Danielle Oteri's Italy

Every day, every single tour guide in Florence tells thousands of tourists a story that is not true. It’s the story of the construction of the dome, a feat of engineering so ingenious that even today, architects and engineers can’t understand how it was done, achieved by one single man, a goldsmith with no formal training.

But Filippo Brunelleschi’s innovation — a double-shell dome built with herringbone masonry — had been used to build mosques and mausoleums in Iran. And 15th-century Florentine merchants, who had large networks and communities in Iran, particularly Soltaniyeh, were no doubt very well acquainted with them.

In this episode, I’m discussing this incredible story with Massoud Katebeh, an Iranian-American engineer who studied in Florence. We are both fascinated with the story of Piero Sanpaolesi, the professor who first revealed these Persian models for the dome of Florence in 1971, and was ignored.

Now, a new generation of scholars, in particular Dr. Lorenzo Vigotti and Prof. Hadi Safaeipour, is building on Sanpaolesi’s groundbreaking research and adding brilliant new insights. Please learn more about DOMES: Architectural Technology Transfer on the Silk Road at iraniandomes.eu, an ongoing project that is very much imperiled by the war.

If you enjoyed this essay episode, you can subscribe for more at danielleoteri.com. If you’re planning a trip to Italy and would like some expert guidance, book a trip consultation at danielleoteri-italy.com. Lastly, you can always buy me a coffee.

Also, if you like stories about history revealed through science, listen to the episode Vittoria Colonna Had It All, and find out how the most famous woman of the Italian Renaissance had an extraordinary secret that was only revealed in the 1980s when scientists conducted tests on her mummified body.

If you enjoyed this essay episode, you can subscribe for more at danielleoteri.com. If you’re planning a trip to Italy and would like some expert guidance, book a trip consultation at danielleoteri-italy.com. Lastly, you can always buy me a coffee.

Guidebooks have several lives, and despite the internet, they have been diminished but are far from dead. That’s because they are among the only fact-checked pieces of travel material available. When you are paying for a guidebook, you are paying for knowledge. The transaction is clear.

Purchasing a guidebook is first a dream. It’s a catalog of possibilities. Then it becomes a strategic tool, a travel companion, and, when it returns home, either a beloved souvenir or totally useless. Often, people will hold on to them until they have to move or really clean and make space, and then Lonely Planet Prague has to go in the trash. And don’t even try to “donate” your 15-year-old guidebook; you know nobody wants it.

But guidebooks have another life if you hold on to them long enough. They become a time capsule — an eyewitness account that was also aggressively fact-checked about a world that no longer exists, that you can use to reflect on that world, and see just how much has changed.

That’s what has suddenly caused an essay I wrote in August of 2022 to go viral. It’s called “The Before Sunrise Generation,” and I wrote it in response to Gen X clients who were returning to travel now that their kids were leaving home and they had time and money to travel once again. They would ask if they should buy a Eurail pass or stay in a pensione, and I found myself explaining how the way they had traveled in the 1990s really no longer exists.

Then this current wave of 90s nostalgia — inspired by “Love Story,” about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette — has the children of Gen Xers marveling at how free the 90s seemed. One hundred percent of social interactions were in real life, with total presence, nobody on their phone because they didn’t exist. Think about Jesse and Celine, the protagonists of the 1995 film Before Sunrise. They start talking while riding the train, and decide to get off together in Vienna, and spend the night wandering the city and talking. Nobody is tracking their location, and no photos are taken. Two strangers on a train, just figuring it out. If this movie were set in the present day, maybe they’d meet in line for a much-delayed Ryanair flight and maybe start talking only if they had been there so long their phone batteries died.

But the thing that today seems so old school and authentic at one point, the vulgar new thing.

We Will Simply Drift

Prior to rail travel, making the Grand Tour of Italy required private transportation, personal invitations, and letters of introduction. You had to be a person of means and education. Trains democratized travel. And then another industry emerged to meet that new tourist: the guidebook.

Baedeker guides, first published in Germany, were famous for their red cloth covers. They were comprehensive guides to cities and rural places, and they removed the need for a letter of introduction forever. They liberated people from relying solely on local guides who were only available to elite networks. The term “Baedekering” could be used with the same snark I sometimes reserve for TikTok tourism.

In E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, “Baedeker” is a codeword for the pedantic sightseeing that Forster portrayed as typical of the English touring Italy. It’s funny that they were portrayed as kind of low-brow, because they were very dense with information on art and history, and were written by specialists. They were especially praised for their German precision, which was exactly what made them fall out of favor after World War II. German precision was uh, no longer a virtue.

Early in the story, Lucy is shown studying Baedeker’s Handbook to Northern Italy and committing “to memory the most important dates of Florentine history.” Later, she meets an eccentric lady novelist who disapproves of such solemnity and tells her, “No, you are not to look at your Baedeker. We will simply drift.”

Overtourism in 1909?

The author Henry James was not a fan of the new train-traveling tourist. In 1909, he wrote Italian Hours, where he decried that Venice was overrun by tourists, totally devoid of authenticity — that the sentimental tourist’s sole quarrel with his Venice is that he has too many competitors there. He likes to be alone, to be original, to have — at least to himself — the air of making discoveries.

Just as I can be very eye-rolly about TikTok tourism, those who had experienced the Grand Tour were disgusted by the overtourism that proliferated in the 1890s.

I have been saying for a while that, because of technology, those of us born pre-Y2K have witnessed an accelerated period of time in which technology has changed more quickly than anything else in history. But Ada Palmer, the author of the fantastic book Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age, articulated this in an interview, where she said people in the 1310s were nostalgic for the way it was in the 1300s, and there has always been upending innovation, even if we look back and don’t find the innovation particularly interesting. Chairs with backs, different kinds of metallurgy… people are always innovating.

Naples in the Nineties

But I fully confronted my self-important idea when I opened an old guidebook called Naples in the Nineties —about the 1890s.

The first chapter is called “Vanishing Naples.” The author, a British consul to South Italy, wrote a survey of Naples and the surrounding area for travelers. He speaks most about Naples as a place to see the last of the old world: superstitions fading, religious practices disappearing, a pre-industrial way of life giving way.

Naples had been the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies — a monarchy — that ended with Italian unification in 1861. This was to be a good thing, economically, for everyone, but of course, nobody had any idea how much more change was barreling toward them.

The 1890s were the heart of the second industrial revolution, which came later to Italy because the Italian peninsula had always had such a robust agricultural economy — really since the Roman Empire — that it didn’t need to industrialize until it was absolutely forced to.

The monarchies of pre-modern Italy fell when Italy unified as a modern nation in 1861. Wealth consolidated in the north, with an industrial corridor developing between Milan, Turin, and Genoa. Add in harsh taxation, and Southern Italy went into economic free fall. The result was mass emigration. Cheap labor for the northern factories, plus financial support from family working abroad, helped Italy fully industrialize.

The damage to the south had begun long before Italian unification, with the industrialization of wool production. The wool and olive oil trade had fueled the Renaissance and sustained the economy of southern Italy for centuries. The Medici and the great banking houses of Florence built their wealth on wool, and the whole system ran on transhumance, the twice-yearly migration of massive sheep herds along ancient grass paths called tratturi, from the highlands of Abruzzo down through Molise to the plains of Puglia. Shepherds had been following these routes since the 3rd century BC. The families who owned the flocks built the great palaces you still find in the mountain towns of Abruzzo. Then, the first phase of the industrial revolution at the turn of the 18th century gutted the wool market. British industrialization mechanized textile production, collapsing cloth prices, and eliminating the economic reason to maintain the herds.

In the 1890s, many of these rural places in Italy collapsed. Naples, chaotic and changeable, was wobbling through it.

Eustace spends much of his book discussing the wearing of amulets and the belief in spirits and spells, which are also disappearing. He catalogs the amulets people wore to keep away evil spirits: the mermaid, the seahorse — objects that would keep away the bad air that brought cholera and also malaria. The 1870s and 1880s saw terrible cholera outbreaks across Italy, spread by standing water, an easy fix that was finally resolved in the 1890s. Better sanitation diminished superstition. The mermaid is still a symbol of Naples, but you won’t see it as an amulet to ward off the bad air. You will see the cornicello, though — a little red horn. It’s everywhere in Naples: on keychains and dashboards and restaurant walls. It transformed from a tool to a symbol of identity.

And what’s interesting is that even though so much has changed, the descriptions aren’t that different from what you’ll experience today, which is really fascinating commentary on how the spirit of a place can persist. Henry James in Italian Hours described the waterfront of Naples, the lungomare, its lazzaroni, its peasants fishing on the waterfront, and the general air of beauty and chaos. Now it’s pedestrianized, lined with hotels and restaurants, but still chaotic in that Neapolitan way — full of life. You’ll still see locals with their fishing poles in the water, right next to the port where the cruise ships dock and where millions of Italians once departed for lives abroad. It’s completely different and yet completely the same.

The Loss of the Picturesque

Naples in the Nineties emphasizes much of the advice I pass on today. Go to Ischia. Visit the ruins at Baia. Go see the stadium in Capua, which is like seeing the Colosseum, except that there will only be you and an older Belgian couple visiting. (Every archaeological site in Italy has one Belgian couple visiting. I don’t know who writes their guidebooks, but they must be good people.) Yes, Capri is full of beauty, but hardly any Caprese live there anymore because the expats have taken over. Yes, that was what he said in 1897!

He discusses Torre del Greco and how coral supplies have diminished; the fishermen now have to go all the way to Sicily, where they find far inferior coral, yet they are still selling cameos there. One hundred and thirty years later, they are still selling cameos there because the craft has survived.

And Torre Annunziata, he recommended trying macaroni, since all the pasta factories are there. He writes: “The principal industry of the town is macaroni making, which may be seen here in great perfection on application at any of the mills. Until recently, it was supposed that macaroni, like wine, could only be made by manual labor. The skill of modern engineers has shown this notion to be fallacious, and macaroni is now almost universally made by machinery and is not at all inferior to that made by the old-fashioned plant. We have, of course, a loss of the picturesque, but we are learning to bear this loss with the serenity acquired by habit.”

How many times have I tried to frame a photo to block out the electrical wires, or looked for a Vespa or an old Fiat to anchor my shot instead of the more ubiquitous Toyota Yaris? In many ways, tourism is the biggest thing protecting the picturesque. Nobody wants to go on a food tour that takes you to Conad or Edil.

Here’s a detail I just loved — Eustace notices “the public writers at their tables in the streets, fewer of them now, their business decidedly slacker than it was in the old days.” These “scrivani” were people who served the illiterate: filling out documents, writing letters to relatives abroad, and also frequently writing love letters.

The post office was putting them out of business by centralizing bureaucratic operations. The scrivano, who had been the human interface between the illiterate citizen and the written world, was being replaced by an institution.

Their Business Decidedly Slacker

When I was traveling in 2001 and 2002, I used internet cafés the same way — once every few days, you’d buy an hour, log into your Yahoo or AOL account, and check emails that were still being written like letters. The smartphone erased the need to make the time and spend the money, and now AI empowers anyone to be completely uninhibited in their written expression in any language.

And speaking of AI, Eustace also writes about Herculaneum, buried alongside Pompeii in 79 AD. He describes the discovery of the Villa of the Papyri, originally called “the house of the coal merchant” because of the carbon fragments found there. Later, they discovered those pieces of carbon were charred rolls of papyrus. An entire Roman library, carbonized by the eruption.

He writes: “There is no saying what literary treasures this library may not contain. Hitherto nothing of the first importance has been found, the works being chiefly philosophical, but there is every reason to hope that a wealthy man’s library, contained in 79 AD, may contain many works which have been lost to the world.”

Going Very Rapidly Indeed

He wrote that in 1897. Those same scrolls — still unreadable for over a century because they crumble the moment you try to open them — are now being decoded by AI. The Vesuvius Challenge, a project that used machine learning to read the carbonized papyrus without physically unrolling it, has already recovered text. We may yet find out what was in that library.

Eustace couldn’t have imagined it. Neither could I, really, until it happened.

As someone who attended both high school and college in the 90s, the internet just seemed to happen. We had Prodigy, then AOL, and Instant Messenger, but they all seemed like new toys for about ten years, until everything rapidly digitized in the early aughts. It’s funny, because I feel like I saw the end of the old world in Florence in the 90s, when there were still little shops on the side streets with nothing more than a pot of hot oil and an older woman frying things in it. And I yearn for that again as I see people feel morally obligated to stand in line for viral sandwiches inspired by social media.

He closes the chapter: “If we have dwelt at some length on Naples from the old world point of view, it is because we love her best clad in her old garments… but we need not blind ourselves to the fact that all this must go. Naples is going very rapidly indeed.”

I opined in my Before Sunrise essay that the internet democratized meticulous planning, but it annihilated spontaneity.

But the lesson from Eustance is: We are learning to bear this loss with the serenity acquired by habit.

We are always witnessing the end of something and the beginning of something.

If you enjoyed this essay episode, you can subscribe for more at danielleoteri.com. If you're planning a trip to Italy and would like some expert guidance, book a consultation at danielleoteri-italy.com. And if neither of those is right for you but you'd like to show a little love, you can always buy me a coffee.

The most delicious thing you can eat in Southern Italy is buffalo milk mozzarella. Italy has earned such a sterling culinary reputation that most people just open their mouths and say yes to whatever is put in front of them. But every once in a while, someone says buffalo mozzarella, what the hell is that?

It is a strange thing to encounter, especially because the languid, enormous, but very sensitive water buffalo are cugini to the ones you’ll find in Vietnam or Cambodia, where buffalo milk mozzarella is not a thing. Buffalo mozzarella is made primarily in the region of Campania. It graces pizzas in Naples and has a different casein than most cow’s milk, so the lactose-intolerant among us can indulge. Buffalo farms abound in Caserta, near the stupendous Palace of Caserta, from where the Bourbon monarchy ruled over “the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.” Before Italy became the nation we know it as today in 1861, it was a monarchy that pioneered several industries, including a dairy industry based on buffalo milk. But even more exquisite is the stuff made at a handful of farms, a little farther south.

If you’re driving there, maybe on a day trip from Naples or the Amalfi Coast, you’ll inevitably get snarled in traffic on what locals call “the mozzarella highway” through Battipaglia. Every sign on the roadside is flashing mozzarella di bufala. The traffic is largely due to hundreds of trucks that pass through daily to pick up mozzarella and transport it to supermarkets across Italy. I’ve heard waiters in Florence extol the virtues of its freshness, boasting that it just arrived in the restaurant that afternoon. I’ve also heard waiters in New York cooing that they just picked it up from JFK that morning. Keep driving; Battipaglia is an industrial farming zone, and everything is pasteurized for export. Better things await in the town called Capaccio-Paestum.

Paestum is most famous for three extraordinarily well-preserved Greek temples. They are massive and built of travertine, a volcanic stone, then coated in plaster and painted to mimic marble, which doesn’t exist in Southern Italy. Paestum was colonized by Greeks, conquered by Lucanians, who were the indigenous people of the area, whom the Greeks employed as their security goons, and then became a Roman city. Paestum was considered very old when the Romans conquered it. The oldest of the three temples was 280 years old. The Greeks regarded everything around the temples as sacred ground, but the Romans were insatiable real estate developers. There developed markets, civic buildings, a large Asclepieion, which was the closest thing to a hospital in the classical world, and dozens of smaller temples, all surrounding the big, very old ones.

Roman Paestum was bigger and far more important than Pompeii or Herculaneum, and though it’s beyond the reach of Mount Vesuvius’s molten tentacles, it is still affected by earthquakes. The Roman Empire declined, and Paestum sank. Literally. The reason: a phenomenon called bradyseism, which is a Greek word: bradys means slow, and seismos means movement.” It’s an imperceptible but continuous slow rising and falling of the earth - a slow-motion earthquake.

When the Greeks built the temples close to the glittering Tyrrhenian sea, things were on the up. But by the third and fourth centuries, Paestum was a swamp, infested with malaria carrying mosquitos. Mal aria means ‘bad air.”

The Paestani fled for the hills. Some went to the hills just above Paestum, founding Capaccio, my grandmother’s hometown, while others went higher to the sea-facing cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. The name Positano may be related to the Paestani who settled there.

And certainly people also went to Salerno, which was a Roman city, then under Lombard rule, and in 1077 was officially conquered by the Normans, proud descendants of the Vikings, loosely related to the Normans who just 11 years earlier had taken England at the Battle of Hastings. Salerno was a luxurious city, full of international merchants, and home to the world’s first medical school. Meanwhile, once glorious Paestum, not very far away at all, must have looked like the zombie apocalypse.

Just to let you know, I haven’t forgotten we were talking about buffalo and delicious cheese; they will soon re-enter our story, but first, we need to make a stop in Salerno.

Salerno was where the Norman king built a cathedral dedicated to Saint Matthew the Apostle. It’s believed he died in either Ethiopia or Persia, but his bones somehow ended up near Paestum, and two people had a dream, alerting them to the location. They retrieved the old bones, and the cathedral was built around them. The Normans also began to adorn the area we now call the centro storico of Salerno with Roman columns from Paestum. They’re embedded in many corners, and sometimes you’ll see a sign with a dog lifting its leg and a red line across it. It may read “Questa e storia” - this is history, and don’t let your dog pee on it. The massive columns that you’ll encounter in the courtyard of the cathedral came from what must have been another enormous temple at Paestum, which was clearly functioning as an open quarry.

Why? Because using Roman columns made an architectural argument that the new power is heir to the Roman one. For someone from somewhere else, Northern France in this case, to frame himself as the legitimate successor to Roman caesars. And how did they physically pull them out of the swamp and drag them back to Salerno? With water buffalo, which are naturally immune to malaria.

Buffalo arrived on Italian soil via Arab merchants, who first brought them from Southeast Asia to Egypt for use as work animals. For roughly two centuries, Sicily was under Muslim rule, first governed by emirs from North Africa. Sicily was wealthy and well developed, so much so that the various wealthy factions dissolved into infighting, which allowed the Normans to more easily conquer them. Neither gentlemen nor scholars, they kept what the Arabs did best, including mathematics, agricultural practices, and sugary desserts, including cannoli. Buffalo thrived in the marshy lands along the Italian coast and were incredibly effective at doing the impossible work of clearing rivers. As they plod through streams, the underwater reeds that are nearly impossible for humans to remove will tangle around the legs of a buffalo sauntering through the day and easily snap and break.

Paestum doesn’t appear in the historical record again until the 1700s, during the period known as the Grand Tour. Part of a complete education was a trip to the Italian peninsula, where something astonishing had happened. Pompeii was discovered. The Bourbon kings of Naples not only founded the buffalo mozzarella industry, but also the field of archaeology, which didn’t exist. Pompeii fever swept the educated world and set off the Neoclassical movement. Paestum, though never completely abandoned, defined the word backwater, and was a more adventurous leg of the Grand Tour. In paintings from this period, you can see these beautiful Doric temples, their reflections in pools of water, and grazing buffalo all around them.

Can you imagine what a sight that must have been to citified elites from England and Germany? People who had never seen or even imagined a buffalo, or were accustomed to having their dopamine spiked by imagery hundreds of times every day?

In those paintings, you’ll also notice houses, and the locals – my ancestors – guiding the buffalo, or sitting on a hill wearing loose pants and a floppy hat, playing a flute, or some other peasanty activity. As a sidenote, I don’t understand how my lineage in this area survived long enough to produce me, as I am target number one on every mosquito’s agenda.

When you arrive at Paestum today, you will also find the very best farms producing buffalo milk mozzarella within a mile of the temples. Most well-reputed is Tenuta Vannulo, a local family-owned farm that has made artisanal cheesemaking and the highest standards of animal welfare a point of attraction. You can tour the facility and watch buffalo using state-of-the-art self-milking machines, getting massages with what look like car-wash brushes, while a guide explains how Mozart is played for them in their pens. The result is a product unlike anything on the mozzarella highway, and it is exquisite. I especially recommend the buffalo milk gelato. If you’re a coffee person, get the coffee flavor, drowned with a shot of espresso. (To the uninitiated, this is called an affogato.) That’s it, that’s the peak coffee experience of your life.

But my favorite place is Barlotti, partially because it’s within walking distance of the Paestum temples. You don’t have the full organized tour experience that you have at Vannulo, but you can hang out with the buffalo, who are very quiet and relaxed in a very Southern Italian way. Have lunch inside their beautiful glass-encased restaurant or in the garden underneath the pergola. Don’t overthink your menu choices. Get the sample plate that includes fresh mozzarella, smoked mozzarella, and a mound of ricotta, followed by a plate of cooked vegetables, a selection of whatever is growing at the moment. For dessert, a cannoli filled with buffalo milk ricotta.

After lunch, walk to the Paestum temples. The swamp was officially drained in the 1930s by the Fascists, another group that sought to legitimize itself by resuscitating Roman ruins, and the ground continues to be managed today. After the war, when malaria was eradicated, a modern Paestum was fully developed. If you walk on the right side of the road, you’ll see water running – there are ancient springs here, which certainly inspired the placement of the temples nearly 3,000 years ago. The presence of the Asclepieion, natural springs, and temples together indicates that the Greek colonists identified this as a place of healing. And you can squint past the sunlight and use your imagination to see a parade of buffalo, pulling a plough with a giant Roman column atop it, en route to Salerno. Because everything good from the old world should be used to build the new one.

In this episode, I speak with writer Susan van Allen about Ischia, the island very close to Capri that I like to call paradise for normal people. The last time I was there, Susan introduced me to her favorite place to stay on Ischia, the Pensione Di Lustro, a throwback to another era of travel and the place where Truman Capote spent 97 days living and writing “Local Color.”

I hope you enjoy it!

Links from the episode:

Episode 4: Vittoria Colonna Had It All

Naples Destination Deep Dive

Rome Destination Deep Dive

Florence Destination Deep Dive

In this episode, I share why I don’t pack my days in Italy too tightly, and unpack what I mean when I advise clients to leave time for walking and wandering.

This episode is dedicated to Morton Kaish, who taught me how to “walk like an artist” in Italy and how even passively taking in great art and architecture can change you for the better.

You will also hear a conversation with illustrator Jenny Kroik. We talk about why places that don’t photograph well often end up being the ones that stay with you, and how sketching can help you process complex, layered moments that don’t fit neatly into “good day/bad day.”

Finally, I walk through what is planned for Jenny’s Art Retreat in May at Borgo La Pietraia, including Chef Mario’s deceptively simple food, daily gentle art prompts, visits to the Paestum temples, a buffalo farm, Amalfi’s historic paper mill, and the turquoise waters of Cilento.

I share these details as inspiration for planning your own self‑guided trip to Italy: choosing a single home base, slowing the pace of your days, leaving room for serendipity, and designing an itinerary around the kind of beauty you want to experience.

Links

* Retreat details and booking: Jenny’s Art Retreat at Borgo La Pietraia (May 17–24)

* Jenny Kroik’s Arthur Avenue illustrations for The New Yorker

* Jenny’s website and her Substack newsletter

Happy New Year, and welcome back to Danielle Oteri’s Italy—we’re starting 2026 in Venice, the Italian city everyone rushes through, with no idea of how much they’re missing. This episode is your invitation to slow down, understand how Venice really works, and get ready for the Venice Destination Deep Dive premiering for paid subscribers on January 22 at 8 p.m. ET.​

In this episode

* Why most popular Venice advice is shallow, and how “hit‑and‑run” tourism (20–30 million visitors a year, most of them day‑trippers) is reshaping the city.​

* What changed when large cruise ships were banned, and how the new €5 day‑tripper fee on peak days actually works.​

* Why Venice is not an ancient city like Rome or Naples, but a preposterous “upside‑down forest” built on millions of submerged wooden piles in a lagoon.​

How to experience Venice without the crush

* Why a day trip to Venice is “the worst way to see it,” and why staying at least three nights changes everything about your sensory memory of the city.​

* Practical timing advice: understanding when day‑trippers flood in (roughly 11 a.m.–4 p.m.) so you can have quiet mornings and atmospheric evenings.

* Trip‑planning strategy: skipping the Rome–Florence–Venice conveyor belt in favor of flying in and out of Milan and pairing Venice with a few days in Turin.

A local lens with Gillian Longworth‑McGuire

* Meet writer Gillian Longworth McGuire, author of the Substack Gillian Knows Best, who spent many years in Rome before making the unexpected decision to settle in Venice.​

* What drew her to the “real life” of Venice: garbage boats, the total absence of wheels, and the pleasure of living in a city where everything happens on foot or by boat.​

* How she navigates living near the Arsenale in one of the last streets with mostly Venetian neighbors, and what it means when only 13 longtime residents remain on a street that once held hundreds.​

* Why her wish for Venice is simple: slow down, stay in Venice proper (not on the mainland), and stay longer than you think you “have time” for.​

Glass, budgets, and where to stay

* How to experience Murano glass without the timeshare‑style hard sell: asking your hotel to connect you with a trusted furnace, or booking with Wave, a younger collective of master glassmakers and students.​

* Honest talk about Venice pricing: why Venetians have always been merchants, why Venice is less forgiving than Rome or Florence, and why you need to research carefully and budget more here than elsewhere.​

* Hotel strategy: why it often pays to spend more for a well‑located, non‑damp, genuinely comfortable room.

About the Destination Deep Dives

* What you get as a paid subscriber: a live Zoom premiere, with Q&A, then 50% off the beautifully produced, MasterClass‑style course with video lessons and a fully detailed 5‑day itinerary.​

* What each Deep Dive covers: what makes the city special and challenging, how to tackle the “must‑sees,” and thoughtful alternatives that help you avoid lines and TikTok‑driven FOMO.​

* Existing and upcoming Deep Dives: Florence (being migrated to the new platform), Naples (available now), Rome (landing shortly), with Matera, Cilento, and Venice all in the queue.​

I want to wish you happy holidays and express my profound gratitude for reading, listening, and supporting this podcast and newsletter. I hope you enjoy this two-minute video reflection on the passing of the seasons, inspired by one of art history’s most enigmatic works.

I’ll see you in 2026.

In this episode, I explore the phenomenon of “collective effervescence,” a term coined by the sociologist Émile Durkheim to describe the intense, shared emotional experiences that make us feel briefly part of something bigger than ourselves.

Please support my work by taking out a premium subscription (just $8 per month).

From saint processions in Ischia to bonfire rituals in Abruzzo and the miracle of San Gennaro’s blood in Naples, I explore how Italy’s festas and sagre are a kind of emotional infrastructure—places where community, memory, and the sacred all converge. I’m joined by writer and festival researcher Katerina Ferrara, whose regional guides help travelers weave these events into their itineraries.

Together we discuss:

* How festivals in Italy layer pre‑Christian rites, Catholic devotion, and modern life

* Why small‑town saint days and harvest feasts are often the most powerful travel experiences

* The role of children and returning emigrants in keeping these traditions alive

* Catania’s identity as “the Black City” under Mount Etna

* The story and cult of Sant’Agata, patron saint of Catania and of women with breast cancer

* What actually happens during the three‑day February feast of Sant’Agata

* The emotional “wave” when the saint’s statue leaves the church, and the crowd erupts

* Festival foods you can only find on these days, including Minne di Sant’Agata and local arancine

* Practical tips for tracking down festivals and sagre when dates shift every year

I want to thank my paid subscribers, who I hope are enjoying our monthly Q&A Zoom meetings and Destination Deep Dives. So far, we’ve explored Florence, Matera, Naples, and Rome. Next up: Venice and the Amalfi Coast.

And since trip planning season is nearly here, I’ve refreshed my menu of trip planning services. From one-hour Trip Consultations to hybrid Custom Itinerary Design or full Bespoke Trip Planning, everything is explained there so you can choose the option that best fits your needs and budget.

Chapters/timestamps

00:00 – What is “collective effervescence”?02:00 – Why Italian saint festivals feel so powerful05:00 – Bonfires, solstices, and ancient roots of Italian rituals08:00 – Meet Katerina Ferrara and her festival guides11:00 – How to actually find and plan for festivals and sagre15:00 – Food festivals, fundraising, and “festifusion”19:00 – The Infiorata of Noto: a two‑day flower masterpiece24:00 – Children, memory, and passing traditions on28:00 – Catania and the Val di Noto: baroque cities under Etna32:00 – The legend and martyrdom of Sant’Agata36:00 – Inside Sant’Agata’s three‑day feast and all‑night procession43:00 – Devotion, identity, and the bond with a patron saint47:00 – Festival sweets: Minne di Sant’Agata and more51:00 – Catania’s unique arancine and horse‑meat culture54:00 – How to follow Katerina and use her guides

Guest

Katerina Ferrara – Author of regional festival and sagra guides for Sicily, Puglia, Rome & Lazio, and Venice & the Veneto. She helps travelers anchor their trips around local celebrations.

* Website: katerinaferrara.com

* Instagram: @katerinaferrara_author

In this episode, I explain the differences between travel agents, advisors, and influencers…because I know first-hand how confusing this world can be!

You’ll hear industry insider stories, plus the simple method I give people to decide when to DIY their trip, when to get professional help, and when to trust their own gut over another influencer’s feed. I’ll also share unglamorous but essential tips picked up over the years on the road—like the realities of country driving in Tuscany or the best place to stop for gas on your way to Naples airport.

You’ll also meet my new collaborator, Angela Miklos, whom I first met in 2023 as a Trip Consultation client and who will now help me offer a brand-new hybrid service called Custom Itinerary Design. (The photo in your podcast player is the classic Forio sunset that Angela mentions.) This option is for people who love research and planning but want an expert to provide the best advice and handle the heavy lifting so that they can focus on the fun parts.

A reminder for paid subscribers that the next Ask Me Anything About Italy is on December 11th at 8 pm ET on Zoom, and the Venice Destination Deep Dive happens on December 18th at 8 pm ET.

Right now, both the Naples and Rome Destination Deep Dives are available to watch for paid subscribers. They’ll leave the website soon when the polished, final versions with the itinerary and bonus segments are ready for purchase. (Naples leaves in a week, Rome will be up for at least 2 weeks more.)

I’m back from my research trip and have so many interesting things to share with you.

Before I tell you all about Ostia, here’s a reminder for my paid subscribers that Thursday November 13th is the next “Ask Me Anything about Italy.” It’s happening at 8:00 p.m. ET on Zoom, and if you can’t make it, please send me an email with your question. I’ll answer it live, and then you can watch the replay the following morning.

Then, on November 20th, I’ll be premiering the next Destination Deep Dive on Rome. I spent 5 days in Rome just to research this Deep Dive.

Here’s how it works. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’re invited to the live premiere on Zoom. It will be available to paid subscribers until I finalize the version, which will then be made available for sale along with a complete itinerary and bonus resources. And paid subscribers get a 50% discount.

Last Sunday, I was wandering around Ostia Antica, desperately searching for the restroom. Not the modern one, which was located right next to the entrance of the archaeological park, but the ancient one, where Romans would take care of their essential personal business sitting, uh… cheek to cheek.

The communal toilets are the most famous thing in Ostia, but they aren’t marked on the map or any of the signage. I knew they were part of the bath complex that was adjacent to the forum.

Today, the ancient city of Ostia is located near the airport, but 2,000 years ago, it was also an industrial hub where goods came in and out, due to its strategic position where the Tiber River meets the sea. The experience is similar to Pompeii, but Ostia wasn’t buried by a volcanic eruption; instead, it sank into the silt and turned into a swamp fiercely guarded by malaria-carrying mosquitoes until it was reclaimed in the 1940s.

Today, it’s a well-tended but little-visited archaeological site. It’s easy to reach from the center of Rome, and easier to traverse than Pompeii, with lots of spots to sit on ancient stone beneath lush umbrella pines that stretch their lush branches in all directions like they slept late and just got out of bed.

After winding my way through the Forum baths, the gym, the hot room, and the cold room, I found the famous toilets. The engineering is all exposed, including a channel where water would constantly flow to flush away waste. The openings in the marble bench where people sat are about as close to each other as the indents on the New York City subway.

Being shocked at the lack of privacy is not something most people, throughout most of human history, would have even noticed. Today we are awash in privacy and convenience that we take entirely for granted. And while the pleasures of indoor plumbing, kitchens, washing machines, and air conditioning eliminate much of the drudgery of life, these conveniences have fundamentally reshaped our society. The more privacy we enjoy, the less we need the public square and each other.

I always discourage people from taking a day trip to Pompeii in favor of a much easier trip to Ostia Antica. While yes, it’s possible to take the fast train, and there are lots of bus tours offering this, it’s a very long and expensive day of getting there and back for what is necessarily a swift and shallow experience of Pompeii, which deserves a good, long visit. Ostia Antica offers the same experience, allowing you to walk through a Roman city along the same roads as everyday citizens, past their homes, shops, and public buildings.

Also, it’s so peaceful.

Even though it’s extremely easy to get there, just $3.50 on the very pleasant Metromare train, only the most interested travelers go there, along with school groups, so you can take your time gazing at the mosaics of sea horses and the gods of the sea in what were the baths of Nerone. You can explore a thermopolium, a typical Roman quick-service restaurant, as only the wealthiest Romans had kitchens, and enslaved people to prepare meals for them at home. There’s a theater, a district of warehouses, as this was a port town where the work of shipping across the Roman Empire was done, and the oldest known synagogue in Europe. Just outside the archaeological park is a castle and a cobblestoned district of restaurants where you can eat very well. Or go one more stop on the train, or grab a quick taxi ride to be right on the beach and enjoy a perfect dish of spaghetti and clams for lunch.

Ostia Antica was diverse, like most Roman cities. As armies conquered lands across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, people captured as slaves during wars across the empire were brought back as war booty and put to work. There were also the indigenous people who had founded cities, including Pompeii, before the Romans took over. They continued to speak their own languages and imparted many of their customs to the Romans, which have been passed down to us today without the appropriate label.

Life for most Romans was extremely public. Homes weren’t much more than places to sleep. The baths were places to work out, get clean, and, most of all, socialize, and all levels of society would encounter each other at the baths. And everyone, even the wealthy, would eat at the many fast food restaurants you find in every Roman city. Studies by bioarchaeologists at Pompeii have discovered that all Romans, regardless of social class, ate the same fish, grains, and meats; the primary differences were the settings in which meals were served. They would have to to public fountains for their drinking water. Everyone in a Roman city had to do their laundry, and would take their clothes and blankets to storefront laundries. The Forum was always the center of the city, with all the administrative bodies in place, as well as a large communal piazza where crowds could gather.

Only the wealthy enjoyed privacy, albeit minimal by modern standards. Walking around Ostia or Pompeii, you will see wealthy homes tucked right into the urban grid next to modest or even poor homes where enslaved people resided. The larger villas were situated on the periphery of the city, offering sea views or surrounded by orchards or woods, but access to the city remained important. Even at a massive villa like Villa Oplontis, which belonged to someone of the highest Imperial class, close to Pompeii, the guest rooms that orbit the infinity pool are small, indicating they were really just for sleeping. Most of the time spent in the villa would be in the company of everyone else who lived there. And there was a working warehouse directly next to it, because showing your industriousness was a prime virtue in Roman society.

Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation,” frequently cites the research of Robert Putnam, which demonstrates how a major turning point in American culture during the 1990s, when people began distrusting their neighbors, was due to the widespread adoption of central air conditioning. Previously, few households had more than one air conditioner, which they would use only on the hottest days, and so people spent far more time outside with their neighbors. Television and cars in the 1950s, and then air conditioning in the 1990s, directly led to a steep decline in community engagement.

A few days earlier, when I was in Pompeii, I overheard a tour guide explaining why there were so many bath complexes among the ruins. The American guests thought it was odd that there were so many people indulging in a spa experience until she explained that Roman homes, except for the most luxurious ones, did not have either bathrooms or kitchens, and that almost nothing about daily life was private. If you were very rich and had lots of slaves to fetch things for you, he went on to say, you might have a house that was closer to the sea. The guest responded by telling the guide how he had recently bought a house in Florida. I guess he was trying to relate to the history being explained, but missed the mark.

There are many inaccurate stereotypes about the Italian dolce vita, but one thing that stands is the tighter social fabric, at least compared to life in North America. I remember going to a movie theater in Florence on a Tuesday night and choosing seats in the empty theater right in the middle. Maybe only 20 other people trickled in and sat immediately next to us, which I thought was odd, until I realized that was my American instinct to spread out away from others. Look at a Roman city, or an Italian village clustered on a hilltop. Social cohesion requires proximity. And Italy is still light on air conditioning, as HVAC units have become much more energy efficient, and European summers get hotter and hotter. If air conditioning is more widely adopted in Italy, will it erase the culture of the piazza?

The lesson is that social cohesion thrives when life is less convenient. The Roman Empire still fell, there were still terrible wars, and despots and dictators, but I believe the underpinning of the Italian way of life lies in communal experiences. The communal bread ovens you can still find in small villages, the trattorias that serve local dishes, even if they seem repetitive, which I hear travelers sometimes lament. Those dishes are anchors, and when you visit Italy, you should try to eat the most local things possible. I flinch when I see prices rising because I know young Italians enjoy a level of sociability that is so much better than in the U.S., because a spritz and a pizza are generally inexpensive.

Walking around a city like Ostia Antica is an opportunity to reflect on daily life, past and present, not just the wars and conquests of history. I get something different every time I visit an archaeological site. This time, I’m contemplating how convenience should not always be a top priority. And for people who want a deeper experience of Italy, consider sacrificing a bit of comfort sometimes, such as going off the beaten path, to experience the power of connection.

I’m receiving numerous emails about trip planning for 2026, and I’d like to share my refreshed menu of services. Though I have a special love for southern Italy, my business partner Arianna and I have a fantastic network all over Italy. We have great guides in the most famous places, and many in the lesser known ones as well.

The trip planning season will begin shortly, and here’s a quick rundown of my services in case you would like my help planning your trip to Italy.

The most affordable option is to subscribe to this podcast and newsletter via Substack and join the monthly Q&As, which happen over Zoom. That’s just $8 a month or $80 a year.

* Trip Consultation – $295 A one-hour session to discuss your interests, answer questions, and share expert recommendations. This is ideal for DIY travelers seeking professional direction. I don’t put a limit on the number of recommendations I offer – I ensure you have what you need based on the questions I ask and our discussion. Often, people are worried they won’t get all their questions answered in an hour, but trust me. All the questions that have you jammed up are what I do, so you’ll be shocked by how much we can accomplish in an hour.

* Custom Itinerary Design - $995

This personalized planning service is designed for travelers who want a thoughtfully curated trip, crafted just for them. Your journey begins with a 45‑minute Zoom call to discuss your ideal itinerary, travel style, budget, and timing. From there, we design a customized day‑by‑day plan that reflects your pace, interests, and priorities. Every itinerary includes restaurant suggestions, optional experiences, and curated recommendations delivered through a custom mobile app for easy on‑the‑go access. Once the first draft is ready, you’ll receive it by email for review. If it feels right, we’ll share direct booking links so you can confirm each experience at your own pace. For travelers who prefer private experiences over group tours, we can book expert local guides from our personal network and invoice those services à la carte. After your bookings are complete, we’ll meet again for a 45-minute follow-up call to finalize details, review daily logistics, and address any last-minute questions. The result is a seamless, personalized itinerary that leaves room for discovery while keeping every travel day beautifully organized.

* Bespoke Trip Planning – For this, we charge a fee to cover our time, which will be quoted once I know more about your trip. There’s a free call you can sign up for, where I can hear more about what you have in mind and then provide a fee estimate.

This is an all-inclusive service where we design and book everything. All tours and many of the drivers are among our most trusted and frequent collaborators who are always eager to host our guests. I handle converting and paying all vendors in Italy, and my business partner Arianna provides on-the-ground support throughout your trip, offering peace of mind from start to finish.

* You can also view the full menu of services here.