Italian Life + History

The incredible Italian journalist Luigi Barzini (author of the seminal work The Italians) claimed that there were “two Italies:” the one that created and nurtured such luminaries as Dante Alighieri, St. Thomas of Aquino and Leonardo da Vinci; the other, feeble and prone to catastrophe, backward in political action if not in thought, “invaded, ravaged, sacked, and humiliated in every century.” Italy, the country, is a relatively new concept, born only within the last century and a half. Italy, the culture, is a wonderful, complicated, frustrating, beautiful, unique thing.

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