Month October 2017

Today is our last day in Bologna. We’re three months into our wonderful Italian adventure and it’s time to move on. If you asked us whether those three months have flown, we’d say yes – and no. You know that… Continue Reading →

Mantova’s self-indulgent Prince Frederick II Gonzaga liked the good things in life. So much so that in the early 1500s Frederick ordered construction of a magnificent pleasure palace where he could indulge himself, his mistress and his friends in il… Continue Reading →

At exactly three o’clock each afternoon at a monastery on the edge of the city of Ferrara, a small convent of nuns files into their private chapel. The Sisters of the Order of St Benedict have been praying in that… Continue Reading →

Jump in a car and head into the countryside anywhere in Italy and it almost certainly won’t be long before you come across a beautiful historical village. More than 250 villages here have been awarded the official status of ‘i… Continue Reading →

After almost three months on the road my best (and only) boots were in serious need of a clean, so I stepped into the little shoemaker’s shop in Mantova hoping the man there might do the job for me. He… Continue Reading →

When we crossed the border into San Marino we’d been on the road for about an hour and a half on a cold, wet and pretty miserable day. Now our destination was in sight – or it should have been…. Continue Reading →

The first performance in Vicenza’s spectacular Teatro Olimpico – a production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex – took place on 3 March 1585. More than four hundred years later, the set from that performance is still on the stage of the… Continue Reading →

Bologna’s Certosa is one of the oldest and largest cemeteries in Europe. A former Carthusian monastery, the Certosa became the city’s Monumental Cemetery in 1801. Some time later it was discovered the site had been used by the Etruscans to bury their… Continue Reading →

In 1535 in the northern Italian city of Brescia, Angela Merici founded ‘The Company of St Ursula’. This group of women would eventually become known as the Ursulines, an order of nuns whose vow to ‘educate girls’ took them to… Continue Reading →

Last Sunday Greg and I stood in Bologna’s main square – among three thousand others – waiting patiently for the arrival of Pope Francis. It was showery and cool, but the crowd didn’t mind a bit. The Pontiff’s visit had… Continue Reading →