by Lucy Gordan | Jun 5, 2025 | Travel, Travel blog
The only eyewitness account of the two-day eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD handed down to us are two letters written by Pliny the Younger, a Roman lawyer, magistrate and author and sent to the historian Tacitus some 25 years after the disaster. Today their...
by Lucy Gordan | Apr 28, 2025 | Travel, Travel blog
Confetti are traditionally almonds from Avola, a town in Sicily’s province of Syracuse, encased in a hard bite-size outer shell of sugar. They’re ubiquitous at all Italian celebrations, most frequent in the spring and summer, but of course not exclusively, because...
by Lucy Gordan | Feb 18, 2025 | Travel, Travel blog
Since New York is nicknamed “The Big Apple”; Chicago “The Windy City”; Paris “The City of Lights”; Venice “La Serenissima”; Ravenna on Italy’s Adriatic coast should be “The City of Mosaics”. Ravenna’s heyday was during the Middle Ages when it became the capital of the...
by Lucy Gordan | Feb 14, 2025 | Travel, Travel blog
Numerous (at least 11) early Christian martyrs were named Valentine, which derives from the Latin valens meaning strong, worthy and powerful. Of these the Valentines honored in Western Christianity on February 14th are possibly two: Valentine of Rome (Valentinus...
by Lucy Gordan | Feb 7, 2025 | Travel, Travel blog
Rome is nicknamed “The Eternal City” thanks to her monuments from all periods of her history from the legendary kings to the present. They begin with the 7th century BC Temple of Vesta in the Forum and end with MAXXI, her Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by the...
by Lucy Gordan | Jan 19, 2025 | Travel, Travel blog
In 2004 Egeria di Nallo, a prolific author and professor of anthropology, political science, sociology, and marketing at the University of Bologna with a group of committed citizens founded the Association for the Protection and Enhancement of Italy’s Culinary...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 8, 2024 | Travel, Travel blog
TREVISO’S RADICCHIO ROSSO: THE VENETO’S WINTER VEGETABLE Treviso isn’t a destination on a traveler’s first itinerary to Italy, but only a half-hour train ride from La Serenissima it’s definitely worth a day-trip especially enjoyable for medievalists, poets, and...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 7, 2024 | Travel, Travel blog
Traditionally every holiday season the Morgan Library displays Charles Dickens’s only original manuscript of his novella A Christmas Carol. In drastic financial straits Dickens wrote the five “staves” or chapters of this iconic tale over six weeks at the end of...
by Lucy Gordan | Oct 18, 2024 | Travel, Travel blog
In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first ordinary Jubilee or Holy Year, with the Papal Bull, “Antiquorum Habet Fida Relatio.” Since then, they have taken place either every 50 or every 25 years. 2025’s Holy Year is the 27th. It will begin on Christmas...
by Lucy Gordan | Sep 2, 2024 | Travel, Travel blog
THE APPIAN WAY: DIRECTIONS, SIGHTS, and GASTRONOMYOn July 31 UNESCO proclaimed the Via Appia or Appian Way Italy’s 60th World Heritage Site. Running about 300 miles south to Brindisi, originally paved with large lozenge-shaped basalt cobblestones, and lined with...
by Lucy Gordan | Jul 6, 2024 | Travel, Travel blog
Today, Rome’s Jewish population counts some 15,000 people and a dozen Orthodox synagogues. The liturgy of the largest and ornate Il Tempio Maggiore follows the Orthodox Italki rite as practiced by Italian Jews since early Roman times. In fact, Jews have lived in...
by Lucy Gordan | Apr 18, 2024 | Travel, Travel blog
On March 19 Sergio Mattarella, The President of Italy, inaugurated the new headquarters of the Foreign Press Association in what had been the Roman residence of former Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi. Some three weeks later the key speaker at the Foreign...
