One of the great patrons of the Renaissance, creator of perhaps the most remarkable library outside the Vatican, the Duke of Urbino was also the most successful and feared mercenary of the a... read more
Siena's medieval golden age was brought to a grisly end by an appalling visitation of the plague in 1348. Nevertheless, the republic of Siena lasted for four hundred years, from the C12th un... read more
First translation of his novel set in Naples in the shadow of WW2, about a railway clerk, thwarted in his artistic ambitions, and his long-suffering family. Published in Italian 20 years ago... read more
The architecture and interiors of Pompeii, photographed in natural light and in marvellous detail. This lavish book has emerged from a project undertaken by Spina and the Parco Archeologico ... read more
A villa with a Roman aqueduct in the garden that famously belonged to Princess Zenaida Wolkonsky, whose salon included Gogol, Donizetti, Thorvaldsen, Stendhal and Sir Walter Scott. The autho... read more
From the formality of the palace gardens along the Grand Canal to the less opulent on some of the other islands in the Venetian lagoon, photographed in every season.
The Beppina of the title was the author of a bundle of hand-written recipes found in an old Italian cookery: "a microcosm of the culinary taste of the Aretine upper middle-class during the B... read more
The subtle and growing bonds between two couples in occupied Turin: this is a classic of wartime Italian fiction, translated now into English for the first time. Bassani called it "successfu... read more
Patrick Leigh Fermor held that baroque architecture in Italy could never have existed without pasta in all its multitudinous and beguiling forms... Drawing on a decade and a half of living i... read more
A new edition of this splendid book, in a smaller format and illustrated with a few drawings rather than photographs. Roddy writes wonderfully about Testaccio (where she has lived for over a... read more
In the 1550s, a Venetian public servant produced three anonymous volumes of geographical data, some of it well known, some hitherto secret: Renaissance Wikileaks.