From Augustus to the last emperors of the West, the story of Rome is, in large part, the story of the families who fought, adopted and murdered their way onto the throne. This is a guide to the dynasties that shaped the Roman Empire.
Continue Reading
The Oscar and BAFTA-winning director’s adaptation of the acclaimed stage play, Ink, about the birth of The Sun and the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire will have its world premiere on the Lido on 2nd September
Continue Reading
St Clare was born on 16 July 1194 in Assisi, into a noble family whose sheltered future she abandoned at eighteen for a life of poverty. She founded one of the great religious orders of medieval Europe.
Continue Reading
One of Rome’s four great papal basilicas – Saint Paul Outside the Walls – and the last of the city’s ancient churches to have survived largely untouched since antiquity, was gutted by fire on 14/15th July 1823. It was a disaster that shook the Christian world as deeply as the Notre-Dame fire would nearly two […]
Continue Reading
The artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo died on 11 July 1593 in Milan. He is celebrated for his imaginative portrait heads built entirely from objects such as fruit, vegetables, flowers and fish,
Continue Reading
One of the most fascinating domus at Herculaneum, the Roman town buried and preserved by the Vesuvius eruption along with Pompeii in 79 AD, has reopened after a 30-year restoration. The House of the Carbonized Furniture is open again thanks to a restoration project carried out in a public-private partnership with the Packard Humanities Institute […]
Continue Reading
Michele Mari won the 2026 Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, with his novel I Convitati di Pietra (The Stone Guests) at a ceremony in Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio on Wednesday. Votes cast by the prize’s jury of more than 600 members of the cultural world were counted live.
Continue Reading
As Simone Verde’s ambitious redesign of the Botticelli rooms at the Uffizi draws international praise, Florence’s licensed tour guides are raising pointed questions about who the changes are actually for. Perhaps the real question is whether a museum generating nearly €62 million a year in revenue can afford to ignore its customers’ experiences.
Continue Reading
A team of 20 restorers is to use laser technology on one of the most significant projects in the Vatican Museums’ history – Raphael’s Loggia.
Continue Reading
On 14 June 1837, Giacomo Leopardi — poet, philosopher and one of the most original literary minds in the Italian tradition — died in Naples aged 38. He was the victim of the cholera epidemic then sweeping the city. In a life marked by physical suffering, intellectual isolation and serial heartbreak, he produced a body […]
Continue Reading
