thus the name, digestif. Most have a strong connection with their place of origin, such as the Vecchio Amaro del Capo, the Amaro Lucano, the Amaro Silano and others that I have enjoyed throughout Italy. Here are a few amari (bitters) with names and labels that reflect their ties to Calabria and Basilicata in South Italy. Read More
How many words do you know to describe the land? Language reveals a lot about a people. In Bova, Calabria, the Museo della Lingua Greco-Calabra “Gerhard Rohlfs” takes a closer look at this connection between the calabresi and their land, specifically the community that speaks an ancient Calabrian Greek language in the Aspromonte Mountains, way down south in the toe of Italy. Read More
A picture-postcard medieval village, Morano Calabro lies within the Pollino National Park in the very north of Calabria along the Basilicata border. Its tightly packed houses along a maze of lanes wrapped around a hill appear like a fairytale, often likened to a nativity scene, in Italian il Presepe del Pollino. Read More
“I have never beheld the enchantment of the Straits of Messina, that Fata Morgana, when, under certain conditions of weather, phantasmagoric palaces of wondrous shape are cast upon the waters – not mirrored, but standing upright; tangible, as it were; yet diaphanous as a veil of gauze.” Thus spake Norman Douglas in his Old Calabria. The extraordinary vision, looking across the Strait of Messina from Reggio Calabria to Sicily has eluded me, as well, in all my time spent in the Città della Fata Morgana. Read More