Travel news, information on the best places to visit in Italy, where to go for vacation suggestions of travelers, personal trip experiences, and HIKING: follow me on my exploration of the most exciting adventures
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The “Pragmatic Nobles” who used diplomacy and Church alliances to rule for 400+ years. Dynasty that would learn to survive by being much ‘smarter’ than the rebel Alberico but… TOO much
Guarded by carved oak against winter's bite, a bas-relief freezes 1400s nobility: stern lords flank ladies in shockingly short tunics. No trailing velvet trains; these hems skim the knee. Why?
This story is my interpretation of the Saint-Pierre bas-relief on a door in the castle. Tourists visiting the castle do not notice its protagonists, and the guides don’t know what to say to you. They did not see it really. But there is an answer: medieval life was not quite the same as we imagine it from the ceremonial medieval pictures.
The October wind had teeth that morning when Caterina de Challant slipped through the postern gate of Ussel, her mare already saddled and stamping in the shadows. Behind her, in the castle’s great hall, her uncle’s men would be arriving within the hour, riding up the main road with documents and armed escorts, ready to strip her of yet another inheritance. But Caterina had learned to read the rhythms of ambush and lawsuit as other women read psalters.
Across northern Italy, some of the oldest stones in the region hold secrets from a distant past, where children were interred with reverence and ceremony.
The path through the woods above Roppolo is carpeted in copper leaves, and the winter light falls thin through the bare chestnuts.
Twenty-six kilometers separate Biella from Ivrea, but they might as well be centuries apart.
I’ve already told you about Ivrea—the city that dreamed outward, that built its utopia around Olivetti’s vision, that wanted the world to see what it had created. Biella chose differently. When the textile industry that defined it for generations disappeared, Biella didn’t dream of the future. It turned inward.
There was once a sign at the city entrance—or maybe it’s a legend that captures the truth better than facts ever could—that read something like: “Welcome to Biella—but no one’s expecting you.” In 2018, statistics confirmed what the sign suggested: Biella was officially Italy’s least attractive city, the place no one wanted to move to.
And yet.
I fell in love with Biella the moment I arrived, eight years ago, not despite its coldness, but because of what that coldness actually meant.
One day, walking into town from where I live just outside the city, I dropped my shirt—an expensive one I loved.
Inside Rosazza—Italy's Most Mysterious Village, Built by Freemasons to Transform the Soul Rosazza, Province of Biella, Piedmont
Sometimes the rain knows something you don’t.
Google promised a dry afternoon, but the sky had other plans. By the time I left my car at the village entrance, the drizzle had turned serious, insistent, the kind of rain that soaks through optimism and practical planning alike.
I had no destination, no agenda—just a pull I couldn’t name, urging me toward Rosazza on this gray November day.
I’d been here before, of course. Many times. But always rushing, always with somewhere else to be. This time, drenched and aimless, I finally saw what I’d been missing.
What flies away is never truly lost. It only waits to be found again, to catch the light, to rest in someone’s palm and tell its story one more time.
Candelo’s main piazza (square) with one of the Ricetto towers
The archeologist’s trowel scraped through mud in Candelo’s main piazza and stopped. Something caught the light—a flash of silver pressed into earth that had held it for centuries.
He knelt, brushed carefully with fingers that knew how to coax history from dirt. A coin emerged: sesino di Gian Galeazzo, Milano 1390. The viper of the Visconti, fierce and unmistakable, is still visible after 635 years in darkness.
Late spring, 1390. The same piazza, but different.
Yesterday’s rain had finally stopped, leaving the world washed clean. The air tasted sweet. Ginevra emerged from the narrow cobbled street into the brightness of the square, and in her palm lay the sesino—warm from her hand, catching the morning sun like a small promise.
Water that tastes of vanished oceans, flowing toward a sea that inherited the dreams of Tethys.
The green stones of Monviso are not alone in their exile.
Fromthe hills above Turin, from the ancient terraces of Biella, even on the clearest days, from the distant spires of Milan, one mountain alone commands the western horizon.
Not the highest peak in the Alps—that honor belongs to Mont Blanc—but the most imperious, the most solitary, the most impossible to ignore.
For many of us, Italy is sun-drenched piazzas, the gentle clink of wine glasses, and the slow, sweet rhythm of days that have unfolded the same way for centuries. It’s a romantic vision, but
But Italy, like any ancient place, is a palimpsest. Layers of beauty are written over layers of blood and iron.
That's like finding a Viking who still worshiped Thor during the Renaissance. So I went full Indiana Jones to uncover their story… and it's wilder than Game of Thrones.
This story is my interpretation of the Saint-Pierre bas-relief on a door in the castle. Tourists visiting the castle do not notice its protagonists, and the guides don’t know what to say to you. They did not see it really. But there is an answer: medieval life was not quite the same as we imagine it from the ceremonial medieval pictures.
