A cluster of five mountains like ancient trusting friends encompass Lake Como with tales to tell. They tower to the horizon in a domineering maze of peaks, deep irregular valleys, and crusted sheer-sided facings. Deeply sculptured from wind and rain, and often cloud-covered, they stand like faithful world-worn sentinels. Tagged the Pre-Alps, the mountains cast long shadows across the lake’s glacier-formed deep blue water creating a textured moment of sun and shade. Residents and visitors alike recognize that in only a few places on the planet are water and mountains in such remarkable intimacy and the recognition inspires soft expressions of awe and delight.

As a result, the majority of Trieste residents these days are native Italian speakers, but in a place where Italian, Germanic and Slavic influence and language all bleed into each other. The geographic borders make no sense to anyone. You meet Italian nationals with Germanic surnames and vice-versa. You meet Slavs whose mother tongue is Italian.

For centuries, artists and aristocrats, divas and dictators, poets and politicos, why even James Bond himself, have fallen under the spell of alpine breezes, the scent of lemon blossoms and the mesmerizing shades-of-blue of Italy's largest lake, Lago di Garda. Straddling three distinct regions: Veneto, Lombardy and Trentino-Alto Adige, this ladle-shaped body of water beckons travelers to experience the Italian dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing).

When I’m not in my wellies tending to our two-acre plot of olive trees, tucked inside the Valle d’Itria of the Alto Salento sub-region of Puglia in the southeastern reaches of Italy, I like to lace up my hiking boots, grab my camera and walking stick and head out on long, photo-shoot treks around my ‘hood.

My dream was about to become a reality. Based in Los Angeles, I was used to taunts from my otherwise wonderful East Coast friends, who were never shy about battering me with people in Southern California don’t know what REAL pizza is. Though I had eaten my way through New York, Boston and Philly in the past and had sampled their delicious pies – I would ask them countless times why it was a REAL pizza and others were not.

The latest T-Boy Society of Film & Music poll is devoted to our members' favorite international destination. That is, the first international destination we'd visit when the roadways, skyways and waterways are deemed safe to travel. You'll find members' selections to be illuminating, telling us much about their own personal preferences.

Italy has been the backdrop for some of our favorite films, and the beguiling scenery often upstages the acting. Don’t Look Now (1973), Room with A View (1985), Cinema Paradiso (1988), Il Postino (1994), Call Me By Your Name (2017) . . . well, we could go on and on. The stars, too, have often been smitten with the settings …

Wandering the hilly, narrow cobblestone streets in our home base of Montalcino, Italy, a Medieval city of interlocking passageways, steps and alleyways curving around and through and behind and beyond the main square, I reminded myself I was walking through history spanning eight hundred years. Stopping for lunch, I ordered a glass of the house wine. A bottle arrived at …

A crostata is an Italian baked tart or pie, also known as coppi in Naples and sfogliate in Lombardy. The earliest known use of crostata in its modern sense can be traced to the cookbooks Libro de Arte Coquinaria (Book of the Art of Cooking) by Martino da Como, (circa 1465).

Just because we can’t travel during the Covid-19 pandemic, doesn’t mean we can’t still explore the culinary traditions of various countries from the comfort of our own kitchens.