A podcast about the Italy that doesn’t make it onto the tourist trail — the art, history, culture, and stories that reward the curious. Hosted by Italy News Online editor Deborah Cater and her sister, Sarah Cater, a licensed tour guide in Florence, aka Floeasy.
New episodes every fortnight.
What the podcast is about
Italy Beyond the Guidebook is a fortnightly podcast produced by ItalyNews.Online. Each episode takes a single subject — a figure, a place, an idea — and explores it in depth, drawing on history, art history, culture, and lived experience of Italy. The tone is conversational and knowledgeable, aimed at curious listeners who want more than the surface.
Topics range from Renaissance masters and medieval saints to Italian coffee culture and the women history forgot. If you’ve ever stood in front of a Caravaggio and wanted to know the full story, this is the show for you.
Season 1 Episode 4 – Brunelleschi: Florence’s architect
Brunelleschi’s dome is the most recognisable feature on the Florentine skyline — but the story behind it is one of obsession, rivalry, and a mind that simply refused to accept that something couldn’t be done.
This week’s episode of Italy Beyond the Guidebook covers the full arc: the 1401 competition loss to Ghiberti, the years in Rome measuring ruins nobody else cared about, the invention of linear perspective, and the dome itself — built without centring, without precedent, and without anyone quite believing it would hold.
Season 1 Episode 3 – The Medici Family
The Medici were bankers, patrons, popes, and powerbrokers — a family who turned money into art, art into influence, and influence into a dynasty that shaped the course of European history.
In this episode, we go beyond the legend to ask who the Medici really were: what drove them, what they built, and why Florence still carries their fingerprints five centuries later.
Season 1 – Episode 2 – 800 years of Sta Francis of Assisi
St Francis of Assisi: The Man Behind the Myth
He’s one of the most recognisable figures in Western history but most of what people think they know about Francis of Assisi is legend, not life. In this episode of Italy Beyond the Guidebook, we go beyond the birdbaths and the blessing of the animals to find the real Francis: a rebellious young man from Umbria who walked away from wealth and built a movement from nothing.
We explore his world, his Assisi, and why the 800th anniversary of his death in 2026 — now marked by a special Papal Jubilee Year — has put him back at the centre of global conversation.
Essential listening for anyone interested in Italian history, medieval Christianity, or travel to Umbria and Assisi.
Italy Beyond the Guidebook — Italian history and culture, told the way it deserves to be.
Season 1 – Episode 1 Caravaggio: Genius & Rebel
Our first episode looks at the life of Caravaggio, a genius with a talent for trouble.
