Tracking down regional airlines: Italy and Europe

Posted on January 30, 2011 by John Rose

What if you want to depart or arrive from a smaller regional airport? How do you contact directly the small airlines with the inexpensive flights?

There are the booking sites, but they don’t always handle details, such as a needed baggage check, and they often have a message that there may be additional fees that the airline may charge. Also, the booking sites may not offer every option for every airline, and I like to know every option.

I work backwards, looking first at the aeroporto, airport, at which I’ll arrive. As I write this I’m planning a round trip flight from Rome to Catania in eastern Sicily, so I’ll use this trip as my example.

While I’m flying from Rome, with plenty of airlines, my destination Catania is the smaller airport, serviced by fewer airlines. So I’ll begin by looking up the Catania airport’s site. There is an British flag in the upper right corner to take you to the Catania airport’s English language site.

Using the Italian site, I spot the airplane with the caption Voli, Flights, which shows me that day’s arrivals. This is a snapshot of a given day’s flights, and gives some idea of the airlines that fly into Catania. But I’ll dig a little deeper into the site to get all the names of all the airlines that arrive.

To do this, starting again at the main page of the site, I see Informazione Voli, Flight Information, in the left hand column. Clicking this, I see the choice Compagnie Aeree, Airline Companies. Bingo! If you’re with me this far, you realize that you can eliminate a number of the airlines servicing places other than where you wish to fly from, and go from there. At this particular site, the link to the individual airlines are right there with their listing.

While there are other search options, still using the Catania example, at the Flight Information, Informazione Voli, drop-down menu, these may be time-limited. I go right to the airlines’ sites and enter dates there to see what they offer.

We can hope that all the airports provide this information, and that it will be even easier to find in the future. If you’re trying this at home and having trouble finding the information, please leave a comment with the airport you’re investigating. I’ll see if I can dig into the site and find it.

A pronunciation tip- Italian websites end with the suffix .it, pronounced punta eet. They pronounce www voo-voo-voo, even though the Italian w is recited as doppia voo (Italian spelling would be doppia vu), double u, and it is the letter u that is pronounced voo when reciting the alphabet.

An aside—how about those great names for Italian airports? Rome is Aeroporto Roma Leonardo da Vince di Fiumicino. Its international code FCO is from Fiumicino, the name for the area where the airport is located. And Catania, code CTA, is Aeroporto Catania Fontanarossa Vincenzo Bellini, also called Aeroporto Internazionale Catania. My guess is that Fontanarossa, literally red fountain, denotes the sub-area where the airport is located. Vincenzo Bellini is the Catania-born composer of operas such as Norma, La Sonnambula, The Sleepwalker, and I Puritani, The Puritans, among others. He also composed many songs and song cycles. His is the bel canto, beautiful song, style.

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Booking on Windjet

Posted on January 19, 2011 by John Rose

Having trouble booking online with the aerolinea, airline, Windjet?

I wanted to fly from Rome to Catania, and Windjet offered flights nicely spaced through the day. The other low-cost airlines offered limited times, and none of them worked for me. I was determined to book with Windjet.

The process I use to track down flights is covered in my blog post Tracking down regional airlines. The best economy choice, with flights offered scattered through any given day, was Windjet.

The site functioned fine until I got to page 3. There a mobile phone is requested with the Italian country code +39 already in the info block. I entered my mobile phone number, using the prefixes needed to call the U.S. from Italy, +00 1 and the number. A screen message dropped down: “Mobile phone numbers must be in this format- 391234567890.” The ultimate screen message was “Errore” along with the Indietro, Back, button. I tried many permutations of numbers, eventually making up numbers to fit the +39 code.

I finally emailed Booking (instructions below on how to find) and heard back from Annamaria that the Italian mobile phones would begin with one of these prefixes, 347/338/339, and consist of 10 numbers. I thought that she might be suggesting I just put some numbers in using one of the prefixes she gave me, but none of the numbers I made up were recognized.

I never did get numbers to work in that mobile box. I wrote back to Annamaria and she gave me this number for booking by phone: 095/7234560.

This was different from the “Call Center” number on the Italian version of their site, which is 89.2020, and which only shows in the upper right-hand corner if you have chosen Italian as the site language (click the first circle- the green, white and red one). There are other call numbers for the second and third site languages- French and Spanish. Clicking the call center number on any of these site versions brings up, on the left, an email message box. On the right is some literally useful information, informazione utili . One can click to open addressed email pages to, for instance, Booking, Helpdesk, Customer Relations, and Lost and Found. It was by clicking Booking that I first reached Annamaria.

I recommend that you try to book at the number Annamaria gave me, 095/7234560. Their hours are 0900-1300 Monday through Saturday. To call from the U.S. to Italy, add the foreign call and country code prefixes 011 39 (00 39 for Britain to Italy). When I called (oh yeah, I had to change my phone plan before I could call overseas) the person who answered connected me with the person in the office who spoke English the best.

My Italian is passable, and all my email communication, mostly with Annamaria, was in Italian. When I booked over the phone and the English speaker got on, we soon decided that booking in Italian was better for both of us.

Perhaps the problem that you encountered had to do with credit card information. I never had an indication that my card wouldn’t work—I was hung up on the mobile number. But as I booked by phone, we tried one card, then another, and finally my debit card. It seemed that either of the card transactions should have gone through, and it was only after I finished up that I thought, “Whoa, I just gave all my card numbers overseas.” While I did get almost instant alerts from my 2 credit cards, it was only the debit account that was charged.

While it is easy to get mad at any airline that doesn’t make booking easy, I still enjoy that, after all, this is travel, and simply working out details is a journey in itself. It seems that Windjet is a truly Italian business, with the website set up in a way that works for Italians and not so well for others, French and Spanish perhaps excepted. I also blame the web designer. That person should have the functionality that works best for any and all customers built into the site. But at least I’m booked!

Almost, for sure, I think. While I have my booking number, spoken over the phone and repeated back by me, I never did get confirmation, email or otherwise. I’m working on that. Perhaps in spelling out my email, I said jeh for first letter j, a letter not in the formal Italian alphabet. But jeh would actually be letter g. I should have used the phonetic alphabet, thus, for J, Jugoslavia.

Picking up where I left off above, I desired flight and purchase confirmation. At the Windjet site, I clicked the Italian (first one on the left- green, white and red) so the page would display the Italian call center number in the upper right corner. I gave information above on how clicking this call center number brings up many contacts for help. Actually, even though the English page doesn’t show an easy number for reservations, clicking the upper right corner, even though blank, will bring up the Usefull Informations page. I sent my request to both Booking and Helpdesk on the same email, including my reservation number and even the bank statement showing the transaction. Within a day, I had the official confirmation for the flight that I was needing. Here’s a portion of it.

As you can guess, Conferma Prenotazione is Reservation Confirmation. Ricevuta Fiscale is Monetary Receipt. Titolo Viaggio is Travel Title or Travel Qualifications, a designation that it is an official document. My full name is given under nome, but as you fill out forms, Nome means First Name, and Cognome means your Surname or Last Name.

Now all we have to do is catch an early Assisi-Rome train, hop on the train station-to-airport train, make our 12:55 flight at Fiumicino, arrive in Catania, and catch the shuttle to Siracusa by mid-late afternoon to meet up with the delightful Lilli Occhipinti of Casesicilia, who will give us the keys to our 8-day apartment rental!

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The T-1 Scandicci Tramvia line

Posted on December 27, 2010 by John Rose

The T-1 Scandicci line, Florence’s first tramvia, literally tramway or what urban planners often call light rail, travels to the periferia (pl.), suburbs, southwest of Florence. Scandicci is 6 km from Florence, and the 7.4 kilometer line makes the full 14-stop trip in 23 minutes.

Scandicci has been a fast growing mostly residential area, population 50,000. The Residenza stop is the central part of Scandicci, and there an urban plan by Richard Rogers is being worked into the fabric of the city.

In Florence, the tramvia leaves from its own station on via Alamanni which is outside at the west side of Santa Maria Novella train station. It heads west into Cascine Park and then across the Arno on a new bridge dedicated to the tramvia, pedestrian and bicycle traffic. From its stop on the south bank of the Arno, Piazza P. Uccello, it travels along Via del Sansovino and Viale F. Talenti, turns there, and travels the route to Scandicci.

Zoom in on the Google map and look for the blue train symbols. The symbol for buses is also blue, but you should be able to distinguish the tramvia symbol from the one for the bus. Note the stops and you can see better the streets and piazze the tramvia links up with.
Below is a map of the line, and you can also open a larger version of the map in a separate window.
The T-1 Scandicci tramvia line

Posted in Transportation | 3 Comments

Radio and Podcasts in Italian

Posted on October 21, 2010 by John Rose

Plenty of helpful Italian podcasts and radio can be had on iTunes or at a station's website. A few shows I subscribe to are English 24, Gastronauta, and Decanter.

When I began listening to Italian radio on the computer some years ago, I used, and still use occasionally, Audio Hijack Pro from the company rogue amoeba to make audio files. I learn a lot by listening to shows repeated times.

My favorite learning show is English 24, English Ventiquattro. On their site, click on a red triangle on the right side under Riascolta, Re-listen. They will play comments or a short speech by an American or Brit, usually a political figure or someone from the arts world, and then, section by section, render the phrases in Italian, with quick explanations of literal translations followed by freer but better translation of the English. Here is the iTunes link to the English 24 podcast. If you have iTunes on your computer and click visualizza in iTunes, you will see a button to subscribe, which will deliver the program regularly to your iTunes podcast list. My thanks to Marta Cagnola and Giulia Cravelli for a fine show.

I had to try Gastronauta just for the witty name, implying explorations to the nether reaches of gastronomy. In fact, the show talks mostly about the finer points of food and wine Italians know well, with guests and interviews.

Both of these shows are on Radio 24. A full listing of their shows is listed at their site under programmi, or you can go to their podcast listings for additional shows or to subscribe. Click the purple symbol to go to the iTunes listing of the show.

Decanter is another enogastronomia show whose site offers links to just a few recipes and other related items. Decanter is on RAI 2 or Radio 2, Rai 2 o Radio Due, just one of the stations that is part of the multimedia organization RAI, Radiotelevisione Italiana. These stations seem to be a very rough equivalent of National Public Radio in the U.S., but more commercial, and I have heard that Berlusconi somehow controls RAI, but it doesn’t seem like a mouthpiece for his views.

Radio Due has a number of fine shows, and their podcast file links you right up with iTunes. Not available as podcasts is a rich array of narrated books and specially written shows from their show Alle Otto della Sera, At Eight in the Evening. The focus is on, very broadly speaking, history in all its aspects. What a fine array of shows! Click through the site’s full alphabetical listing by clicking Successivi. I don’t see any way to download the shows unless you play them and use your own software to preserve the files.

Another rich archive of spoken-word programs can be found on RAI 3, the RAI channel to go to for classical music. The Il Terzo Anello programmi site will give you plenty to choose from. Scrolling through the archivio list at the bottom of the site, I’ll choose randomly the show Mosâico Italiano. It is composed of 30-minute commentaries on each Italian province.

Whole novels read aloud are available on the RAI 3 Terzo Anello program Ad Alta Voce. Maybe you’d like to hear such Italian classics as Il Gattopardo, The Leopard, or Natalia Ginzburg’s intimate Lessico Famigliare, published in English as both Family Sayings and later as What We Used to Say. There are plenty more: Lolita, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio and Lo strano caso del Dottor Jekyll e del Signor Hyde are just a few examples. The style of these readings includes musical interludes and musical settings in the background.

As I write this, the current reading, A.S Byatt’s La Vergine nel Giardino, The Virgin in the Garden, is available as a podcast, either at the RAI 3 site or at iTunes, but I didn’t find any other readings available in this form. You can subscribe to current shows.

Any of these programs will give you much more Italian than your average Italian station, likely to be giving heavy airplay to American and British pop hits.

Regarding the photos at the top of the page, Guglielmo Marconi is memorialized in Florence’s Santa Croce church, though buried in Emilia-Romagna. Today’s RAI network is a direct descendant of the UIR network listed on the RADIORARIO schedule, RADIORARIO being a clever combination of the words radio and orario, hourly schedule.

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Centuries

Posted on October 21, 2010 by John Rose

Il quattrocento (literally, the 400) refers to the 1400’s. Il novecento (lit., the 900), the 1900’s. This is the common form. They also use sêcolo, century, the same way we do. Il diciottêsimo sêcolo, the eighteenth century, is the 1700’s, or il settocento. But the numbered centuries are more commonly written with Roman numerals, thus il XVIII sêcolo. The actual 400’s would be called il quinto sêcolo, the fifth century, just like we say it, and properly written il V sêcolo.

This left me wondering what shorthand method is used to refer to the 2000′s. Asking a retired Italian teacher the other day, she said that it would be Il duemila.

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Enough with the counting, already. I just want to buy some formaggio and salumi, cheese and cured meats

Posted on September 21, 2010 by John Rose

The basic unit of measure in the marketplace is the etto, .22 pounds (one-tenth of a chilo). One etto is un’etto, about one-quarter pound. Un chilo (one kilogram) = 2.2 pounds.

At the market, you order by the etto, plural etti. Un’etto, due etti, tre etti, eccêtera. Cinque etti, 5 etti, also expressed as un mezzo chilo, 1/2 kilo, is just over a pound (5 x .22 lbs.=1.1 pounds).

As a learning aid, repeat back aloud the total that the cashier says to you.

Regarding the total cost, How much(?) Is Quanto è? What does it cost(?) is Quanto costa? Strictly speaking, one would use quanta if the gender of what you are speaking about is feminine.

When you’re ordering at the cheese- and meat-case, the attendant will often poise the knife over what is thought to be your desired amount and say, Così(?), Like this? If it’s right, you say, Basta così. “Enough like that.” “That’s it!”

If you want more or less, say più (pron. pyoo), more, or meno, less. Of course, you can always hold your hands up and show them far apart or closer together. Mnemonic device: più = plus, or meno = minus. The phrase più o meno means more or less. Basta is always good for Enough!

The following are challenges to learning Italian:

  • Nominal pronouns—I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they—rarely appear, though we English speakers look for them first to identify who is the actor in a given sentence. In Italian, the different verb endings express 1st, 2nd or 3rd person, and singular or plural. It takes a language book to learn them, and I like the emphasis the Living Language multi-media learning tools place on verbs.
  • Another big difference is word order.

That’s the important stuff—a guide to pronouncing the language, useful when reading market signs, menus, directions, ads and headlines, even if we don’t know the vocabulary.

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Pronunciation tips

Posted on September 20, 2010 by John Rose

This will help when ordering items from signs at counters, reading menus, in il mercato, and more.

A c followed by an i or e renders a soft English “ch” sound: ci (as in peachy, dieci); ce (as in chest, cento).

A c followed by a, o, or u renders a hard k sound. Examples: casa, home; cosa, thing (Che cos’è, with cosa abbreviated, means What is it?); cupola, dome. Cucina, kitchen, has a hard c followed by u and also a c followed by i- soft ch. The bar (where we get our caffè, espresso) may have a cashier—a cassa.

Another rule regarding c: Ch in Italian is a k sound. You surely know Chianti. It seems odd to us, but ch = k, always. Another example: chilo, kilo. Also chi, pronoun who—Chi è, Who is it? Think of English parallels—scheme, schizo, school, chemistry. This should resolve the bruschetta (brew-'sket-tuh) debate.

To pronounce double consonants—say each of them. Think of the first one as a stop-syllable, the next a start-syllable. Or just hang on them a bit longer. Examples: cassa, cashier, savings bank; otto, 8; architetto, architect; etto, 1/10 kilo, .22 pounds; spaghetti. Here’s some you might not want to mix up: penne, type of pasta, pene, penis; anno, year, ano, anus. Architetto del paesâggio is landscape architect.

Generally, pronounce each vowel, but note these few exceptions:
The vowel i forms its own syllable, not a diphthong; for example, cinque, dieci, quattôrdici, ventinove, but…
The i is not always pronounced— diciasette, diciotto, diciannove. The i after the c plays a role, making the c soft English ch. Diciasette (dee-cha-'seh-teh); diciotto (dee-'chaw-toh). We all know Ciao. .

It happens with g’s as well—the painter Giotto (pron. 'joht-toh); the vino Pinot Grigio (pron. 'gree-joh); formaggio (pron. for-'ma-joh), cheese. Those ending o’s are like the o in job.

Sei, six, has two syllables; likewise, the i is its own syllable in sêidici, ventisei, etc. But to my ears, the i following the e is short and quickly said or truncated in typical speech. It’s something to listen for.

Another exception to the “pronounce every vowel” rule is a u following a q or g. Familiar to us, a qu followed by a vowel, as in quattro or cinque, renders a qw sound. Likewise, gu followed by a vowel creates the gw sound, as in guerra, war, or guancia or guanciale, cheeks, which you may find on a menù, pronounced meh-’new.

Italian vowels are remarkably consistent. Here’s a simple guide: a = ah; i = i in pig; u = oo. O’s, as in otto, 8, have two sounds, rather like the sequence of o’s in bongo. An e can be like the e in hello, or more like the a in halo. Italian language books will explain finer points and additional vowel sounds I am avoiding here.

Most fun of all are the gn and gli combinations, fun because, all of a sudden, the sounds coming out of your mouth sound inevitably Italian. My Living Language books helpfully and memorably compare the gn sound to the ny in canyon, the gli sound to the center part of million. I love to eat gnocchi, aglio is garlic, meglio is better. You’re sounding Italian now.

That r is a distinctive Italian sound, more a Scottish than an American r. It is a light slap of tongue to the front of your palate/back-top of your teeth, and sometimes this is a delicate trill at the very end of the tongue. It is not formed in the back of your mouth. It is sounded about where our L’s end. Double r’s are often trilled, even if slightly. I have difficulty saying birra, beer, but that’s okay, because I usually order vino, perhaps un mezzo litro, a half liter, more often un litro di vino da tavola.

Masculine endings, singular and plural, are -o and -i; feminine are -a and -e. Singular e endings pop up here and there, and the noun is often, though not always, feminine. The plural of these nouns always end in i. Adjectives’ endings commonly match the noun’s gender and number, but many have an -e singular ending and -i plural ending, regardless of gender.

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Useful Italian: Counting and your birthday

Posted on September 19, 2010 by John Rose

A travel book I enjoy is Next Time Round in Tuscany by Ian Norrie. The following guide is for the first time round, and the best simple thing you can do first time round is to learn numbers and counting. You will enjoy having this basic facility, you will use it often, and it will be a gateway to the language. Italian is in bold, English equivalents in italics.

Italian is accented on the next-to-last (penultimate) syllable, except, as friend Gianni points out, when it isn’t. When the accent shifts to the final syllable, the Italian accent mark is `, as in: caffè, coffee, espresso; università, university; più, more; così, like this, like so; papà, dad (to distinguish it from Papa, pope). Shifts to other syllables must simply be learned.

To indicate an accented syllable other than one determined by these two rules, I’ll use a caret (circumflex accent), ^, over the vowel. It is not part of the Italian spelling; I add it as a guide to proper pronunciation.

Counting

Counting is easy to master and gives confidence in everyday transactions. An easy way to practice before traveling is this: As license plates come into view, say the numbers, at least the hundreds, and preferably out loud. You will notice steady improvement.

Memorize one to ten, uno a dieci. Pronounce the vowels; thus, due, 'doo-eh; sei, 'say-ee; dieci, dee-'eh-chee.

Memorize the teens, and note the two patterns. The numbers from ûndici a sêidici, 1 to 16, exhibit one pattern—numeral followed by dici, ('dee-chee). Diciasette a diciannove, 17 to 19, exhibit the other —dici followed by the numeral. Venti is 20.

From 21 to 99 a pattern is repeated. Note the following: uno, 1, and otto, 8, both begin with a vowel. Venti (20), trenta (30), quaranta (40), etc.—all the denominators when counting by 10’s—drop their final vowels when linked to them. For example, trentuno, 31, drops trenta’s a; trentadue retains it. Ottantotto, 88, drops ottanta’s a, but ottantanove, 89, retains it. This pattern occurs from the 20’s through the 90’s, and in combined forms; example, centocinquantotto, 158.

Here are the numbers—remember that the ^ designates an accented syllable but is not part of the word written in Italian. Tre, 3, gains a written accent in ventitrè (23), trentatrè (33), eccêtera, et cetera. Zero (pron. 'dzay-ro) is British zed.

A table showing patterns in counting
1 to 10 10 to 20 20 to 30 30 to 40 50 to 90+ by tens
uno ûndici ventuno trentuno cinquanta (50)
due dôdici ventidue trentadue sessaanta (60)
tre trêdici ventitrè trentatrè settanta (70)
quattro quattôrdici ventiquattro trentaquattro ottanta (80)
cinque quîndici venticinque trentacinque novanta (90)
sei sêdici ventisei trentasei cento (100)
sette diciasette ventisette trentasette due cento (200)
otto diciotto ventotto trentotto mille (1000)
nove iciannove ventinove trentanove due mille
dieci venti trenta quaranta  

One hundred is cento (not uno cento), 200 due cento, 300 tre cento, and so on. One thousand is mille, two thousand is due mille, etc.

Where we use a comma in writing numbers, Italians use a punto, period—1.000.000, one million. Where we use a period, Italians use a vîrgola, comma; e.g., 3,25%. Dates are ordered differently, too. We write month/day/year; they write day/month/year.

Years and your birthday

Want to try years? The numbers are strung together; thus duemilledieci, twenty-ten. The year of my birth, millenovecentocinquantuno, is 1951.

Year is anno (pl. anni). To say how old you are—let’s use 22 for an example—say, Ho (pron. oh, I have) ventidue anni. Literally, I have (number of years).

Uno’s final o is often dropped and replaced by a linking apostrophe when the succeeding word begins with a vowel—uno anno becomes un’anno. Ho ventun’anni means I’m 21. Even when followed by a consonant, uno’s final o is sometimes dropped; e.g., Un caffè, per favore, A coffee (espresso), please. American style brewed coffee, perhaps offered in hotels, is not common elsewhere. Happy birthday is buon compleanno.

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Oltrarno

Posted on September 6, 2010 by John Rose

Oltrarno comprises five neighborhoods along the south bank of the Arno. Arrayed west to east, these are Pignone, San Frediano, Santo Spirito, Pitti, and San Niccolò.

From the Comune di Firenze, Council of Florence, website, here’s a map that accurately reflects the neighborhoods of Oltrarno. This site calls the area Diladdarno, which translates as something like “That part across the Arno over there.” Info on the Diladdarno site is spotty and not kept up-to-date. Sites for parking may be helpful.

It looks like the Florence Wine Event will happen in 2010 on November 19, 20, and 21. We attended a few years ago and give it 11 stars. Our experience was of wine stops at three Oltrarno piazzas, our itinerary of choice ending at Piazza Santo Spirito, where there were 200 chairs set up for a big dinner. The map for the 2009 event had wine booths set up in six piazze, even better!

The later date in 2010 means dicier weather, and so it will be centrally located in the Cortile dell’Ammannati, the interior courtyard of Palazzo Pitti, Pitti Palace. The central and partially covered location means everything will go on in the event of maltempo, bad weather. Another big bonus—the Boboli gardens are right there, though I don’t know if you’ll be able to wander through the gardens with your wine in hand (or in your wine-bib). Still sounds great, though wandering from piazza to piazza, wine in hand, was one of those “Life gets no better” moments.

A sidetrack here to highlight another Florence wine event, WineTownFirenze 2010, which took place for the first time September 30th through October 3rd. This ranged across the historic center and also into Oltrarno. It was an international showing of wines and numerous talks and programs. The Italian home page for the event features a map, wacky but fun videos, and a picture of smart and sassy young folks. Their outfits would be ruined by the blue bib-type things we’ver worn at other wine events. The bibs have a slit into which one slides the glass, and it’s held there, leaving hands free for eating and gesticulating. Note that the Italian version of the home page also has some comments on how the event was and at least one link to videos from the event and some press comments.

I didn’t attend in 2010, and in looking up information about how it went I encountered a comment congratulating the organizers on turning Wednesday’s confusion into a fine weekend. I did turn up a couple of blog posts by Anthony and Hera, two travelers from Canada recording their Firenze experiences, but no additional reviews.

Firenze-Oltrarno is a site with good intentions but not kept up. It does have snippets of information about the neighborhood. There is a map with locations of the neighborhood tabernacles, seen along the streets. These would make an interesting and fun study for an art history person.

Walking along the river to Piazza G. Poggi puts one at the base of the steps up to the grand Piazzale Michelangelo.

Oltrarno is the antiques center of Florence and the home of numerous workshops of all sorts. There are schools where art and craft techniques are taught. The neighborhoods are active with artisans and exhibits. Special events are held to promote and sustain them. This can be seen in the Dialddarno and Firenze-Oltrarno sites mentioned above. If artisans are of special interest to you, you may also be interested in this website devoted to crafts in the entire region of Tuscany.

After a few years of work, Villa Bardini has its exhibits and garden open.

There is a free museum in the house where lived Rodolfo Siviero, who tracked and then recovered Italian art looted during World War II. His website says it so well, “His sometimes rather unscrupulous way of doing things and his great success with the opposite sex earned him the reputation as the James Bond of the art world.” The collection of furniture is intriguing, and the art and art fragments are interesting for their variety and for being this expert’s personal favorites. It is on the corner of Piazza Poggi and Lungarno Serristori in San Niccolò.

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Favorite Florence neighborhoods: Santo Spirito

Posted on September 4, 2010 by John Rose

This section is about Santo Spirito, our favorite piazza and quartiere, neighborhood, the place we think of as our “home” in Florence. Reading about Florence, you’ll read about Oltrarno, the area across the Arno from the historic center. Oltrarno is sometimes referred to as a neighborhood or a quarter, quarter being a translation of quartiere, neighborhood. I think of Oltrarno as an area or general district, made up of a number of several individual quartieri.

Back to Santo Spirito: Weekdays start with produce booths arranged around the center and household goods and clothes sold from booths at the south end. Church bells announce a service at Santo Spirito church.

There’s an “Antiquarian Market” one weekend per month, and an “Herbs and Tools Market” another—most likely the 2nd & 3rd Sunday of each month, but not in August. I’m not clear about the winter months.

We remember one day when the home goods market was set up as usual, a television soap was being filmed in another corner, and a student demonstration filled the church porch and steps!

From the south end of the piazza (the end opposite the church&;#41;head east (walking away from the church, turn right) on Via Sant’Agostino to the bakery, Il Forno, the Ortofruttolo (vegetable and fruit store)and a number of other shops. My Illini/Parisienne niece Lucie (her award-winning food blog is Bilingual Butter) remembers the Asian store. One comes to the cross street Via Serragli, and my favorite pizzicheria– a sliced meat and cheese store. Back to heading east on Via Sant’Agostino, its name changes to Via San Monaca, and, traveling on this a bit, there’s a supermercato on the right.

If you have time for a visit to Santo Spirito:

Bar Ricchi serves a well-regarded cappuccino and good gelato. Giny read that Faith Willinger, known for her books including Eating in Italy and for her cooking classes, is a regular here. In The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston’s real-life investigation and adventure begins at Bar Ricchi. The interior eating area is adorned with fantasized images for the unadorned front of Santo Spirito church, images inspired by local resident and artist Mario Mariotti’s 1980 art project consisting of amazing projections onto the church’s facade.

If it’s more like lunchtime, grab a panino at Bar Ricchi or at Gustapanino, via dei Michelozzi 13/r, or shop for a picnic along Via Serragli and come back to the piazza, where the likely vantage point is the steps in front of the church. There are also a couple of benches and the fountain. Casalinga, at Via Michelozzi 9/r, makes it into many guidebooks as a reasonably priced trattoria. I like it best at lunchtime—it’s just off the piazza heading east from the front corner of the church.

Cabiria Café opens up for lunch, and is a favorite pre-dinner aperitivo spot. For dinner, Borgo Antico is humming, and the other restaurants try to match the buzz. The Popcafé pops out late at night. At night and until the wee hours, the church steps are a popular, sometimes raucous, hangout.

Santo Spirito church, dome-builder Brunelleschi’s last design and completed after his death, is open most days. The Santo Spirito church has a cenacolo, dining room, with a varied but interesting display and, on the wall, an Orcagna fresco. I wish I could be clear on when the Cenacolo is open, perhaps only on Saturdays. The cenacolo’s Fondazione Romano collection of 11th century sculptures and fragments is often described as haphazard; I love these kind of peculiar groupings, the collected work has heart and often reflects pre-Renaissance times.

On the piazza’s southeast corner is a palazzo featuring an upstairs porch, a loggia. Earlier house forms required a defensive front, but this was built at a time of changing needs and styles, and was a prime example of what would become a common feature throughout Europe.

You may spot a low-relief sculpture on the east side of the piazza commemorating the site of the killing of WWII partisans.

A famous woodworking shop, Bini, closed in 2008 after more than a century of making wooden hat forms for hatmakers and sculptures of everyday objects that were sold in galleries around Europe. I recently read that some of Bini’s work is preserved in a new spot, a museum-bookstore-café named Volume (vo-LOO-meh)). If you go there, I’d love to hear about it.

The writer and artist Lisa McGarry, who has written about Florence’s piazzas, likes Santo Spirito.

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