Click on the arrow icon beside each category to display or hide all items within the chosen category. Summaries of each page may be hidden or shown by clicking the plus icon next each item. Use the Options menu to expand or contract all items, display or hide summaries or sort the table of contents. My cooking focuses on minimizing the effort/quality ratio.
Good food is great, but in today’s busy world it isn’t reasonable to spend two hours cooking… Pasta is my staple. Plain pasta with just a little olive oil, or butter, maybe white pepper and herbs from the garden, even with a store-bought sauce straight… Another Roman signature pasta, carbonara has lots of contradictory origin stories, but the name is related to “carbon” or coal, and it was first recorded…
This staple Roman pasta uses a rich tomato sauce made with pancetta or guanciale (i.e. bacon), often with pecorino cheese and onion, and spicy red pepper.… One of my long-time cooking goals has been to achieve a delicious pasta sauce that can be made in the time between putting the pasta in the water and draining… Spring Marzipan in Florence. Because an historian should always choose what to study based on the cuisine of the region where the sources are.
I am an… No description found for this item. A new section, for quick access to my reviews of museums, churches, monuments, restauraunts, shops and gelato places, in Italy and in my other travels. The… I was racing from my office to the gym yesterday, struggling not to spill orange goo on my 18th century reenactment overcoat while wolfing down instant… Often in class I'm lecturing on some aspect of the Renaissance, of Rome, of Florence, and find myself needing to end a sentence with, "...well, except Venice,… Often in class I'm lecturing on some aspect of the Renaissance, of Rome, of Florence, and find myself needing to end a sentence with, "...well, except Venice,… What is Venice's carnival actually like?
Venice's modern carnival is not a traditional folk and fertility festival. It does not have mummers and green men… Drum roll please... time for the results of my Guess the Purse - Guess the Price challenge:
I often stroll through what I call…
I mentioned a few weeks ago a busy week including a Joust. The Joust in question was the Giostra della Stella (Joust of the Star), is held in Bagno a… I made a day trip to Bologna, our neighbor to the north, home of one of the greatest old universities, world-renowned in the Renaissance for its medical…
There is a district, just west of the center of Florence, which I refer to as the "Thousand Dollar Purse" district.
Here the truly extravagant end…
Once upon a time (circa 1475) the whimsical Will that scripts the Great Scroll of the Cosmos woke up in the morning and decided: Some day centuries from…
Machiavelli, Part the Second: in which terms are defined, moral codes collided, teachers betrayed, a hypothetical man executed, Batman and Sherlock Holmes…
I have determined, based on the volume of questions my the first installment of my Machiavelli series sparked, that two entries on Machiavelli is not… This is not the promised second installment of my discussion of Machiavelli. I have been too busy to do it properly. In the mean time, however, I have at…
My year in Florence has flown by, leaving me to face up to a life without battlements and medieval towers, without Botticelli and Verrocchio, without… A quick review of the architectural centerpieces of Florence. Prices and hours may change arbitrarily (this is Italy, after all).
Palazzo Vecchio (Palazzo… Kicking off my new Travel Reviews section, a quick review of some centerpieces among the many, many, many attractions Florence offers her visitors. Please…
And on a more personal note, best wishes to all for the year's end and beginning. May your new year be filled with friends, accomplishments, good health,… I am traveling this week, so will leave you with a simple photo essay, demonstrating what I enjoy over the course of about 45 minutes at dusk whenever I have… Florence is full of activities and events as well as sights and sounds and people, and if there are sometimes long silences between my entries, it is the… Imagine if you will the perfect snoozing morning. September is just beginning to cool from summer to real fall. Slices of sun stray between the shutter…
Florence is always having festivals, partly because every day is some saint's day by now, but also because when the Republic of Florence decrees in 1397…
Me – I’m going to stay inside all day and do work.
Florence – But I’m Florence. Florence is better than work.
Me – No, I’ve been here… The Italian legal kerfuffle over "Fake Centurions" abruptly came to make sense on my recent visit to Bologna, when I discovered the Legio I Italica camped out… I have returned from a jaunt to Rome, and with great stealth and industry obtained this footage of the rare beast in its natural habitat.
The most common…
There has just been a crackdown, reported in this article, on the “fake centurions” in Rome, who stand around in classical armor outside the Colosseum… The following map will help you find excellent gelato and food in Florence, guaranteeing that whether you're hungry for a gourmet dinner, some quick pizza, or… Time once again for me to sound like a madwoman, but there are some topics for which the modest, objective vocabulary of sane discourse is not well suited.… I was cheered recently by the juxtaposition of a pair of articles on my Italian news feed:
Pretty-much Everyone in Italy is About to Go On Strike
Italians… One of my great life goals has been a delicious pasta sauce that can be made in the time between putting the pasta in the water and draining it, and that has…
In Florence, daily meals become a pleasure, but there remains the peculiarity that, divine as the pizzas and pastas and cheeses are, the actual Florentine…
I didn’t have time to go to a restaurant for lunch, or to make it to the good market, so I had to make do with what I could grab from the little corner… Since our chance to watch it is this weekend, I can't resist a quick plug for what I consider easily the most exciting Summer Olympic sport, despite being… When in London, do as the Greeks do: go to the theater a lot, enjoy antique sculptures, and, if they're on, check out the Olympics. So, lest this corner of… The following map will help you find excellent gelato and food in Florence, guaranteeing that whether you're hungry for a gourmet dinner, some quick pizza, or… Quick note to let you know that I have created a photo album, reachable through the navigation tab above. For now I've added the beginnings of an album about… American friends who have traveled extensively in Italy, or some other regions of the Earth, smile with an instant, knowing understanding when I say “bathroom…
The site migration is complete, but was rocky. We are recovering from some serious but happily temporary site errors.
Ex Urbe has been down and up a…
Since the number of people who have asked to receive my e-mails from Italy keeps growing beyond my ability to keep track, I’m finally going along with… The following map will help you find excellent gelato and food in Florence, guaranteeing that whether you're hungry for a gourmet dinner, some quick pizza, or… A quick review of the architectural centerpieces of Florence. Prices and hours may change arbitrarily (this is Italy, after all).
Palazzo Vecchio (Palazzo… Kicking off my new Travel Reviews section, a quick review of some centerpieces among the many, many, many attractions Florence offers her visitors. Please… Who is the author of this blog? I choose to remain shrouded in mystery, so I can continue to generalize without footnotes unhindered. Wa ha ha!
Periodical… Note: this is a guest post. I am on another research jaunt, speaking in Rome and Oxford and visiting an intriguing book in Paris. While I’m travel-swamped…
Was Machiavelli an atheist? We don’t know and never will, but we can learn much about our society’s attitudes toward atheism by examining the persistenc…
(See also Machiavelli Part I, Part I.5, Part II and Part III)
Long has he waited, the new prince who in 1503 joins Borgia and Medici in stage center of…
Once upon a time (circa 1475) the whimsical Will that scripts the Great Scroll of the Cosmos woke up in the morning and decided: Some day centuries from…
Machiavelli, Part the Second: in which terms are defined, moral codes collided, teachers betrayed, a hypothetical man executed, Batman and Sherlock Holmes…
I have determined, based on the volume of questions my the first installment of my Machiavelli series sparked, that two entries on Machiavelli is not…
My year in Florence has flown by, leaving me to face up to a life without battlements and medieval towers, without Botticelli and Verrocchio, without… The Vatican museum: hall after hall of ancient Rome. Shelves crowd the corridors with busts of Caesar, of Cicero, of a hundred obscure Senators, of still…
The city of Florence would like it to be known that 7:00 AM is the correct time to get up and admire Giotto’s bell tower.
Perhaps you didn’t hear…
On July 30th Florence, the Uffizi gallery, Google and numerous other Earthly powers celebrated the 500th birthday of Georgio Vasari (1511-1574).
… (NOTE: This post is a continuation of my earlier "unbiased" reviews of the Marvel Thor and Avengers movies, in which I presented a reading of the films… (No very specific spoilers for Skyfall appear in this post, just comments on the overall structure & mood).
"Why did no one mention this before!" My…
Contains spoilers. For background, see my Unbiased Review of the Marvel "Thor" Movie.
(Also, disclaimer: this review is, like its prequel, tongue-in-… December has been extraordinarily productive for me, with a large number of small articles and other projects now plumply complete, but the down side has been… We still have plenty of saints to cover, now that the Machiavelli series is done.
In the last edition of Spot the Saint I discussed John the Evangelist,… It's been a while, so here are some extra trixy new saints to add to our challenge. (Note, the Renaissance images featured in this post will feature nudity,… Hello, all. My latest post has been delayed by, among other things, Venetian Carnival, book projects, visiting friends, private tours of the back rooms of the… I have just returned from a jaunt through Sicily, where the change of cityscape was a perfect reminder of how useful the ability to spot saints can be. I… 'Tis the season for a review of the vague saintly origins of the modern Hallmark Christmas:
Saint Nicholas of Bari (or of Myra; San Nicola, 270-343 AD)
Com…
A dear friend's visit and a weekend in Rome has delayed this update, but while I was trying to write up my recent tour of fascinating Roman churches, a mix…
Since a friend I recently visited wanted something more challenging in our saint spotting, I'm starting in on some of my favorites, the monk saints, very… Since I talked recently about the Heavenly Court, comparing the office of Patron Saint to nobility holding landed titles, I would like to pause a moment to…
Following up on a comment (an as I sit here in my high medieval tower hearing the winds howl through the stone) I want to discuss the institution of Patron… When one has an altarpiece, and wants to flank the central Christ or Virgin with a pair of solid, unobjectionable companions, ones which make no particularly… The newest installment of our attempt to become literate in the medieval sense of being able to "read" what's going on in religious art.
Saint Sebastian (San…
In galleries, museums, and even on the art-spotted streets of Florence, friends and I love to play “Spot the Saint” – trying to identify the saints…
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