Today there is little left of Monterano, once a bustling town built on tufa rock in rolling wooded Etruscan countryside about 50 km northwest of Rome. It used to be the feudal seat of the Orsini and Altieri families but in 1799, when the population had already been hard hit by malaria, there was ...

The list of events for summer evenings in Rome this year looks good and is long enough to satisfy almost every taste in every part of town. But the season has had an inauspicious start. The opening night of the Teatro dell’Opera’s programme at the Baths of Caracalla was called off in protest ag...

Walk through any major square in Italy over the next couple of weeks and chances are you will be stopped and asked to lend your support to a campaign titled “L’acqua non si vende”, or “Water is not for sale”. The campaign, which runs until 24 July, is an initiative of the Forum Italiano dei Movim...

After two years of hearing prime minister Silvio Berlusconi tell Italy that the economy was in fine shape and that Italians were better off than their European fellows, the message has been reversed. Berlusconi, the eternal optimist, could not bring himself to break the news so it was delivered b...

You wouldn’t expect American blues stars such as Luther Allison, Ruthie Foster, Derek Trucks and James Brown’s solo saxophonist Maceo Parker to be performing in a backwater in the heart of an obscure area of the Ciociaria region, half way between Rome and Naples. And yet every July the little tow...

Restoring a roof or, even worse, buying a new boiler, are the maintenance jobs that everyone dreads. Remodelling the kitchen, re-planting the terrace, commissioning a painting or even restoring grandma’s melodious Bechstein are fun, even if expensive, projects. But how long can you go on listenin...

Rome is where you reckon with your past, where you take stock of history and your own doings. When the thoughtful, moody and deeply committed New York School painter Philip Guston, one of the “Big Boys”, came to town as Artist in Residence at the American Academy in 1971, to an ancient alien land...