I expected another quiet walk in the hills above Florence. Instead, I stumbled across three unsettling stone carvings hidden beside a woodland path on a boundary rock: one of a naked woman or angel, two grotesque faces with gaping mouths, and no obvious clue as to who carved them or why. The first one was of a woman lying down, or a fallen angel. At the entrance to Fiesole woodland stands a line of enormous boulders. The first one is a beautiful carving of a woman (or fallen angel?), along...

How best to stop the feisty mozzies from bothering you this summer, that doesn't involve the use of big nets, growing tobacco plants, smoking pipes, cigars or accurate electric bat use ~ which all work super well of course. It seems that the males aren't the problem, it's the females who bite the skin to get the blood protein for their eggs. And it's better to deter them naturally, with either sprays or oils, candles and water mixes than use industrial manufactured chemicals. But there are a...

The Italian architect, engineer, and sculptor, Filippo Brunelleschi, chose Impruneta's fine terracotta bricks for Santa Maria del Fiori (the Duomo's) unsupported vault. Having lived in Stoke on Trent, England’s historic heart of the pottery industry, it is fascinating to now call Impruneta home, which is at the centre of Florence’s famous terracotta production. Situated on a plateau just south of Florence, Impruneta owes the exceptional quality of its terracotta to its clay rich foundations,...