The latest news from the experts in Italian Travel
After 17 years, Steve Brenner and Linda Martinez are selling their vacation rental website, Cross-Pollinate. The couple started Cross-Pollinate in 2000 as a way to manage the requests from guests they couldn’t accommodate in their hostel, The Beehive, in Rome. Over the years, Brenner and Martinez grew the business to include 500 private apartments, B&Bs and guesthouses in eight European …
This article appears in the March 2017 issue of Dream of Italy. Updated 2018. Florence has always been a food-centric town. Classic old-school trattorias, new vegan hipster restaurants, tripe-sandwich stands and never-ending cafes fill the city. The menus are often the same almost everywhere, not because of tourism, but rather because Florentines, when they go out, always want the same traditional …
This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of Dream of Italy. Updated 2018. What’s your first thought at the mention of Florence? Art? Shopping? Food? Half-day food tours are all the rage these days in cities around the world. Seven years ago, Toni Mazzaglia, an Italian-American expat hailing from North Carolina, started one of Italy’s first such tours and the …
While you can watch the first season of our PBS series online, there’s no better way to watch than on the TV screen! The season is airing at various times on local PBS stations around the country and also on the PBS-owned channel CreateTV which airs in more than 85% of the United States. Good news, if you would like …
This article originally appeared in the June/July 2015 issue of Dream of Italy. Season Two is now available! This article was updated in 2018. As you may already know, the first season of the TV travel series Dream of Italy is currently airing on CreateTV and PBS stations around the United States. This subscription newsletter – which I founded in 2002 to …
Pompeii is hosting a temporary exhibition of 30 massive bronze, plaster, and marble sculptures of mythological creatures through May 1, 2017. The sculptures, imposing classical-style figures that fit right in among the ancient ruins, are the works of Polish artist Igor Mitoraj, whose last wish before his death in 2014 was to have his work displayed at Pompeii. Like ancient …
Updated 2018. We have discovered the best ragú in Naples. Given the significance of ragú in Italian culture this is an incredibly bold statement and we know it! But we are telling you here first, before some celebrity chef discovers it and puts it on the map! That’s why Dream of Italy membership has its privileges – to get in …
Updated 2018. Our capes cast a shadow on the cobblestone streets as the sun set behind on us the Grand Canal in Venice. I felt for a moment as if I’d stepped back in time (like in Starz’ fabulous Outlander historical time travel series). Was it 2017 or two hundred years earlier as I looked at my daughter in a …
This article appears in the February 2017 issue of Dream of Italy. Updated 2018. The ancient city of Pompeii has seemingly been undergoing restoration since it was discovered in the 1700s, and the newest restorations include two homes and a brothel. Both homes – Casa Obelius Firmus and Casa Marcus Lucretius Fronto – were lavishly decorated with frescoes and paintings, and …
Updated 2018. In recent years, Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet has swept through the literary landscape like wildfire. The four books (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child) chronicle the friendship between two post-World War II girls named Lila and Lenù as they …
