The marvellous Attlee takes us on the journey, through space and time, of one violin, whose voice "was powerful enough to unbuckle joints". Cremona, Russia, Venice, Alpine forests... (Her la... 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
A woman moves through her lonely days in an Italian city: Lahiri's move to Rome a few years ago must inform this sensitive and observant novel. Written in Italian, the text is translated int... read more
Set in Florence and spanning three generations of women, this novel centres on the catastrophic floods of 1966 and the international volunteers - the 'angels of mud' - who helped.
In 1849 Garibaldi gave up the defence of Rome to the besieging French troops and made his way northwards with a few thousand volunteers; this is an earlier phase of the attempt at Italian li... 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
MH constructs an enthralling narrative of Vatican intrigue by drawing on Cardinal Ippolito d'Este's records of the papal conclave of 1559. She shows how both the papacy and the political fat... read more
Built in 1420-1436, the dome was not painted by Vasari and Zuccari until 1572-1579. This book, with text in English & Italian, presents in detail the entire pictorial cycle.
A handsome illustrated book on the Palazzo Castelluccio. Built in the C18th, it fell into ruin when the family died out in the C20th and has been restored by its new owner, the author. It co... read more
Between the Alps, the Appenines and the Tyrrhenian Sea grow bitter oranges, basil, olives... The Genoese are likely to ignite if anyone disagrees that their cuisine is the best in Italy.
Celebrated particularly for its classical statues (qv the excellent recent The Torlonia Marbles), this Roman villa was the C18th creation of Cardinal Albani. It was preserved with its collec... read more
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
A lavishly illustrated work of scholarship, exploring maiolica's conversations with artifacts ranging from Islamic metalwork and Chinese porcelain to Venetian lace and glass.
Howard (1907-1987) served as an intelligence officer in WW2 throughout the Italian campaign. He married Lelia Caetani of Ninfa, where Bassani wrote a large part of The Garden of the Finzi Co... read more
An atmospheric, creepy thriller set in a remote valley in northern Italy, where a writer, investigating an apparent drowning many years before, is hampered by superstition.
Wildly delicious, deliciously straightforward - a celebration of good ingredients, sluiced with new olive oil and nipped with a pinch of salt...The beautiful farmhouse of Arniano - Amber's f... read more
Ludwig Pollak was the art dealer-scholar who found the missing arm of Laocoön, in the famous classical sculpture. In this mysterious, cerebral novella set in Rome in 1943, Pollak is exhorte... read more
A marvellous biography of this clever, brilliant, opportunistic, amoral, inquisitive man - Damrosch's erudition serves his notorious subject very well.
A rollocking historical novel set in Renaissance Venice: an artist sets his heart on a miraculous new pigment, only to find himself caught up in conspiracies, a love affair, violence, obsess... read more
Two men go walking in the Dolomites, but not together; one falls to his death, the other reports the body. Is it coincidence that they knew each other in earlier years, and that one had betr... read more
Against the backdrop of WW2 and its aftermath, a young Italian woman marries and moves to her husband's village in the south. Ginzburg's characteristically limpid prose harbours may details ... read more
From the Alps to the Adriatic, through Ferrara, Mantova, Parma, Cremona, Pavia and Turin. Those who read Helena Attlee's recent Lev's Violin will know something of its historical use, but no... read more
An English art historian is found dead in a Venetian bookshop after a bad flood. It's in the via dei Assassini, and her death and its consequences are anything but peaceful. Jolly dark stuff... read more
When a young woman in Renaissance Italy is taken by her husband, the Duke of Ferrara, to a remote villa, she realises he intends to kill her... Richly told, by the author of Hamnet.
Pieces together three generations of a family, moving between Italy and England, in an attempt to understand what roots and home might mean. Subtle, charming memoir.
The fragmented recollections of a handful of survivors of the earthquake that struck the northern Friuli in 1976. Their tiny village high in the Julian Alps, beneath the immense karstic mass... 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