Toblino: lakes, legends, castles and wines
A small lake of Alpine waters, and an environment so unique that it is classed as a biotope, in need of protection at all costs. A medieval castle, bu...
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Francesco Sorelli
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Helen Farrell
GUIDE TO ITALIAN LIVING
Suddenly together again
Speaking as someone who has been able to look from both sides of the camp, these old-new – erste-neue, as they say on Italy’s Austrian bor...
Loving the cherry plum
In the Casentino area between Arezzo and Florence there is a wide valley, dominated by the castle of Romena on one side and the castle of Poppi o...
The battle of the Easter eggs
Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi, as they say in Italy – Christmas with the family, Easter with whom you please. And this year, at last, i...
Machiavelli: The Prince in exile
From the wide courtyard at the villa of Albergaccio, in the northern reaches of the Chianti Classico, you can glimpse Florence on a clear day. Wi...
Cantè j'euv
“The eggs are too sweet? What can I say? They’re Easter eggs.” (Totò).It would be easy, maybe even expected, to start an...
Barefoot, hooded and slow
They walk with slow, deliberate steps. Often barefoot. Long hoods hide their faces, so no one knows who they are, and nor must anyone know. For once, ...
San Leo, the origins of the Montefeltro, and the dilemmas of Cagliostro
Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Vincenzo Pietro Antonio Matteo Franco Balsamo is the name – and what a name – of one of the most vivid yet...
The Carnival at Bergamo
There’s no need to take pot-shots at the huge festivals that Venice, Viareggio, Cento, Ivrea and Fano put on. Comparisons of that sort would be ...
The days of the thrush
In Italy, the last days of January go by the name of i giorni della merla (the days of the thrush, specifically the female thrush), and a quick Google...
Christmas that lights up our South
Ovens, hobs, grills and fires. Streets, squares, boulevards, and porches, living rooms, corridors and trees, trees above all. The spirit of Christmas&...
The table and the cinema
A celebrated director of photography once observed that filming dialogues around a table are among the most complex scenes to set up and to shoot.&nbs...
Downshifting with Cincinnatus
The story begins some 2500 years ago – give or take a few days – with the Roman legionary Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (whose na...
Castagno d’Andrea and marroni chestnuts
One rainy day in early November, we park the car beneath the church of Castagno d’Andrea. Other buildings are few: there’s a workshop, a s...
Looking for Talent
Never before has our civilization revolved so much around the image. Image in the strict sense of the word – photos etc – and in the more ...
Florio, a family, a history
I arrived in Favignana on a rubber dinghy, one windy day in late August, slicing through the white horses on the turquoise sea. I closed my...
The Prince, the Ghost, and the Cook
The Bardi castle stands tall and proud on a ridge of the Apennines, to the south of Parma. It’s a paradise for view-seeking motorcyclists, ...
The Via Appia
From Rome to Brindisi, from century to century. A road that traces space and time, that embodies the thoughts, customs and ways of life...
Il Ranavuottolo
When Giacomo Leopardi and his friend Antonio Ranieri (whom he had met in Florence) arrived in Naples in 1833, Leopardi was a prematurely-aged, 35-year...
The Midnight Games
In the run up to the 23rd Olympic Games, the sports pages were awash with material that had little to do with sport itself. The pandemic, infection ra...
Rivers of wine: a dream that comes true
It’s an image beloved of the sots and the dipsos, a story of being able to drink unlimited quantities of wine to your heart’s content. It&...
My name is Luca
Luca is the new film from Disney-Pixar, released in June. It’s the work of Genoese director Enrico Casarosa, and the last thing...
Michele Perinotti, the paddy fields of the Grange
To an outside observer, rice cultivation would seem to have a heavy environmental impact, with a fairly fraught interaction between man and nature. Ho...
The Return of the Fireflies
We were having dinner with friends the other evening. In Florence, a beautiful house with a garden. A summer storm forced us to eat inside. But the h...
ETICO, the second life of Corks
ETICO is a project that collects corks and turns them to other uses, such as design and furniture. Here we explain what types of cork are of inte...
The Little Fish
Summer, according to the calendar, is with us. Scientists are broadly behind the decree that no longer requires us to wear masks outside. The commerci...
Coffee Concert, a type of art
Even in the theatre, somehow, the French Revolution marked a watershed. By “revolutionary” decree, the monopoly on the theatres was abolis...
Three questions for Riccardo Felicetti, CEO of Pastificio Felicetti
Environmental awareness is a key production theme of your pasta company, both in terms of industry and communication. Where and when did you start to ...
Pellegrino’s Pilgrimage
It was back in 2011 that I received a phone call from my friend Leonardo Romanelli. It went more or less like this: - Have you ever heard ...
Under the Stars
Not far from Florence, in the enchanting backdrop of the Tuscan hills, you find the Tenuta Poggio Casciano agriturismo. This is home to Locanda Le Tre...
Three big questions for Gian Luca Pellegrini, Director of Quattroruote
”Sustainability” has become one of the most common words in current parlance, and perhaps also one of the most abused. Everywhere you lo...
Arezzo for Tiziano
We are delighted to talk about a campaign that emphasizes the importance of our area with an approach that’s perfectly aligned with the idea of ...
Avrò cura di te (I’ll take care of you).
August 2008. The spaceship - a rattling minibus with air unconditioning to relieve the ottoman sultriness – is about to arrive in Konya, the cit...
The Etruscans: beauty and mystery
There is hardly a corner of southern Tuscany or northern Lazio that doesn’t speak in some way of an old civilization – the Etruscans, who ...
Luca Cesari: the story of pasta in ten dishes
We can’t tell you which ten dishes Luca Cesari discusses in his book. And we’re not going to tell you why "everything you know – or ...
The Legend of the Black Rooster
June 1988. The green Volkswagen Beetle winds through the Chianti with deliberate slowness, on the legendary route 222. My parents in front, me in the ...
The Picnic Mythology
Anyone who thinks that Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe represents the first picnic in history is much mistaken. In actual fact, the origi...
Cultured vulgarity
We often smile when we hear certain expressions from the old peasant dialect, usually colorful and brutal in some way. We think of ourselves as proud ...
Casentino: a hidden gem
Legend has it that in building Florence’s Palazzo della Signoria, now the iconic Palazzo Vecchio, the architect Arnolfo da Cambio was aiming for...
Arcimboldo: when food is an art form
We are living a historic moment and food is the unrivalled protagonist. Cooking has become a spectacle, brought to our TVs by celebrity chefs who intr...
Poggio Casciano Brand Experience
As and better than a hundred words, the whole world of the Poggio Casciano Brand Experience in one minute....
If wine can be melodramatic
Versa vino, eccellente Marzemino! The wine that is sung more than any other is Marzemino, thanks to its mention in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Accord...
The Match Under Siege
On the morning of 17 February 1530, the Spanish soldiers, in the pay of the Roman Emperor Carlo V, camping outside the walls of Florence, were woken t...
La Befana, an Italian legend
The word “Befana” probably comes from a poetic take on Epiphany, when the divine figure of the Baby Jesus in the manger appeared to the Ma...
Saint Sylvester, history and legend
Sylvester was the 33rd pope of the Roman Church. It would seem that he died on 31 December, 335, and united a lengthy ministry in one of the most disj...
Christmas with the family
Knowing how to handle Christmas 2020 is a feat of acrobatics: on one hand, there’s an obsession with the safety measures that greatly deprive us...
The Fourth Magi
We all know about the three "Magi" who brought gifts to the Baby Jesus in Bethlehem. However, hardly anyone knows the little-told story of Artaban, th...
Strenia, Baby Jesus and Santa Claus
Christmas is just around the corner. Almost all the Christmas decorations go up on 8 December, the day of the Immaculate Conception, according to trad...
I Nasoni di Roma: waste and functionality
You walk along the ancient streets of Rome, sometimes slapped awake by its murderous beauty, sometimes by the obscenities of modernity. In Rome, the g...
Home delivery: something old, something new
There’s nothing new about the idea of having food delivered to your door, just like there’s nothing new about takeaway: food on the go is ...
Fresh pasta, a daily sculpture
An entire encyclopedia could be filled with Italy’s fresh pasta wisdom: shapes and fillings, customs, and heated debate between factions. Surrou...
Practicing beauty
I’m not a big fan of Roberto Vecchioni’s music, but I find a disconcerting beauty in the few songs of his that I do like. I don’t su...
The scent of the bottega
The word “bottega” conjures up the scent of wood and old memories. My grandmother’s wrinkled hand with which we’d cross a magi...
Sustainability is also social
Sustainability is a widely used word and perhaps also abused in certain contexts. Often when we talk about sustainability, we think about the environ...
Happy Birthday Le Tre Rane!
It’s hard to believe, but Locanda Le Tre Rane – Ruffino will be celebrating its first birthday on Friday 23 October! The desire to open a...
The Orchard of a Timewaster
A few years ago, when I was reading anything and everything I could get my hands on, I came across a book called “L’Orto di un Perdigiorno...
A tasteful life in the leap year
The infection rate has started to climb again and containment measures are back in force to limit social gatherings. Without going into the pros and c...
Three Glasses for Riserva Ducale 2017
When in late nineteenth-century farming Tuscany, wine was simply a source of nourishment, white and red grapes together, foot pressed, energy for a da...
Sunday lunch picnic at Poggio Casciano
October is one of the year's most evocative months. It brings the first shivers, anticipating the cosy, homely rituals of winter while bidding farewel...
Vivere di Gusto
What’s Vivere di Gusto? The answer could be short and simple, or long and detailed. Let’s put it this way: our magazine aspires to be a ch...
A taste of the Renaissance
The winding road that leads to Chianti from Bagno a Ripoli abruptly unfurls with a view on the left that’s only interrupted by the verticality o...
Le Tre Rane - Ruffino
Legend has it that Le Tre Rane was an inn that a young Leonardo da Vinci opened on Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, with an inspiring vision that food ...
It’s a good story, the story of Ruffino
Like the straw around a flask, Ruffino’s history is a story woven from truth and legend, the certifiable and the cinematic. During the First Wor...
When breakfast matters
Waking up, that sudden reconnection with the harsh everyday reality and a way of turning it into something special: breakfast. The frescoed ...
One summer’s day at Montemasso
Picture yourself travelling up and down on the same day at the height of summer. Heading south of Florence and up a few hundred meters into the hills....
Vinum, the Etruscan legacy
Few ancient peoples elicit charm and mystery in equal measure: the legacy of the Etruscans became sedimented in the country’s past, fully comple...
Panzanella
Panzanella is a mainstay on the summer menu at Ruffino’s restaurant, the Locanda. We write it with a capital letter and without worrying about o...
Monteriggioni, the non-existent Inferno
Out of the hundreds and thousands of jewels set in Italy’s crown, Monteriggioni holds a special place. Despite the myriad magical walled towns t...
Caterina’s taste
It is well known that the Italian language has its roots in the fourteenth-century Florentine that was spun so sublimely by Dante, Petrarch and Boccac...
Sunday Lunch
I still remember those noisy lunches at grandma’s. The house was small, but the dining room, which was used only once a week and was otherwise k...
Le Tre Rane to your door
The long lockdown severely limited our restaurant activity, but it didn’t stop us from thinking and planning. In fact, we used the time to laun...
Le Tre Rane Estate
It’s been over a month since Poggio Casciano returned to some kind of normality, and again we’re welcoming plenty of food and wine enthusi...
The city that invented the skyline
There’s probably nothing that hasn’t been said before about San Gimignano and its history, its golden century - its golden age - when it b...
Firenze Jazz Festival
It’s still very hot for September. The sun presses down with its sheen of milky humidity and the constant cicada chorus blends with the voices o...
History of a successful flask
2020 is a significant year for one of Ruffino's most significant wines. The Ruffino flask is back holding the local red, Chianti Rufina DOCG: a proud ...
Corporate social responsibility
A clear corporate social responsibility plan means it becomes possible to increase the attention given to CSR. When this mission becomes part of a com...
The Wine Cellars at Poggio Casciano
A mysterious and isolated world lurks beneath the striking bulk of the Poggio Casciano Villa, dominated by the inescapable perfume of wine, redolent w...
Le Tre Rane - August
Having barely paused for breath, Stefano Frassineti is once again updating Le Tre Rane’s menu, changing the flavours for a changing season....
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