Marvelous Spanish Steps with Mother's Day display of azaleas
ROME – Walked up a hill to see the most famous – and most infamous – of all tennis players. That would be the great painter Caravaggio, of course.
Oh, I know he’s been dead for 400 years, but you never know who you’ll run into while wandering along Rome’s skinny cobblestone streets. Caravaggio, whose straight name was Michelangelo Mensi, is hanging out on the museum walls of the Scuderie del Quirinale, where he grabs you with stark reality: from a bowl of fruit – you reach for a pear – to Goliath’s decapitated head. He, the conquering David, is a self-portrait and his last painting . More contrasts; the Annunciation sharing space with a prim lady cutting a man’s throat. Not to mention believable angels, seductive St. John the Baptists (no less than four versions) and a game of cards. continue reading »
May 21 2010 | Italy and Travel | 2 Comments »
The city of Como from nearby hillside
We just added photo galleries from Bud & Anita’s trip through Italy in 2006, starting at Rome and stopping at Busetto, Cremona, Como and Cogne along the way.
Check them out in the May 2006 section.
March 07 2009 | Messages | No Comments »
Another of the creative images of players used this year at the Italian Open
ROME – You can find anything in this ancient city. But diligent searchers had an almost impossible task in trying to uncover semifinals of the Italian Open.
Four is the normal quota. At last, on a muggy Saturday afternoon, one did pop up: long shot Alize Cornet – she of the lovely name meaning ocean breeze — overcame No. 6 Anna Chakvetadze, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, as a slim crowd cheered her breezy two-fisted backhands down the line.
By that time the customers were justifiably fed up with the two week tournament. Because of injury pull-outs there were no semis in the men’s precinct, only 38 minutes worth of tennis. Move ahead, the women’s looked promising – until Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova decided not to play, citing pains in the back and the calf respectively.
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May 17 2008 | Rome Masters | No Comments »
The artwork at the Italian Open this year was beautiful images of players....
ROME — For 35 years, a remedy to Boston’s erratic, pseudo spring has seemed to be a flight to the Italian Open and almost guaranteed sunshine. Rome sweet Rome has been the annual escape for me since 1973, a discovery of Il Foro Italico, the playpen whose earthen courts have been such a frustrating mystery for American guys.
Originally named Il Foro Mussolini for the dictator of the 1930s, who had it built and fancied himself as a high-grade hacker playing with a private coach, it nestles beside the Tiber at the foot of Monte Mario. Numerous of Respighi’s glorious “Pines of Rome” are hunched beside the courts, and the crowds become wildly passionate if one of their own is on view. They adored Adriano Panatta, the last homeboy to win the title in 1976, and threw coins at the young Swede, Bjorn Borg, to distract him in the 1978 final against Panatta. Borg cashed in, however, and never returned.
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May 17 2008 | Rome Masters | No Comments »
COGNE, Italy – It’s a hideaway that makes you recall the longingly romantic lyric:
“There’s a small hotel, with a wishing well. I wish…we were there together.”
We have the bygone American songsmiths, Richard Rodgers and Lorenze Hart, to thank for that gem. And we have the Jeantet-Roullet family to thank for 81 years stewardship of their inimitable small hotel in the Cogne Valley, a pocket of the Italian Alps.
Sorry, no wishing well on the property. But the joyously pink-walled Hotel Bellevue, resting in its meadow, is the stucco-and-timber embodiment of Rodgers and Hart’s wishful revery. continue reading »
May 15 2003 | Italy | 2 Comments »
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