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If you’re short on cash but with some kind of marketable skill — photography, a foreign language, accounting — a Milan bed and breakfast just may be the ticket.

At Bed & Breakfast Porta Garibaldi in central Milan you can trade your talents for a place to sleep year round. The idea is the brainchild of owner Alessandra Maggioli, who also lets the studio apartment which can sleep a couple or two singles for 90 to 130 euros a night pictured above. So far Maggioli has accepted a case of good wine for a weekend, a painting by a young artist and another guest is helping her design a web site.

If you don’t need a place to crash in Milan but would like to barter plan ahead: there’s a whole circuit of Bel Paese B&Bs that for one week a year accept trades instead of cash. This year it falls from November 15-21, you can check out offers on the website.

Smart swappers may want to stay where it’s warmer or where there’s something nearby to do — nothing worse than a seaside town shut down for fall — but the idea is a good one.

An easy swap that comes to mind would be a quick, accurate translation of individual B&B websites in English or other languages.

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A micro-survey of 320 linguists found that l’italiano tops their list for the most romantic tongue.

In the inevitable battle with French, Latin lovers from across the Alps came out slightly ahead, with Italian winning 45% to 40%.

Spanish, surprisingly, came out as the ratty pajamas and curlers of languages with its romantic quotient stalled at just 6%, tied with English. Portuguese came in last of the top five with 3%.

Sure, a sample size of 320 people isn’t exactly representative, but the idea that these are specialists — from the 2,600 translators and interpreters at Today Translations in London — makes it more interesting.

It’s one thing to think how romantic “l’amore” sounds is in Italian without speaking it, but the respondents are folks who know at least two languages and can, presumably, imagine trysts in them as well.

The top six romantic words in any language, trite as all get out, were also dominated by Dante’s language. Hit the jump for the list. Continue reading Italian “World’s Most Romantic Language” Survey Says

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Cell phones will now tell Italians when the tide is high in Venice. The city government just launched a free text message alert system for the floods which frequently put La Serenissima under several feet of water.

Intended to assist waterlogged locals, the only real requirement for signing up is an Italian cell phone. These timely texts could save a lot of headaches for anyone traveling to the city, especially in the fall flood season, normally a great time to visit Venice since it’s less plagued by tourists.

These acqua alta alerts let users know up to 36 hours before floods hit, keeps them posted from three to six hours before storms and lets them know when things are clearing up and water is ebbing back into canals.

Given that there are far more cell phone subscriptions than Italians, it is one of those services whose time has long come.

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The view from Galileo's last home now looks out on Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics, where researchers have made a model of his telescope. (Nicole Martinelli/GlobalPost)

Astronomers have recreated Galileo Galilei’s telescope to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his groundbreaking observations.

Galileo spent his last eight years confined to Villa Gioiello here in the hills south of Florence after he was condemned as a heretic in 1632 for his conclusion that the Earth revolved around the sun. The small white building has a bare facade, except for a bust of the scientist staring fiercely at the Trattoria Omero across the street.

In the late 19th century, the white domes of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) observatory rose within view of the Villa. Now, after two years of study, INAF researchers are observing the night sky with a replica of Galileo’s telescope.

They began trying to see through Galileo’s gaze in January 2009. While Galileo spent just one winter making his observations, researchers strung out the work over the year. Paolo Stefanini, a technician who has solved problems big and small at INAF since 1966, believes Galileo would recognize the simple metal tool he crafted.

“When we first set out to re-create it, aesthetics played a part,” Stefanini said. “But we also needed something sturdy. The original was made from strips of wood joined together and covered with red leather; we needed a telescope that could be used without falling apart.”

Full story on Global Post

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@Repubblica

After Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was struck in the face with a replica of Milan’s cathedral Dec. 13, souvenir sellers here are reporting brisk sales of copycat statues.

“Around here, sales of some tourist items slow down or stop for awhile, ” a vendor identified as Willy told told conservative daily newspaper il Giornale. “The mini-duomo was one of those items. Today, they’ve started moving again. A lot of journalists are buying them, but also people who want to give them as Christmas gifts. ”

Other vendors reported that they sold maybe one of the statues representing the soaring Gothic spires of the fourth-largest church in the world and icon of the city a month, but sold 40-45 a day since the incident.

The dangerous doodad — Berlusconi landed in the hospital with a broken nose, two cracked teeth and also suffered injuries to his lips and cheek — measures 10 x 10 centimeters (about 4 x 4 inches) and is made of resin and chalk. Sold in kiosks in the square around the cathedral, it can cost anywhere from €6-€12 euros ($8.70- $17.50).

Massimo Tartaglia, a 42-year-old with a history of mental problems, hurled the mini-cathedral through the crowd on Sunday as Berlusconi greeted supporters in a rally. Tartaglia is now in isolation at Milan’s San Vittore prison. While he has written a letter apologizing for his “cowardly act,” police are now investigating Facebook groups that sprung up defending his act of tchotchke terrorism.

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Hands on with a chubby Christ child. @centrica

If you’ve ever stared at a painting and wanted to reach out and squeeze that adorable little putto, you’ll soon have a chance to do it without getting arrested.

Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, one of the largest treasure troves of Renaissance art, is developing a touch-screen device that allows art lovers to zoom in for a more hands-on approach to the masterpieces.

Italian art, Cover Flow style. @centrica

You can flip through centuries of art — the same way you scroll through your albums on iTunes.

The program is called “Uffizi in a Touch” (sadly, a name not vetted by anyone who actually speaks English) developed by an Italian company called Centrica.

It took them four years to take life-size 100-megapixel photos that will be up for perusal in December for researchers and the more tactile groups of tourists.

No word yet on whether Apple will be after them for using the Cover Flow technology that’s been on the Cupertino company’s devices since 2006.

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Sicilian mafia turncoat Gaspare Mutulo, recently in the headlines for revealing a kidnapping plan aimed at Silvio Berlusconi, used his time in jail to paint.

His lawyer Silvio Nistico’ has put 20 of his artworks, which all portray a slightly naif if always sunny and calm Sicily, on display in an online gallery.

The views of small crowded houses and a sea framed by prickly pear cactus typical of the Italian isle go for about a thousand euro each, Italian media reported, though the online shop is not live yet.

@gaspare mutulo, painting detail.

The Palermo-born mobster, called “Asparino” diminutive for “Gasparino” in Sicilian dialect, was locked away various times between 1965 and 1992, when he became a state witness against the Mafia.

He was the first mafioso who spoke about the connections between Cosa Nostra and Italian politicians. Mutolo contributed to the indictment of Italy’s former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and to an understanding of the context of the 1992 Mafia murders of the politician Salvo Lima and the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

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Although many communal fonts in Italian churches have run dry because of the flu scare, one small parish church has a custom-designed font that dispenses holy water for making the sign of the cross in a more hygienic fashion.

It works much like a touchless soap dispenser in a public bathroom: the faithful place their hands underneath it, triggering a motion sensor and holy water runs forth.

Nicknamed the “sacred dispenser,” the container is covered in terracotta with a matching basin. It hangs on the wall in the church of Tre Fanciulli a Fornaci, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Milan.

“I thought it up seven years ago while working my pizzeria,” inventor Luciano Marabese told newspapers. The parish priests in the town of about 5,000 had related to Marabese the disturbing news that drug addicts were washing needles in church fonts. Between spinning one pizza and the next, Marabese came up with the idea of safer holy water.

“It’s been in the church since 2005, but since the flu scare, I’ve been contacted by half of Europe — Spain, Portugal, Poland — only the Vatican hasn’t called yet. ”

The hygienic holy water dispenser costs about €1,500 ($2,200), with part of the proceeds going to humanitarian projects in Africa.

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The Codex Atlanticus at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana

If you’ve ever wondered what’s inside Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, you’ve got six years to take a look.

Milan, where the original Renaissance man worked for years, has brought the largest collection of his drawings and writings, the 1,000-plus-page Codex Atlanticus, to the masses. The Codex is normally housed in the city’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where it is off-limits even to most scholars. But until 2015, visitors can view a rotating exhibition of selected pages from the real da Vinci code, grouped into themes including mechanical flight, anatomy and war machines.

Finished drawing for strut solution@ Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana -Milano

Among the pages, dating from 1478 to 1519, visitors will find engineering designs, recipes, doodles from apprentices, as well as sketches for da Vinci’s many ahead-of-his-time contraptions. Da Vinci, who reportedly made sketches of his observations on loose sheets or on tiny pads he kept in his belt, left behind the largest literary legacy of any painter.

“It can be a little embarrassing, when people only expect to see finished drawings or amazingly detailed sketches,” said da Vinci expert Pietro C. Marani, curator of the first three-month exhibit, “Fortresses, Bastions and Cannons.”

“What you’re really looking at is a cross-section of art, science, technology, mechanical studies – all woven into the daily life of an amazing figure, but it’s not always what you might expect,” he said.

Full story on the Wall Street Journal Europe

Codex Atlanticus Exhibit Info:
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday
8:30 am – 7:00 pm
Price: €21.50 for both halves of the exhibit, includes reservation.
Online tickets and reservations: www.ambrosiana.it

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Although Italy’s birth rate is one of the lowest in the world, one small Tuscan town, Quarrata, is turning that around. Last year, there were 256 bambini born in a hamlet of 25,000 — resulting in a birth rate of 10.32, about what was normal in Italy 30 years ago.

“We don’t know exactly why so many people are having kids here, ” mayor Sabrina Sergio Gori, who is also a doctor, told newspapers. “It’s definitely not a bad place to live. There’s work, plenty of it in furniture factories and some of the largest garden centers in Europe.”

Aside from increasing schools and day care centers to meet the newcomers, Quarrata — about 20 miles northwest of Florence — also holds a giant collective birthday party in June every year for the town’s kids in a Medici villa called La Magìa (pictured above). Part of the park grounds have been turned into a playground, too.

The villa is a symbol, Gori says, that parents who have kids know they’re not alone in raising them. She believes more Italians don’t have children — the national birthrate is 1.3 — because they have one and realize how hard it is.

“Many would like to have at least two kids,” she said. “But the lack of services and the expense takes away any enthusiasm they have for becoming parents again.”

Unlike other parts of Italy, the increase isn’t just from births by foreigners. Immigrant families in Quarrata are responsible for about 20% of the birth uptick.

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