Italian culture

Anyone who has seen the first images from The Dog Stars, Ridley Scott’s latest film and felt they recognised something was right. The director chose Italy as the main setting for his post-apocalyptic film, creating scenery that feels both familiar and strange. With a budget of $110 million, a crew of more than 400 Italian professionals and 100 international staff, The Dog Stars is one of the largest productions filmed in Italy in recent years.

A medieval castle on the Lazio coast played an unexpected part in Cleopatra (1963), the Hollywood epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Rome has an old riddle hidden in plain sight.

Sometimes a single film scene is enough to change the way a place is seen forever.

When They Call Me Trinity was released in Italian cinemas in 1970, audiences were glued to the screen, and not only for Bud Spencer and Terence Hill’s comic moments. There was something familiar about its scenery: open grasslands, wide skies and rugged rock faces.

In Taormina, a terrace overlooking Mount Etna and the Ionian Sea leads to a house where art has coexisted with daily life for over a century. Here, the brushes, notebooks, and gazes of giants like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway have intersected, in a creative laboratory that has shaped the Sicilian imagination. Today, that house, Casa Cuseni, is a living museum that can be visited only by reservation and in small groups, allowing visitors to truly enter the rooms and avoid being left behind a red rope.

Almost three thousand years of history have not settled one of literature’s most absorbing questions: where are the places of Odysseus and the Odyssey really located? Over the centuries, Homer’s poem has served as a compass for geographers, philologists and sailors trying to overlay its map onto the Mediterranean, gathering evidence, clues and theories that can sometimes fit together surprisingly well. The result is an itinerary touching Sicily, Lazio, Campania, Tunisia, Greece and the waters around Malta.

Sometimes a film is enough to draw in tourists, as the effect of The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Milan shows.

Forty years after the death of Jorge Luis Borges and 15 years after its inauguration, the labyrinth dedicated to him by the Giorgio Cini Foundation on Venice’s Island of San Giorgio Maggiore has been renewed. One of the Venetian cultural heritage’s most iconic and poetic spaces has now reopened

The award-winning director Christopher Nolan has returned with a new cinematic adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, with Matt Damon in the star role. For a story so strongly rooted in a specific geographical and cultural imagination, which locations were chosen?

Castles have always carried an air of mystery, guarding fascinating stories: hidden secrets, traces of distant eras, and tales of nobles, ladies and knights. Across Italy, from north to south, there are castles, fortresses and strongholds that attract thousands of visitors each year, all keen to uncover their history and soak up the atmosphere as they wander through grand halls and silent courtyards.

From the I-Days in Milan to open-air gigs in Puglia’s parks, and on to the international buzz of Florence and Lucca, summer in Italy is once again one of the best times of year to catch live music.So which music festivals are taking place in Italy in summer 2026?

There’s nowhere quite like Italy when it comes to family-friendly festivals. Towns and cities fill with music, food stalls, street performers and local traditions that draw in everyone.If you're looking for the best festivals in Italy with kids in 2026, you’ll find options all year round.

June in Rome always carries a certain energy, but Pride month adds something extra.

If you’re in Italy in late June, chances are you’ll hear about Festa di San Giovanni 2026.

Can a region be rebuilt with a handful of seedlings? In one Italian village, this is exactly what happened.

A Spanish collective has won the idealista Contemporary Art Prize 2026 for its project Libertà.

If there is one moment when Rome feels like living history rather than an open-air museum, it’s during Rome’s birthday.

The Venice Biennale 2026, officially the 61st edition of the Venice Art Biennale, is one of the biggest contemporary art events in the world.Every two years, the city shifts gear: curators, critics, collectors and curious travellers all descend at once, and the atmosphere becomes part cultural pilgr

Among the most fascinating and ancient underground funerary complexes in the capital are undoubtedly the Catacombs of Priscilla.

Northern Italy isn’t short of military history. Roman forts, Venetian defences, Austro-Hungarian strongholds.

If you’re used to celebrating in June, Father’s Day in Italy might take you by surprise. Here it’s held every year in March and is known as Festa del Papà.When is Father’s Day in Italy?Why is Father’s Day different in Italy?

The Italian Capital of Culture 2028 has not yet been announced, but the path towards the final decision is well underway. Ten shortlisted cities will compete for the title by presenting their cultural projects to the ministerial committee.

Valentine’s Day is celebrated worldwide on 14th February, and Italy is no exception. Known locally as San Valentino, this holiday is also called la festa degli innamorati — the day of lovers.

Venice during Carnival is a bit like walking onto a film set: masks everywhere, music echoing off the canals, and something happening in every square.