Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy Tuscan
Arianna visits Lucca for the first time, and gets some advice from a friend who lives there. Arianna and Eleonora look at the map together to get an idea of how the city is laid out. With its Roman origins, Lucca's urban space was designed with intersecting roads called 'cardos' and 'decumani'.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
Mini decides to guide Arianna through one of the main roads of Lucca to the center of the city. It's one continuous road but its name changes several times. Arianna is fascinated by some mysterious numbers appearing on the stones of the pavement.
Difficulty:
Adv Beginner
Italy
The best way to get around Lucca is by bike. Arianna rents one and enjoys riding along the amazing walls of the city, still intact after centuries.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
There are a lot of interesting places to see from the walls, as Arianna rides around on her rental bike: the botanical garden, a tower with trees on it, and the entrance to a pilgrimage route to Rome.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
Marino tells about Marechiaro, a small village in the area of Naples called Posillipo. Marchiaro gives its name to a very famous Neapolitan song by Salvatore Di Giacomo.
Difficulty:
Adv Beginner
Italy
The Villa San Marco is an amazingly well-preserved luxury villa from the Augustan period, with a wonderful panoramic view of Vesuvius and the gulf of Naples. Marika shows us around the four nuclei of the villa.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
The name of the villa was inspired by the story of Dionysus who watched Ariadne while she slept. It was excavated first by the Bourbons but was buried again. Later in the 50s, digs were resumed and now, it can be visited in all its glory.
Difficulty:
Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Fulvio shows tells us the story of a door, a very famous door, called the Alchemist's Door, also called the Magic Door, or the Door to Heaven, a monument built by Massimiliano Savelli Palombara, Marquis of Pietraforte on the grounds of his villa in Rome.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
Fulvio tells us plenty of interesting things about the history of one of the symbols of Rome, the Colosseum. To begin with, it wasn't always called the "Colosseum."
Difficulty:
Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Take your time with this episode about Rome because it is chock full of information. Il Campidoglio, also called Monte Capitolino, is the smallest of the seven hills of Rome, but it's the most important because that's where the mayor's office is, as well. Where did the word "capitol" come from? Fulvio has the answer. He also talks about where the word "money" comes from. And you will recognize the name of the architect who designed the piazza and its surrounding buildings.
Difficulty:
Adv Beginner
Italy
To take a break from the hustle and bustle of Rome, there is a place waiting for you, just 40 minutes away, where horses and cows graze in the wild, and where there is plenty of interesting flora and fauna to observe: The Sorbo Valley.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
Comedian and actor Caterina Guzzanti is a guest at a middle school in Afragola, in the province of Naples, a school named after Rita Levi Montalcini. Guzzanti meets with the students from the theater class for a lesson on the imagination, which has a lot of importance in her work but was also very important to the great researcher from Turin, Montalcini.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
Rita Levi Montalcini talks about when she won the Nobel Prize in 1986. Her niece, Piera, tells the story from her point of view, and Paola Tarassi, a research student of hers, tells about studying with her after she had already won the Nobel.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
Rita Levi Montalcini felt that imagination was the "secret sauce" of her research. And this encouraged her to turn to young people, who have plenty of imagination. She didn't hesitate to teach kids of junior high school age, which came as a surprise to some people, since she was a winner of the Nobel prize.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Italy
Rita Levi Montalcini dedicated a great part of her life to young people, especially young researchers, and though she had no children of her own, she felt that all kinds of young people were like sons and daughters to her.
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