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Carbonara
The waiter at Osteria Ragno d’Oro, around the corner from the Ottaviano metro station not very far from the Vatican state, did not write anything down. He looked at my son, eleven years old and on his third carbonara in as many days, and gave the slow nod Romans keep for things that are correct.…
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Su di giri
You hear Monza before you see it. We had taken the regional train out from Milano Centrale, a carriage so full of red shirts it felt like a terrace on wheels, and walked the last stretch through the Parco di Monza under old trees, past joggers and families carrying folding chairs, following a sound that…
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Kraftwerk
One of my best friends learned German from a band. Not from the grammar book our teacher handed out, and not from the exchange week in München that everyone else talked about. He learned it in his room, with the same records playing over and over until the words stopped being sounds and started meaning…
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Coup d’état
On November 10, 1799, the 19th of Brumaire by the Revolution’s own calendar, soldiers march on the château of Saint-Cloud outside Paris. Napoleon Bonaparte walks into the Orangery, where le Conseil des Cinq-Cents sits, calm and almost solemn. But cries rise from every bench: “À bas le dictateur!” (down with the dictator!”) Someone shoves him,…
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Bellet et Bandol
Ask anyone what they drink on the Riviera and the answer comes without hesitation: rosé. Pale, cold, bottled by the hundreds of millions across Provence every summer, it’s the wine of the terrace, the beach club, the long lunch that turns into evening — so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget the region grows serious…
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Fauve fantastique
There is a moment, sometime in the early afternoon on the Côte d’Azur, when the light does something that is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t seen it. It doesn’t just illuminate. It saturates. The white walls of the old town glow from within, the sea holds a blue that has no business existing…
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L’ultima cena
There is a door in Milano that most tourists walk past without a second glance. It sits on the side of a red-brick church, unremarkable, easy to miss between a tram stop and a row of shuttered shopfronts. You need a ticket, booked weeks in advance, and a time slot. You wait in a small…