I love Italian idiomatic expressions - those sayings you just can’t translate directly but which make the Italian language the colorful and charming language it is.
Today’s saying is perfect for the fashion-minded Italians, who always manage to look fantastic:
Ti sta a pennello.
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If you’re tired of the glorified martyrdoms you’re seeing in all the famous artwork around Italy (why don’t those saints look more pained when they’re being burned/stabbed/crucified?), you’ll enjoy this stop on our tour of Weird and Wonderful Rome - The Criminal Museum in Rome.
The Crime Museum in Rome, run by the Ministry of Justice, is housed in what used to be a prison - so it should feel good and authentic even before you see the displays. It was built in the early 1800s for Pope Leo XIII and now several offices of Rome’s police departments call it home. This means that in order to see the museum, you’ll need to go through a security check. Don’t be alarmed.
There are three sections to the Criminal Museum - one dedicated to the main categories of crimes, one dealing with things like investigation techniques and police search methods, and one covering what’s involved in serving a criminal sentence. It’s section one, called Punishment and Crimes, which is gory and gruesome, and which attracts the most visitors. Using life-sized models, it illustrates how criminals were dealt with (some might say “tortured”) for centuries the world over, including the infamous Iron Maiden and other macabre instruments.
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I love Italian idiomatic expressions - those sayings you just can’t translate directly but which make the Italian language the colorful and charming language it is.
Today’s saying is another example of a colorful Italian saying taking the place of what would ordinarily be a boring sentence:
Stanno discutendo sul sesso degli angeli
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Someone has dyed the water in the Trevi Fountain bright red:
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Anyone who has walked through the touristy sections of Italy’s major cities has seen them - the peddlers of designer knock-offs who carry enormous black duffel bags and set up “shop” on any vacant patch of pavement. They seem to run in packs, and they’re read to bolt at a moment’s notice if they hear that the police are in the neighborhood. Tourists crowd around them, eager to get a good deal on a fake Prada or Gucci bag, but the goods aren’t even worth the rock-bottom price that’s being charged.
The police in Italy have been making more of an effort to crack down on these traveling salesmen recently, although the most public form of the effort seems (to me) to be targeted at the wrong end of the stick. Yes, the sellers of knock-offs face arrests and fines if they’re caught, but - as noted above - they often get tipped off when the police are coming through and are rarely caught in the act (seriously, though, if you ask me, any local cops are going to know exactly who they are, if for no other reason than they’re the only ones carrying around enormous black duffel bags - and I’m talking about bags big enough to carry bodies in, so even if the police didn’t find fake Fendis inside, they’d have a good reason to ask for a look-see).
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The Italian blogosphere is abuzz at the moment with the announcement of a proposed law which could severely restrict the rights of everyday people to have blogs and express whatever the heck they want to express on them. The undersecretary to the President of the Council in Italy (don’t even ask me what the heck that title means, I haven’t the foggiest), Ricardo Franco Levi, has drafted a law which would require different media outlets which publish editorial matter - including blogs - to register with a central registry, and even pay a tax. Bloggers who didn’t register would then be subject to stiff fines. (One of the odd side effects of this law is that bloggers, even part-time, doing-it-for-fun bloggers, would be classified as professional journalists.)
Political activists in Italy are up in arms, as you might imagine, and the words “the end of the internet in Italy” have been posted on several blogs. According to this blog, government officials have attempted to make it clear that this proposed law would not apply to personal or non-professional blogs or websites, but - as this post also points out - it doesn’t seem that there’s been much of an effort made to explain what constitutes a professional site and what doesn’t.
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Some Italian news for your Sunday reading pleasure:
We’ve heard of the great Bernini because of his masterpieces of sculpture, but he was also a painter - and a new exhibit in Rome is showing off this lesser known side of Bernini’s artistic contributions to the world. The show at the National Gallery of Ancient Art runs through January 20, 2008.
The hunting lodge (read: “palace”) outside Turin which was once a getaway for the ruling Savoy family - and was the model for Versailles - has undergone a massive restoration and is now open to the public….
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Here is the contact information for the Irish Embassy and Consulates in Italy. While you hope to never need their services while you are traveling, it’s good to know they’re there if you do!
I’ve gotten a few emails about this, so let me be clear - I’m not with the government of Ireland, or the embassy or consulates. I write about Italy. I don’t have information about getting a visa to visit Ireland. If you want that kind of information, you’ll have to contact the embassy/consulates directly using the contact information listed below.
Irish Embassy in Rome
Piazza di Campitelli, 3
00186 Roma
tel: (+39) 06 6979 121
fax: (+39) 06 6792 354
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Naples is the birthplace of pizza, but most tourists never get further south than Rome - so if you’re going to try pizza in Italy and you’re not heading to Naples, Rome is your best bet. Check out this video for an example of one pizzeria in Rome:
You may have noticed that the patrons were eating their pizzas with a knife and fork, not picking up slices (well, except for the hostess of the video who …
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“The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci - Visiting Hours, Location, Admission Fees, Ticket Reservation Information
Whether Milan should be included on your list of cities to visit in Italy is a matter of debate, but if you’re one of those people who simply needs to see things like Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, in person, you’ll go out of your way to get to Milan. Unfortunately, getting Last Supper tickets can be really difficult, especially on short notice.
The enormous painting adorns one wall of a former dining hall in the monastery attached to the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan, and unfortunately da Vinci’s experimentation with a new kind of fresco application has led to the painting deteriorating dramatically over the years since it was completed. Because of this, visiting The Last Supper (Il Cenacolo in Italian) isn’t just as easy as showing up and popping in on a whim. Admission is strictly limited to a certain number of people per day, and visitors must go through several sealed chambers before entering the room where the painting is. In fact, the dining hall itself has been converted into a climate controlled environment, with the windows bricked up and the entire room sealed, simply to preserve what’s left of da Vinci’s work.
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