the Rome Blog

I’m seeing a lot of posters in metro stations for the upcoming Roma Fiction Fest. The poster features a cinema screen with the festival logo splashed across it. I thought it might be yet another Rome film festival, but it turns out to be a new annual festival dedicated to television fiction (more…)

I recently discovered the website of Pierreci, who take care of the bookings and reservations for some of Rome’s monuments. As well as the standard things like The Colosseum (and until its recent reclosure, the Domus Aurea), Pierreci can also arrange tours of some of Rome’s more obscure treasures (more…)

I keep forgetting to renew my Bibliocard. If you haven’t come across one of these, it’s a sort of souped-up library card. It costs €5 a year, and for this you get all the usually library borrowing rights, plus a selection of discounts around the city (more…)

I’ve just realised that Rome’s literary festival, the Festival delle Letterature, has begun. This year, the festival runs from 18 May to 21 June. It’s taking place in the Basilica of Maxentius in the Forum, and consists of (more…)

I can’t remember precisely how I first heard of the Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio; like many things in Rome I seem to recall a mixture of passaparola and posters in the streets advertising concerts at various events. But the reasons why I became so interested are much clearer (more…)

Here are links to a couple of stories about Italy that I’ve seen on the BBC News website over the last couple of weeks: Italy’s World Cup party goes on and Sicily’s license-less bus drivers.

If you have an internet browser (like Firefox or Safari) that can read RSS feeds, try using the following to get regular Italy news updates from the BBC: http://newsapi.bbc.co.uk/feeds/search/news/italy - it’s not foolproof but it will occasionally throw up a story you’d otherwise have missed.

This week, as well as putting up some new pages on the Mamertine Prison, Piazza Navona and Santa Sabina, I also finally got around to visiting the Ara Pacis.

The Ara Pacis Museum is a strange place. It’s housed in a controversial building designed by the architect Richard Meier, a long white pavilion walled with over 1500 square meters of glass. It seems out of place in Rome, and many people detest it. I actually thought that it wasn’t that bad, but I don’t think it’s being used to its best advantage (more…)

When I was researching a piece about Fernet-Branca for the website last month, I came across a rather unlikely-sounding statistic suggesting that the Branca Distillery, makers of Fernet-Branca, are responsible for 75% of the world’s consumption of saffron. (more…)

While I was walking from the Church of Trinita dei Monti (at the top of the Spanish Steps) to the Piazza del Popolo, I came across a rather dramatic modern statue, representing two men in battle:

The men are two brothers, Enrico and Giovanni Cairoli, (more…)

It’s good to see that Il Falcone Maltese is still in print and going strong. Claiming to be the first monthly Italian magazine dedicated to giallo & noir (a nice combination of colour and language there), Il Falcone Maltese was launched last year by a team including sci-fi and crime author Massimo Mongai. (more…)