Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Sunday, September 21, 2025
The 1933 Italy Graf Zeppelin series is a set of six airmail postage stamps commemorating the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin's flight to Rome.
Friday, August 15, 2025
Italy's Lake Bracciano was used as a seaplane airport, beginning in 1906, known as Aeroporto di Bracciano-Vigna di Valle, on the Southern shore, during the 1930s as part of Rome's airport infrastructure. It is only 15 miles from Rome
Rome's first international airport, Leonardo da Vinci Airport (Fiumicino), opened in 1960, gradually taking over, and now the lake is the water source for Rome, carefully protected from all pollution
The lake owes its origin to intense volcanic and tectonic activity from 600,000 to 40,000 years ago, which created many small volcanoes in the Sabatino territory. The main magma chamber was situated under the present lake of Bracciano. Its collapse created the depressed area now occupied by the lake
it serves as a drinking water reservoir for the city of Rome, it has been under control since 1986 in order to avoid pollution of its waters. The use of motorboats is strictly forbidden (exceptions being made for a few professional fishermen and the authorities), and a centralized sewer system has been built for all the bordering towns in order to avoid any spoiling of the water quality, making Bracciano one of the cleanest lakes in Italy. The absence of motorized navigation favors sailing, canoeing and swimming.
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Monday, July 07, 2025
Penske Automotive Group Inc. said on July 3 it completed its acquisition of a Ferrari dealership in Modena, Italy. The retailer said it expects the dealership, now called Ferrari Modena
With this addition, Penske now operates 29 retail locations across Italy and nine Ferrari dealerships globally, including the exclusive distributor of Maranello Classic Parts.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Monday, December 16, 2024
Did you ever hear that during WW2, the Vatican was bombed? Twice?
Above, shrapnel damage on the Vatican Railway station
The first exploded near the railway station. The second destroyed a large part of the Vatican mosaic workshop. The third hit the façade of the Palazzo del Governo. Finally, the fourth hit a square behind the basilica, shattering the surrounding stained-glass windows to smithereens. The last one didn't go off.
The bombs "weighed between 100 and 150 kg, (220 - 330 lbs, ed.) were highly explosive, burst immediately, and produced small craters but had a large range of action," noted Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione the following day.
Public opinion blamed the Fascists or the Germans. The Americans believed that the plane was one of their bombers that got lost and dropped its bombs on the wrong target, and secretly admitted so to the Vatican.
The city was also bombed a second time, in March 1944, but that was a much simpler case of a British bomber missing its target.
The city was also bombed a second time, in March 1944, but that was a much simpler case of a British bomber missing its target.
Steve, you were telling me about this during SEMA, and mentioned that it was the world's worst navigator on an American bomber, but I couldn't find anything online about the story you mentioned
Saturday, July 06, 2024
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
while digging for a McDonalds building’s foundation in Frattocchie, Italy in 2014, workers found about 150 feet of an ancient Roman road, constructed between the second and first centuries BCE.
The McDonalds was then part of the excavation, preservation, and built the restaurant a storey above the road, with some glass floor areas so diners can look down at the 2000 year old road, or head down the stairs to get a close up look. Yes, 3 skeletons were found, recreated with fakes, and relocated.
This makes it the only McDonalds with a museum.
And the only one not able to use a preexisting road for a drive thru
Monday, August 28, 2023
Train services between France and Italy have been halted for the foreseeable future after a huge rockslide in the Maurienne valley in the French Alps blocked some railways and road
Regional authorities in Savoie said the rockslide occurred at 5:15 pm (1515 GMT) on Sunday, when "boulders with a total volume of 700 cubic metres (25,000 cubic feet)" slammed into a protective barrier along the RD 1006 road that leads to the Mont-Cenis pass into Italy's Susa valley.
The landslide forced the suspension of all cross-border trains on the Chambery-Turin line, as well as TER regional trains in the Maurienne valley, French rail operator SNCF said.
The Frejus tunnel connecting France and Italy under the Alps has also been closed to heavy trucks, whose drivers are being advised to use the Mont Blanc tunnel or the A8 motorway instead.
Wednesday, May 03, 2023
the bridge that has been seen by more people than any other (very likely true) but until today, was not identified or known - has finally been identified, and located. The bridge in the background of the Mona Lisa painting
Based on historical documents and comparisons between current photographs and the painting, it was possible to identify the real Mona Lisa bridge.
"It is the Romito Etruscan-Roman bridge, also known as Ponte di Valle, located in the municipality of Laterina in the province of Arezzo," explained Vinceti.
The Romito bridge had four arches, resting on two cliffs, was part of a byway, or shortcut, that made it possible to shorten the journey between Arezzo, Fiesole and Florence by several kilometers.
"Only one arch remains of the bridge today, but in the period between 1501 and 1503 the bridge was functioning and it was very busy, as shown by a document on the state of assets on Medici family properties, found in the State archives of Florence".
It was precisely at that time that Leonardo was in the Val d'Arno area, first at the service of Cesare Borgia, and then for the gonfalonier of the Republic of Florence, Pier Soderini.
Monday, April 10, 2023
Norma Sue Stephenson, 95, will soon be taking the trip of a lifetime to Italy to visit the site where her husband, Captain Victor Phelps’ plane was shot down during World War II.
“He flew the invasion and said that, that was the most planes he had ever seen at one time in the air, something like over a thousand,” Stephenson said.
Phelps was with the Twelfth Air Force’s 87th Fighter Group. He was shot down while carrying out orders to bomb a bridge near Bologna.
“He was shot down in Italy on his 116th mission and taken prisoner by the Germans” said Stephenson.
Phelps was taken prisoner by German soldiers but liberated months later by General George Patton’s army on April 29, 1945.
“If my grandson hadn’t put that on the internet, if the man in Italy hadn’t seen it, none of this would happen.” Stephenson said.
The family’s wish to visit the memorial site was granted through the nonprofit Twilight Wish foundation, which is a national nonprofit charitable organization whose mission is to honor and enrich the lives of seniors through intergenerational wish granting celebrations.
Monday, March 27, 2023
a chef with a motokitchen, on a Moto Guzzi Ercole (thank you Kim!)
He became a chef, worked in five-star restaurants in Venice and Dubai, then as a personal chef in villas and luxury yachts before returning home to a small town in the Veneto region.
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Saturday, January 14, 2023
Friday, November 18, 2022
an Italian government project is under way to transform the Appian Way (Via Appia) into a pilgrimage route from buzzing Rome to nautical Brindisi,
in 2015, Italian writer Paolo Rumiz decided to walk the Appia for La Repubblica newspaper.
The one problem: There was no modern map of the route.
He contacted a prominent hiker who has spent nearly four decades traversing Italy. For two months, Riccardo Carnovalini overlaid military maps, ancient shepherd paths, and satellite imagery to plot the Appia’s course.
Ancient Romans following the Appia encountered a station to swap out their horses every 10 miles, and a guesthouse every 20 miles.
Taranto, a port city roughly 40 miles from the Appia’s end. This is the only city founded by the Spartans outside Greece, and a row of Greek columns still stands near the water.
Friday, November 11, 2022
National Geographic reports that Italy has an infestation of wild boar, and they are as commonly hit by traffic as raccoons in Michigan
after World War II, as Italy’s economy boomed and its population urbanized, forests slowly healed and wildlife returned.
Wild boars feed on many foods, mostly human crops, and their population rebounded—particularly in the absence of the gray wolf, their main predator.
Starting in the late 1950s, Italian hunting groups pushed cities and regional governments to stock boars in empty forests for hunting sport.
According to a recent study, wild boars are now a familiar presence in 105 Italian cities, compared with only two a decade ago.
“They have accessed a gigantic pantry: our farm fields and organic urban waste. Nothing has been effective at curbing their population growth—they have no predators; their natural habitat, the forest, is expanding; and winters are less cold,” she says.
“But there is another essential factor: They have lost their fear of human beings.”
“But there is another essential factor: They have lost their fear of human beings.”
Boar hunting tradition in Italy and France has been demonstrably ineffective at reducing the population, instead, it creates a increased breeding situation, with a shorter time between litters. Yes, that's counterproductive.
Hunters mostly go after the larger boars (trophy hunting), disintegrating the family nucleus and scattering smaller females that will begin their reproductive cycle earlier.
Instead, the government should hire hunters to selectively target reproductive females, which would drastically reduce the population, but traditional hunters oppose this idea, both because of its solitary nature and because it would limit boars available for the much-loved caccia in braccata, a communal form of hunting in which a few hunters with dogs herd boars toward other hunters at particular stations, where the animals are then killed. It’s an opportunity to meet friends, be in nature, and have a drink afterward.
Boar culling does not solve the problem, and in many cases this practice increases reproduction, a phenomenon also found among wolves
the 13th International Symposium of Wild Boars in Barcelona, for the first time, attained a consensus that wild boars need to be contained across the continent.
Friday, October 14, 2022
Pons Fabricius, the oldest Roman-made bridge in the city still existing in its original state.
located over the Tiber river in Rome, connecting the eastern shore of the Tiber Island to the mainland.
The bridge was constructed in 62 BC by Lucius Fabricius, a curator of roads in Rome, and it is one of only two bridges in the city not connecting the two banks of the river.
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
A severe drought in Italy has revealed an archaeological treasure in Rome: a bridge reportedly built during emperor Nero's reign that is usually submerged under the waters of the Tiber River.
the remains of the Neroniano Bridge, also known as the Ponte Trionfale or Vatican.
The remains of the pylons now emerge on both banks. According to Romasegreta, the structure was built by Caligula to connect the Campo Marzio to his Circus located on the left side of the current Vatican basilica.
But the bridge takes its name from the emperor Nero, who “restructured” it to improve the connections with his properties on the right bank of the river, where there was also the villa of his mother Agrippina. Via Triumphalis was passed over it and reached Veii.
In 405 AD the emperors Arcadius, Honorius and Theodosius built a triumphal arch in memory of the victory achieved by Stilicone in Pollenza in 402 against the Goths of Alaric, but in the following century the bridge was demolished precisely to prevent the Goths from entering Rome.
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