Sections Close
Cerca

Lucy Gordan

Former editor at the American Academy in Rome and at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, with journalistic accreditation in Italy and the Vatican, I’m culture editor of the US monthly Inside the Vatican; European Bureau chief of Epicurean-Traveler.com, and regular contributor to KMT: a Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, German Life, and the Italian food and travel monthly La Madia Travelfood. At the age of 9, I, born and bred in Manhattan, spent my first day in Italy on the unforgettable SS Saturnia going to Naples. I’ve been married to my abruzzese husband Luciano for over 47 years and we have two daughters and three grandchildren. To quote Robert Browning: “Open my heart and you will see/Graved inside of it, Italy.”

Italian Hours

Arts -

Celebrating Alberto Sordi (1920-2020): A Beloved Roman Icon of Italian Cinema

Our preview visit was extra special because it was as if Sordi himself had invited us. As if any minute he would come down the magnificent staircase and beckon us to make ourselves comfortable on his plush velvet-covered sofas and armchairs. Everything was exactly as he and Aurelia had left it. From the front door and salone, we wandered through the dining room, kitchen, his gym with his favorite bicycle and mechanical bull, movie theater lined with Liberty-style statues of the Muses, and his study full of memorabilia….

Arts -

Celebrating St. Francis Today, When His Love for Humanity is Most Needed

This year the celebrations to honor St. Francis of Assisi on his name day are particularly festive. We can draw much courage and inspiration from his exemplary life during these difficult times. In New York City the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, in the Madison Square Garden area, first started humanitarian relief efforts during the Great Depression with a breadline. Today it continues to do so, making this the oldest parish in the United States to have operated a breadline continuously. Beginning in 1980 they also have provided housing in the neighborhood for the chronically mentally ill.

Arts -

Roberto Longhi Foundation Exhibits Its Caravaggios at the Capitoline Museums

Longhi’s lifetime ambition was the artistic re-evaluation of Caravaggio and his importance to seventeenth-century Baroque painting. He reached his goal by curating two mega-exhibitions in Milan: “Caravaggio e i caravaggeschi” in 1951 and “I pittori della realtà in Lombardia” in 1953. Besides Caravaggio, Longhi also put Piero della Francesca on the world map. Among the other artists he wrote about were: Cimabue, Masolino, Massaccio, Correggio, Carpaccio, Artemisia Gentileschi, the Futurists, The Roman School, and Giorgio Morandi.

Arts -

Gli Uffizi Galleries in Florence: How We’re Coping with the Covid-19 Pandemic

A virtual tour can never replace a real-life one.  “It’s the same for sports events or movies,” Schmidt explained. “Watching a game on TV is not the same emotionally as going to the stadium.....” Schmidt doesn’t expect a deluge of foreign visitors during 2020. He speculates that the visitors will be Florentines and Italian nationals.  Hopefully, the foreign visitors will be able to return in 2021 and it’s at that time that Schmidt thinks there will be a huge increase in visitors, just as there was after the 1966 flood (an increase of more than 1.5 million visitors) and the 1993 bomb.

Lifestyles -

“Il Canto Degli Italiani” Finally Unites Italy During the Coronavirus Crisis

My appeal to Onorevole Salvini: follow the example of your fellow citizens who are working non-stop, no matter what their politics, to save the lives of others. Unlike you, the virus is invisible. During these terrible and uncertain times, stop waving rosaries and criticizing the performance of our Government, which is yours too. Have the decency for once to go out on your balcony and sing “Fratelli D’Italia”. But I ask you: do you know the words?

Travel -

“Acqua Alta” In Venice. Bonacini Tells the Press: Stop the Fake News and Exaggerations

Vittorio Bonacini, the owner of Hotel Tintoretto, informed us journalists that, “Venice’s 274 hotels (400, if you include Mestre and other mainland environs too)--75% of which belong to AVA--are usually sold out between New Year’s Day and the Epiphany, but this year our bookings are less than 50%.  We have been hardest hit by American cancellations because 15% of Venice’s some 11 million overnight tourists every year are Americans, followed by the British at 8% and the French at 7%.  Nothing like this has ever happened before, not even after September 11.”
Fabio Peyla, Francesco Redi and Sara Arrigoni

Food & Wine -

The Sweetest Challenge: A Judge Tells Us About Twissen’s Tiramisù World Cup

This year Redi invited me not only to attend the third championship from November 2-4, but also to be one of the eight judges at its semi-finals. Besides taste we had to judge: how efficiently the contestants had worked, how well they had cleaned up their work station, how well the ingredients combined with each other, and the visual beauty of each final entry. Here's a behind-the-scene look...

Arts -

Commemorating Sculptor Antonio Canova, His Legacy, and Its Place in History

In the late 18th century, Neo-Classical sculptor Antonio Canova was proclaimed the new Phidias, the new Praxiteles, and his studio was a “must-see” stop for travelers on the official Grand Tour. His many VIP patrons throughout Europe included Popes Pius VI and VII, as well as Napoleon and the Bonaparte family. Today his artistic legacy is being celebrated with this mega-exhibit in Rome. And to finish the day, you can enjoy tonnarelli cacio e pepe in his studio which is now a bar/restaurant/and museum.

Arts -

Historic Russian Icons on Display at the Pitti Palace For First Time in 2020

Starting in 1796, for only a few years they were stored in the Uffizi before the majority of them were moved to the Medici Villa di Castello with its magnificent gardens and grounds, where they remained until the beginning of the 20th century; then to the Accademia from 1958-1968, then to the Palazzo Pitti, back to the Accademia from 1984 to 2013 and then in 2014 to the Uffizi where they were displayed during the Christmas holidays.

Arts -

“BVLGARI: the Story, the Dream”, Three Generations of an Iconic Family of Jewelers

The decadence of “Hollywood on the Tiber” played a crucial part in transforming the image of Italy from that of a struggling country, into a glamorous industrial power. It also gave Rome new appeal, thanks also to its fashion houses and artisanry, and not least for the contributions of the Bulgari jewelers. Starting in the 1950s the Eternal City returned to being the cradle of art and history, but also the center of glamour—a resource for at least the next forty years.

Iscriviti alla nostra newsletter / Subscribe to our newsletter

Close