Angela Marotta

At fifteen, my parents uprooted me from my Canadian life and brought me “back” to Italy, as they called it. But how do you return to a place you have never actually lived in? I felt an unexpected paradox. I belonged to a place I’d never fully known. And yet, through my parents’ stories, the connection was already there even though I barely understood the country until I walked its streets myself. Growing up with first-generation immigrant parents in Canada, we had a clear sense of what our...

Discovering Jewish Italy Beyond the Crowds. Over-tourism has become a growing and constant concern, with long queues surrounding monuments and streets flooded with people. Italy today can feel like a country almost carried away by its own popularity. Despite this, Italy still holds countless undiscovered, unbeaten paths in places intrinsically woven into the historical and cultural fabric, no less Italian and undeniably part of its heritage. A History Older Than Italy Itself Even in the...

When I was young and living in Rome, my friends and I didn't plan much. We declared it a day for breakfast in Florence and set off in the middle of the night because it was exciting. Someone brought a map. Someone ignored the map. Someone else promised to navigate but sang the same song on repeat instead. We took a wrong exit, argued in good fun about who missed the sign, and laughed so hard the windows fogged. We rolled into Florence as the city was waking up. Our tired faces crowded the bar...