Europe

April 13, 2021

Covid vaccinations in Italy rolling out slowly but I got mine

La Nuvola, the award-winning convention center where I got vaccinated. Photo by John Henderson

La Nuvola is Rome’s answer to modern architectural marvels, a bookend to the legendary monuments this city built 2,000 years ago. Known formerly as the Nuovi Centro Congressi (New Congress Center), it is a gargantuan glass cube made up of 592,000 square feet of convention space. Built from 2008-16, it was awarded the 2012 Best […]

April 6, 2021

Dante Alighieri: Italy celebrates 700-year anniversary of his death

Italy celebrates the 700-year anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death while I reflect on one of my favorite books as a young adult.

March 31, 2021

Birthday in Lockdown Italy

In lieu of travel, my birthday was lunch and dreams and praying for a vaccine Since moving to Rome in 2014, birthdays have never been dates of dread. I don’t see them as another year older. At my age, 65, they blend together, like cards in an ever-growing deck. Instead, birthdays in Rome are dates […]

March 23, 2021

Augustus Mausoleum: The long-awaited reopening illuminates perhaps Rome’s greatest emperor

The Augustus Mausoleum was the first of its kind in Ancient Rome, built even before the Pantheon. It has reopened to the public for the first time in 14 years.

March 17, 2021

Lockdown Rome II: A 3rd Covid wave floods over Italy and three weeks of isolation awaits us once again

Gray skies the shade of a lonely broken highway greeted me Tuesday as I ventured out for the first time in Episode 1 of “Lockdown Rome: Season 2.” The science fiction tale of a broken, 3,000-year-old city has a different feel this time. A year ago, this city of 2.8 million felt like the day […]

March 11, 2021

Anzio: Nero’s birthplace and site of key WWII battle is a beachside paradise a short ride from Rome

ANZIO, Italy — You can’t tour Rome and Southern Italy without being in awe of the monstrous footprint this civilization laid down 2,000 years ago. Monuments and market places, mausoleums and temples, the most powerful civilization in man’s history stretched from what is now Great Britain to Persia. Peoples and armies in between cowered with […]

March 2, 2021

Palestrina: A Rome day trip back 2,200 years ago to the powerful Roman Republic and a massive sanctuary

PALESTRINA, Italy — Before the Virgin Mary there was Fortuna Primigenia. She was the Roman Goddess of Fate, the oldest daughter of Jupiter. In 204 B.C., as the Roman Republic flexed its muscles, the largest sanctuary on the Italian peninsula was built in her honor. Stretching 1,300 feet at the base and crawling up the […]

February 23, 2021

Naples Underground: an eerie walk through 2,500 years of dark history

Naples Underground covers 2,500 years of Naples history dating back to the Ancient Greeks.

February 17, 2021

Valentine’s Day in pandemic Rome: A romantic hotel and tracing Spartacus’ footsteps on the Appian Way

The Appian Way is Rome’s road of blood. The other day Marina and I walked nearly six miles of arguably Italy’s most famous road, a hike always shrouded in violent history. It was on this road that Spartacus and his 6,000 slaves were crucified (See “Spartacus: Failed Labor Revolts”) in 73 B.C. It was on […]

February 8, 2021

The Torlonia Marbles: Ancient history with a view as Rome museums cautiously open in middle of a pandemic

Italy is crawling with yellow fever. I am. It’s all over me. From my head to my toes to my senses all the way to my taste buds and brain. But I’m not suffering. No, I am wallowing in bliss. Going against the grain set by the rest of the European Union, on Feb. 1 […]

February 2, 2021

When in lockdown Italy? Here are my 10 favorite recipes

Hello again from post-lockdown Italy where Monday I finished my second quasi house arrest in the land that Covid first engulfed. I was in lockdown so long I started a 10-part Netflix series on blood clots. I walked past pubs, long closed, and got weepy at the mere sight of a Peroni sign. My mask […]

January 26, 2021

Italy’s government collapses so when do I get vaccinated?

It took only one week for my adopted country of Italy to have a more screwed-up government than my old country in the United States. On Tuesday, Italy’s government collapsed. Prime minister Giuseppe Conte, the popular political outsider who steered Italy from the most Covid-bashed country in the world into calm seas, turned in his […]

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