It was a pleasure to return to the Venaria Reale near Turin after writing about it for the NYT about a year ago. The occasion: they’ve finished restoring an enormous exhibition space out of the former stables and greenhouse. On this visit, all the work was done and tidy. Fortunately, the same friendly, low-key atmosphere [...]
After receiving an avalanche of interest, Italian doctors repeated an initiative to help macho men in crisis. Last year’s free hot line and website aimed at helping Latin lovers do their thing “without worries” received an unexpected 15,000 calls and a million web page views in a month. Italian stallions evidently aren’t so hot to [...]
Emotions will run high during what may be the world’s first movie festival designed to make moviegoers blubber like babies debuts in Rome. Inspired by Japan’s crying clubs, the Tearjerker Film Fest is a two-week weep-a-thon. Called literally “jerk my tears,” or Strappami Le Lacrime in Italian, ticket prices for the festival are just four [...]
There’s a lot of covert phone camera snapping at art exhibits. Cameras are almost never allowed (how could they sell postcards, otherwise?), but that doesn’t stop visitors from trying to get a picture of a work they want to look at again, later. This is especially a problem in Italy, where there are more cellphones [...]
