ItalyUpdate

For the next eight months, visitors to Pompeii can admire the 30 gigantic bronzes by Igor Mitoraj set among the ruins of Italy's most famous dead city.

Lazio's fifteen Nature Museums, grouped together under the Resina Museum System, have produced a group programme that extends over 2016 and beyond, to encourage visitors to explore the multiple facets of the area. The city of Rome is surrounded by bucolic farmland, wooded hills and unspoiled nature reserves, while the entire region has a variety of environments that range from sea to mountains and lakes to wetlands, each with its own specific ecosystem.

Signora Emma Morano from Ciavasco (Piedmont) celebrated her 116^th birthday on the 29^th November last winter, making her the world's oldest living person after the recent decease of the Afro-American Susanna Mushatt Jones, who was born 4  months before her in 1899.

The annual award for Italy's most beautiful garden reaches its 14^th edition this year 2016.

Ten parks and gardens are competing for the top places in Il Parco Piů Bello d'Italia contest. The competition, introduced in the year 2000, spotlights Italy's vast patrimony of private and public green spaces, featuring not only world famous Italian gardens, but also lesser known villas and residences in all Italian regions.

The model village of Crespi D'Adda, built by industrialist Benigno Crespi in 1877 to house the workers employed in his textile factory, can be visited on Sundays and holidays up till October 2016.

The Vatican Museums have announced this year's programme of special events, featuring concerts by the orchestra of the Academmia di Santa Cecilia in the splendid venue of the Raphael Rooms, as well as recitals by young talented musicians from three Italian Conservatories in the Gregorian Profane Museum,  in collaboration with the Italian National Music Committee (CIDIM), and a series of musical performances in the Pine Cone Courtyard, ranging from  the Moscow Russian Choir, Argentinian Tango, jazz and brass bands.

All the monuments and archaeological sites on the Appia Antica, Rome's celebrated Queen of Roads, will be thrown open to the public free of charge on the up-and-coming Appia Day, proclaimed for Sunday, the 8^th May 2016.  

Italy's Federation of Sommeliers, Hoteliers and Restauranteurs (FISAR) converge the weekend 7-8^th May 2016 in the strawberry town of Nemi in the Castelli Romani near Rome to demonstrate the best of Italy's wines. The wine lovers' event Borgo DiVino/ Wines of Italy: the best of..... is organized by the Town of Nemi and the tourism promotional organization CastelliExperience.

The National Museum of Magna Graecia in Reggio Calabria, considered to be one of Italy's most important museum of ancient classical art, re-opens its doors on the 30^th April 2016 with a splendid new look. The luminous new atrium, designed by architect Alfredo Pirri,  adds a whole new dimension onto the monumental Palazzo Piacentini, built 1932-1941 to house the antiquites from the Italian colonies of ancient Greece, such as Sibari, Crotone, Caulonia and Locri.

According to a recent report issued by the International Energy Agency (IEA) to mark World Earth Day 2016, Italy leads the world in use of solar power, with 8% of its entire energy production coming from the sun. With solar panels becoming progressively cheaper over the last 10 years, more and more households have installed panels on their roofs and unused grazing land has been converted into sun farms that feed the national grid.