Rome’s Palatine Hill is now producing honey and olive oil from ingredients grown on its grounds. Italy owes its culinary brilliance to fresh, local products – and it doesn’t get more local than this. Parco Colosseo, the archaeological park comprising Palatine Hill, the Colosseum a...

Romantic-era poet Giacomo Leopardi’s home will open the poet’s private living quarters to the public on March 21. Casa Leopardi, located in the town of Recanati in the central region of Le Marche, was the noble Leopardi family’s home. Parts of Casa Leopardi are already open to the...

Archaeologists working on the Herculaneum site near Pompeii have discovered that the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD produced heat so intense that it turned one man’s brain into glass. The remains of the man, whom archaeologists believe was about 25 years old, were discovere...

Rome’s Borghese Gallery has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise about $8 million to buy a bronze sculpture by Bernini. The bust is of Pope Urban VIII, who commissioned many works from Bernini and was the Baroque artist’s most important customer. Now, Anna Coliva, the director of t...

Italian art newspaper Artribune has named Rome’s MAXXI museum the Best Museum in Italy for 2019. MAXXI, a museum of modern art, stands for Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo. MAXXI, which opened in 2010, showcases contemporary art by Italian and foreign artists. The institution...

Piobbico, a beautiful medieval village in central Italy, has celebrated an unusual trait for 140 years: It is the home of the Club dei Brutti (The Ugly Club), known for the ugliness of its residents. The club’s motto is “A person is what he is and not what he looks like.” Piob...

Newly excavated thermal baths have opened to the public in Pompeii, allowing visitors to see the ruins of what was supposed to be a main attraction in the city. Construction began on the Pompeii Central Baths before the fateful Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 A.D., but was never completed. ...

For now, the gardens at Milan’s Villa Belgiojoso Bonaparte are open only to adults accompanied by children – but that may change, as the city mulls whether to make the gardens accessible to all. Since July, Milan City Councilor Filippo Del Corno has been pushing to allow adults without...

Two Italian medical history museums – the Museo delle Arti Sanitarie in Naples (39-081-440647; Via Luciano Armanni 1; www.museoartisanitarie.it) and the Museo Storico Nazionale dell’Arte Sanitaria in Rome (39-06-6833262; Lungotevere in Sassia 4, Ospedale Santo Spirito) – are collabor...

Michelangelo’s Pietà dell’Opera del Duomo is undergoing restoration at the Opera del Duomo museum in Florence. The sculpture is also known as The Deposition, the Bandini Pietà or The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, and is known for an incident in which Michelangelo became frustr...