Stolen Gauguin Shows up in Sicilian Kitchen

Wow, this is a good one.  A stolen Gauguin worth between 10-30 million euros is found in a Sicilian kitchen of a retired autoworker...where it's hung for decades!  He bought the work for $100, supposedly fair and square, at an Italian State Railway auction in the mid '70s.  He also has a Bonnard from the same sale.  Obviously this guy has an eye for art.  The man's son had it appraised and the appraiser contacted the Carabinieri...oops!  Looks like a law suit will commence regarding who gets this beauty.

The most beautiful villages in Italy

You, too, may have stumbled across this article on buzzfeed recommending 15 must-see Italian villages.  It must have been hard to whittle it down to 15.

The Italian government has taken a much more in-depth stab at this list.  The Il Borghi piu d'Italia web site is slow to load (maybe a reminder to slow down?) but it's worth the wait.

The recommended villages are broken out into an interactive map - the north, centre and south, including Sicily.

There's also a hard copy book but it's in Italian. Even more reason to slow down and brush up on your language skills. At the bottom of the web site you can sign up for the newsletter, too. 

Even for devout Italophiles, there's bound to be some new towns for you to visit.

Vernazza, rebuilt after the 2011 mudslide, made the cut on both lists

Florence's Mayor Now Italian Prime Minister

At only 39 years old, Matteo Renzi has just become Italy's next Prime Minster, ousting Enrico Letta due to essentially poor job performance regarding Italy's beleaguered economy.  Can this non-elected outsider stop Italy's 12.7% unemployment rate?

Merry Christmas

"New" Da Vinci Uncovered

Photo courtesy of The Telegraph

What else is in those Swiss bank accounts?  A long lost Leonardo depicting aristocrat Isabella d'Este was recently unearthed in a bank vault whose account was owned by an undisclosed Italian family. A pencil sketch of the noble woman has long been in the Louvre and art historians felt a painting also existed for the commission.  UCLA verified the artist and the University of Arizona's labs carbon dated the piece. But skeptics remain.  Full story here

Florentine Summer Fashion

Here is The Florentine's take on fashion for the brutal Florence summer...flip-flops don't work with cobblestone anyway!

No Wonder Volterra is So Different!

Rainy day view of countryside surrounding Volterra

We found Volterra to be the most unique of the Tuscan hill towns that we visited.  And, we wished we had allotted more time there!  This article in The Florentine points to one of the reasons why this medieval village has such a different flavor than the rest.