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Table of Contents
The Day I Shut Down the Vatican
Masters of the Southern Italy Night
To my mom and dad, who introduced me to Italy
Introduction
ask any traveler to Europe’s “Boot” (lo Stivale), “Why Italy?” and he or she responds with the almost inarticulate bemusement of someone in the infatuation phase of a love affair. Italy is irresistible. We return again and again for the cuisines, the wines, the festivals, the unique regions and attitudes—all rooted in the very soil under the traveler’s feet.
If you live in the West or speak any Romance or Germanic language, you can trace roots back to here, in the Roman and Greek Empires, even if you’re not Italian. Your diet probably depends in part—or entirely—on Italian cuisine: pizza, spaghetti and meatballs with parmesan and crusty garlic bread, minestrone, mineral water, Caesar salad (invented in Florida, actually, but since it’s named after Caesar…) and gelato. You may have salivated over Ferraris and Lamborghinis; perhaps you
