“
People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris.
”
”
Roman Payne (Crepuscule)
“
I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert
“
One doesn't come to Italy for niceness, one comes for life!
”
”
E.M. Forster (A Room with a View)
“
It's temples and palaces did seem
Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to heaven.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation)
“
Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance.
”
”
E.M. Forster
“
Tonight I watched the sun set at Ponte Vecchio. I think its safe to say I have finally found the place that feels right to me. I just can't believe I had to come halfway across the world to find it.
”
”
Jenna Evans Welch (Love & Gelato (Love & Gelato, #1))
“
It's hard to be less than happy when you can be happy with less.
”
”
Chris Brady (A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation)
“
They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be beautiful.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
“
We are all pilgrims who seek Italy.
”
”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“
When life gives you twists and turns, Chique Yourself Up in Italy!
”
”
Barbara Conelli
“
Italy's siren call lures us more and more.
”
”
Frances Mayes (A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller)
“
In treading upon the ashes of dead men in Italy, Egypt - on the banks of the Bosphorus, one almost despairs to think how idle are the dreams and toils of this life, and were it not for the intellectual pleasure of knowing and learning, one would almost be damaged by travel in these historic lands.
”
”
William T. Sherman
“
Here we are at last. The Italian proverb says “See Naples and die” but I say, see Naples and live; for there seems a great deal worth living for.
”
”
Arthur John Strutt
“
You are what you read.
”
”
Nancy Petralia (Not in a Tuscan Villa: During a Year in Italy, a New Jersey Couple Discovers the True Dolce Vita When They Trade Rose-colored Glasses for 3Ds)
“
Italy was about churches, Greece it's ruins; but Israel was about surviving and about feeling glad.
”
”
Martha Gellhorn (Travels With Myself and Another)
“
Jacob wrote that the true poet ‘is like a man who is happy anywhere, in endless measure, if he is allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set. The false poet travels abroad in strange countries and hopes to be uplifted by the mountains of Switzerland, the sky and sea of Italy. He comes to them and is dissatisfied. He is not as happy as the man who stays at home and sees the apple trees flower in spring, and hears the small birds singing among the branches
”
”
Jacob Grimm (Grimm's Fairy Tales: Classic Fairy Tales (Classic Fairy Tales Ser))
“
In the twentieth century, astrophysicists in the United States discovered galaxies, the expanding of the universe, the nature of supernovas, quasars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the origin of the elements, the cosmic microwave background, and most of the known planets in orbit around solar systems other than our own. Although the Russians reached one or two places before us, we sent space probes to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. American probes have also landed on Mars and on the asteroid Eros. And American astronauts have walked on the Moon. Nowadays most Americans take all this for granted, which is practically a working definition of culture: something everyone does or knows about, but no longer actively notices.
While shopping at the supermarket, most Americans aren’t surprised to find an entire aisle filled with sugar-loaded, ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. But foreigners notice this kind of thing immediately, just as traveling Americans notice that supermarkets in Italy display vast selections of pasta and that markets in China and Japan offer an astonishing variety of rice. The flip side of not noticing your own culture is one of the great pleasures of foreign travel: realizing what you hadn’t noticed about your own country, and noticing what the people of other countries no longer realize about themselves.
”
”
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries)
“
To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you. You could take your treasure with you when you traveled too, and in the mountains where we lived in Switzerland and Italy, until we found Schruns in the high valley in the Vorarlberg in Austria, there were always the books, so that you lived in the new world you had found, the snow and the forests and the glaciers and their winter problems and your high shelter in the Hotel Taube in the village in the day time, and at night you could live in the other wonderful world the Russian writers were giving you.
”
”
Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)
“
As the sun rose I could see Etna, a truncated cone with a plume of smoke over it like the quill of a pen stuck in a pewter inkpot, rising out of the haze to the north of where I was treading water.
”
”
Eric Newby (Love and War in the Apennines)
“
It is a place that 'grows upon you' every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Pictures from Italy (Penguin Classics))
“
If the landscape of human emotion were to exist in country, it would be in Italy." ~Lisa Fantino/Amalfi Blue
”
”
Lisa Fantino (Amalfi Blue, lost & found in the south of Italy)
“
Maybe that was just part of the Italian experience. “Come to Italy! Fall in love! Watch everything blow up in your face!” You could probably read about it on travel websites.
”
”
Jenna Evans Welch (Love & Gelato (Love & Gelato, #1))
“
The thing about settling down that freaks me out is that you're being honest, You're saying, this is me. This is what I can do. This is it.
”
”
Lucy Diamond (One Night in Italy)
“
A wise walker will set out early, keeping an open mind on how far to travel, allowing each day's adventure to evolve.
”
”
John Litwinovich (Assis Walking Adventure Guide)
“
No matter where I've been overseas, the greatest joy was moving into Italy. Italy has changed me, for the better.
”
”
Efrat Cybulkiewicz
“
I grew up back and forth between the British Isles: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. I spent short periods of time in France, Italy, and South Africa. This is my first time in the States. I was disappointed by Atlanta at first — I'd wanted to live in New York-but it's grown on me.”
Everything about Kaidan was exciting and exotic. This was my first time traveling away from home, and he'd already seen so much. I ate my apple, glad it was crisp and not soft.
“Which was your favorite place?” I asked.
“I've never been terribly attached to any place. I guess it would have to be...here.”
I stopped midchew and examined his face. He wouldn't look at me. He was clenching his jaw, tense. Was he serious or was he teasing me? I swallowed my bite.
“The Texas panhandle?” I asked.
“No.” He seemed to choose each word with deliberate care. “I mean here in this car. With you.”
Covered in goose bumps, I looked away from him and stared straight ahead at the road, letting my hand with the apple fall to my lap.
He cleared his throat and tried to explain. “I've not talked like this with anyone, not since I started working, not even to the only four people in the world who I call friends. You have Patti, and even that boyfriend of yours. So this has been a relief of sort. Kind of...nice.” He cleared his throat again.
Oh, my gosh. Did we just have a moment? I proceeded with caution, hoping not to ruin it.
“It's been nice for me, too,” I said. “I've never told Jay anything. He has no idea. You're the only one I've talked to about it all, except Patti, but it's not the same. She learned the basics from the nun at the convent where I was born.”
“You were born in a convent,” he stated.
“Yes.”
“Naturally.
”
”
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Evil (Sweet, #1))
“
No, mother; no. She was really keen on Italy. This travel is quite a crisis for her.” He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there was something half attractive, half repellent in the thought of this vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
“
Many of us do not believe that it is truly possible to see the whole world in the same way as we travel and see, say, Italy or Spain. However, if we pretend for a moment that there are no borders separating one country from another, if we actually realize that these borders are nothing but imaginary lines drawn on maps and in historians’ heads, we may easily come to view our planet as one country, one destination – as the moon or Mars were when we first set out to explore them.
”
”
Nicos Hadjicostis (Destination Earth- A New Philosophy of Travel by a World-Traveler)
“
MYTH 280. | Spaghetti originated in Italy. Spaghetti originated in China. Magellan tasted it on his travels in Asian and brought
”
”
John Brown (1000 Random Things You Always Believed That Are Not True)
“
Veni, vidi, vici. That was easy for Julius Caesar to say; he crossed Italy in a chariot, not on a stupid bike." - Vivia
”
”
Leah Marie Brown (Faking It (It Girls, #1))
“
One of the great joys of traveling through Italy is discovering firsthand that it is, indeed, a dream destination.
”
”
Debra Levinson (Italy Luxury: Family Hotels & Resorts)
“
that Rome (if one does not yet know it) has an oppressingly sad effect for the first few days: through the lifeless and doleful museum atmosphere it exhales, through the abundance of its pasts, fetched-forth and laboriously upheld pasts (on which a small present subsists), through the immense overestimation, sustained by savants and philologists and copied by the average traveler in Italy, of all these disfigured and dilapidated things, which at bottom are after all no more than chance remains of another time and of a life that is not and must not be ours. Finally, after weeks of being daily on the defensive, one finds oneself again, if still somewhat confused, and one says to oneself: no, there is not more beauty here than elsewhere, and all these objects, continuously admired by generations and patched and mended by workmen's hands, signify nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value; -- but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
“
Grosso, who traveled to Italy to study Padre Pio's stigmata firsthand, states, "One of the categories in my attempt to analyze Padre Pio is to say that he had an ability to symbolically transform physical reality. In other words, the level of consciousness he was operating at enabled him to transform physical reality in the light of certain symbolic ideas. For example, he identified with the wounds of the crucifixion and his body became permeable to those psychic symbols, gradually assuming their form. "70 So it appears that through the use of images, the brain can tell the body what to do, including telling it to make more images. Images making images. Two mirrors reflecting each other infinitely. Such is the nature of the mind/body relationship in a holographic universe.
”
”
Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe)
“
I wanted to see the places he brought home in books from the Penrose Library—the campaniles of Italy, the windswept coastline of Morocco, the twinkling skyscrapers of Manhattan. Places I could only afford to travel to on the page.
”
”
Katy Hays (The Cloisters)
“
But you don't come to Palermo to stay in minimalist hotels and eat avocado toast; you come to Palermo to be in Palermo, to drink espressos as dark and thick as crude oil, to eat tangles of toothsome spaghetti bathed in buttery sea urchins, to wander the streets at night, feeling perfectly charmed on one block, slightly concerned on the next. To get lost. After a few days, you learn to turn down one street because it smells like jasmine and honeysuckle in the morning; you learn to avoid another street because in the heat of the afternoon the air is thick with the suggestion of swordfish three days past its prime.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Leslie Stephen died in 1904. In that year his children retreated to Wales for a period and then travelled in Italy. Vanessa and Virginia went on to Paris, where they met up with Clive Bell. On returning to London, Virginia suffered
a severe, suicidal breakdown.
”
”
Jane Goldman (The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf)
“
It is very odd to be standing in a locked room in the Penitentiary, speaking with a strange man about France and Italy and Germany. A travelling man. He must be a wanderer, like Jeremiah the peddler. But Jeremiah travelled to earn his bread, and these other sorts of men are rich enough already. They go on voyages because they are curious. They amble around the world and stare at things, they sail across the oceans as if there's nothing to it at all, and if it goes ill with them in one place they simply pick up and move along to another.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace)
“
American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash -- all of them -- surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild an reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index. Driving along I thought how in France or Italy every item of these thrown-out things would have been saved and used for something. This is not said in criticism of one system or the other but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness -- chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea. When an Indian village became too deep in its own filth, the inhabitants moved. And we have no place to which to move.
”
”
John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
“
You think it’s normal to get what you want all the time,” said Jule. “For things to be easy. But it isn’t. Most people don’t get what they want, like, ever. They have doors shut in their faces. They have to strive, all the time. They don’t live in your magical land of two-seater cars and perfect teeth and traveling to Italy and fur coats.
”
”
E. Lockhart (Genuine Fraud)
“
I've always preferred the city at night. I believe that San Judas, or any city, belongs to the people who sleep there. Or maybe they don't sleep - some don't - but they live there. Everybody else is just a tourist.
Venice, Italy, for instance, pulls in a millions tourists for their own Carnival season but the actual local population is only a couple of hundred thousand. Lots of empty canals and streets at night, especially when you get away from the big hotels, and the residents pretty much have it to themselves when tourist season slows during the winter.
Jude has character - everybody agrees on that. It also has that thing I like best about a city: You can never own it, but it you treat it with respect it will eventually invite you in and make you one of its true citizens. But like I said, you've got to live there. If you're never around after the bars close, or at the other end of the night as the early workers get up to start another day and the coffee shops and news agents raise their security gates, then you don't really know the place, do you?
”
”
Tad Williams (The Dirty Streets of Heaven (Bobby Dollar, #1))
“
Η τελειότητα είναι μια δύσκολη, επικίντυνη στιγμιαία ισορροπία απάνω στο χάος, λίγο να ρίξεις βάρος δεξιά η αριστερά, γκρεμίζεται.
”
”
Nikos Kazantzakis (Journeying: Travels in Italy, Egypt, Sinai, Jerusalem and Cyprus)
“
I love the way Italy makes me feel like I'm home.
”
”
Ilene Modica (Our Italian Journey: Living our dream in Italy for one year)
“
Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.
”
”
Anna Akhmatova
“
Living in another culture, not just visiting it, has reshaped our view of the world.
”
”
Nancy Petralia (Not in a Tuscan Villa: During a Year in Italy, a New Jersey Couple Discovers the True Dolce Vita When They Trade Rose-colored Glasses for 3Ds)
“
Δεν υπάρχει Ελένη! Δεν υπάρχει Ελένη!" μα εμείς οι Έλληνες, βαθιά νιώθουμε: Ελένη θα πει να πολεμάς για την Ελένη!
”
”
Nikos Kazantzakis (Journeying: Travels in Italy, Egypt, Sinai, Jerusalem and Cyprus)
“
We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalize over Italy and ecstacise over Spain- but England we love.
”
”
Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Shuttle)
“
The days go by, through the brief silence of winter, when the sunshine is so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead leaves gleam brown, and water sounds hoarse in the ravines.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence
“
He might have left Amherst and traveled far away, to Italy or Mexico in search of beautiful food and adventure...Made small things exciting and beautiful, the way he knew how.
pg. 246
”
”
E. Lockhart (Family of Liars)
“
…”The Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don’t suppose it will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends of Mr. Vyse’s. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest people! For our part we liked them, didn’t we?” He appealed to Lucy. “There was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine’s great stories. ‘My dear sister loves flowers,’ it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue — vases and jugs — and the story ends with ‘So ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful.’ It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.”…
”
”
E.M. Forster (A Room with a View)
“
Italian cuisine, at its very best, is a math problem that doesn't add up. A tangle of noodles, a few scraps of pork, a grating of cheese are transformed into something magical. 1+1=3: more alchemy than cooking.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
The Langhe is a paradise, a giardino: pears, apples, pomegranates, chestnuts. Everything you could want to eat falling from a tree. And above all, nocciole. You see those trees? Those are South American hazelnuts. Fatter. Rounder. There are also the smaller Turkish hazelnuts, but Ferrero Rocher uses the big ones to make Nutella. And wine- everywhere, wine. Barbera, Bonarda, Dolcetto, and the king, Nebbiolo, the king of all grapes.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
We have many obligations to this good lady, who is a kind neighbour, an obliging friend, and a most agreeable companion: she speaks English prettily, and is greatly attached to the people and the customs of our nation. They
”
”
Tobias Smollett (Travels through France and Italy)
“
I couldn't even work up a tingle in holding An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy; with Observations on the Mistakes of Some Travellers, with Regard to That Country. I figured people had been making goombah jokes even in 1768.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
Ποιο είναι το χρέος μας; Να στεκόμαστε μπροστά στην άβυσσο με αξιοπρέπεια. Να μη φωνάζουμε, μήτε να γελούμε για να κρύψουμε το φόβο μας. Μήτε να σφαλίζουμε τα μάτια. Ήσυχα, σιωπηλά, να μάθουμε να κοιτάζουμε το βάραθρο χωρίς ελπίδα και φόβο.
”
”
Nikos Kazantzakis (Journeying: Travels in Italy, Egypt, Sinai, Jerusalem and Cyprus)
“
I'm glad that the rock is heavy
and that it feels all right in my heart
like an eye in a pot of humus.
Let's write long letters on grand themes,
fish sandwiches, egg sandwiches and cheese;
or travelling in Mexico, Italy and Australia.
I eat a lot so I won't get drunk and then
I drink a lot so I'll feel excited
and then I've gone away I don't know where
or with whom and can't remember whom from
except that I'm back with my paper bag
and next time my face won't come with me.
”
”
Frank O'Hara (Meditations in an Emergency)
“
Whereas while you're travelling, nobody really knows. While you're travelling you still have the potential to do anything, be anything. It's only when you stop and actually try to do those things that you discover your own capabilities, I guess.
”
”
Lucy Diamond (One Night in Italy)
“
As Anne grew, so did her ambition to travel. Her dream destinations became further flung and more exotic. It did not satisfy her to leave England for a week or two; throughout her adult life she spent months at a time away from home, including periods of residence in Paris. Having also explored Italy, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in the summer of 1833 Scandinavia and the Baltics were in Anne’s sights. After months of indecision, she finally ‘determined to go north’ on 17th July that year, resolving to end her journey in Denmark.
”
”
Anne Choma (Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister)
“
THE rule for travelling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind us. The object of travelling is to see and learn; but such is our impatience of ignorance, or the jealousy of our self-love, that we generally set up a certain preconception beforehand (in self-defence, or as a barrier against the lessons of experience,) and are surprised at or quarrel with all that does not conform to it. Let us think what we please of what we really find, but prejudge
nothing. [Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy]
”
”
William Hazlitt
“
The irony behind the Church's disdain for the practice is that European Catholics have used saintly relics and bones as intermediaries for more than a thousand years. The ñatitas were similar in purpose to other skulls I had met several years earlier, on a trip to Naples, Italy.
”
”
Caitlin Doughty (From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death)
“
In August 1902, Olivia’s health grew alarmingly worse. Despite temporary improvements, it continued to decline, and in 1903, on the recommendation of her doctors, Clemens decided to take the family to Italy. In early November they settled into the Villa di Quarto near Florence. In addition to Clemens himself, the travelers included Olivia, Clara, and Jean. Three employees were also with them: longtime family servant Katy Leary, a nurse for Olivia, and Isabel V. Lyon, who had been hired in 1902 as Olivia’s secretary but had since assumed more general duties.
”
”
Mark Twain (Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1)
“
Under Mongol domination, faraway regions of the globe came into contact more than superficially and, for at least a century spanning the mid-1200s to the mid-1300s, these regions were linked in a common network of exchange and production. For the first time, people and caravans could travel safely from Italy to China.
”
”
Marie Favereau (The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World)
“
I must have been about four years old when Russia took hold of me with giant hands. That grip has never lessened. For me, the love of my heart, the fulfilment of the senses and the kingdom of the mind all met here. This book is the story of my obsession. In her essays, The Sentimental Traveller, Vernon Lee wrote of her emotion for Italy thus: ‘There are moments in all our lives, most often, alas! during childhood, when we possess the mystic gift of consecration, of steeping things in our soul’s essence, and making them thereby different from all others, for ever sovereign and sacred to us.’ So Italy became to her – so Russia to me.
”
”
Lesley Blanch (Journey into the Mind's Eye: Fragments of an Autobiography)
“
We navigate the produce stands, plucking palms full of cherries from every pile we pass, chewing them and spitting the seeds on the ground. We eat tiny tomatoes with taut skins that snap under gentle pressure, releasing the rabid energy of the Sardinian sun trapped inside. We crack asparagus like twigs and watch the stalks weep chlorophyll tears. We attack anything and everything that grows on trees- oranges, plums, apricots, peaches- leaving pits and peels, seeds and skins in our wake. Downstairs in the seafood section, the heart of the market, the pace quickens. Roberto turns the market into a roving raw seafood bar, passing me pieces of marine life at every stand: brawny, tight-lipped mussels; juicy clams on the half shell with a shocking burst of sweetness; tiny raw shrimp with beads of blue coral clinging to their bodies like gaudy jewelry. We place dominoes of ruby tuna flesh on our tongues like communion wafers, the final act in this sacred procession.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
It took longer for the fork to gain acceptance in England because it was thought to be a feminine utensil. Thomas Coryate, an English traveler and philosopher who had been to Italy and France, published a book in 1611 that included the Italian custom of eating with a fork. He declared himself the first man in London to eat with a fork.
”
”
Dorothea Johnson (Modern Manners: Tools to Take You to the Top)
“
No, Mother; no. She was really keen on Italy. This travel is quite a crisis for her.” He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there was something half attractive, half repellent in the thought of this vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths.
”
”
E.M. Forster (The Works of E. M. Forster)
“
There was the loud noise of water, as ever, something eternal and maddening in its sound, like the sound of Time itself, rustling and rushing and wavering, but never for a second ceasing. The rushing of Time that continues throughout eternity, this is the sound of the icy streams of Switzerland, something that mocks and destroys out warm being.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence (D.H. Lawrence and Italy: Twilight in Italy/Sea and Sardinia/Etruscan Places)
“
But beyond the extravagance of Rome's wealthiest citizens and flamboyant gourmands, a more restrained cuisine emerged for the masses: breads baked with emmer wheat; polenta made from ground barley; cheese, fresh and aged, made from the milk of cows and sheep; pork sausages and cured meats; vegetables grown in the fertile soil along the Tiber. In these staples, more than the spice-rubbed game and wine-soaked feasts of Apicius and his ilk, we see the earliest signs of Italian cuisine taking shape.
The pillars of Italian cuisine, like the pillars of the Pantheon, are indeed old and sturdy. The arrival of pasta to Italy is a subject of deep, rancorous debate, but despite the legend that Marco Polo returned from his trip to Asia with ramen noodles in his satchel, historians believe that pasta has been eaten on the Italian peninsula since at least the Etruscan time. Pizza as we know it didn't hit the streets of Naples until the seventeenth century, when Old World tomato and, eventually, cheese, but the foundations were forged in the fires of Pompeii, where archaeologists have discovered 2,000-year-old ovens of the same size and shape as the modern wood-burning oven. Sheep's- and cow's-milk cheeses sold in the daily markets of ancient Rome were crude precursors of pecorino and Parmesan, cheeses that literally and figuratively hold vast swaths of Italian cuisine together. Olives and wine were fundamental for rich and poor alike.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
she went on a solo trip to Italy, role-playing a character in a Forster novel. In Florence, she read performatively in cafés and sat in the cool of exquisite churches, straining for some kind of spiritual feeling. In Rome, she visited the Non-Catholic Cemetery and sought out the graves of Keats and Shelley and found herself moved and mortified by being moved.
”
”
David Nicholls (You Are Here)
“
1852-55 The middle of November found the travellers back again in Florence, and it was nearly three years before they again quitted Italy. No doubt, after the excitement of the coup d’état in Paris, and the subsequent manœuvres of Louis Napoleon, which culminated in this very month in his exchanging the title of President for that of Emperor, Florence must have seemed very quiet, if not dull.
”
”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
“
He peeled the towel that imprisoned us away and let it fall. I felt it slide softly off my backside, and I felt, too, his rising excite¬ment, hard, erect, pressing against me.
My nipples were erect, straining, aching, pressed against his strong warm damp chest, the tangle and pattern of his hair. He was a beast, an animal. My excitement was rising again, to match his. It was as if my heart were about to burst or to flip flop, breathless, into a dark abyss.
“Of course, you are crazy, my darling, but, then, so am I.” He kissed me and his oh-so-clever hands seized my waist, tighten¬ing, and then sneaking up my backside, pulling me, pressing me closer, into him. He kissed me again, and his lips moved down my neck to my shoulder and then to my breasts.
“Oh,” I said, “Oh.”
He bent over me, kissing my collarbone and then my breasts, carefully, slowly, his hands traveling down my back, and over my backside; suddenly, he was on his knees, kissing the whorl of 101
my belly button; then he was forcing me open, gently, gently, his tongue exploring caressing, devouring …
“Oh …” I exhaled a deep, shuddering breath. I tipped on the very edge. He bit me, gently. Oooooh!
He pulled in the reins, the bit and bridle, of the frisky frothing filly that I had become; this sudden halt made me wilder, crazier; then, once again, he brought me, trembling, up to the very, very edge of the cliff – of orgasm, of loss of self.
Then he pulled me back. I blinked and trembled. Around the two of us, there was a whole world, a whole universe. It seemed too vivid to be real, like the backdrop in an opera. Venus was brighter and lower now. The sky had turned deep indigo. One by one, stars appeared.
”
”
Gwendoline Clermont (The Shaming of Gwendoline C)
“
We start our meal in the kitchen, right beside the blazing oven, where one of Franco's cooks chops a filet of local grass-fed beef into rough cubes and dresses it with olive oil and wisps of lemon rind. A puffy disc of dough emerges from the oven, which Franco cuts into wedges before heaping it with mounds of this restrained tartare. The union of warm, smoky bread and cool, grassy beef is enough to make me want to camp out in the kitchen for the rest of the night.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Remember that a little learning can be a pleasant thing. Italy gives much, in beauty, gaiety, diversity of arts and landscapes, good humor and energy—willingly, without having to be coaxed or courted. Paradoxically, she requires (as do other countries, probably more so) and deserves some preparation as background to enhance her pleasures. It is almost impossible to read a total history of Italy; there was no united country until a hundred years ago, no single line of power, no concerted developments. It is useful, however, to know something about what made Siena run and stop, to become acquainted with the Estes and the Gonzagas, the Medicis and the Borgias, the names that were the local history. It helps to know something about the conflicts of the medieval church with the Holy Roman Empire, of the French, Spanish and early German kings who marked out large chunks of Italy for themselves or were invited to invade by a nervous Italian power. Above all, it helps to turn the pages of a few art and architecture books to become reacquainted with names other those of the luminous giants.
The informed visitors will not allow himself to be cowed by the deluge of art. See what interests or attracts you; there is no Italian Secret Service that reports on whether you have seen everything. If you try to see it all except as a possible professional task, you may come to resist it all. Relax, know what you like and don’t like—not the worst of measures—and let the rest go.
”
”
Kate Simon (Italy: The Places in Between)
“
You said she has no travel records leaving Italy?"
"Yes sir."
"So there is a great possibility that she is still here in Italy, isn't?"
"Yes sir."
"What is 'true love' in Italian?"
Secretary Wood showed surprise in his boss' peculiar question that was so not in line with their topic.
"Uh...it's 'vero amore', sir." Secretary Wood answered, looking at Cullan as if he already lost his marbles.
"Okay. Find my wife as soon as possible, Secretary Wood. I want my vero amore back to me." Cullan said with vindiction.
”
”
Nicholaa Spencer (Marrying A Wannabe Nun)
“
The calm skies that drifted above us lulled us into thinking this traversée would be smooth, but after several hours, the unsteady sea had taken its toll on me and after a light lunch and a brief swim in the open sea failed to do so, I attempted to remedy my mal de mer with rest. When I awoke, the sun had already set and the cool air and soft light of twilight helped recalibrate my disoriented thoughts. Although my seasickness had subsided, I lay starboard side facing the heavens - that were now a deep shade of purple - so as to not provoke another episode. We set to anchoring behind several large volcanic pillars just a stone’s-throw away from where the Tyrrhenian Sea kissed the east of the island. A handful of wishes scattered the skies as we approached the shores of Aci Trezza. As these stars traced their dying song across the void above, part of me felt ashamed for even entertaining the notion of wishing upon a star, but that voice was speedily silenced by words He had once shared with me in Scotland: “There is always some truth to fiction.
”
”
R.J. Arkhipov
“
Later in the meal, the full extent of Massimo's whimsy-driven modernist vision will be on display- in a handheld head of baby lettuce whose tender leaves hide the concentrated tastes of a Caesar salad, a glazed rectangle of eel made to look as if it were swimming up the Po River, a handful of classics with ridiculous names such as "Oops! I dropped the lemon tart"- but it's the ragù that moves me the most. The noodles have a brilliant, enduring chew, and the sauce, rich with gelatin from the tougher cuts of meat, clings to them as if its life were at stake.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
But life seemed fuller, more populated than it had a year ago. She went to exhibitions and films, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, and when she’d saved enough of Neil’s money, which was her money, she went on a solo trip to Italy, role-playing a character in a Forster novel. In Florence, she read performatively in cafés and sat in the cool of exquisite churches, straining for some kind of spiritual feeling. In Rome, she visited the Non-Catholic Cemetery and sought out the graves of Keats and Shelley and found herself moved and mortified by being moved.
”
”
David Nicholls (You Are Here)
“
One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical—it might almost be called a malicious—smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur—or rather astrachan—overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with a large cape to it—the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the winter months in Switzerland or North Italy—was by no means adapted to the long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Idiot)
“
His ragù begins the same way all ragù begin: with finely diced onion, carrot, and celery sautéed in olive oil, the sacred soffritto. "It's important to really caramelize the vegetables. That's where the flavor comes from."
Later come two pounds of coarsely ground beef ("from the neck or shoulder- something with fat and flavor") and a pound of ground pork butt, browned separately from the vegetables and deglazed with a cup of white wine (pignoletto, of course). Peeled tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaves, and three hours of simmering over a low flame. Seasoning? "Salt. Never pepper.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Despite the challenges, S'Apposentu slowly bloomed into one of Cagliari's most important restaurants. Roberto brought with him the hundreds of little lessons he had learned on the road and transposed them onto Sardinian tradition and terreno. He turned roasted onions into ice cream and peppered it with wild flowers and herbs. He reimagined porceddu, Sardinia's heroic roast pig, as a dense terrine punctuated with local fruits. He made himself into a master: of bread baking, cheese making, meat curing. In 2006, Michelin rewarded him with a star, one of the first ever awarded in Sardinia.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Because here's a thing I've come to understand of late: context really does affect flavor. A place, its atmosphere, the people within it, their mood (and ours) genuinely change the way things taste. A restaurant lasagna has to be twice as good as your mother's or that one you had on that trip to Italy -- for it to be remind you of it even a little. A rack fo smoked pork ribs will never taste as good on a ceramic plate atop a tablecloth as it does from within a Styrofoam box on the hood of your car, downwind a roadside smoker, I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.
”
”
Jason Wilson (The Best American Travel Writing 2021)
“
Aboard the gondola, Giacomo Foscarini sat facing Mathias. They were crossing the Canal Grande, then they would navigate around San Marco and return. Foscarini loved to travel around Venice this way. They stopped briefly at a mooring near the bridge to the Rialto, and Foscarini had a servant fetch green olives, fresh Piacenza cheese, a few sausages from Modena, and wine that had just been delivered from Crete. The nobleman often dined aboard his gondola, looking out over the city, watching his world. "Seen from this vantage point, Venice doesn't seem like it's in any of its terrible troubles at all magister," said Foscarini.
”
”
Riccardo Bruni (The Lion and the Rose)
“
The great cheeses of Europe were born during the Middle Ages- Cheddar in southern England in the twelfth century, Gouda in the Netherlands not long after; Parmigiano-Reggiano, the king of Italian cheeses, emerged as a staple of the cuisine of Emilia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. From there, cheese began its inexorable march toward diversification, from sharp, funky blue cheeses aged in caves to unpasteurized triple creams to tangy pucks of goat cheese rolled in lavender and fennel pollen. By some estimates, more than four thousand varieties of cheeses are produced today- a thousand in France alone- made from a dozen different kinds of milk: cow, sheep, yak, reindeer, even human.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
We sat around for hours, turning over the mysteries of the universe, giggling like a dorm room full of stoners, all of us seemingly intoxicated by the truffle's powerful pheromones. A new ritual was born, an annual Truffle Fest that stretched on for the better part of a decade across state lines and continental divides. In that time, I've cooked dozens of truffle-larded dishes. Soft scrambled eggs. Scallops and salsify in parchment. Wild mushroom pizza. Butter-bombed risotto. Whole roasted chicken with truffle slices slipped like splinters under the skin. Above all, handmade pasta tossed with melted butter and anointed tableside with truffle- the finest vessel for the tuber's dreamy fragrance.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
The soul of Sardinia lies in the hills of the interior and the villages peppered among them. There, in areas such as Nuoro and Ozieri, women bake bread by the flame of the communal oven, winemakers produce their potions from small caches of grapes adapted to the stubborn soil and acrid climate, and shepherds lead their flocks through the peaks and valleys in search of the fickle flora that fuels Sardinia's extraordinary cheese culture. There are more sheep than humans roaming this island- and sheep can't graze on sand.
On the table, the food stands out as something only loosely connected to the cuisine of Italy's mainland. Here, every piece of the broader puzzle has its own identity: pane carasau, the island's main staple, eats more like a cracker than a loaf of bread, built to last for shepherds who spent weeks away from home. Cheese means sheep's milk manipulated in a hundred different ways, from the salt-and-spice punch of Fiore Sardo to the infamous maggot-infested casu marzu. Fish and seafood may be abundant, but they take a backseat to four-legged animals: sheep, lamb, and suckling pig. Historically, pasta came after bread in the island's hierarchy of carbs, often made by the poorest from the dregs of the wheat harvest, but you'll still find hundreds of shapes and sizes unfamiliar to a mainland Italian. All of it washed down with wine made from grapes that most people have never heard of- Cannonau, Vermentino, Torbato- that have little market beyond the island.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Well what can you expect?' I retorted. 'Those people are, as you say, simple and uneducated. Wasn't it Marx who said that peasants are like sacks of potatoes? Is it surprising that their lives are filled with gods and goddesses and demons?'
She glanced at me again. 'You really do not care for ordinary people, do you?'
The imputation of elitism made me bridle. 'Why you're quite wrong!' I said. 'I consider myself a person of the left. As a student I was a Maoist fellow traveller. I've always stood in solidarity with peasants and workers.'
'Oh yes, certo!' she said, suppressing a giggle. 'I knew many Maoists and fellow travellers in Italy. They had every regard for the bellies and bodies of poor people - but not, I think, for what is in their heads.
”
”
Amitav Ghosh (Gun Island)
“
25 May, as the extent of the French defeat became apparent, Lord Halifax carefully began sounding out the Italian ambassador to find out what concessions would be needed to ‘bribe’ Italy from entering the war. Gibraltar, perhaps, or Malta? He hoped that Italy could provide the initiative for a peace conference with Hitler, leading to a ‘general European arrangement’. England was to keep the sea and its empire, while Germany could do as it pleased on the continent. Hitler would probably have agreed to such a proposal: it was roughly the same division of roles Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers had contemplated in 1914. As a result, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Norway – the lion’s share of Europe – would have been transformed into a federation of Nazi
”
”
Geert Mak (In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century)
“
By first light, immigrants haul crates of melons and buckets of ice over the narrow cobblestone streets. Old men sell salted capers and branches of wild oregano while the young ones build their fish stands, one silvery torqued body at a time, like an edible art installation. It's a startling scene: gruff young palermitani, foul-mouthed and wreathed in cigarette smoke, lovingly laying out each fish at just the right angle, burrowing its belly into the ice as if to mimic its swimming position in the ocean. Sicilian sun and soil and ingenuity have long produced some of Italy's most prized raw ingredients, and the colors of the market serve as a map of the island's agricultural prowess: the forest green pistachios of Bronte; the Crayola-bright lemons and oranges of Paternò; the famous pomodorini of Pachino, fiery orbs of magical tomato intensity.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Down every aisle a single thought follows me like a shadow: Brand Italy is strong. When it comes to cultural currency, there is no brand more valuable than this one. From lipstick-red sports cars to svelte runway figures to enigmatic opera singers, Italian culture means something to everyone in the world. But nowhere does the name Italy mean more than in and around the kitchen. Peruse a pantry in London, Osaka, or Kalamazoo, and you're likely to find it spilling over with the fruits of this country: dried pasta, San Marzano tomatoes, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, jars of pesto, Nutella.
Tucked into the northwest corner of Italy, sharing a border with France and Switzerland, Piedmont may be as far from the country's political and geographical center as possible, but it is ground zero for Brand Italy. This is the land of Slow Food. Of white truffles. Barolo. Vermouth. Campari. Breadsticks. Nutella. Fittingly, it's also the home of Eataly, the supermarket juggernaut delivering a taste of the entire country to domestic and international shoppers alike. This is the Eataly mother ship, the first and most symbolically important store for a company with plans for covering the globe in peppery Umbrian oil, and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano Vacche Rosse.
We start with the essentials: bottle opener, mini wooden cutting board, hard-plastic wineglasses. From there, we move on to more exciting terrain: a wild-boar sausage from Tuscany. A semiaged goat's-milk cheese from Molise. A tray of lacy, pistachio-pocked mortadella. Some soft, spicy spreadable 'nduja from Calabria. A jar of gianduja, the hazelnut-chocolate spread that inspired Nutella- just in case we have any sudden blood sugar crashes on the trail.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla.
They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement.
Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.
”
”
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
“
As soon as we take our seats, a sequence of six antipasti materialize from the kitchen and swallow up the entire table: nickels of tender octopus with celery and black olives, a sweet and bitter dance of earth and sea; another plate of polpo, this time tossed with chickpeas and a sharp vinaigrette; a duo of tuna plates- the first seared and chunked and served with tomatoes and raw onion, the second whipped into a light pâté and showered with a flurry of bottarga that serves as a force multiplier for the tuna below; and finally, a plate of large sea snails, simply boiled and served with small forks for excavating the salty-sweet knuckle of meat inside.
As is so often the case in Italy, we are full by the end of the opening salvo, but the night is still young, and the owner, who stops by frequently to fill my wineglass as well as his own, has a savage, unpredictable look in his eyes. Next comes the primo, a gorgeous mountain of spaghetti tossed with an ocean floor's worth of clams, the whole mixture shiny and golden from an indecent amount of olive oil used to mount the pasta at the last moment- the fat acting as a binding agent between the clams and the noodles, a glistening bridge from earth to sea. "These are real clams, expensive clams," the owner tells me, plucking one from the plate and holding it up to the light, "not those cheap, flavorless clams most restaurants use for pasta alle vongole."
Just as I'm ready to wave the white napkin of surrender- stained, like my pants, a dozen shades of fat and sea- a thick cylinder of tuna loin arrives, charred black on the outside, cool and magenta through the center. "We caught this ourselves today," he whispers in my ear over the noise of the dining room, as if it were a secret to keep between the two of us. How can I refuse?
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
As we walk through Savignio, the copper light of dusk settling over the town's narrow streets, we stop anyone we can find to ask for his or her ragù recipe. A retired policeman says he likes an all-pork sauce with a heavy hit of pancetta, the better for coating the pasta. A gelato maker explains that a touch of milk defuses the acidity of the tomato and ties the whole sauce together. Overhearing our kitchen talk below, an old woman in a navy cardigan pokes her head out of a second-story window to offer her take on the matter: "I only use tomatoes from my garden- fresh when they're in season, preserved when it gets cold."
Inspired by the Savignio citizenry, we buy meat from the butcher, vegetables and wine from a small stand in the town's piazza, and head to Alessandro's house to simmer up his version of ragù: two parts chopped skirt steak, one part ground pancetta, the sautéed vegetable trio, a splash of dry white wine, and a few canned San Marzano tomatoes.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Everywhere you turn you see signs of its place at the top of the Italian food chain: fresh-pasta shops vending every possible iteration of egg and flour; buzzing bars pairing Spritz and Lambrusco with generous spreads of free meat, cheese, and vegetable snacks; and, above all, osteria after osteria, cozy wine-soaked eating establishments from whose ancient kitchens emanates a moist fragrance of simmered pork and local grapes.
Osteria al 15 is a beloved dinner den just inside the centro storico known for its crispy flatbreads puffed up in hot lard, and its classic beef-heavy ragù tossed with corkscrew pasta or spooned on top of béchamel and layered between sheets of lasagne. It's far from refined, but the bargain prices and the boisterous staff make it all go down easily.
Trattoria Gianni, down a hairpin alleyway a few blocks from Piazza Maggiore, was once my lunch haunt in Bologna, by virtue of its position next to my Italian-language school. I dream regularly of its bollito misto, a heroic mix of braised brisket, capon, and tongue served with salsa verde, but the dish I'm looking for this time, a thick beef-and-pork joint with plenty of jammy tomato, is a solid middle-of-the-road ragù.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas.
Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor.
Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt.
Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot.
In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
THE JOURNEY BACK from Regium to Rome was easier than our progress south had been, for by now it was early spring, and the mainland soft and welcoming. Not that we had much opportunity to admire the birds and flowers. Cicero worked every mile of the way, swaying and pitching in the back of his covered wagon, as he assembled the outline of his case against Verres. I would fetch documents from the baggage cart as he needed them and walk along at the rear of his carriage taking down his dictation, which was no easy feat. His plan, as I understood it, was to separate the mass of evidence into four sets of charges — corruption as a judge, extortion in collecting taxes and official revenues, the plundering of private and municipal property, and finally, illegal and tyrannical punishments. Witness statements and records were grouped accordingly, and even as he bounced along, he began drafting whole passages of his opening speech. (Just as he had trained his body to carry the weight of his ambition, so he had, by effort of will, cured himself of travel sickness, and over the years he was to do a vast amount of work while journeying up and down Italy.) In this manner, almost without his noticing where he was, we completed the trip in less than a fortnight and came at last to Rome on the Ides of March,
”
”
Robert Harris (Imperium (Cicero, #1))
“
The choice of 'eastern Europe' as a frame of reference requires a word of explanation. The term is used here in a provisional manner and indeed a rather arbitrary one, with the lower-case form intended to underline this. The travellers set out from places that stretch from Kiev to Rijeka, and from Gdansk to Crete. The eastern Europe that they represent includes the lands that lie between the Baltic in the north and the Mediterranean in the south; between Russia in the east and Italy, Austria and Germany in the west. These boundaries were set in part by the limits of the possible: had resources permitted, accounts by travellers from the Baltic countries or by Austrian Germans, among others, might equally well have been included here. My aim has been to assemble a representative selection of travel writings from this region: the anthology includes accounts from some twenty languages, by more than one hundred authors, written over a period of more than 450 years, beginning in the sixteenth century and finishing with a book published in 2004. The writers travel to Ireland in the west, to Istanbul in the east—and any number of places in between.
But why group these particular east European travels through Europe together, in a single volume? The answer lies partly in eastern Europe's relationship to the idea of Europe itself.
”
”
Wendy Bracewell (Orientations: An Anthology of European Travel Writing on Europe (East Looks West))
“
Despite the raised voices and the wild gesticulations, nobody here is wrong. The beauty of ragù is that it's an idea as much as it is a recipe, a slow-simmered distillation of what means and circumstances have gifted you: If Zia Peppe's ragù is made with nothing but pork scraps, that's because her neighbor raises pigs. When Maria cooks her vegetables in a mix of oil and butter, it's because her family comes from a long line of dairy farmers. When Nonna Anna slips a few laurel leaves into the pot, she plucks them from the tree outside her back door. There is no need for a decree from the Chamber of Commerce to tell these women what qualifies as the authentic ragù; what's authentic is whatever is simmering under the lid.
Eventually the women agree to disagree and the rolling boil of the debate calms to a gentle simmer. Alessandro opens a few bottles of pignoletto he's brought to make the peace. We drink and take photos and make small talk about tangential ragù issues such as the proper age of Parmesan and the troubled state of the prosciutto industry in the region.
On my way out, Anna no. 1 grabs me by the arm. She pulls me close and looks up into my eyes with an earnestness that drowns out the rest of the chatter in the room. "Forget about these arguments. Forget about the small details. Just remember that the most important ingredient for making ragù, the one thing you can never forget, is love."
Lisetta overhears from across the room and quickly adds, "And pancetta!
”
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Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
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Although Zolla no longer associated with Julius Evola, he nevertheless arranged for me to meet Italy’s most famous crypto-traditionalist writer who was a very controversial figure because of his espousal of the cause of Mussolini during the Second World War. I had already read some of Evola’s works, many of which are now being translated into English and are attracting some attention in philosophical circles. But based on the image I had of him as an expositor of traditional doctrines including Yoga, I was surprised to see him, now crippled as a result of a bomb explosion in 1945, living in the center of Rome in a large old apartment which was severe and fairly dark and without works of traditional art which I had expected to see around him. He had piercing eyes and gazed directly at me as we spoke about knightly initiation, myths and symbols of ancient Persia, traditional alchemy and Hermeticism and similar subjects. While he extolled the ancient Romans and their virtues, he spoke pejoratively about his contemporary Italians. When I asked him what happened to those Roman virtues, he said they traveled north to Germany and we were left with Italian waiters singing o sole mio! He also seemed to have little knowledge or interest in esoteric Christianity and refuse to acknowledge the presence of a sapiental current in Christianity. It was surprising for me to see an Italian sitting a few minutes from the Vatican, with his immense knowledge of various esoteric philosophies from the Greek to the Indian, being so impervious to the inner realities of the tradition so close to his home.
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Seyyed Hossein Nasr
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The only point that everyone I spoke with in Rome agrees upon is that Armando al Pantheon is one of the city's last true trattorie.
Given the location, Claudio and his family could have gone the way of the rest of the neighborhood a long time ago and mailed it in with a handful of fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. But he's chosen the opposite path, an unwavering dedication to the details- the extra steps that make the oxtail more succulent, the pasta more perfectly toothsome, the artichokes and favas and squash blossoms more poetic in their expression of the Roman seasons.
"I experiment in my own small ways. I want to make something new, but I also want my guests to think of their mothers and grandmothers. I want them to taste their infancy, to taste their memories. Like that great scene in Ratatouille."
I didn't grow up on amatriciana and offal, but when I eat them here, they taste like a memory I never knew I had. I keep coming back. For the cacio e pepe, which sings that salty-spicy duet with unrivaled clarity, thanks to the depth charge of toasted Malaysian peppercorns Claudio employs. For his coda alla vaccinara, as Roman as the Colosseum, a masterpiece of quinto quarto cookery: the oxtail cooked to the point of collapse, bathed in a tomato sauce with a gentle green undertow of celery, one of Rome's unsung heroes. For the vegetables: one day a crostini of stewed favas and pork cheek, the next a tumble of bitter puntarelle greens bound in a bracing anchovy vinaigrette. And always the artichokes. If Roman artichokes are drugs, Claudio's are pure poppy, a vegetable so deeply addictive that I find myself thinking about it at the most inappropriate times. Whether fried into a crisp, juicy flower or braised into tender, melting submission, it makes you wonder what the rest of the world is doing with their thistles.
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Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
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HISTORICAL NOTE There are no nuclear power stations in Belarus. Of the functioning stations in the territory of the former USSR, the ones closest to Belarus are of the old Soviet-designed RBMK type. To the north, the Ignalinsk station, to the east, the Smolensk station, and to the south, Chernobyl. On April 26, 1986, at 1:23:58, a series of explosions destroyed the reactor in the building that housed Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. The catastrophe at Chernobyl became the largest technological disaster of the twentieth century. For tiny Belarus (population: 10 million), it was a national disaster. During the Second World War, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages along with their inhabitants. As a result of Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. Of these, 70 have been forever buried underground. During the war, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Among the demographic factors responsible for the depopulation of Belarus, radiation is number one. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birth rates by 20%. As a result of the accident, 50 million Ci of radionuclides were released into the atmosphere. Seventy percent of these descended on Belarus; fully 23% of its territory is contaminated by cesium-137 radionuclides with a density of over 1 Ci/km2. Ukraine on the other hand has 4.8% of its territory contaminated, and Russia, 0.5%. The area of arable land with a density of more than 1 Ci/km2 is over 18 million hectares; 2.4 thousand hectares have been taken out of the agricultural economy. Belarus is a land of forests. But 26% of all forests and a large part of all marshes near the rivers Pripyat, Dniepr, and Sozh are considered part of the radioactive zone. As a result of the perpetual presence of small doses of radiation, the number of people with cancer, mental retardation, neurological disorders, and genetic mutations increases with each year. —“Chernobyl.” Belaruskaya entsiklopedia On April 29, 1986, instruments recorded high levels of radiation in Poland, Germany, Austria, and Romania. On April 30, in Switzerland and northern Italy. On May 1 and 2, in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and northern Greece. On May 3, in Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey. . . . Gaseous airborne particles traveled around the globe: on May 2 they were registered in Japan, on May 5 in India, on May 5 and 6 in the U.S. and Canada. It took less than a week for Chernobyl to become a problem for the entire world. —“The Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident in Belarus.” Minsk, Sakharov International College on Radioecology The fourth reactor, now known as the Cover, still holds about twenty tons of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one knows what is happening with it. The sarcophagus was well made, uniquely constructed, and the design engineers from St. Petersburg should probably be proud. But it was constructed in absentia, the plates were put together with the aid of robots and helicopters, and as a result there are fissures. According to some figures, there are now over 200 square meters of spaces and cracks, and radioactive particles continue to escape through them . . . Might the sarcophagus collapse? No one can answer that question, since it’s still impossible to reach many of the connections and constructions in order to see if they’re sturdy. But everyone knows that if the Cover were to collapse, the consequences would be even more dire than they were in 1986. —Ogonyok magazine, No. 17, April 1996
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Svetlana Alexievich (Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster)
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Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas.
Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor.
Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt.
With finocchio in fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot.
In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.
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Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))