ItalyUpdate

170 wine cellars with a total 386 wines of Italy's South gather at the Resort Masseria Caselli of Carovigno (Brindisi) between the 4-9^th June for the 9^th edition of Radici del Sud, the foremost southern Italy showcase of the wines of Puglia, Basilicata, Campania and Calabria, made from autochthonous vines.

Nutella chocolate spread, one of Italy's most successful exports, celebrates its 50^th birthday this year with a special commemorative stamp issued by the Italian post office, featuring the classic Nutella jar that is expected to be a hit with stamp collectors.

 

The Lazio Region plans to coax foreign tourists to venture beyond Rome and discover the multiple beauties and treasures of the territory with the help of a new website.

 

British art has never been well known or appreciated in Italy. Two splendid exhibitions, running contemporarily in Rome and covering the works of major artists of the '700 - '800 should help to fill the lacuna.

“Hogarth, Reynolds, Turner, Pittura Inglese verso la Modernit�” gives a fascinating insight into the classical period of landscape and portraiture, dominated by a series of artists who took much of their inspiration from travel in Italy, but who re-interpreted the underlying pictorial principles of Italian art to create their own vision of society.

 

The wines of Lazio region, virtually ignored by wine connoisseurs only twenty years ago, are making an increasing impact on the Made in Italy market. 28 Lazio wines scooped awards at the 48^th edition of the international Vinitaly 2014 Wine Fair at Verona.

ADSL (the Association of Historic Italian Dwellings) promotes the art and history of the Alta Tuscia area in Northern Lazio throughout May and June by opening the doors of historic aristocratic residences and other monuments in the towns of Bolsena, Acquapendente, Castell'Azzara, Proceno, Onano and Gradoli which rise along the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrims' route to Rome from Canterbury, England.

The Giragola Festival of Ostuni (Puglia) will showcase the region's gastronomic best every Friday during the month of May 2014. Organized as an itinerant tour with taste stops at five local restaurants and wine bars, where visitors can sample the wines and traditional dishes of the Salento and southern Murgia area, Giragola also includes sightseeing as well as performances by local musicians, theatrical events and art and photography exhibitions.

Three separate exhibitions are dedicated this spring to the fascinating and mysterious Etruscan people who inhabited a large part of the Italian peninsula from the Iron Age till they were conquered and absorbed by the Romans. They left extensive evidence of their civilization, their rituals, their art, their engineering feats and their burial customs in the hundreds of tombs distributed in world famous necropoli such as those at Cerveteri, near Rome, and Tarquinia in northern Lazio  

The historic Cathedral of Pozzuoli (Campania) will open its doors once more on the 11^th May 2014, The Feast of the Saints Procolo and Gennara, patrons of the diocese. The church, built on the ruins of a Roman Temple of Augustus, has a long and tormented history. It rises on a rock which collapsed in 1538, causing serious damage to the structure. 

The competition launched by the Fondazione Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron (Monumental Parks Foundation) to design a new brand image on the theme A Logo for Beauty attracted around 3000 designs, of which 300 from 62 foreign countries.