Verdant countryside

Mellowing in Italy - Siena, Thursday 2007 May 10

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May 10th 2007
For today’s notes, I am sitting at a café in the main square of San Gimignano, a town that was virtually abandoned from medieval times until about the 1970s. Now it is a fun, touristy town, with sellers of souvenirs lining the pedestrian road into the town square. Although in modern times all the houses are ... read more

Europe » Italy » Tuscany » Siena

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Italy became a nation-state in 1861 when the city-states of the peninsula, along with Sardinia and Sicily, were united under King Victor EMMANUEL II. An era of parliamentary government came to a close in the early 1920s when Benito MUSSOLINI establis... ... read more