Who knows what Sigismondo Malatesta, the famous 15th Century Lord of Rimini (and original ‘renaissance man’, as described by American poet Ezra Pound), would make of his city were he to return today. Apart from the obvious differences between the renaissance city (many significant parts of which remain, for example Malatesta’s castle) and that of the 21st - i.e the presence of skyscrapers, electrically powered street lights, and the ever present motor vehicle - one thing would perhaps strike him above all, the move to the seaside. (more…)

Italy, Tuscany, Maremma….. How better way to identify or recognize the place of the real “slow life”.

Yes “slow life,” this is the “motto” of Locanda la Pieve, a small charming locanda/hotel with 8 rooms and a restaurant in Semproniano, Tuscany.

Just 5 Miles from the famous Saturnia natural thermal bath, the waterfalls of the ancient Romans. Someone call this area “the other Maremma,” yes because Semproniano is on the borderline of the traditional Maremma, closed to Siena, the Etruscan area of northern Latium, Pitigliano, Sovana, the Lake of Bolsena….. Next to you now.

The concept of “slow life” is there, officially is part of the daily lifestyle of everyone who came here. The life there, or for better said, “here,” is slow; no industry, no traffic, no rush, no pressure Take your time and enjoy every single moment of your stay.

Locanda la Pieve want to be the starting point for those who want or need to start this new important way of life… how? Breakfast doesn’t have an early hour, walking around to discover the nature, biking and exploring, relaxing, and hot bathing are the daily personal schedule; you live like a local: shop at the local stores, go to the same cafe every morning, take the time to see the things that are near you. Learn more about how people live in other countries and come away from your trip rejuvenated and changed. Food is made with “organic ingredients,” extra virgin olive oil, vegetables and cheese are from the local farmers, wine is from the area and you can taste the sun and the flavors of Tuscany…

You can discover the territory, enjoy the sunset that gives to the surroundings a special colors or take a break in the middle of the uncontaminated nature; the air is special and you can finally take your time. The territory is great, the atmosphere you can feel at “Locanda la Pieve” look special.

Sometimes traveling isn’t just about going to a destination; it’s a state of mind. Physically, I’ve been trapped in South Carolina for seven months now while mentally I try and put myself back in my favorite European places. One of my very favorites is the Tuscany region of Italy. While the city in South Carolina is a blistering desert of concrete, Tuscany radiates a rejuvenating warmth that washes over you like the rolling green of the hills.

Since I’m currently unable to experience the area in person, I can only do what I can to substitute the experience. CDs full of pictures taken during my travels bring back stifled laughs and fond memories. The coffee table books I’ve collected over the years are so full of intense color and vivid landscape scenes that it makes my ache even worse. I even read “Under the Tuscan Sun” this week (which isn’t done justice by the movie). Mayes is such a descriptive writer. She does such a perfect job bringing the area to life and I believe, deserves much credit for putting Cortona on the map. Her book stirs memories of my one day in this little town – hot chocolate and pastries at a little café in the morning, gelato under a patio umbrella in the pouring rain, and linen shopping after the sun triumphed over the stubborn clouds. It almost makes me forget that my ‘gelato’ is now Eddy’s or something from Dairy Queen.

I also try to substitute with cooking – of course, I’m far from the authentic cuisine I once savored in the local family-owned restaurants. Tortellini al forno, penne al’arabiatta, even plain old spaghetti marinara is a work of art in Tuscany. I throw basil around like it’s going out of style, get all giddy when I find a sweet gorgonzola or pecorino cheese at the grocery store, and keep Verdi on full volume while I create my own personal Italy in the kitchen. Fortunately, I’ve been able to bring back the very best extra virgin olive oil in the entire country – La Macchia. The green, aromatic oil tastes so fresh and so light that you taste what you are meant to taste – the fruit of the olive tree – and not something reminiscent to wheel bearing grease. So even if my bruschetta is made from imported North Carolina tomatoes, South Carolina french bread, parmesan from Kraft, and dried basil from a lousy little plastic jar (out of fresh basil again…), I still have my beautiful drizzling Tuscan olive oil.

Italians also understand and appreciate the concept of ‘breaks’ (and not the 15 minute kind). Time doesn’t rule a Tuscan’s day, rather it revolves around life at the moment. I rush from one end of my current hometown to the other, running errands and trying to make it to appointments on time – in Italy, being late is ‘normale’. And when it gets to lunchtime, there’s no rushing through the meal and then jumping back into a schedule. Between the shining sun at its zenith and a full stomach that’s pulling you into a food coma, the day calls for a siesta. This ingenious concept not only refreshes the body but it literally pulls your mind into another world. Why fret about the next two hours when everyone else’s life has also come to a relaxing standstill? Daydream, watch the tall grasses blow in the wind, or drink a cappuccino among friends with a vineyard as a backdrop. Until the notion of a daily siesta takes hold in America, I attempt to create my own with plastic patio furniture and a Coca-Cola…that is, until the phone starts to ring with endless telemarketers anxious to sell me siding or refinance my mortgage.

There are just some places that feed your soul and remain in your heart no matter where you go. The rise and fall of the graceful hills, the glittery silver-green leaves of the olive trees, the way the aged bricks glow in the last rays of the evening sun all call me back for more. In the meantime, though, I’ll remain in a Tuscan state of mind.

You may find scores of beautiful cities in the world, but you won’t find the city like Rome. Rome, you know, is cut from different stuff. It has its own tastes of romance and art. There are numerous magnificent museums and art galleries in the world, but the museums and art galleries of Rome have their own genre and grandeur.

Rome is the finest artworks of the world. Created by Romulus in 753 B.C., the celestial city of Rome is one of the world’s richest cities in history and art. The Italian capital offers an unparalleled collection of museums and art galleries that make the city Mecca for esthetic connoisseurs. The museums and galleries make Rome the city loved and adored by artists. The city offers a constellation of museums and galleries that often gives come-hither calls to the artists and connoisseurs. Rome offers you a wide range of museums and art galleries including religious museums, archaeological museums, military museums, science museums, ancient art museums, modern art museums, etc. etc.

Borghese Museum and Gallery (Museum Galleria Borghese), established in 1613 to hold up Cardinal Scipione borghese’s art collection, the Museum Galleria Borghese features the works by Rubens, Caravaggio, Raphael, Bernini, Titian, Antonello da Messina and Canova. Here you can find the most far-famed sculpts by G.L.Bernini such as “David”, Canova’s masterpiece, “Apollo and Daphne’, ‘Pluto and Proserpina’, Raphael’s ‘Deposition’, the reclining statue of Pauline Borghese, and a rich picture gallery plenty of masterpieces of absolute value amogn the others the famous “Danae” by Correggio, Caravaggio’s paintings, Titian’s “Sacred and Profane love.”

You can watch the monuments and works of art from all the provinces of Rome at the Museum of Roman Civilization (Piazza G. Angelli). Created under the name of Museo dell’Impero Romano in 1927, the museum exhibits a great collection of artworks in its 59 rooms, which include the items that were figured in the Archaeological Exhibition at the Baths of Diocletian in 1911, and the models of single-oared warship, an apartment building in ancient Ostia Antica, and of the Colosseum.

The National Museum of Rome – Museo Nazionale Romano offer you a nice slice from the history of Rome housed in three different facilities - the Baths of Diocletian including the Palazzo Massimo, the Octagonal Hall, and the Palazzo Altemps. Some of the attractions of Rome include a wonderful statue of a Young Girl from Anzio of the first Hellenistic age; three sarcophagi with representation of the Three Graces; a fragment of a Hebrew sarcophagus figuring the seven-branch candlestick; and the Tomb of Gaius Sulpicius Platorinus and his family, that was unearthed during the building of the Tiber embankment between Ponte Sisto and the Farnesina.

The National Museum of Oriental Art (Via Merulana) is a wonderful museum dedicated to the Oriental art. The museum features pottery from the Italian archaeological excavations in the region of Sistan of the 3rd millennium B.C., bronze objects from Luristan (Iran), Islamic Art, Chinese, Japanese & Korean pottery, and Buddhist bronzes. The items of special interest include Palmyrena art of the 3rd century, an Islamic ceramic plate, glazed with epigraphic decoration from Eastern Iran, and a bottle in gold and silver with scenes of bacchanal from Iran’s Sasanide period.

You can visit Doria Pamphilj Gallery at Palazzo Doria Pamphili, Piazza del Collegio Romano, where you can relish Rome’s most distinguished private art collections, including works by Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael, Velázquez, Lippi, Lotto, Rubens, Guercino, Reni, Parmigianino, Bellini and Brueghel. The Doria Pamphilj Gallery is housed in the majestic Renaissance palace- Piazza del Collegio Romano- which was passed from the Della Rovere family to the Aldobrandinis in 1601 and then, when Olimpia Aldobrandini married Camillo Pamphilj senior in 1647, to the latter. This magnificent palace is that was worked on by the architect Gabriele Valvassori between 1731 and 1734.

National Gallery of Ancient Art (Palazzo Barberini, via Quattro Fontana) is your place, if you want to access some of the finest collections of 13th to 17th century artworks. Located on two sites; the Palazzo Corsini and the Palazzo Barberini (one of the grandest palaces in Rome built in 17 century), the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica features the works by Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea del Sarto, Perugino, Caravaggio, Canaletto and Raphael.

The Gallery of the National Academy of St. Luca (Piazza dell’Accademia di San Luca) offers you an eclectic collection of classical works by artists such as Raphael, Canova, van Dyck, Titian, Guercino, il Sassoferrato, Reni and Pietro da Cortona. Galleria dell’Accademia di San Luca is one of Rome’s most prestigious galleries founded as an art academy in 1478.

Galleria Colonna is your destination to enjoy the masterpieces by artists including Lorenzo Monaco, Bronzino, Ghirlandaio, Salviati, Veronese, Palma il Vecchio, Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto, Pietro da Cortona, Annibale Carracci, Francesco Albani, Guercino, Guido Reni, Carlo Maratta, Gaspard Dughet, Crescenzio Onofri, Girolamo Muziano, and Pompeo Batoni. Reflecting the nobility of the Colonna family, the magnificent Galleria Colonna is housed the huge complex of Palazzo Colonna that was constructed in 50 years from 1654 to 1704.

The Modern National Gallery houses offer you the most significant collection of Italian paintings and sculptures of the 19th and 20th centuries. Featuring the works by artists belonging to neo-classicism, romanticism,Tuscan Macchiaoli impressionism, and the most of the contemporary art movements, the gallery offers the works by Goya, Géricault, Delacroix, Blake, Renoir, Rossetti, Courbet, Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Cezanne, Modigliani, Mondrian, Duchamp, de Chirico, Cara, Miró, Kandinsky and Klimt.

Besides, you can fine a number Religious Museums in Rome, which include Museum of the Souls of the Dead (Lungotevere Prati), Permanent Exhibition of the Jewish Community of Rome (Synagogue, Lungotevere Cenci), Museum of the Catacombs of St. Sebastian (via Appia Antica), Museum and Picture Gallery of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls (Piazzale S. Paolo), Museum of St. Pancras (Piazza di S. Pancrazio, 5.d, Basilica di S. Pancrazio), Franciscan Museum (Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, Circonvallazione Occidentale 6850, Grande Raccordo Anulare km. 65), Museum of the Historical Chamber (via S. Giovanni Decollato, 22 Church of S. Giovanni Decollato), Museum of St. John Lateran (Basilica di S. Giovanni in Laterano), and Museum of St. Vincent and Anastasius (vicolo dei Modelli).

Rome also has plenty of Archaeological Museums that include Villa Giulia National Museum (Piazzale di Villa Giulia), Forum Antiquarium (Piazza S. Maria Nuova), Barracco Museum (via dei Baullari), Archaeological Museum Ostia (located at the excavations of ancient Ostia outside Rome), Museum of Etruscan and Italic Remains & Museum of Plaster Casts (University City, Faculty of Letters, Dept. of Historical, Archaeological, and Anthropological Sciences of Antiquity), Capitoline Museum (Piazza del Campidoglio), Centrale Montemartini (Via Ostiense), Museum of the Walls (Via di Porta S. Sebastiano), Museum of Roman Ships (Fiumicino), etc.