The Italy Now Podcast

We step inside Palazzo Diedo in Cannaregio with curator Adriana Rispoli, where Berggruen Arts and Culture has staged Strange Rules, the first curatorial reflection on protocol art ever mounted in Italy. Beneath restored 18th-century frescoes, algorithms run underfoot. Adriana walks us through new commissions from Matt Dryhurst and Holly Herndon, Trevor Paglen's 25-minute AI hypnosis piece, and the...

We climb to Tenuta di Castellaro, 350 metres above the Mediterranean, where founder Massimo Lentsch is rebuilding Aeolian viticulture vine by vine. He tells us how a volcanic archipelago once known for its wines came close to losing them altogether, and what it has taken to bring the vineyards back to life on this windblown stretch of rock and sea. It is the story of an estate, an archipelago, and...

We meet Pierpaolo Tiretti on the Vulcanello promontory at Therasia Resort, Sea and Spa, the design-led Aeolian retreat that occupies a piece of Italian television history. The villa was once the hideaway of Mike Bongiorno, the man who effectively invented Italian TV, and his celebrity rolodex laid the groundwork for what is today one of the islands' most discreet hotels. Pierpaolo, himself from Is...

We meet Ilaria D'Uva in Venice, where she has just given a voice to the city's Naval Museum and where two million people a year already hear her words at the Duomo of Milan, the Pantheon, Pompeii and Assisi. She grew up, as she puts it, on bread and audio guides, the daughter of the man who created Italy's very first audio guide in 1959, after Florence said no and the future Pope Paul VI in Milan...

We step inside the Procuratie Vecchie on Piazza San Marco in Venice, a 500-year-old palace closed to the public for five centuries and reopened in 2022 after a complete restoration by David Chipperfield Architects. Emma Ursic, CEO of The Human Safety Net Foundation, tells us how Generali transformed this extraordinary space into a global home for social innovation, reaching more than 1.3 million v...

We meet larger-than-life French actress Marianne Borgo in Cannes, where she was practically born into the film festival itself — her uncle was one of the four men who, on a train back from Venice just before the war, decided France needed a festival of its own. But Marianne's heart belongs equally to Italy. She tells us about her grandfather, an Italian count who gave up everything to follow a you...

We meet Veronica Sabbag in Cannes at the World Women Foundation, the Brussels based international lawyer and former EU diplomat who left twenty years of conflict management to pick up a different instrument of peace, music. She is the founder of United Voices for Peace and the force behind Global Women in Music, a project born with the United Nations Symphony Orchestra to put female composers and...

We meet Sohrab Mirmont at the World Woman Foundation during the Cannes Film Festival, just as he prepares to shoot his new film in Venice with the cinematographer who once worked alongside his uncle, the late Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami. The producer behind Riddle of Fire, which premiered at Directors' Fortnight in Cannes edition 2023, tells us how a single ride on a Venetian water taxi sparke...

We catch Turkish actress and producer Selin Yeninci in Cannes, fresh from a panel and even fresher from her second appearance on Verissimo, where Italian audiences welcomed her as one of their own. As Saniye in Terra Amara, the Turkish drama that ran for 121 episodes and travelled to more than 150 countries, she became a household name from the Amalfi Coast to Anatolia. Selin tells us about the mo...

We sit down with Lorenzo Marsili, philosopher, writer and founding director of Berggruen Institute Europe, inside Casa dei Tre Oci, the 1911 artist's studio on the Giudecca that now serves as the Institute's European home. Marsili explains why a global think tank founded in Los Angeles chose Venice over Berlin, Paris or Rome, and how three Venetian buildings have quietly become a gathering place f...

We sit down with Luca Vullo, actor, director, author and cultural ambassador, to explore the gestural language that runs beneath Italian speech like a second grammar. And makes Italy unlike anywhere else on earth. Luca has spent years cataloguing and teaching the more than 250 recognised Italian gestures, touring his one-man show La Voce del Corpo from San Francisco to Sydney, often with his moth...

We travel to Gragnano, a hilltop town outside Naples where the mountain wind, sea air and light conspire to create conditions unlike anywhere else on earth. And where Pastificio Di Martino has been making Pasta di Gragnano IGP for over a century. Giuseppe Di Martino walks us through 260 handcrafted shapes, each one designed not for beauty alone but for the precise company it will keep on the plate...

We arrive at Masseria Potenti near Manduria, a 16th-century fortified farmhouse in the heart of Puglia, where a family's dream of sharing their corner of southern Italy has quietly grown into one of the region's most beloved destinations. Maria Grazia Di Lauro and her daughter Chiara Tommasino tell us how a holiday home became an agriturismo by accident, shaped entirely by the guests who loved it...

We sit down with Albiera Antinori, at the Forum della Cucina Italiana in Manduria, where the 26th generation of Italy's most storied winemaking family talks dynasty, disruption and the long view. She tells us how Tignanello broke every rule of late-1960s Chianti Classico, why wine and food are inseparable in Italian culture, and what a 27th generation is already bringing to one of the world's gre...

We sit down with Miriam De Rienzo Gazzola at Palazzo Maresgallo in Lecce, a sixteenth-century residence rescued from sixty years of abandonment and brought back to life as one of Puglia's most extraordinary boutique hotels and art spaces. Miriam tells us how she and her husband Lionel gave up two years of their lives to a restoration that their own architect told them was madness — and how Helen M...

At Tenuta Donna Anna, a working country estate in the heart of Salento, food is not a product — it is a memory. Carlo Cascione and his family grow Senatore Cappelli, an ancient variety of wheat that nearly disappeared in the twentieth century, mill it themselves, and turn it into pasta shaped by hand at a table where guests from across the world come to learn, to eat, and find themselves, more tha...

We step inside the cellars of Produttori di Manduria, the oldest active wine cooperative in Puglia, where more than 300 grape-growing families have been tending the same ancient vines since 1932. Anna Gennari, who leads hospitality at the cooperative, tells us how Primitivo arrived in Manduria as a bride's dowry in the 19th century and grew into one of Italy's most celebrated appellations. From st...

We step inside the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna with Professor Robin Cormack, one of the world's leading authorities on Byzantine art and author of Byzantine Art for Oxford University Press. Standing beneath some of the most breathtaking mosaics ever created, Robin explains why this small city in Emilia-Romagna holds a place in art history that Rome, Florence and Venice simply cannot match. Fro...

We sit down with Toni D'Angelo, director and son of Nino D'Angelo, to talk about  Nino. 18 Giorni, the documentary that took him back to his father's extraordinary rise from poverty in Naples' San Pietro a Patierno to stadiums at Wembley, Madison Square Garden and the Olympia in Paris. The film's title refers to the 18 days Nino missed at the start of Toni's life, away on stage when his son w...

We go inside Palazzo Mignanelli in Rome, where the Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti has unveiled Venus, a stunning exhibition running through May 2026 that brings together art and fashion in spectacular fashion. Curator Pamela Golbin walks us through the most breathtaking pieces, from the vision behind the show to the surprising collaborations that made it possible. It's the Rom...

Episode 2 – We speak with Daniele Kihlgren, the visionary behind the regeneration of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, a medieval village in the mountains of Abruzzo. Find out how one man's bold idea brought a crumbling hamlet back to life, and and created a new model for Italian hospitality. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We sit down with Mario Mozzetti at Alfredo alla Scrofa in Rome, where fettuccine Alfredo was born and where the art of mantecatura has been passed down through three generations. The third-generation owner of Alfredo alla Scrofa tells us how this iconic dish conquered the world, from Hollywood legends to Masterchef Turkey, and why the secret is still in the hands. It's a love letter to Roman tradi...

In this introductory episode we unveil the blueprint to the Italy Now podcast. Meet us, understand our approach, and get a glimpse of the stories ahead. Consider this your press pass to the real Italy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.