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 This article was written by Ian Sansom, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 16th July 2010 23.05 UTC
The most notorious family in Italian history was Spanish. Rodrigo Borgia – who went on to become one of the baddest of the bad popes – was born in Valencia, Spain, in 1431. In his classic book, The Bad Popes (1969), ER Chamberlin calls Rodrigo the “Spanish Bull”. Giovanni di Lorenzo de Medici, Pope Leo X, and no shrinking violet himself, famously compared Rodrigo to a wolf. “Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious perhaps that this world has ever seen. And if we do not flee, he will inevitably devour us all.”
Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather (1969), spent 20 years working on a novel about the Borgias, The Family (2002), and describes Rodrigo in fine purple prose as “a mountainous man, tall enough to carry his weight”. He is, to all intents and purposes, Don Corleone, the Godfather.
Rodrigo Borgia’s uncle, Alfonso de Borja, was Pope Callixtus III. Through family preferment, Rodrigo became first a bishop, then a cardinal, then vice-chancellor of the Holy See. His position in the church allowed him to become fabulously wealthy and to take numerous mistresses, with whom he fathered a number of children. With his favourite, Vannozza dei Cattanei, he fathered a son, Cesare, born in 1475, and a daughter, Lucrezia, in 1480. These two became their father’s helpmeets. Lucrezia was just 12 when her father bribed his way to becoming pope – reputedly with four mules carrying sacks of silver – and by the time she was 13 he’d married her off to Giovanni Sforza, a member of a powerful family who Rodrigo regarded as useful allies. When the Sforzas proved not to be useful allies, Rodrigo simply announced that Giovanni was impotent and had the marriage annulled. Historians agree that it was Giovanni who then began to spread rumours of the Borgias’ incest and orgies, for which they became renowned.
Lucrezia’s second husband, Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Bisceglie, fared even worse than the hapless Giovanni. When Alfonso was found to be dispensable, Cesare had him strangled by a henchman. Lucrezia, apparently, was heartbroken.
Unsentimental and undeterred, her father and brother then managed to get Lucrezia married off to Alfonso d’Este, eldest son of the Duke of Ferrara – again, a marriage of political and papal convenience. The writer Kathryn Hughes has described Lucrezia as “handed round like a parcel to suit her father’s political game”. The Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it rather more nicely: “Though legend has associated her with her father and her brother Cesare in extremes of iniquity, she can in fact hardly be accused of more than resignation to their will.”
Sarah Bradford, in Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (2004), debunks many of the myths surrounding Lucrezia – there probably was no poison ring, though it does seem likely that her brother Cesare did indeed stage the infamous chestnut banquet in 1501, in which naked courtesans scrambled around for chestnuts, to the delight of onlooking prelates, a scene vividly brought to life in the 2006 Spanish film, Los Borgia.
The Borgias have become a byword for badness: they are the great dynasty of the debauched and the depraved. Lucrezia in particular remains an icon of transgressive womanhood. Lord Byron was obsessed with her – he stole a lock of her hair. In 2008, researchers at the National Gallery of Victoria, in Australia, discovered that an overlooked painting by Dosso Dossi, Portrait of a Youth, is, in fact, a portrait of Lucrezia. She is holding a knife.
 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
 From the heat of the Italian summer, a special collection of summer posts. In alphabetical order:
- A Canadian in Italy: Trash the dress
No need to hold back on those unusual wedding photos
- At Home in Tuscany: So … there actually is lavender in Tuscany
Tuscany’s hidden secret
- Bella Vita in Liguria: Lerici from a local
You need more than a weekend to really know a place
- Casa Margherita: Don’t call me hardy!
The olive tree survives
- Daily Rome: Summer in the countryside
Sunny colours and sunny shapes
- Frutto della Passione: How do you say ‘Scolapasta’ in English
The frustration of not being able to express yourself
- Life in Abruzzo: Plaiting the Abruzzo sun & a frittata recipe with the remains
It is pick and plait time
- Over a Tuscan Stove: More zucchini: fiori fritti
There are so many ways to prepare them
- Palazzo Pizzo: Blue summer
Balconies that face the sea
- Status Viatoris: Pooch’s Pool
The temperatures are wilting!
This article was written by Mike McDowall, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 9th July 2010 23.05 UTC
Throughout the year in Tuscany there are numerous festivals. Those in the winter months tend to involve crossbow competitions, jousting, barrel rolling, horse races, medieval costumes and acts of religious devotion. Those held during the summer typically celebrate the local harvest, with most towns and villages staging some sort of event. In Gassano, for example, they have the festival of the eel, in Treschietto they celebrate the onion, and in Marradi they have a knees-up for the sweet chestnut. Later in the year there are numerous olive oil festivals and plenty of events to mark the grape harvest in October.
What you don’t expect is for a Tuscan town of 10,000 people to dedicate two or three weeks of every year to fish and chips. And yet it really does happen – in Barga, northern Tuscany. Beginning around the end of July, the Sagra del Pesce e Patate is billed as a celebration of “traditional Scottish fish’n'chips”.
Each day around 500 people sit down to a deep-fried dinner at trestle tables on the sports field. During the festival they munch their way through about a tonne of chips – and even more fish. There’s a huge vat of tomato salad if you feel the need to cut through the grease, and of course, gallons of chianti with which to wash it all down.
Barga prides itself on being “the most Scottish place in Italy”, and although I keep calling it a town, it is officially a city – the smallest in the country. It is twinned with East Lothian and you really do hear Italians speaking English with a Scottish accent.
The story I’ve been told is that the Duke of Argyll was holidaying in Tuscany in the 1890s, and, at some point during his trip, engaged the services of a group of local forestry workers to labour on his estates back home. The forestry workers took their families with them, and more families followed. By the end of the first world war there were around 4,000 Italians living in Scotland. Many were employed in traditional industries, but others established ice-cream parlours, cafes and restaurants, often serving the local favourite: fish and chips. Estimates of the number of Italian descendants in Scotland today range from 30,000 to 100,000. Barga’s current most famous “son” is the singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini, whose family, naturally, owns a fish and chip shop in Paisley, just outside Glasgow, which was opened by his Barghese great-grandfather.
Over the years, there has been a great deal of coming and going between Barga and Scotland, with those still in Scotland homesick for the vineyards and olive groves, and those who’ve returned to Tuscany apparently homesick for deep-fried food. And so they hold a fish and chip festival.
The food is served on paper plates with plastic knives and forks and, of course, sachets of tomato ketchup. We enjoyed our fish and chips to the inimitable sound of bagpipes, and I was told that, on certain days, one or two of the fryers may be older gentlemen in kilts. All that was missing was the malt vinegar – we had to make do with a wedge of lemon.
The event is run by the enigmatic sounding Lake Angels, a group of local ramblers who fund projects in Rwanda via another expatriate connection. So although you may regret stuffing yourself with hot, greasy food in 30C heat, you can undo the top button of your trousers and console yourself with the knowledge that it is all in a good cause. Not least, it is an excuse to visit a wonderful city in a breathtaking landscape.
Barga’s walled, medieval citadel was founded in the 10th century. Its streets are so narrow and winding, they’re mostly inaccessible to all but the tiniest of vehicles. We learned to keep an ear out for buzzing Vespas and the ubiquitous high-revving, three-wheeled Piaggio Ape. Barga is a lively place, with a marvellous theatre, frequent concerts, beautiful buildings with colourful window boxes, and much laughter in the cafes and bars. It has a celebrated opera festival, an internationally renowned jazz festival and an annual gathering of Fiat 500s from all over Europe. It is also home to the finest ice-cream I have ever tasted, served at a cafe in tranquil, atmospheric Piazza Santa Annunciata. I recommend the pine nut; my girlfriend preferred the coconut or the stracciatella with chocolate shavings. On evenings when we weren’t guzzling fish and chips there were plenty of restaurants to choose from, and it was difficult to avoid sampling local delicacies such as castagnaccio, a flat, squidgy cake made from chestnut flour, pine nuts and rosemary, which has a distinctive smoky flavour.
I can think of few more relaxing ways to spend an afternoon than that first stroll we took through Barga’s streets, browsing in the boutiques and galleries, sneaking a look into the gardens and houses, and watching the Barghesi go about their business. After a couple of hours’ wandering, we reached the summit of the town, where we found a remarkable cathedral and a piazza with a terrific view over the mountains and chestnut forests. You could bring stout boots and join the hunters, hillwalkers and mushroom pickers who take delight in the spectacular Apuan Alps. But you may be too busy: I’m reliably informed that it is possible, in the towns and villages around Barga, to take part in a festival here almost every night from the start of July to the end of September.
• Barga’s fish and chip festival runs from 23 July–16 August 2010. Villa Moorings (+39 583 711538) has doubles from €100 (summer price). Il Fabbro B&B (+39 346 240 7922) has doubles from €80.British Airways, easyJet, Thomson, Jet2 and Ryanair fly to Pisa from various UK airports. Car hire from Pisa airport through Atlas Choice starts at £153 a week. Paolo Nutini plays the nearby Lucca Summer festival on 20 July: tickets from ticketone.it from €34.50. Barganews.com has more information on events.
 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
This article was written by John Hooper in Rome, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 8th July 2010 16.25 UTC
Despite its status as Italy’s second-largest city and capital of fashion and finance, Milan’s rulers fear the city’s honour is under threat because of its likely failure to feature on a new version of the Monopoly board.
The mayor, Letizia Moratti, has launched an appeal for the Milanese to vote in droves in a poll organised by the manufacturers of the game, to save their city from the humiliation of being left off the board. “Yesterday and today, I have been dealing solely with Monopoly,” the mayor told reporters after a meeting of the full council yesterday that debated a resolution calling for action.
The issue has taken on added sensitivity at a time when Milan is aiming to raise its global standing by hosting the 2015 Universal Exposition. “The absence of Milan from such an important and historic game … would represent, albeit on a small scale, a lack of recognition – almost a sick joke – for a city that wants to take on an international profile,” declared Alessandro Fede Pellone, a councillor for Silvio Berlusconi’s Freedom People movement who tabled the motion that prompted Moratti’s appeal.
The trouble began when, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the release of Monopoly in Italy, the makers decided to release a new version in which the squares would correspond to towns rather than streets, and leave it to the public to decide through an online vote which should be included. So far, Milan has received a miserable 0.23% of the ballot – about a third of what it needs to make it on to the board. Loyal Milanese have until 28 July to save the honour of their city.
But they can probably count without the help of the leader of the centre-left opposition, Pierfrancesco Majorino. “It seems to me that this is tragicomic,” he said. “Even a primary school pupil knows the mayor should be using her time to manage the city and not devoting herself to the fate of a boxed game.”
 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
My personal top 10 choice of the posts of the bloggers from Italy. In alphabetical order:
- Artichoke Blog: Artichoke Feast in Torricchio, Tuscany
How many towns can claim to have only one monk?
- Baroque Sicily: Fine Fellows of Siracusa
A look at real Sicilian men
- Brigolante: Perfect Picnic Places in Umbria , San Leonardo (Assisi)
And you can BBQ
- Casa Margherita: Roundabout an Olive
It’s the watering system that matters
- Creative Structures: Under Pressure
The problems with water in rural Italy
 Eternally Cool: Souvenir Plates
VW’s advertising campaign- Florence Journal: Florence in Shanghai
The amazing ‘Uffizi Touch’ technology
- Italian Notebook: Lavender Festival
No need to go to Provence
- Stresa Sights: Miss Stresa 2010
Where the Miss Italia pageant started
- Valle Nuova: Photo of the Day – Objects from the Past
But what is it?
This article was written by John Hooper in Rome, for guardian.co.uk on Sunday 4th July 2010 18.05 UTC
In a message announcing his retirement to the readers of art magazine FMR, the Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci wrote: “To whoever asks me why, I shall answer in the same way as Voltaire: ‘Laissez-moi cultiver mon jardin.’ “
The full import of those words has only now become apparent six years later with the news that the man who published some of the world’s most fantastical works ? and luxurious volumes ? has created its biggest maze. His labyrinth of bamboo hedges at Fontanellato near Parma reportedly covers some seven hectares (17.5 acres), which would make it more than five times larger than the Pineapple Garden Maze on Hawaii, the largest permanent hedge maze in the Guinness Book of Records.
The former publisher said he first confided his ambition to Jorge Luis Borges, who characteristically told him the world’s largest maze already existed and was called a desert. The publisher of such flights of the imagination as Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, an illustrated encyclopaedia dealing with a parallel world and written in an unintelligible alphabet, Ricci said he had based the design for his enormous labyrinth on mazes depicted in two Roman mosaics.
The maze will open to the public in 2012 when a visitors’ centre has been built. Ricci said visitors would be advised to bring mobiles in case they needed help. A journalist from Corriere della Sera, which was given a first glimpse of the maze, recorded that he got lost on the return journey.
 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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