Beach buses are back Sun, sand, sea… Yes, a day at the beach is almost everyone’s perfect summer day out. If you don’t have a car to get you there, Rome’s summer beach buses are now up and running. You may have to take the metro or train for part of your journey, but the buses run up and down th...

From 8-10 July, Italy once again hosts the annual summit of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations or G8. Once again Silvio Berlusconi is prime minister. In 2001 the meeting began in comic vein with Berlusconi playing set-dresser for Genoa’s beauty and decorum: he ordered extra orang...

In early April, Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera was placed under compulsory administration as a result of a ?5 million hole in its 2008 budget. However, as managing director Francesco Ernani pointed out, before that the theatre had come out in the black seven seasons in a row and the 2008 budget could h...

The Keats-Shelley House poetry prize for schools 2009 is divided into two sections, English and Italian, and into three age groups. This year the 5-9 age group was given the themes “Flood” or “Race”; the 10-13 age group “Cocoon” or “Stargazing”; the 14-18 group “Equilibrium” or “Creation”. Below...

In early May the Italian government, showing an unusual degree of determination, put into effect a new, hard-line policy against illegal immigrants arriving in the country by sea. The turn of the screw against the “boat people”, in large part Africans, who over the last several years have been ar...

Summer is around the corner, which means that anyone planning on staying in Rome over the holidays had better start thinking about what to do with their children. But not to worry: a number of parks, kindergartens, farms, theatres and other centres organise summer camps where kids can play and ta...

There is a no more satisfying and delicious thing to eat than a great piece of bread. This nutritious and multifunctional staple is one of man’s oldest foods. It’s emblematic, has been politicised, is used in religious ceremonies and metaphorically it can express wealth, hospitality and even kind...