Many people make the trip to Pisa with the sole purpose of snapping the obligatory photo: pushing the city’s famous Leaning Tower back into place.  Some spend a few minutes strolling through the green lawn surrounding it or duck quickly into the nearby cathedral, but after that, the normal visitor’s trip to Pisa usually comes to an end.   Over the next couple of weeks, though, a series of concerts under the stars will have tourists and locals sticking around Pisa a bit longer.

For nine years, Piazza dei Miracoli has acted act as the stage, da Vinci’s Tower as its crooked backdrop, for Concerti sotto la Torre (Concerts Under the Tower), featuring music ranging from jazz to classical.  Top-notch musicians play the night away to intimate audiences of fewer than 300 people.

The informal sunset concerts, costing only 12 Euro per person, are a great way to relax in a completely unique setting, taking in both unparalleled architecture (no pun intended) as well as world-class performances.

While three of the Pisa shows have already taken place, you can still hear the music of Mahler, Mozart, and Schumann, among others, during the concerts on July 4, 7, and 11.  And then, there’s always next year!

The unique, geometric marble of Santo Sepolcro (photo via wikimedia commons)

If you’re in need of a last-minute trip to Italy, this weekend is the perfect chance to hop on a plane and set off to the bel paese.  This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, European Heritage Days will sweep across 20 regions in Italy—from Rome to Florence, Milano to Salerno—with over 1,000 events celebrating architectural, natural, historical, and archaeological treasures while allowing visitors and locals alike to explore the heart of Italy.

In addition to special events, wine tastings, free exhibitions, and environmental tours, some of the highlights of this year’s festivities include:

• Decorated with rare geometrically sculpted marble, Rucellai chapel and Santo Sepolcro temple in Florence’s Santa Maria Novella open to the public with a chance to meet the head of the team responsible for the restoration.
• Concerts in Rome featuring La Vertuosa Compagnia del Musici di Roma on the 25^th and Banda del Vigili del Fuoco on the 26^th.
• In Salerno on the Amalfi Coast, kids can play and learn about local archeology at the Museum di Paestum while adults visit the newly opened Prehistoric wing.
• Likewise in Venice, children between the ages of 6 and 11 years old can partake in “Glass Tales” workshops while adults get a guided tour of the exhibition “Altino. Glasses from the Lagoon” with the director of the Archeaological Museum of Altino.
• And in Montefalco, southeast of Perugia, there will be a roundtable discussion at the Chiesa Museo di San Francesco.

So, no matter what your idea of “culture” is, there will be plenty to go around this weekend during Italy’s installment of European Heritage Days.

Contact us to get your last-minute tour together!

Every year, Mulberry Street in New York’s Little Italy is jammed with food carts, games, and people as the carnival-like San Gennaro Festival takes place over the course of eleven days.   Filled with the aromas of fried zeppole and Italian sausage; the sounds of accordions and traditional Italian music; and the colors red, white, and green wherever you look, this huge block party is truly one for all of the senses.  And while this annual festival has become synonymous with Little Italy, its roots are located thousands of miles east in Naples, Italy.

Founded in 1926 by a group of Italian immigrants from Napoli, the Feast of San Gennaro started out as a small celebration aimed at paying tribute to Naples’s patron saint while raising money for the poor.   In Napoli, they used to gather together at the duomo every September 19^th for mass, during which thousands of people prayed that a vial of the saint’s dried blood would liquify, therefore promising good fortune for Naples and its residents.  If the miracle didn’t occur, the townspeople braced for the worst—earthquakes, plagues, anything.   But if the blood did turn into liquid, then a 21-cannon salute was fired and patrons poured into the cathedral’s piazza where stalls of sweets, religious figurines, and local crafts were waiting to be sold.

Replicating this hometown celebration, the newly immigrated families erected an outdoor shrine to San Gennaro and took their coffee shops to the street, inviting the public to come and celebrate with them, asking only for a small donation to be given to charity.

Over 80 years later, the Feast of San Gennaro in New York is still going strong, and in its birthplace of Napoli, even stronger.  So this year, get a taste of the real thing and celebrate the original Feast of San Gennaro in Napoli!

Thinking about squeezing in a trip to Italy this year?  There’s no better time than right now—when the weather is warming up, nature is coming alive, and the country’s biggest tourist destinations are calm before the summer tourism storm.  It’s the perfect time to travel in Italy, and this is when all of the locals come out to play.  So if you want to see Italy at your own pace, get an authentic feel for how Italians live, and truly experience la dolce vita, April is your month.

You’ll feel as if you own Florence’s Boboli Gardens as you stroll through its grounds, catching glimpses of color as its magnificent flowers start to bloom against the backdrop of Pitti Palace.   As you relax the day away at a café in Venice’s Piazza San Marco, there will be more pigeons than people to watch in the square.  In Rome, you’ll feel like royalty as you walk right in to the Coliseum, the Vatican, and the Pantheon without having to wait in long lines.  And you’ll catch yourself looking for for-sale signs during your blissful travels through Sorrento, Capri, and Sicily, because where else could possibly be a better place to relocate?

When you add in the fresh food, the light-jacket-needed weather, and the great deals that abound, you may want to consider making Italy in April an annual event.

Every town around the world seems to have its own quirky claim to fame—be it a frog race, grape-eating contest, or maybe it’s home to the world’s biggest fork.  But the annual Festival of the Schietti held during Easter week in the Sicilian town of Terrasini, just outside of Palermo, might take the cake—or the cannoli, be that as it may.

Since the 1850s, or perhaps even earlier, the bachelors of this tiny Sicilian town have been competing to win the hearts of local women by lifting a ribbon-decorated orange tree weighing 50 kilos (about 110 lbs) with one hand, raising it above their heads in a demonstration of strength, which is said to reflect on their ability to support a family.

Why an orange tree?  In addition to a tree’s reputation as a symbol of life and fertility, the orange tree was chosen because it is stronger than, say, a lemon tree, and therefore can withstand being dropped to the ground as some bachelors repeatedly fail in their attempts.  Not to mention the bitter oranges grown on the melangolo tree, the species used every year, are medicinal, essential to keeping pregnant women healthy. 

Once the tree is chopped down and decorated with ribbons, red handkerchiefs, bells, and other ornaments, it is paraded through town, stopping at the houses of the zite, or women being vied for by the bachelors, who are wearing traditional costumes of black velvet pants and a vest, as well as a red scarf and pom-poms, plus a red beret.  Whenever the procession stops, it’s time for another zita to witness her beloved’s spectacle of strength. 

The event draws not only the attention of the locals, but tourists have also been getting in on the fun recently, especially during the festivities leading up to the main event.  Folklore shows, traditional food tastings, and even a scaled-down version of the tree-lifting for kids all help build enthusiasm before the big day.

Maybe this sounds a little weird to you—or maybe you think it’s a bit tame.  Here are a few of the other odd goings-on in Italy: 

Battle of the Oranges, kickoff to Carnevale where people throw oranges at each other (Ivrea, every February)

Italian Snake Festival, complete with a parade of a St. Domenic statue covered in live snakes (Cocullo, first Thursday in May)

Corso dei Ceri, 20-foot wooden candles are maneuvered through the narrow streets to Basilica San Ubaldo (Gubbio, May 15)

Festa Del Cornuto, Betrayed spouses get together to feast on chestnuts while wallowing in their misery with poetry and parades (Rocca Canterano, November 8 )

Duck Race, neighborhoods earn bragging rights if their appointed duck is the first to waddle across the finish line (Balconevisi, Tuscany, in mid-October)

With Easter drawing closer, there are plenty of holiday-themed events springing up around the country.  But L’Arte nell’ Uovo di Pasqua (Art in Easter Eggs) is unique in that it combines holiday traditions, art, and charity during one glamorous evening at White Gallery in Rome. 

For the most part, these aren’t your traditional pastel, flower-decorated Easter eggs.  The artists and celebrities who donate artwork to the cause, including architect Massimiliano Fuksas and artist Igor Mitoraj, are simply using the egg shape, the symbol of birth and hope, as inspiration to create, jewelry, sculptures, and paintings, which are sold during the L’Arte nell’ Uovo di Pasqua event.

Now in its ninth year, the project, founded by Sergio Valente, has raised money for charities with causes as varied as fighting HIV or bringing clean water to Ethiopia.  And this year, the Fondazione Alberto Sordi, which does research to treat and prevent senescence spine, will benefit from the fundraising. 

So the Easter egg—in Rome anyway—serves a purpose bigger than simply being a commercial holiday icon.

Truffles, as the 18th-century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin called them, are “the diamond of the kitchen.”  Highly coveted, these delicious tubers are used sparingly in French, Spanish, Italian, and Croatian cooking and for enhancing the flavors of dishes such as pasta, risotto, and omelets.  Sparingly—because a pound of truffles can cost up to $3,000.

While the Langhe area of Piedmont is infamous for its wine and its wealth of the highly sought-after white truffle, you’ll have to wait until the fall to experience them in all of their glory.  In the meantime, get your truffle fix at the Black Truffle Fair in Norcia, a small mountain town near Perugia known for its delectable cuisine.  For two weekends (February 26-27 and March 5-7), the town thrives, with locals and visitors alike enjoying the regional delicacy of black truffles, which grow solely with oak and are found almost exclusively in Europe, of which 20% is produced in Italy.  So stay at one of our premier hotels in Perugia, either the Hotel Brufani Palace or the Sangallo Palace Hotel, and take a day trip to Norcia to discover a charming town and delicious truffles.

If the Black Truffle Fair in Norcia is too last-minute, start planning now for white truffle season, using this list of truffle fairs as your guide:

80^th International White Truffle Fair of Alba
Alba, equidistant from Torino and Genova
Every weekend from October 9 – November 14, 2010

San Miniato Truffle Fair
San Miniato, in between Florence and Pisa
Last three weeks of November

San Giovanni d’Asso fair 
Just outside of Siena
Second and third weekends of November

The National White Truffle Fair
Acqualagna, the self-proclaimed “truffle capital,” in the Marches region, where 2/3 of the national harvest of truffles is produced
Weekends in the end of October through mid-November

Fiera del Tartufo
Sant’Angelo in Vado, Marches region
Four weekends in a row, starting on the second weekend of October

Trade Fair of the Truffle and Woodland Products
Città di Castello, north of Perugia
November 6 – 8, 2010

Savigno Sagra del Tartufo
Savigno, west of Bologna
First three Sundays in November

Sasso Marconi Truffle Festival
Sasso Marconi, just outside of Bologna
First weekend of November

Fiera Nazionale del Tartufo Nero di Fragno
Calestano, in the mountains south of Parma
Every Sunday from mid-October through the third Sunday of November

With all of this talk about Valentine’s Day, who doesn’t have chocolate on the brain?  And for Italians, there’s no better place to satisfy a sweet tooth than at one of the many chocolate festivals across the country.  Filled with seminars, competitions, tastings, cooking classes, and, of course, endless exhibitions of chocolate, these events draw hundreds of thousands of people each year. 

 If you and your sweetie don’t have plans yet for Valentine’s Day, hop a plane to Rome for a 4-day getaway weekend and check out the Cioccolentino festival in nearby Terni—home of Saint Valentine himself!

 Here are some other chocolate festivals around Italy:

Artisan Chocolate Fair
Florence
February 4-7
Held in Piazza Santa Croce, this annual festival features locally made products, including chocolate teas, coffees, and other beverages, as well as chocolate in the more traditional solid form.

Cioccolentino
Terni
February 11-14
The home of Saint Valentine hosts one of the biggest annual chocolate fests in Italy, packed with bingo games, book readings, plenty of tastings, workshops, lots of activities for the kids, and jazz concerts.

Festival del Cioccolato
Volcano Buona di Nola, Campania
February 13-21
Just outside of Napoli, this free choco fest boasts over 200,000 visitors.

CioccolaTÒ
Turin
February 22-March 3
With chocolate competitions and tastings, this festival hosts local Piedmont chocolatiers, including Lindt and Ferrero—the maker of Nutella.

Eurochocolate
Perugia
October 15-24
The biggest chocolate festival in Italy—and perhaps even the world—this festival is famous for its exhibits, cooking classes, banquets, and the Eurochocolate Awards.  Perugia isn’t just the chocolate capital of Europe, it is also home to Baci, those delicious hazelnut-filled chocolates.

Cioccolosità
Monsummano Terme, Tuscany
January – February 2011
Though this 3-day event that ties in with Italy’s Slow Food Movement already took place this year, mark your calendar for next year.