The Collected Traveler

Finally, here is the rest of my presentation for "Undiscovered Rome, Florence, and Venice":

*Language: I do not speak Italian, but I do know some key words and phrases which rarely fail to bring a big smile to the faces of my hosts and people I meet. The natives of any country love it when visitors try to speak their language. Italian may not be as widely spoken around the world as French, for example, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t attempt to learn some Italian vocabulary – it’s a beautiful language, and if you studied Latin, you’ll learn it in a snap. The Tuscan dialect is considered “standard” Italian, and though there are local dialects spoken in every part of Italy, almost everyone will recognize the Tuscan variety when you speak it and will most likely be happy to converse in it as well.

One of the most inspiring books I've ever read, and new this year, is La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language (Dianne Hales, Broadway, 2009). I loved this book from cover to cover, and I was hooked even from the first few words of the Acknowledgements: “Grazie. Grazie tanto. Grazie mille. Vi ringrazio. I wish there were more ways to say thank you…” Hales’s story of learning Italian is infectious, and even if you don’t have any desire or intent to learn Italian, you may very well when you’ve finished reading her tale. At the least, will find her journey charming, funny, fascinating, and, of course, bella. As Hales notes, only four countries other than Italy – Switzerland, Croatia, San Marino, and Slovenia, and not counting the Vatican – recognize Italian as an official language; but the Società Dante Alighiere, founded in 1889, has approximately five hundred branches around the world. (You may also be inspired to then read, or reread, Dante’s “14,233 eleven-syllable lines organized into one hundred cantos in three volumes,” if only because nearly every Italian Hales knows can recite at least a few verses from the Divine Comedy -- from a professor she learned of an anecdote from World War II, which is that a partisan shepherd in Tuscany had been ordered to shoot anyone who couldn’t identify prove he or she was Italian. The shepherd stopped a professor one night who was biking outside Pisa after curfew without any identification. The shepherd asked the professor to prove his Italian identity “by reciting the seventeenth canto of the Inferno. He got to line 117 but couldn’t remember the rest. The shepherd finished the canto for him.”) La Bella Lingua is nothing short of a love letter to Italy and Italian and is essenziale.


*Made in Italy
The Made in Italy tag was created to distinguish quality, handcrafted items from knockoffs in the marketplace, and though these items typically cost more, consumers know they are at least paying for something that isn’t machine-made. Made in Italy is also the name of a wonderful and essential book whose subtitle is A Shopper’s Guide to Italy’s Best Artisanal Traditions from Murano Glass to Ceramics, Jewelry, Leather Goods and More by Laura Morelli (Universe, 2nd edition, 2008). This is not a shopper’s guide – Morelli enhances our appreciation of (or introduces us to) the prodotti artigianali (most typical, handcrafted products) from Italy’s eighteen regions, and she has written a book that is informative, inspiring, and practical. Morelli writes that for her “the most impressive thing about Italian workmanship is that – even with today’s sophisticated technologies – no one has improved on the hand-wrought designs of these unsung masters. Even in the twenty-first century, their work is still recognized around the world as a benchmark of quality.” After the first edition of this book was published, Morelli’s inbox was flooded with e-mails from readers who wanted to share stories about their own travels and the artisans and shops they’d discovered, and they asked her about how to recognize authentic goods. She believes that “people will wait and pay more for a beautiful object when they can make a connection with the person whose labor and passion went into crafting it,” and I completely agree.

Chapter three covers Tuscany and Umbria, and Morelli has added a special section on shopping for leather in Florence to this edition because it’s been the most common request she’s received. She also includes excellent information on shopping in Italy, packing, money, avoiding scams, getting your stuff home, and a phrase that is the Italian craftsman’s motto: pochi, ma buoni… (“few, but good…”). Morelli loves to hear from her readers, and she may be reached at her website, lauramorelli.com, where readers may also subscribe to her newsletter, Laura Morelli’s The Real Deal.


*Marbled Paper flourished in Turkey, especially in Istanbul, in the 15th century. The Beyazit neighborhood of Istanbul was known as the printing and paper quarter, even as recent as the 1920s, and the streets there were once lined with workshops. The art of marbled paper making was known as ebru, the art of the clouds, and in addition to producing endpapers for books, and mats for decorative calligraphy, and decorative panels on fine woodwork, the largest output of ebru was for large sheets of pale patterns, on which were written important government documents and official communications which had to be unforgeable and unalterable. And ebru was both unforgeable and unalterable because any erasure of the writing would be betrayed by the break in the color pattern of the ebru background.

Marbled paper arrived in Italy through Venice, but today the making of it survives almost exclusively in Florence. Yet, I was surprised to read in an extensively researched book,
Marbled Paper: Its History, Techniques, and Patterns (Richard Wolfe, University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1990) that “Marbled decoration, as well as other types of colored
decoration, never became an extensive or integral part of bookmaking and bookbinding
in Italy.” Apparently the British and the French surpassed the Italians in this regard
(in Paris there is even an organization called the Society of Friends for the Binding of
Books); but there are a few shops in Florence that remain devoted to marbled paper and

the book arts that I particularly like: Giulio Giannini & Figlio, directly across from the Pitti Palace, isn’t undiscovered; but many visitors don’t know that it’s Florence’s oldest marbled-paper maker, founded in 1856, and that it began as a bookbinder that catered to the large foreign literary colony in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets From the Portuguese and Casa Guidi Windows published in later editions by Giannini (Casa Guidi, by the way, is somewhat undiscovered: located right around the corner from Giannini at number 8 piazza San Felice, the palazzo was the home of Elizabeth and Robert Browning from 1847 to 1861. It is now owned by Eton College, and welcomes visitors Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. from April 1st through November 30th, and rooms may be rented).

Il Torchio in via de’ Bardi (via de’ Bardi 17) is probably my favorite marbled paper shop because there are never very many people in it and its leather and paper bound books are sewn entirely by hand. It was started by Anna Anichini, over 30 years ago, but the shop feels much older.

Last is Carteria Tassotti (via dei Servi, 9/11r) steps away from the Duomo. I’ve included this wonderful shop on my list even though it doesn’t stock marbled paper per se but its other handmade papers are beautiful, and the store also has a great selection of other appealing paper products, prints suitable for framing, journals, writing utensils, notebooks, greeting cards, bookmarks, etc. The Florence store is one of four in Italy, with the headquarters located in the town of Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto. Bassano was famous between the years 1660 and 1860 for the publishing work of the Remondini family’s company, which once had more than 18 moveable-type presses and employed over 1,000 people. The company was founded by Giovanni Antonio Remondini, an ironware dealer who moved from his hometown in the Po valley to Bassano. He purchased a printing press and some woodcuts from a bankrupt printer, and the family was from then on connected with publishing and the manufacture of prints and colored and decorated paper, and its craftsmen decorated paper by stamping it with wooden blocks and metal plates. “Remondini papers,” as the firm’s pattern papers came to be known, enjoyed an extensive reputation and popularity throughout Italy and Europe, even though they were not very frequently used in bookmaking. Remondini products were sold by traveling salesmen, and they sold all over Europe, in Russia, and in America. The fall of the Venetian Republic marked the end of the Remondini empire, and the various product lines of the company were sold off separately. But in 1957, Giorgio Tassotti relaunched the Remondini tradition by producing hand-colored prints, and by the 1960s he added a few more, and now there are 4,000 items in inventory. Today Grafiche Tassotti is a family company, and all its products are produced by the company itself.

Marbled paper is more than just a pretty product – as author Richard Wolfe notes, “Few people today are aware of the considerable role that marbled paper played in the everyday life of Europe and the Western world from late in the 17th century until late in the 19th.”
“Marbled papers were employed outside the book trade as well to adorn a great many products of everyday use. They served as wall coverings, as linings for the interiors of trunks, boxes, wallets, musical instrument cases and other containers; for covering boxes and other receptacles; as ornamentation in the panels of cabinets, furniture, and even harpsichords; as wrappings for toys, drug powders, and other consumer goods; for enclosing blank books used for writing, and for many stationery purposes; and as shelf papers for lining cupboards and cabinets and for many home decorating purposes.” For me, when I purchase marbled paper – and I never leave Florence without at least one paper find – I feel I’m buying a piece of artistic heritage, and each time it feels like a new discovery.


*Olio & Convivium, in via di Santo Spirito (at number 4 / 055.265.8198), is a glorious outpost of Convivium Firenze, a Tuscan atelier gastronomico located on viale Europa near Porta Romana. The Convivium emblem is a coat of arms bearing the 14th century Guild of Oil Sellers and Grocers of Florence, featuring a lion with an olive tree branch in its claws. I haven’t yet been to the viale Europa store – though I hear it’s beautiful, in a restored farmhouse dating from 1300 – but the Olio branch is in historic Palazzo Capponi in the Oltr’arno. What makes both locations unique is that they each have a restaurant (more about meals here on my blog), and a fantastic shop, where you can select provisions for a take-away picnic (cheese, bread, salami, wine, etc.) and prepared dishes (pasta and vegetable dishes, salads, etc.), as well as a great assortment of noted Tuscan specialties (there is also a line of Convivium’s own products, including honeys, jams, pasta sauces, biscuits, etc., and the gift wrapping and presentation is, naturally, fantastic). Catering and cooking classes may be arranged, but to me the really special thing about Olio & Convivium is its olive oil tastings. Olio is one of the few places in Italy where you have the opportunity taste and buy so many oils – there are approximately sixty in stock at any given time, all from Tuscany, and many cannot be purchased outside of Italy. Like wine, Tuscan oils are all about the terra (land), and tasting them side-by-side reveals their vast differences. Tasters learn that you can’t tell if an oil is strong or light solely by its color, but since people tend to form an opinion based on color, the oils are poured into dark blue glasses so tasters can’t see the color of the oil. Bites of apple between oils is a great palate cleanser, and anyone can learn to taste the difference between an artisanal oil and a supermarket oil.

Olio’s oils are generally not for cooking – they’re better for salads, sauces, pasta, dips, etc. – and among the most popular here are Podere Forte and Villa Magra dei Franci. Oils that are also available in the U.S. are generally less expensive at Olio and are available in different sizes. Tastings are about an hour, and reservations are required: www.conviviumfirenze.it.

*Vasari Corridor: For years I’d wanted to visit the Vasari Corridor, Il Corridoio Vasariano, but every time I tried it was closed for repairs, closed indefinitely, off limits to visitors, or, when it was open, too expensive. Finally, I had my chance, thanks to Wendy Perrin at Condé Nast Traveler. As readers may already know, Perrin writes an annual feature called ‘Trips of a Lifetime,’ and in one of her reports she included the Vasari Corridor and the name of a guide permitted to accompany visitors on a private tour: Alessandra Marchetti, an art historian in Florence. It took me a few years before I was able to arrange for a Corridor tour for myself, but in the interim I arranged for my boss and some colleagues to visit and they couldn’t have been more complimentary of Marchetti. Even thinking about it now, five months after my visit, the first word that comes to mind is “wow.” What an extraordinary experience.

The Corridoio was designed by Giorgio Vasari and was completed in just five months, for the wedding of Francesco I de Medici and Giovanna of Austria in 1565. The “urban footpath” as it’s called by museum officials is almost a kilometer long and begins in the west corridor of the Uffizi, continues to the Arno, crosses the Arno atop the shops on the Ponte Vecchio (the original meat market that was previously on the bridge was moved so its unpleasant odors wouldn’t offend the Grand Duke and it was replaced by goldsmiths in 1593), continues to Santa Felicità and to the gardens of the Guicciardini family, and ends in the Boboli gardens, at the Buontalenti Grotto. The Corridor was envisioned as a private passageway connecting the Uffizi (originally the administrative offices of the Medici) with the Palazzo Pitti (where various members of the Medici family lived). It’s amazing to look out the windows of the Corridor when you’re on top of the Ponte Vecchio, and more amazing when you reach Santa Felicità and realize that the Corridor has been incorporated into the church, creating a private loggia for the Medici! There really is nothing quite like this anywhere else in the world. (And as an aside, the ‘Annunciation’ and ‘Deposition’ frescoes by Jacopo Pontormo in Santa Felicità are what I refer to as “gasp worthy.”) The interior of the Corridor is lined almost entirely with over 1,000 paintings, most self-portraits by some of the world’s most noted painters from the 16th to the 20th centuries. A few portraits stand out, but although the collection is unique, it isn’t the reason you pay for the privilege to walk the length of the Corridor.

Marchetti is currently working on a doctoral thesis on Michelangelo (she even lives in a house in Settignano that Michelangelo lived in) and the tours she conducts of the Corridor benefit Friends of Florence (noted above). Tours must be reserved in advance (Vasari Corridor
For years I’d wanted to visit the Vasari Corridor, Il Corridoio Vasariano, but every time I tried it was closed for repairs, closed indefinitely, off limits to visitors, or, when it was open, too expensive. Finally, I had my chance, thanks to Wendy Perrin at Condé Nast Traveler. As readers may already know, Perrin writes an annual feature called ‘Trips of a Lifetime,’ and in one of her reports she included the Vasari Corridor and the name of a guide permitted to accompany visitors on a private tour: Alessandra Marchetti, an art historian in Florence. It took me a few years before I was able to arrange for a Corridor tour for myself, but in the interim I arranged for my boss and some colleagues to visit and they couldn’t have been more complimentary of Marchetti. Even thinking about it now, five months after my visit, the first word that comes to mind is “wow.” What an extraordinary experience. And Marchetti….I’ll get to her shortly.

The Corridoio was designed by Giorgio Vasari and was completed in just five months, for the wedding of Francesco I de Medici and Giovanna of Austria in 1565. The “urban footpath” as it’s called by museum officials is almost a kilometer long and begins in the west corridor of the Uffizi, continues to the Arno, crosses the Arno atop the shops on the Ponte Vecchio (the original meat market that was previously on the bridge was moved so its unpleasant odors wouldn’t offend the Grand Duke and it was replaced by goldsmiths in 1593), continues to Santa Felicità and to the gardens of the Guicciardini family, and ends in the Boboli gardens, at the Buontalenti Grotto. The Corridor was envisioned as a private passageway connecting the Uffizi (originally the administrative offices of the Medici) with the Palazzo Pitti (where various members of the Medici family lived). It’s amazing to look out the windows of the Corridor when you’re on top of the Ponte Vecchio, and more amazing when you reach Santa Felicità and realize that the Corridor has been incorporated into the church, creating a private loggia for the Medici! There really is nothing quite like this anywhere else in the world. (And as an aside, the ‘Annunciation’ and ‘Deposition’ frescoes by Jacopo Pontormo in Santa Felicità are what I refer to as “gasp worthy.”) The interior of the Corridor is lined almost entirely with over 1,000 paintings, most self-portraits by some of the world’s most noted painters from the 16th to the 20th centuries. A few portraits stand out, but although the collection is unique, it isn’t the reason you pay for the privilege to walk the length of the Corridor.

Marchetti is currently working on a doctoral thesis on Michelangelo (she even lives in a house in Settignano that Michelangelo lived in) and the tours she conducts of the Corridor benefit Friends of Florence (noted above). Tours must be reserved in advance (Marchetti’s e-mail address is aleoberm@tin.it) and are limited to about 10 people, I think. The cost is approximately 290 euros, and for her part, Alessandra continues to have access to the Michelangelo archives. And by the way, her partner, in life and in business, is Paolo Cesaroni, a driving guide (not an art historian), and he has an inordinate amount of passion for Tuscany, which I mention because wonderful as Florence is, I think it's essential to get out of the city and explore the countryside. (Paolo's favorite part of Tuscany is La Maremma) paolocesaroni@tin.it / (39) 347.3803408 (cell)

Villa I Tatti
Visiting Villa I Tatti, the home of historian and critic of late medieval and Renaissance art Bernard Berenson from 1900 to 1959, remains one of the highlights of my life. Even the drive from Florence to Settignano was beautiful. Before Berenson’s death, at age 94 in 1959, he had bequeathed his estate to his alma mater, and since then Villa I Tatti has been the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

Berenson, often referred to simply as BB, wanted I Tatti to be a true center of scholarship, and the Center is devoted to advance study of the Italian Renaissance in all aspects, including art history; political, economic, and social history; the history of science, philosophy, and religion; and the history of literature and music. Each year fifteen post-doctoral scholars in the early stages of their careers are selected to become year-long I Tatti Fellows. If I had known about this Fellowship in my second year of college I would have made sure to earn that double major in art history!

BB and his wife Mary commissioned English architect Cecil Ross Pinsent (1884-1963) to oversee extensions and alterations to the Villa and to design a terraced garden. (Pinsent also designed the gardens at La Foce, which some of you may also be familiar with.) Seeing the inside of the Villa is amazing (there are 120 notable works of Renaissance and Asian art) but walking around the garden was just as much a pleasure to me, especially seeing the cypress allée (I am a nut for an allée of any kind of tree, but none more so than cypress). In order not to interrupt scholars, an I Tatti visit doesn’t include a visit to the library, with an impressive 300,000 volumes, an archive of more than 150,000 photographs and other visual materials (the Fototeca Berenson) and 600 journals. Julian More, in Views From a Tuscan Vineyard, wrote that Berenson “felt his time was wasted on pedantic scholarship, that art expertise was not creative, that he was just another Victorian leech on the talent of the Renaissance. It is touching, therefore, to know that he found solace in the Tuscan countryside, walking in the woods above Fiesole, coming from the glare of hot piazzas into the cool of incense-smelling churches. There was one particular oak tree, ancient as an Etruscan wall; Berenson loved to touch it. It made him feel neither Jewish, nor Catholic, but pagan. He was at one with nature.” (More also relates that, somewhat remarkably, Berenson, though Jewish, was able to spend the entire war years in Tuscany as he was looked after and hidden by Italian friends. “The GI who liberated him is alleged to have said: ‘What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?’” ) Berenson once described a walk he took near I Tatti above Vincigliata and wrote that “every step was ecstasy. Sight, sound, smell, the nobler senses, happy. I could not help stretching my arms as if in gratitude to the Maker of it all.” That’s precisely how I felt at I Tatti and in Settignano.

BB earned his reputation as the world’s greatest authority on Italian painting no only by writing numerous books, most notably The Italian Painters of the Renaissance (Phaidon, 1952), but also by purchasing works for Isabella Stewart Gardner, who commissioned him in the late 1800s to buy art for her in Europe. Many of the works he acquired became the core of the new museum she was creating in Boston, first known as Fenway Court and later as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one of my most favorite in the world (see Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Alan Chong, Beacon Press, 2003, for more details about this beautiful collection and about the works Berenson acquired). A wonderful book published after BB’s death is Looking at Pictures With Bernard Berenson (Abrams, 1974) that includes a great reminiscence by J. Carter Brown, then director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., on the first time he met Berenson at I Tatti. The book also opens with a Berenson quote from 1952 that seems to me to reveal the basic philosophy and passion to which he devoted his life: “We must look and look and look till we live the painting and for a fleeting moment become identified with it. If we do not succeed in loving what through the ages has been loved, it is useless to lie ourselves into believing that we do. A good rough test is whether we feel that it is reconciling us with life. No artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art, visual, verbal and musical, our world would have remained a jungle.” Another good book, especially to see photographs of what’s off limits on the tour, is A Legacy of Excellence: The Story of Villa I Tatti (William Weaver, photographs by David Finn, Abrams, 1997).

As I Tatti isn’t a museum, it isn’t officially open to the general public. But scholars, students, Harvard alumni, and people with ties to Harvard or with a special interest in the Renaissance may arrange visits upon request. No more than eight visitors at a time may be accommodated, and tours are offered on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons at 3:00 and last for about an hour, but no tours are held in August, during the Christmas and New Year holiday, and on days when I Tatti is closed. However, at this moment, visits have been temporarily suspended due to construction. You should contact the Villa I Tatti office in Cambridge for information about when tours will be offered again and for reservations: 124 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138-5795 / (617) 495.8042 / www.itatti.it. It’s recommended to write well in advance, and to confirm your reservation after arrival in Italy.

Villa La Pietra
Florence is bursting at the seams with things to see and do, so it’s hard to even consider venturing to the hills surrounding the city. But visitors who do will be richly rewarded, as it’s in the hills that most of Florence’s Anglo-American community lived. In addition to Bernard Berenson at Villa I Tatti, others in this community included Frederick Stibbert, Lina Duff Gordon, and Sir Harold Acton.

This community was quite large during the first decade of the 20th century, when everyone possessed spectacular villas with their attendant gardens. The British and American expats purchased the villas from members of the Florentine aristocracy, who were forced to sell them due to political and social upheavals resulting from the unification of Italy and the eventual move of the Italian capital from Florence to Rome. Though there is still a sizable British-American expat community in and around Florence today, it really thrived at this particular moment in Florence’s history, and the opportunity to buy these villas so inexpensively has not come again. Two world wars, post-war restrictions, and an increase in the value of the land significantly reduced the size of the community. Sir Harold Acton was the last survivor of this original community after Berenson’s death in 1959.

Acton was born in 1904 at La Pietra, the villa his parents acquired the year before. At various points in his life he was a poet, novelist, historian, professor, Royal Air Force officer, and philanthropist, and he’s best known to lovers of Italy for his many books, over 30 in all, including Memoirs of an Aesthete, The Last Medici, The Pazzi Conspiracy: The Plot Against the Medici, and The Villas of Tuscany. Acton was the inspiration for the character of Anthony Blanche in Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited, and in 1985, he was made an honorary citizen of Florence. Upon his death in 1994, Acton bequeathed La Pietra to New York University, and though some very lucky students (approximately 300 per semester) study there throughout the year, the Villa and its magnificent gardens are open to visitors as well.

The name of La Pietra derives from the stone pillar indicating one Roman mile from Florence’s city gate of San Gallo, and is the first important milestone one encounters while heading uphill along Via Bolognese. Though the Actons recreated the Renaissance garden and formed an art collection (to become one of the finest in private hands in Florence), it was Harold who left an indelible mark on La Pietra and on Florence itself. Sir Harold (he was made a Commander of the British Empire and knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1974) became, with Bernard Berenson, one of the “sights” that cultivated visitors to Florence hoped to see. The La Pietra guestbook includes the names of Churchill, Charles and Diana, Lady Bird Johnson, Adlai Stevenson, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The Villa dates from the 14th century and has a typical Renaissance floor plan built around a once-open courtyard where the main axis extends through the house into the gardens. In fact, as Acton once wrote, “in Italian, ‘villa’ signifies not house alone, but house and pleasure grounds combined: the garden is an architectural extension of the house.” The grounds encompass 57 acres in all, and the garden is very fragrant in spring, with roses, iris, wisteria, and herbs (some say May is the best month to visit). The Villa’s art collection consists of more than 3,500 objects ranging from the Etruscan period to the 20th century, and La Pietra’s curatorial staff has adopted a policy that emphasizes preservation over restoration, and it has presented a nice balance between the house as a former home and now as a museum. The estate also features olive groves and fruit trees, and its long avenue of cypress trees, from the main gate to the main entrance, is one of La Pietra’s most memorable features (and note that the gate doesn’t accommodate the width of tour buses, one reason why La Pietra remains something of a secret).

La Pietra is on the route of Florence’s city bus #25 (from the piazza San Marco stop, it’s a 15-minute ride). Ask the driver to indicate where to get off – the stop is across the street from the Villa gate, where you press a buzzer for admittance. Guided tours of the Villa and garden are offered on Friday afternoons, and advance reservations are required by e-mail, phone, or fax. Tours of the garden only are offered Tuesday mornings, again with advance reservations. No tours are offered during August or from mid-December to mid-January. Villa La Pietra is at Via Bolognese 120 / (39) 055.500.7210 / www.nyu.edu/global/lapietra.

*Most of you may know that Fabio Picchi is one of the most famous chefs in Florence. His restaurant Cibreo -- named for an old, local dish made of chicken innards and coxcombs, which must be ordered three days ahead -- has continued to receive rave reviews since opening in the late 1980s, when he startled locals and visitors alike by not serving any pasta -- he maintains that pasta is not an original Tuscan specialty. He went on to open Cibreo Trattoria, Cibreo Caffe, and Teatro del Sale, one of the most unique Florentine eateries -- it's a trattoria at heart but also a boutique grocery store, theater, and private club. Membership is bought at the door for about 5 euros, and you walk back to a large room and find a seat at a table, sometimes sharing space with others. There is a glassed-in kitchen where you can see everything being prepared, and Fabio steps out every now and then to announce the next dishes being brought to the buffet tables. It's a bit chaotic, but the food is undeniably outstanding, and for about 35 euros it's an absolute bargain. But what makes the experience unique is that after all the courses are served, the tables are pushed to the side and rows of chairs are set up to make way for the evening's performance, which can be a comedy routine, a musical number, a poetry reading, a pianist playing George Gershwin songs, etc. Most of the audience are locals, and everything is in Italian but it doesn't matter if you can't follow along. When I went the performance was a one woman monologue by Picchi's wife, Maria Cassi, who is one of Italy's top comic actresses.

BUT, equally as good as Cibreo is a trattoria called Zibibbo, owned by Picchi's first wife and former Cibreo partner, Benedetta Vitali. Zibibbo refers to a grape variety unique to Sicily and the island of Pantelleria, and though it can be used to make table wine and grappa, it's most commonly used in a strong wine similar to Marsala. Unlike Marsala, spirits aren't added -- and the grapes are partially fermented in the sun, a process that's derived from a formula known in the Middle Ages -- and dried zibibbo are often used in desserts. Zibibbo the trattoria is on the outskirts of Florence. Vitali had already earned her respected reputation before she opened Zibibbo, and no one – locals and visitors alike – thinks the ten minute drive from the Centro is prohibitive because it’s one of the best culinary destinations in Florence. In an article entitled “Choice Tables: On the Fringes of Florence, Memorable Eating” (The New York Times, January 27, 2002), Maureen B. Fant notes that Vitali turns out some Tuscan favorites at Zibibbo but also plenty of dishes from southern Italy and the Near East, and others with no clear geographic roots. “Only a person of impeccable judgment and technical skill can pull off this sort of multicultural menu in Italy, and Mrs. Vitali has managed it.”

Vitali also offers several cooking classes, including an intensive course, A Day in the Kitchen, and An Afternoon Encounter, at Zibibbo, via de Terzolina 3r / www.benedettavitali.com / in the U.S.: Michael Melford, mm@melfordlaw.com / (617) 491.0920].

....okay, my presentation notes are officially finished ... more about Istanbul in my next post!