Italian Clubs, Events, Lifestyle; Travel Italy

Penne with four cheese, requires four different kinds of Italian cheese: Mozzarella, Bel Paese, Fontina, and Parmesan.

Ingredients (servings 4):
- Pasta (Penne) 400 gr.
- Butter  100 gr.
- Mozzarella cheese 150 gr.
- Bel paese cheese 70 gr.
- Fontina  cheese 70 gr.
- Parmesan cheese 50 gr
- Cream  200 gr.

- Preparation -
Cook the pasta in salty water and drain it.
Put the butter in a pot, heat until it starts to frizzle, then add the pasta.
Add grated parmesan and the other cheeses cut into small cubes, mix and amalgamate it all with the cream keeping at a low heat until the pasta is covered with a creamy sauce.

It will take you less than 20 minutes to prepare it. Just pay a bit of attention to the calories.

On September 19, as Little Italy’s annual 11-day Feast of San Gennaro was kicking off, miles away from there, in Naples, Italy, the miracle of San Gennaro’s blood that liquefies happened again.
After repeating a ritual older than 600 years, the archbishop of Naples announced:
“a few minutes ago the blood started to melt“.

A vial of the blood of Saint Januarius (San Gennaro), has been liquefied every few months since 1389 in Naples. This great miracle is also a great mystery still regarded as unexplained.
The chemical nature of the relic can be established only by opening the vial, but a complete analysis is forbidden by the Catholic Church.

However three Italian scientists tried to provide an explanation of the phenomenon with the ‘hypothesis of thixotropy’, in an article published on Nature in 1991.
They said:

“…In support of our hypothesis of thixotropy we have been able to reproduce liquefaction of samples resembling the blood relics that we have prepared using substances available in the fourteenth century”.(see the article)

Thixotropy or not, the real mistery of Naples, is that while in the western world, people constantly try to find causal explanations for everything, in this city, located in the western world, forms of magic are simply accepted as a part of life.
While most of western people refuse to accept magic in their lives, the Neapolitans, embrace it.

Those who have seen the movie “The Passion of the Christ“, probably are familiar with an ancient city carved into the rocks located in the Southern Italy.

It’s Matera, best known as the ‘Town of Stones’ , so named after the main feature of the city, the “Sassi di Matera” — “the Matera’s stones“.
The town chosen as setting  for The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

It’s a real town, with its roads, homes and churches not built, but carved into the rock. It could happen you to walk on a roof as visiting a square as well as to go inside a mountain as crossing the threshold of a home.

Matera offers you a lot of wild nature, with its deep canyons and grottoes, history, with more than 120 ancient churches carved into the rock and beach with Adriatic and Ionian coasts just 25-30 miles away.
Matera, and the surrounding area, also offers a cuisine strictly bounded with Mediterranean Diet’s ingredients.

So, this unique city, 9,000 y.o., definitely deserves a visit, better if with a stay in an hotel carved into the rock.

- Travel Brief -

See Matera and Lucania on the map.

- Getting there
- By plane: Bari airport (50km away), connected with the main Italian and European hubs, including London Gatwick and Stansted, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Brussels… also served by the low-cost RyanAir.
- By train: Matera station, (around 6/7 hours from Rome) see timetable.
- By car: around 4/5 hours from Rome

- Accommodation
Accommodation in Lucania and in the Ionian coast

If you happened to travel to the Italian countryside in Summer, you’d be familiar with the ‘sagra‘.
Sagra, is a street summer festival; any small town or village in Italy has its own sagra.

Sagra, or ‘festa del paese’ – village’s feast, is slightly different from the historic festivals.

Food is central in the sagra. They are mainly a sort of culinary festivals.

In Italy, there is a sagra celebrating every item of gastronomy. Dishes celebrating local produce, cooked by local women, provide the justification to launch a sagra. And it’s a tasty and cheap food, accompanied by local wine, served on tables arranged in the main town’s square.
With a band playing folk music and people dancing the whole night.

Unfortunately, the sagra are not so well advertised, so visitors are not used to attend these festivals and miss so a chance to know that rural Italy that does not feature on travel guides.

More importantly, vacationers miss a chance to taste excellent wine and food and avoiding the expensive restaurants.
So definitely, it’s worth taking time to find local festivals; that also enables you to discover non touristy places across Italy.