Italian News Snippets: 10.14.07

Some Italian news for your Sunday reading pleasure:

• If you’re looking for a great meal in Siena, the Osteria le Logge gets high marks from Concierge.
• Italian fast food is now at the grocery store, too – Shelley found a few grocery vending machines at a local market, including one that apparently produces ready-to-eat pizza and pasta. If people really opt for this over the real thing when it’s everywhere and easy to get, that’s a tragedy.
• Italy leads Europe in a category they’d probably rather not – according to recent data, the most bank robberies in Europe happen in Italy.
• In Italy, children tend to live at home until they’re well into their 30s – but a new effort is aimed at getting Italian kids (especially young men) out of the house earlier, by offering them cash to leave home.
• The oldest living woman Italy has died at the age of 109. The area where she lived in Sardinia is being studied because she’s not the only resident living well into the 100s.
• GeoBeats filmmaker Toni Mazzaglia talks about her favorite things about the fall in Tuscany.
• Celebrating a birthday in Italy is a little different than you might be used to. For starters, if you go out to eat with family and friends, you – as the birthday person – pick up the tab. Sara talks about a few of the differences here.
• Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni reopened last weekend with a Rothko retrospective, which will run through January 6, 2008.
• The cell in Palermo where a tortured monk managed to turn the tables on his Inquisitor and kill him instead is one of many undergoing a restoration in a project which should be open to the public by next year. That particular cell, however, is open a little early – visitors can get a sneak peek during the weekends of October.
• Fans of 20th century American surrealist Man Ray will want to add Ferrara to their Italy tour, as some of the artist’s work is on display in the MLB Home Gallery. The show runs through November 2.
• Italy is the 14th best place to live “in terms of environmental standards and green living,” according to a new poll.
• For those of you who like your pizzas with extra cheese, here’s the most cheese of all – a giant mozzarella has earned a spot in the Guinness Book of Records with a measurement of more than 56 meters.
• Love the idea of seeing an opera in Italy but can’t stand the idea of a five-hour opus? Try on an abridged version of Tosca in a Roman theater which will be staged six days a week – every week – from now until May 2008.
• The legendary Sophia Loren is set to make a musical film based on Fellini’s 8 1/2 – the film, called Nine, is based on the hit Broadway musical of the same name.
• 130 Italian masterpieces were loaded on a train this month as part of a traveling art museum. The train will make 22 stops in 40 days.
• Nighttime visitors will soon be allowed into the ancient Roman baths at Baia in Campania to see the site completely floodlit each weekend.
• If you happen to see hummingbirds in Italy, you’re probably not seeing hummingbirds. You’re probably seeing hummingbird moths.
• Italofile’s suggestion of buying combined tickets for several sights in one city is a good one, especially with dollar-to-euro exchange rates getting worse all the time.
• Two Italians, a DJ and an actress, are giving “Disco Inferno” a whole new meaning by setting five verses of Dante’s “Inferno” to a modern beat.
• We’ve all seen how schoolkids’ backpacks seem to get bigger and heavier with every passing year, but Italy’s doing something about it – the government set up a commission to come up with the maximum weight of school bags for youngsters.
• Scientists have discovered some of the oldest fossilized footprints on earth – on the slopes of a volcano in southern Italy. They date back more than 380,000 years.
• Remember the Clericus Cup? The Vatican’s soccer championship for teams made up of clergy? Well, now they’re getting more serious – the Roman Catholic Church just bought a struggling Serie C1 soccer team and is determined to put some ethics and fairness back into the game. You can read more about the story here.