There’s an Italian saying, del maiale non si butta via niente – “throw away no part of the pig”. But anyone passing through Mortara might be forgiven for thinking that the proverb actually talks about not the pig but the goose; for here, as in many other parts of Italy, the webbed foot is almost as highly prized as the cleft hoof. History teaches us that every part of the pig can be eaten; nothing, after the slaughter, should go to waste. If we’re going to kill it, we ...

Borderlands always exert a special charm over the traveller. They pique our curiosity; they make us want to understand the historical reasons behind the present divisions, which are often the concrete results of circumstances very different in colour, but usually all savouring of a similar thing.

Straddling our own borders, in a West-East Berlin kind of way, is Gorizia. There is very little that’s consistent across the urban landscape here, only the names on the street signs and ...

In the Italian tongue, everything has a gender, either masculine or feminine. And it’s often the case that, when it comes to determining what’s masculine and what’s feminine, the codified national language tends to follow the local dialects whence it sprang. The river Brenta, for example, is usually identified as the feminine "la Brenta", even though fiume (river) is masculine. So for the sake of custom, we’ll stick to "la" rather than “il” Brenta, as we follow its ...

Yep, I felt like one of those teenagers on a school trip. Impatient to leave, itching to set foot on Giglio again after more than thirty years. My companions in the adventure: a food journalist of national repute, and a longtime Rufina wine merchant.

It’s late September, and the ferryboat is already operating on the winter timetable, so we’re spared having to get up at an ungodly hour. We take the 2pm boat, and an hour and something later, we’re approaching the island. ...

Between the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia, around a border that was historically fought over more often than not, you come across the ancient town of Rubiera. Rubiera is not a place with much of an aristocratic background; its past is battle-hardened and battle-scarred, thanks to its defensive position on the river Secchia – which, despite the Italian word for river (fiume) being masculine, is known by the feminine la Secchia. It’s a surging, gushing watercourse, and it flows under ...