Pins matching Italy

Mount Vesuvius threw a column of superheated ash and gas 33 km into the sky, then collapsed it into pyroclastic surges that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. The remains of more than 1,500 people have been recovered from the two towns.

Genoese galleys carrying plague from the Black Sea put in at Messina in Sicily, and the disease went ashore with them. Over the next seven years it killed perhaps a third of Europe - up to 50 million people - and took two centuries to be made good.

Venice's Baroque votive basilica, its foundations built on more than a million driven wooden piles in the lagoon mud, is consecrated by Patriarch Alvise Sagredo. The city still marks the day every November 21st as the Festa della Salute.

Floriano Francesconi opened his coffee house under the arcades of Piazza San Marco in 1720, making it one of the oldest cafés in continuous business anywhere. It admitted women when other Venetian cafés did not, which is how Casanova came to be among its regulars, and its orchestra still plays to the square.

Port'Alba began in 1738 as a street stall selling pizza to passers-by and took premises as a sit-down pizzeria a century later, which is the claim behind its billing as the world's first pizzeria. It still bakes in a wood oven lined with Vesuvian stone, on the street of booksellers under the old city gate.

Antico Caffè Greco opened in 1760 a few steps from the Spanish Steps and became the room where the Grand Tour sat down - Keats, Byron, Goethe, Stendhal and Casanova among the names attached to it. It is the oldest cafe in Rome, but it lost a long court fight with its landlord over the rent: after the Court of Cassation upheld the lease termination, police sealed the premises it had occupied for more than two and a half centuries on 8 October 2025.

In 1821, landowner Marco Borrini and French businessman Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Henraux founded the Henraux marble company in Tuscany’s Apuan Alps. It still works the Monte Altissimo quarries first opened by Michelangelo in the 1500s and shown in Stone Men.

Pietro Ferrero's firm is officially born in Alba, Piedmont, on 14 May 1946, months after his cheap hazelnut paste Giandujot became a hit in post-war Italy.

A family-run trattoria near the Pantheon devoted to Roman classics.

The hazelnut and cocoa spread that grew out of Pietro Ferrero's post-war Giandujot is first jarred as Nutella at Ferrero's plant in Alba on 20 April 1964.

Pirelli introduced the P Zero on the Lancia Delta S4 Stradale, the tire that gave rise to the Ultra High Performance category; the first generation followed in 1987 to equip the Ferrari F40. It launched the company's 'Perfect Fit' strategy of bespoke tires for premium automakers.

A deli, wine shop and restaurant serving Roman dishes alongside cheeses and cured meats.

Heinz Beck’s fine dining above Rome at the Rome Cavalieri hotel.

Carnival Vista, a 133,500-ton ship carrying more than 4,600 passengers, was delivered by the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy on 28 April 2016.

A three-year, Tod's-funded restoration of the Colosseum's facade - the first phase of a longer project - wrapped up with a ceremony attended by Italy's prime minister, revealing the monument's stone cleaned of two millennia of grime.

Ed Sheeran achieved the #2 music ranking of 2017 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. Ed Sheeran's chart-wide hit sat just behind Despacito on the 2017 FIMI year-end singles list.

Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee achieved the #1 music ranking of 2017 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. Luis Fonsi's Despacito featuring Daddy Yankee topped FIMI's 2017 annual singles ranking, ahead of an otherwise Italian-led field, and spent 14 weeks at number one on the weekly Italian chart that year.

J-Ax & Fedez ft. T-Pain achieved the #3 music ranking of 2017 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. The J-Ax and Fedez collaboration with American singer T-Pain was Italy's third-biggest single of 2017, a summer rap-pop hit from their joint album.

Ed Sheeran achieved the #2 music ranking of 2018 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. Ed Sheeran's ballad was the second-ranked single on Italy's 2018 FIMI year-end chart, continuing its run from the previous autumn.

Sfera Ebbasta ft. Quavo achieved the #3 music ranking of 2018 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. Sfera Ebbasta's trap single with American rapper Quavo finished third on the 2018 FIMI year-end singles chart.

Takagi & Ketra ft. Giusy Ferreri & Sean Kingston achieved the #1 music ranking of 2018 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. Takagi & Ketra's Amore e capoeira, with Giusy Ferreri and Sean Kingston, was number one on FIMI's 2018 annual singles chart, ahead of Ed Sheeran's Perfect and Sfera Ebbasta's Cupido.

Pedro Capó ft. Farruko achieved the #3 music ranking of 2019 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. The reggaeton remix of Pedro Capó's Latin pop song ranked third on Italy's 2019 FIMI year-end singles chart.

Lamborghini unveiled the Huracán Evo, a 640-horsepower V10 supercar built by hand at its Sant'Agata Bolognese factory in Italy.

Coez achieved the #2 music ranking of 2019 on Italy's FIMI Top of the Music. Coez's title track from his album of the same name was Italy's second-biggest single of 2019 on the FIMI year-end list. Single date per Italian Wikipedia's album article (album released 2019-03-29).