Published on Sunday, July 1, 2018 by Steve I’m Steve Perillo of Perillo Tours. I have a video series called Steve's Travel Tips to share all the insider Italy travel tips I have learned over a lifetime of travel to Italy. This week I'm talking about enjoying Italy's beaches. It is July and beaches are filling up but come August,  Italy's beaches  will be covered with Italians soaking up the sun and...

Published on Friday, June 29, 2018 by Kathy McCabe The upcoming season of opera at Teatro Alla Scala  in Milan will include Gianni Schicci, a comedic opera by Puccini, staged and directed by Woody Allen. Set in the 1930s in New York’s Little Italy, Allen’s version of Gianni Schicci was successful in a 2015 Los Angeles run. The opera is based on a portion of Dante’s Divine Comedy in which Schicci is sent to He...

Published on Saturday, June 23, 2018 by Kathy McCabe Cheesemakers in Italy’s Parmesan-producing regions produced 147,000 tons of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese in 2017, breaking all-time records for the cheese’s production. The 3.6 million wheels of cheese sold totaled 2.2€ billion in sales and increased production by 5 percent from 2016 and 10 percent from 2014, according to Italy’s Parmigiano Reggiano consortium. ...

Published on Sunday, June 10, 2018 by Kathy McCabe Earlier this month, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence debuted its “Raphael and Michelangelo Room” as part of a larger rearrangement of the museum. Housed in Room 41 of the building, the Raphael and Michelangelo Room – as one might expect – contains paintings from the two Renaissance masters. Two paintings by Raphael dating to 1404-05 – portraits of a Floren...

Published on Wednesday, June 6, 2018 by Kathy McCabe A message from Steve Perillo... Italy is a dream. Perillo Tours has been making that dream come true for more than 70 years! That's why we are thrilled to support our friend Kathy McCabe and her PBS travel series Dream of Italy. For two seasons, Perillo Tours has been a proud sponsor of the show! Season 2 is now airing...take a 90-second Italian break and ...

Published on Tuesday, May 29, 2018 by Kathy McCabe They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and if two rare 16th-century Italian sketches could talk, their words would be “Thank goodness we’re home!” Florence’s Uffizi Galleries recently acquired the sketches, the work of Giovan Francesco Rustici and Giovanni Catesi, at an Uffizi Galleries auction at Christie’s in New York City. Both artists created t...

Published on Friday, May 25, 2018 by Kathy McCabe Summer is a happy season, and it’s made even happier each year when the international Blue Flag program heralding the world’s cleanest beaches announces it choices. For 2018, a great number of those in Italy are set along the Tyrrhenian Sea in Tuscany. You might find it impossible to choose, and it just gets tougher when you widen the Blue Flag map out to the r...

Published on Sunday, May 20, 2018 by Kathy McCabe The Bridge of Sighs. The Ponte Vecchio. We all know at least one bridge that makes us long for Italy and its beautiful views. That’s why we love this list of 16 Italian bridges via The Local. If you’ve wanted a new perspective on your Italian travels, this could be it: Why not try out some of these crossings, working them into city visits and country treks, to...

Published on Sunday, May 6, 2018 by Kathy McCabe The Tremiti Islands, an archipelago off of Italy’s east coast, banned all single-use plastic dinnerware from the islands beginning May 1 of this year. Anyone caught using disposable plates, cups and utensils will be fined 50€ to 500€ – including businesses, locals and tourists. The islands’ mayor, Antonio Fentini, instituted the ban after scientists measu...

Published on Wednesday, May 2, 2018 by Kathy McCabe The ciborium in the abbey at San Miniato al Monte in Florence has been restored in time for the 1,000-year anniversary of the abbey’s founding. The ciborium – a covered altar with four columns and an intricate arched ceiling – was completed in 1448 at the request of Piero de’ Medici and designed by architect and sculptor Michelozzo di Bartolomeo. It was built ...