History has just been made: An Italian politician just went down for his sexual picadillos, in what is a very first for this country. I mean, we’re talking about the place that gave us Caligula, Popes with 17 kids, Caesar & Cleopatra and then Marc Antony & Cleopatra, and Emperors gifting sumptuous villas for their (very open) mistresses. It was the Italians who remarked upon seeing photos of Gary Hart on the ‘Monkey Business’ with a pretty blonde (who was not his wife), that he most likely...

Wednesday may have been Prince spaghetti day, but, today is International Pasta Day! And, judging from the latest statistics, Americans are eating pasta even more than once a week. In sunny Rome, we had a beautiful day to celebrate, with all kinds of pastas being served in the shadow of Castel Sant’Angelo. Heck, they even had a kiddie area where they were making Colosseum replicas out of the boxes!

It seems everything’s happening in Bella Roma this fall: The Festival del Cinema, a...

Well, the European elections have come and gone, with the rigid right seemingly trouncing the left and socialist parties from Brussels to Brindisi. It’s not enough to know what, or for whom, we were actually voting for, but how those elections play in Parliament. What’s actually more confusing are the myriad parties from each place who garner representation there. I am still convinced that if my favorite candidate, the ubiquitous Home Developer, Mr. Carlino won out, he’d be spending his time selling...

When you first break with tradition, it often comes accompanied by a soundtrack similar to a herd of elephants in a china store. I’m thinking of things like, oh, little black girls attending a white school in America’s south, the investiture of a gay Bishop, the end of Apartheid, or even the first sounds of Elvis’ form of Rock n’ Roll.

And so it is, in a country heaped in tradition when it comes to making and breaking marriage vows (both done with impunity), that the very public divorce...

Considering that you can't even get a telephone line hookup in Italy in under two months, Berlusconi's affirmation that Aquila will be rebuilt in time for the G8 session in July borders on hallucinogenic. Problem is, it will probably happen, and he will achieve his dream of covering once-picturesque Aquila in swathes of cement [I reference the urban sprawl that is Perugia nowadays]. This is only one of the more strange occurrences this month.

The City of Rome was plastered recently...