ItalyUpdate

If you are banking on living for over a century, Italy would appear to be the best place in Europe to reach the venerable status of Supercentenarian. According to the Italian National Statistics Institute ISTAT, there are currently 17,630 centenarians in the country, six of whom are verified as living supercentenarians – the title given to those who have topped their  110th birthday.

A scoop for the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo (Lombardy): the Mantegna Resurrection in their collection, hitherto believed to be a copy, has now been declared the original work of the great  renaissance master, Andrea Mantegna.

Awards for the best locally produced balsamic vinegar will be announced on the 24 June 2018 during the traditional midsummer Palio di San Giovanni (Tournament of St. John) at the town of  Spilamberto (Modena, Reggio Emilia). From the beginning of April, a team of professional tasters has been trying out hundreds of anonymous samples of traditional balsamic vinegar produced by small family-run businesses.

The unique Quartiere delle Ceramiche (Ceramics Quarter) in Grottaglie (Puglia) where many artists still work in the traditional red clay caves, or grottos, that gave the town its name, will be host to an international exhibition of ceramic sculpture between the 23 June – 30 September 2018.

The Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale of Architectural Design 2018 focusses on a lesser known reality of Italy, the constellation, or archipelago, as Biennale President Paolo Baratta calls it, of the 4000 small towns and villages scattered around the peninsula.

According to Mario Cucinella, the exhibition curator, the idea is to turn the spotlight on the architects who work to redesign and re-qualify small town piazzas and historic buildings “always attempting to create a relationship between history and contemporary reality.

For the very first time, the public can admire a splendid renaissance Madonna and Child by an unknown artist, commissioned in 1519 for the Church of San Giacomo Scossacavalli in Rome.

Civita di Bagnoregio, (Lazio), once labelled the Dying City because of its lack of inhabitants and its precarious position perched on a crumbling rocky plug, has now become The Enchanted City, thanks to the annual Festival of Animation, which attracts more and more participants.

Bass Huang Junpeng was the winner of the recent Italy-China opera singers' contest at the Music Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, Rome, in which five Italian sopranos, tenors and bass students pitted their voices against five Chinese students from Peking and Hong Kong.

The Arezzo Antique Fair (Tuscany), Italy's biggest antique street market, celebrates 50 years of activity between the 1-3 June 2018. Centred around the theme Back to '68, the streets and piazzas of the beautifully preserved renaissance town (the Baptistry on Piazza Grande appears in the Urbino version of three '400 visionary depictions of The Ideal City ) will be enlivened with '60s music and themed performances.

Vienna Cammarota, coordinator and guide of Aigae Campania (the Italian Association of Environment and Excursionist Guides) has reached Selinunte (Sicily) after a 2,700 km trek following the footsteps of the German poet and dramatist Wolfgang Goethe.