Italy Blog

This year, as in each year since its introduction at the start of 2008, Milan’s Ecopass pollution charging system is taking a summer break.  This means that visitors to Milan can drive into the city and not have to worry about having to purchase a pollution charge ticket between the 2nd and 20th August 2010. As Milan’s authorities point out, there really is no need for pollution levels to be controlled in the northern Italian city during August, seeing as the number of vehicles in circulation during this month falls by an average of 48%.  Quite simply, few cars means virtually non-existent pollution.  If only Milan were the same all year round, adds he wistfully. Anyway, no Ecopass to pay is good news for those who stay in Milan in August, and it may even encourage those touring Italy by car to make a detour so they can spend a day or two looking around the city

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Milan’s Ecopass Suspended from 2nd to 20th August

From spat to full-blown split.  Silvio Berlusconi’s marriage of political convenience to Gianfranco Fini has ended in tears.  Scorned lover Berlusconi even rejected Fini’s last minute attempts to kiss and make up and remain part of Berlusconi’s party of love. End of love in. Period.

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Berlusconi Divorces Fini

Italy has an almost endless number of beautiful villages.  Many are unspoiled medieval villages situated on hilltops, others are dotted along Italy’s coastline, and some are tucked away in Italy’s many mountainous corners.  The choice is nothing short of bewildering.  Luckily there is a list. Someone has thoughtfully created a list of Italy’s most beautiful villages and it can be found over on a website called ‘I Borghi Più Belli D’Italia’. This official website set up by the National Association of Italian Municipalities , from which one can also purchase an 800 page guide in English to the huge number of beautiful villages of Italy, is addictive

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How to Find a List of the Most Beautiful Villages in Italy

Italian magazine Internazionale contains a section entitled ‘How others See Italy’, or words to that effect.  It was in this section that I came across Alexander Stille’s pertinent and relevant article ‘Married to the Italian Mob’ . It was on the way back on the train from Genoa yesterday that I read our friend Cristina’s copy of the magazine Internazionale which contains articles from major media sources from around the world that have been translated into Italian. As you may have been able to gather from the title of Stille’s article, it was about organised crime, namely, Italy’s age old mafia problem, which, Professor Stille intimates, may well worsen.

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Italy’s Mafia Could become an Explosive Problem

Italian magazine Internazionale contains a section entitled ‘How others See Italy’, or words to that effect.  It was in this section that I came across Alexander Stille’s pertinent and relevant article ‘Married to the Italian Mob’ . It was on the way back on the train from Genoa yesterday that I read our friend Cristina’s copy of the magazine Internazionale which contains articles from major media sources from around the world that have been translated into Italian.

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Italy’s Mafia Could become an Explosive Problem

There are some mighty big bugs in Italy.  Some of the wasps I’ve seen are huge, and scary.  Luckily, for those of you who are like me: not the world’s greatest bug fans, these miniature giants of the Italian bug world are not often to be spotted. But they are there, and, boy, are some of them big beasties.  The beast you are about to see, which was apparently some 3 inches (7cm) in length, and thus not exactly tiny in bug terms, was found beetling around the Carso area of Italy . For the uninitiated, the Carso zone is also, and perhaps better, known as the kras , karst, or karst plateau .  In actual fact, it is this limestone plateau area that straddles the border between Italy and Slovenia which gave the world the term Karst topography .  End of geography lesson.

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Big Bugs Cast Shadows Over Italy

Strange days in Italy.  Whilst digging into illicit goings on surrounding the awarding of contracts for wind farms in Sardinia, Italy’s Carabinieri police appear to have uncovered the insidious sequel to a mysterious illegal masonic group known as Propaganda 2, or P2 for short.  Italy’s press have wasted no time in labelling the sequel, Propaganda 3. Or P3 for short. P2, for those not familiar with one of the more insidious aspects of Italy’s past, was regarded by some as being a ‘state within a state’, or shadow government.  Curiously, a title similar to the ‘state within a state’ moniker is also sometimes used to refer to the Sicilian mafia, which is known to some as the ‘state within the state’.  Notice the ever-so-slightly different articles – ‘a’ and ‘the’.  And yes, it is suspected that there was collusion between the ‘state within a state’ and the ‘state within the state’.

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Italy, One, P2, P3

One in five southern Italian households cannot afford to see medical specialists , says the Southern Italian Industrial Development Association, Svimuz, in its 2010 Report on the Economy of the South.

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Too poor to see the doctor

Custom Teaser:  If you are going to be within reach of Milan this summer, here is our pick of both traditional and unusual events to attend in August and September.

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Summer events in Milan

Italy is a curious mix of dark and light, of good, bad and ugly.  Cagli, a small town in the Le Marche region of Italy, looks good and light.  Here is a photograph of one of Cagli’s buildings. Pastel colours are everywhere in Italy.  Pinks, greens, rusty and sandy browns.  Sometimes, though, the colours go beyond pastel, such as in this photograph in which the colour of this Cagli building is predominantly orange

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Orange Cagli in Le Marche, Italy