Tante Belle Cose - June in Italy

The month of June kicks off the enormous amount of summer concert series, events, outside cinema, and entire tent cities offering food & drinks, literature, gifts, you name it for all those on summer strolls.  As the Italians like to say, "You have an embarrassment of choice." But there are other lesser known items in the news that give us reason for applause.

• Mario Draghi was plucked to head the European Central Bank which shows how far Italians could go if they lived in a proper meritocracy (although how he got to the upper echelons of Italy's banking system in the first place remains to be seen).

• Italy's esteemed President, Giorgio Napolitano received an honorary law degree from Oxford (I know, I know, Italy has a President??!!)

• Neopolitan police caught the guys who killed the American cruise ship passenger for his watch - putting yet another nail in the coffin in the tourism coffers of this besieged city

• Italians formed a committee requesting the return to Florence of Leonardo's Mona Lisa  [and, in a non-related incident, we were told of a quip by Italy's Minister of Culture upon meeting his counterpart in France:   

It is said we possess more art in Italy than in all of France to wit the Frenchman responded, That may be true, but you'd have even more if it weren't for Napoleon (who pillaged Italy by "purchasing" much of the contents of the Louvre)

• And the Florentines disowned themselves from the gutter cast members of Jersey Shore, filming there for the summer (good to see that the Florentines have good taste - but, how many tune into Big Brother?)

Article here in Life in Italy

• Vogue Italy showed off gorgeous Italian women in all their curvy splendor...Could it be that the age of Sofia and Anna Magnani is making a comeback? 

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