A new guide book for Catholics is designed to lead them back into church by reviewing the services. Journalist Camillo Langone, also a long-time restaurant reviewer, sat in pews all over Italy to write over 300 pages on weekly mass ceremonies. What makes a good mass (communion given in the mouth, incense) bad mass (electric [...]
Milan buses are plastered with bright red posters reassuring recession-anxious consumers that if there’s a financial crisis, the Salone del Mobile is the answer. That confident attitude sums up the buoyant mood at the 48th annual International Milan Furniture Fair, which started here on Wednesday and runs until Monday. In a city where fashion is [...]
Graphic and industrial designer Mirko Ginepro came to my notice with the iPod table for last year’s international furniture fair. Keeping in the pop-culture theme, this year’s effort for the fair’s fuori salone is a wooden lacquer book case in the form of a giant Pac Man, called Puckman (the original name of the video-game [...]
Milan recently gave an extreme makeover to the permanent design collection at the Triennale Museum. The Triennale Design Museum launched in 2007, but gets a complete over haul including a rotation of the 400 or so pieces on show every two years. The somewhat murky, nocturnal feel of the inaugural exhibit designed by Peter Greenaway [...]
Banks in a small Italian town with too many Mario Rossis are using nicknames to tell customers apart. If the lovely lake region of Bellagio, near Como, has a fault it could be that locals tend to stay in the region and pick the same first names. In the town of about 3,000 people, two [...]
After the worst earthquake in 30 years struck L’Aquila killing 250 and leaving 17,000 people homeless, Italians are text messaging donations to help. Italian mobile operators, including TIM, Fastweb, Wind, Tre and Vodafone, made a single number available for SMS donations to earthquake victims. Cell phone users send a blank text to 48580. They’re charged [...]
Top-notch Italian wine maker Allegrini will offer a bottle of wine (to be drunk at a later date) to the driver offering to get friends who have imbibed home. The designated driver promotion doesn’t include the vineyard’s most expensive wines, but the Allegrini red called Palazzo della Torre (a “baby Amarone“), a well-respected nectar of [...]
