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Modica is a Baroque town perched in the mountains of southern Sicily, an island just off the tip of the Italian mainland. With over one hundred churches, it is the site of one of Sicily’s most beloved Easter traditions. The Spanish, before there was a unified Spain and therefore starting with the Kingdom of Aragon, occupied Sicily for approximately...

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Giovanni Insolia grew up in Solarino, a small Sicilian town in the province of Siracusa. One of six children born to Paolo and Sebastiana Teodoro Insolia, he was surrounded by extended family throughout his childhood. Insolia’s father made very little money as the town barber, in most cases receiving goods like wheat in exchange for his services. W...

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On the northern coast of Sicily, looking out toward the magnificent Aeolian Islands, Milazzo is a small town home to Laboling, an Italian language school welcoming students from around the world.  Like all businesses in the tourism industry, language schools are suffering as well due to the coronavirus emergency, which caused Italy, the first count...

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This interview with Charles Marsala, who is bringing great news to the world of the Italian American community in New Orleans and throughout the South East, was done right before the coronavirus pandemic broke out in Italy, and then a couple of weeks before it also arrived in the United States. It is therefore a picture of the world before the coro...

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Joe Ficalora, noto banchiere di New York, italoamericano di origini siciliane, secondo quanto riporta “GDS.it”, ha donato 50mila dollari all’ospedale di Bronte per potenziare il pronto soccorso contro il Covid-19, con un ventilatore e altre apparecchiature. Presidente, amministratore delegato e direttore della «New York Community Bank» (uno degli i...

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When asking a friend what time you should meet for lunch, she may say ‘a mezzogiorno’ – at midday, at noon, or at 12pm.  However, when Italians use the word ‘il Mezzogiorno’, they are not always be talking about lunchtime. Instead they could be referring to the southern area of Italy, including the regions Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilic...

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IN THE MIDDLE AGES, THE story goes, a great famine ravaged Sicily. Peasants starved. The rain refused to come. In desperation, villagers prayed to Saint Joseph, the Biblical carpenter whom Christians believe to be Jesus Christ’s earthly foster father. If the Saint would intervene on their behalf, the Sicilian people promised, they would honor him w...

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Italy is so full of natural wonders that it is hard to know where to begin. Even after more than a decade of living in Rome, I feel like I am barely beginning to scratch the surface of things to see. However, the white, undulating Scala dei Turchi has been at the top of my must-visit list ever since I first saw a picture of the rocky beach formatio...

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Legend has it that in 1625, as a plague swept Palermo and killed dozens of people each day, Saint Rosalia appeared before a man. Rosalia, a young Sicilian hermit who died 500 years earlier, told him that if the people of Palermo walked in procession while carrying her relics, to be found in a grotto on Monte Pellegrino, then the “evil fever” would...

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The event has its roots in the Middle Ages: the tradition says that every year the St. Joseph feast in Scicli is honored with a ride through the streets of the city where the typical bonfires light up the night, recalling the escape to Egypt of Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus, riding on a donkey. According to some historians, the tradition of bonfi...

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