Chiuso per le ferie

...is a common sign around Rome these days. It means "closed for the holidays". And like the local butcher, baker and candlestick maker, ISB will be shutting down for a few weeks. What! A few weeks!

Yep, the staff of ISB is off to Sri Lanka where we will be doing our part for a little charity that is near and dear to our heart. Thanks to your generosity (well, many of you) and Xtina's quick thinking, we raised 400 euros at the end of the summer to build these little tykes a pre-school. (Yes, they are still taking donations).


We will be back in the new year with pics and tales of our travels.

Buon anno, a tutti!

Law and Order: Nativity Division

Scandal and outrage are the dish of the day in my apartment building today. What's happened? The ceramic shepherds from the nativity scene in the lobby are missing, as of this morning. With few leads to go on, the old ladies in the building have classified it a theft. It's not safe in our little corner of Rome today. You will get waylaid by one of my neighbors asking you: What kind of person would steal a shepherd?

Ok, this post is now updated with pics. The first photo is the offending crime scene: the Xmas tree carries, as a rather gaudy ornament, a several-paragraph notice that some miscreant made off with the shepherds. We'll be dusting the tree later for prints.



Here's the new nativity scene as it stands now. Mysteriously, in the place of the shepherds, now stands a strange figure in contemporary dress, maybe half the size of Joseph and the farm animals. This is strange!

Geeky map stuff

I'm crazy about maps. I've been known to pick up a map, with no travel plans in mind, and chart out a route from say Paris to Bordeaux (passing through Tours), or Berlin to Prague (definitely via Dresden). Don't ask me why. I don't want to get in a car and actually drive these routes. I'd prefer to make the journey in my head, I guess. Still, I can't resist picking up a map. It's such a satisfying read. Particularly ancient maps with oddball names for today's cities, or regions or states.

Old Italian maps, I find, are the best because the landlord has changed so much over the years. Italy has only been Italy as we know it today since the 1860s. Before that it was a jumble of states, administered by powerful merchants (as in the case of Tuscany, Genoa, etc) or it was under papal rule.

Where am I going with this?

Well, Xtina and I just received an incredible gift -- a 17th Century map of what is today Le Marche. At the time, it was under the greasy thumb of the pope. Le Marche (or most of it) was known as "Marca d'Ancona olim Picenum," a convenient way of amassing the four provinces of Le Marche into one territory for the pope. The map is an incredibly rich hand-drawn piece of art. It's not exactly accurate, but it's close enough. At the time, Amandola was called just "Mandola" and for some reason Sarnano was shifted about 15 km to the northeast. Close enough. The sea is not the Adriatic, but instead the Golfo di Venetia. Urbino, Rafaello's hometown, is a province unto itself.

See for yourself. The first pic is of the entire region; the second a close-up of the Amandola (here noted as "Mandola) region. Yes, I'm a total map geek.

UPDATE 1 - Dateline: Decadence

Buon Natale, dear readers!

Just a quick note to say Adam, always the danger-loving reporter, was alert enough to take notes from our meal at Arzak last week, I report today from Perugia, still digesting the Xmas guinea fowl. His report (with pics) is here.

ISB will be back later in the week with an end-of-year Best of.

Hijacking the sun

How much would you pay to harness the power of the sun to keep you warm in these dark days of winter, or illuminate the streets enough for a noontime stroll? It seems cruel to even put a pricetag on such a thing. But then you probably don't live in Viganella, a northern Italian village high up in the Alps. Viganella is famous for receiving no direct sunlight for a 10-week stretch each year beginning in mid-November.

This year, the town got together and funded a 100,000 euro project to bring the sun to its dark corner during the winter months. How, did they achieve such a feat of engineering know-how and scientific ingenuity? They stuck a massive, ugly mirror on the far side of the valley to bounce the suns rays onto the little town. The Beeb has the story here.

In case you're wondering how it works: (again, courtesy of the BBC)