NEWS

THIS MONTH

March 2007

More flights to Italy, Mussolini’s Roman villa is opened to the public, George Clooney goes property hunting in Tuscany and a cross-dressing cop in this month’s round up.

NEW FLIGHTS AND BUS LINKS Ryanair has begun new direct links from Nottingham to MilanBergamo, Alghero in Sardinia and Pisa. All three services will operate at least three times a week. A new link from Nottingham to Rimini will run from 27 March, three times a week. Ryanair will also introduce a direct flight from Dublin to Trapani in west Sicily from 11 March, twice a week. For more information, go to www.ryanair.com. Meanwhile Ryanair has introduced a lowcost bus-transfer service from Milan-Bergamo, Verona-Brescia and Venice-Treviso to some of the most famous resorts in the Dolomites: Val Gardena, Cortina and Alta Badia.

GORE BLIMEY: ROME IS BACK The BBC’s hit historical drama Rome returns in March and, bloodier than ever, it’s not for the squeamish. Brave viewers will be treated to a corpse being given breast milk from a nursing mother, a blood-soaked soldier carrying a head through the streets and a slave being tortured to death. Made jointly with HBO, the £60m first series of the Emmy award-winning drama of love and betrayal, masters and slaves and the birth of the Roman Empire was a massive success for the BBC. The opening episode attracted 7.2 million viewers, making it BBC 2’s highest-rated programme of the year. The new series opens with Lucius Vorenus driven to the edge insanity by the death of his wife, the disappearance of his children and his failure to protect Caesar from assassination. Meanwhile, with the Imperial throne vacant, a vicious struggle for power and supremacy erupts, with Brutus and Servilia pitted against Mark Antony and Atia.

SNIPPETS

THE PAPAL’S GAME Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope’s Secretary of State, reckons that the Vatican has such “a huge pool of soccer talent” that there is no reason why it could not one day field a top football team. On the eve of the inaugural Clericus Cup, a competition for 16 sides drawn from clergy and students, the football-mad cardinal said: “I do not preclude the possibility that the Vatican could in the future put together a football team of great value that could play on the same level as Roma, Inter Milan, Genoa or Sampdoria. We could put together a magnificent team.”

16 ITALIA! March 2007

MALARIA RETURNS TO ITALY Tropical diseases like malaria are returning to Italy because of global warming, according to a report from the Italian environmental organisation Legambiente. Italy was declared malaria-free in 1970, but cases of malaria are now being reported every year in the south of the country. Other illnesses enjoying the warmer weather include the tick-borne encephalitis – a virus that induces acute inflammation of the brain. Since modern records began only 18 incidents had been registered until 1993, but now nearly 100 cases have been reported, most of them in the Venice area. According to the report a third ailment – visceral leishmaniasis, which is carried by sandflies and can be fatal – is also on the rise in Italy. Francesco Ferrante, Director General of Legambiente, said: “We are at the southern edge of the globe’s temperate area and that’s why we’re being hit most by the shattering of climatic equilibriums. As a result we are importing illness from Africa.”

NEW-LOOK ITALIA! WEBSITE Checkout the new, completely revamped Italia! website. It’s packed with complete features from recent issues of Italia! magazine, all of them free to download. With our new interactive map of the famous ‘boot’ you can also easily find all manner of holidays, lets and properties for sale region by region. On top of all this, the site allows you to read all of the very latest Italian news, find out what’s on and where in our jam-packed Events Diary and even help yourself to a ten-day Italian weather forecast. To access it all, just go to www.italia-magazine.com