Is Tuscany on Your Bucket List?

Make it Real at Il Borgo

private villa estate

charming drivers

daily breakfast basket

excursions to medieval towns

dinners in local restaurants

spectacular sunsets

a crazy bargain

Free Cooking Class for bookings made by March 1st

Inclusive Tuscany at Il Borgo from Villa Vita

from $2195 per person per week.

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What's New in Rome: Spring 2012

Though it may be thousands of years old, the Eternal City is always changing and evolving. If you're planning a trip to Rome in 2012, check out what's new in Rome:

• The historic Testaccio Market will be closing and a new, modern market will be opening a few blocks away. The move is controversial. Depending on when you are visiting Rome, you might be one of the last to visit the 97-year-old market in Piazza Testaccio or among the first to go inside the new Testaccio Market.
• The latest outpost of Eataly (the mammoth gourmet marketplace that started in Turin) opens in Rome on the city's birthday, April 21. Eataly Rome will take up 12,000 square feet in the former Air Terminal Ostiense, and boast 11 restaurants.
• The must-not-miss musem exhibition in Rome this year is Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archives Revealed. A hundred documents from the Vatican's Secret Archives go in display at the Capitoline Museums starting March 1, 2012.

Learn more about what to do in Rome at Dream of Italy and get our Rome travel app for just $2.99!

Photo by alainlm, flickr.com

Umbria Photo Workshops: May and October 2012

The trip of a lifetime...
Week-long photo workshops with the bestselling authors of Serenissima: Venice in Winter. Explore Umbria by chartered van and stay in a gorgeous fully restored farm villa in the shadow of Assisi. Guided excursions, personal instruction, many meals—a molto simpatico photo vacation. Maximum enrollment for each workshop is six students. May 5-12, 2012 and October 13-20, 2012

Info: http://www.experienceumbria.com/

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"Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archives Revealed" To Open in Rome

If you're visiting Rome between March and September 2012, plan to visit the Capitoline Museums for the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archives Revealed. One hundred original documents -- spanning 400 years of Papal history -- will leave the confines of Vatican City for the first time. The records are usually kept in Vatican Secret Archives, a highly secure building behind St. Peter's Basilica.

Some of those documents on display will include:

• an appeal by the English Parliament asking the Pope to annul Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon
• items from the heresy trial of Galileo, whose scientific theories attracted the hostility of the Catholic Church
• a letter written on birch bark in 1887 by the Ojibwe Indians of Ontario, Canada, to Pope Leo XIII

The exhibition opens March 1st. You can purchase a combined exhibition/museum entrance ticket for the Capitoline Museums for 12 euros and visit Tuesday through Sunday, 9 a.m through 8 p.m.
Need more information on what to see in Rome? Get Dream of Italy's Rome travel app for just $2.99!

Dream Italia: Your Passpost to Italy for Enchanting Tours

Dream Italia specializes in small group tours to Italy offering the culture ordinary travelers miss. Discover our Culinary & Wine, Seaside, and City & Culture tours where we offer you an insider’s view and weave in-depth experiences and interaction with local Italian people into your experience. Join a Dream Italia tour and see firsthand the Italy that dreams are made of...

Experience The Magic of Italy with Dream Italia

Contact us at

elizabeth@dreamitalia.com

or

303-504-6151

View Our Tours:

Dream Italia Picks Positano & Amalfi Coast for 2012!

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Dec. 2011/Jan. 2012 Issue: Rome Food Tour, Carnevale in Friuli, Maremma Hideaway

The Dec. 2011/Jan. 2012  issue of Dream of Italy is hot off the presses. If you're NOT a subscriber, become one this week and get TWO BONUS Italy travel documentaries on DVD ($40 value), you will also receive access to this issue, online access to more than 85 back issues and subscriber-only discounts! Our paid subscribers (who can log-in here) are reading the following articles this month:

Muggia Carnevale Unmasked
While you hear so much about Italian Carnevale in Venice, did you know that one of Italy's great Carnevale celebrations is in the city of Muggia in Friuli? Find out all you need to know to take part.

Rome Food Tour in Testaccio
The working class neighborhood Testaccio is home to some of Rome's great culinary treasures -- both food and the characters behind the food. This food tour's passionate guide will lead you through nine tastings and a unique experience. Also: The New Testaccio Market, Kenny Dunn's Favorite Rome Restaurants

A Magical Maremma Hideaway
The renovated castle in one of Tuscany's most authentic areas offers an upscale escape complete with Tuscan cooking lessons with the proprietor who is a cookbook author.

Italy Travel Apps from Italia!/ Taste Italia Magazines

There was so much interest in our new Rome app that we would like to tell you about other apps that might help you with your Italian travels - a fantastic range of new apps brought to you by our friends, the publishers of Italia! and Taste Italia magazines.

From Italian living and travel to food and drink, and the perfect Italian Christmas, there really is something for everybody in this fantastic range of apps, available from just $1.99. Take them everywhere you go when you download them to your iPhone/iPad/iPod!
Features of the Italia! and Taste Italia themed apps:
+ Download an issue and read on or offline
+ Apps from just $1.99*
+ Save weight in your luggage with the Italia! travel guides
+ Ingredient lists always to hand when you're at the shops
+ Keep as many issues as you like all in one place
+ Take every issue with you wherever you go
+ Turn the pages like a print magazine
+ Easy navigation and zoom function
+ Contents and hyperlinks for easy searchability

Download the Italian Christmas Recipes App - Just $6.99

Download the Italia! Magazine App -  From $1.99

Download the Taste Italia Magazine App - From $1.99

Download the Tuscany Guide App - Just $6.99

Postcards From Italy: Naples Doll Hospital

This holday season, we've partnered with filmmaker Steven McCurdy to give away TWO DVDs of his Italy travel documentaries with every subscription/renewal or gift subscription to the award-winning travel newsletter Dream of Italy (there's still time to order for Christmas delivery in the U.S.!)

In the documentary Postcards from Italy, McCurdy journeys through southern Italy showcasing ordinary Italians who are diligently preserving age-old traditions and customs.

In Naples,  he meets the charming Luigi Grassi who has spent his whole life "repairing objects of love" at The Doll Hospital (Ospedale delle Bombole). Enjoy this clip....

Postcards From Italy: Rome Video

We're currently offering TWO BONUS DVDs (worth $40) of filmmaker Steven McCurdy's Italy documentaries with every Dream of Italy subscription. McCurdy (see our interview with him) has an eye for what makes Italy so alluring. In this clip from one of the DVDs, Postcards From Italy, he sets the sites of Rome to music:

Finding Santa's Bones in Southern Italy

While the above headline is no doubt alarming, don't worry, I have it on good authority that Santa Claus is alive and well and quite busy up at the North Pole. But his inspiration, the original St. Nick, a 4th-century Greek bishop, rests in the region of Puglia. Saint Nicholas was known for his secret gift-giving. The legend goes that believers left their shoes out and he filled them with gold coins.

The story of how the "original Santa Claus" got to the city of Bari from where he perished in Turkey is recounting the fascinating article Saving Santa's Bones. Apparently, roughly 900 years ago, if your city didn't have a pilgrimage site, you were practicially left of the map. So the good folks of Bari decided to hatch a plan to get themselves some relics!

"Three ships and 47 sailors set sail in 1087 for Myra, Turkey, the site where St. Nicholas had been buried some 800 years previously. After convincing custodians at the church where the saint was buried that they were pilgrims, the pirates smashed open the grave, took most of the ancient relics, and carried them back to Bari," writer Debbie Olsen recounts.

Since then, St. Nick's remains have resided in a crypt beneath the altar of the Romanesque Basilica di San Nicola. Olsen writes,"Every year, Bari re-enacts the arrival of the body of St. Nicholas from Turkey with a 10-day festival in early May. The highlight of the Festa di San Nicola is the "translation ceremony," where a statue of St. Nicholas is paraded through the streets with 500 costumed attendants and taken out to sea and brought back to the Basilica."

Learn more about Christmas in Italy in our FREE 35-page e-book -- filled with Italian Christmas and New Year's traditions, Italy holiday travel tips and traditional Italian Christmas recipes!

Christmas Around Italy In Photos: From Bolzano to Puglia

My latest contribution for travel section of The Huffington Post is a slideshow on Christmas in Italy. Click on the photo below to start your journey through age-old holiday traditions in Rome, Milan, Turin, Alto-Aldige, Umbria, Puglia and more....

Learn more in our FREE 35-page Christmas in Italy Guide -- filled with Italian Christmas and New Year's traditions, Italy holiday travel tips and traditional Italian Christmas recipes!