Italy Tuscany Culture Summer Tour 2016

Period: From 1th April 2016 to 30th October 2016.
Duration: 12days (11nights)
Purpose: Allow students to experience the world-famous cultural monuments province of Tuscany, a long historical background, living next to a 2000 years old town of San Gimignano near Florence, visiting wineries, wine rural experience, manufacturing olive oil and Italian cooking lesson, visit the world-famous ancient towns: Pisa, Florence, Siena and Lucca.

Arrival airport: PISA or FLORENCE, Italy
To bring: leisure clothing, sports shoe and swimming suit
Cost: USD 3800 / person, including 11 nights stay in winery farm (only double rooms available), breakfast, lunch (simple meal) and dinner, airport pick up, daily program, activities, transportation, 9 hours Italian lesson (in cooperation with Istituto Europeo Florence) and English, Chinese and German tour guide. By request also Art and Music lesson are available.

Flight ticket to Italy, all entrance tickets for museums and recreation area, insurances, meals and drinks besides 3 main meals per day are not including in the price.

Contact us! 

info@istitutoeuropeo.it - www.istitutoeuropeo.it

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Jeanne Theriault Photography Series: "Unexpected Florence"

Istituto Europeo is very excited to collaborate with Jeanne Theriault and display some of her unique views of Florence. Jeanne resides in Jacksonville, Florida during most of the year, but loves coming and staying in Florence during the summer. For her this city offers many things, and for her photography, the constant life and exploratory nature of the city is everything she could ask for.

What do you like about Florence, what makes it different from Jacksonville?
There is life in Florence. When I stay here, I like to rent an apartment, not stay at a hotel. Because there isn't air conditioning, you have to open your windows, and that is when you hear everything happening. I can hear people talking to each other on the street below, music coming from the apartment across from me. The other night there was an accident, and I could see and hear all these people helping and acting like a real community.

Do you have any favorite places or things to do here?
I love walking around the streets and finding new places and meeting people. I can walk for 6 hours a day! Today I walked into a private area to take a picture, and got caught. But the guys who told me to leave were nice, and I got to have human interaction. That's a great thing about Florence, is that you can talk with anyone and learn so much. I really love the neighborhoods on the Oltrano side of the river. There is so much to discover there.

Can you tell us a little bit about your photography? Do you have specific subjects?
For my photography I like to give myself a theme. Now i've been focusing on pairs of things: like two vespas next to each other. I'm also taking a lot of pictures of things I find on the streets. They are little pieces of the life, and things that people don't usually look at. I don't like photographing the usual things, like big scenic views, because those are just part of Florence. It's the little, unexpected things that give Florence it's character.

What do you do with your photography?
Well I would like to set up an online shop for people to buy them, but I don't have that yet. I am a teacher, so that's my job, but I love doing photography on the side. I give some of my pictures as gifts to people too. One time, I took a photo of this giant fish on display at a restaurant here in Florence. It turned out really great, so I framed it and gave it to them. Then, the other day I walked past the restaurant and they had my photo in their window display! It was fantastic seeing it there.

Here are a few introductory photographs that show the "Unexpected Florence":

"Trash Bins Behind a Palazzo"

"The Mystery of the Abandoned Bicycle"

"Holy Vespa!"

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Vacanze... Italiane

 di Ilaria Gelichi


Giugno sta per finire, l’estate è già cominciata (anche se non si direbbe, visto il clima degli ultimi giorni) e per gli italiani si avvicina il momento delle vacanze. Luglio e agosto sono da sempre, per tradizione, i mesi delle ferie estive: agosto è solitamente il mese in cui le fabbriche, gli uffici e i negozi chiudono, le città d’arte tendono a svuotarsi dei loro abitanti per popolarsi invece di numerosi turisti. In questo mese, al di fuori dei centri storici delle città, è infatti molto difficile trovare dei negozi aperti. Per i ragazzi invece le vacanze scolastiche iniziano a metà giugno e terminano a metà settembre.

Già da maggio però, quando le giornate si allungano e le temperature si alzano, gli italiani iniziano a trascorrere il fine settimana fuori casa, generalmente al mare. Chi ha la possibilità di pernottare fuori parte il venerdì sera o il sabato mattina, per tornare poi la domenica sera; gli altri si accontentano di una gita al mare in giornata, magari in treno per evitare il traffico delle autostrade. Un’altra destinazione delle gite fuori porta del weekend è la campagna, per sfuggire temporaneamente alla calura cittadina e rilassarsi dopo una settimana di lavoro.

Tornando alle ferie vere e proprie, tradizionalmente gli italiani amano trascorrerle con la famiglia fuori dalle città. Le mete preferite sono le località balneari, dove molti hanno una seconda casa, anche se tanti continuano a preferire la montagna o la campagna. Fino a una decina di anni fa, era normale trascorrere almeno un mese in vacanza, talvolta anche l’intera stagione estiva. Oggigiorno le vacanze degli italiani si sono progressivamente accorciate: è sempre più raro trovare qualcuno che può permettersi di fare un mese di ferie, mentre la norma è concedersi una o al massimo due settimane. Chi non possiede una seconda casa ne affitta una, oppure prenota una camera in un hotel o in una pensione; altri amano invece spostarsi in camper o in roulotte e trascorrere le proprie vacanze in campeggio. Le località balneari più gettonate dell’Italia centro-settentrionale sono Rimini e Riccione sulla costa adriatica oppure Viareggio e la costa livornese sul Mar Tirreno. Altre mete balneari sono alcune regioni del Sud (Campania, Puglia, Calabria, ecc.), mentre località come la Sardegna, l’Argentario, Capri e Portofino sono località più costose, preferite da politici o vip.

Una volta arrivati al mare, con l’auto carica di valigie, l’obiettivo principale degli italiani è il relax. La maggior parte della giornata viene trascorsa in spiaggia: si prende il sole, si fa il bagno o semplicemente ci si rilassa sotto l’ombrellone, magari leggendo un libro. I più attivi si dilettano praticando beach volley, ping-pong e altre attività da spiaggia. Alla sera invece solitamente ci si scatena: si va a cena fuori (magari dopo un aperitivo sulla spiaggia con gli amici) e poi a ballare in discoteca oppure a passeggio sul lungomare, dove i negozi sono spesso aperti anche dopo cena – un’occasione in più per fare shopping!

A questo punto non mi resta che augurarvi: buone vacanze in Italia!!!

Athens and Florence: the Foundational Relation of Western Culture

Piazza della Signoria shines in the sun of June. The severe solidity of Palazzo Vecchio, the graceful and spacious arches of the Loggia de' Lanzi, the crowd of classical and Renaissance statues staring at the passersby with their eloquently silent gaze- all this conjures up a sense of harmony, lightness and luminosity as one could find only on the Acropolis, when the summer sun and its reflections on the Aegean immerse the Parthenon and the temple of Poseidon in a bath of light. Florence as the new Athens: the proofs of this equation are under the very eyes of the one who looks at the city on the Arno through that idea of beauty first incarnated on Greek soil. One would have no difficulty thinking that Plato would have found himself at ease under the porch of the Uffizi or strolling along the benches of the Arno: he would have admired here that same sense of equilibrium and profoundly discrete beauty that nourished his soul in his native Attica, where he spent his days walking out and about with Socrates through the Stoá Poekíle and the Agorá. We know for sure that his alleged reincarnation -if we want to agree with Cardinal Bessarion- enjoyed Florence very much. Georgios Gemistós, called the Plethon, lived here for four years during the period of the Council of Ferrara and Florenze (1437-39), teaching at the Studium on the differences between Aristotle and Plato and reintroducing to the West the texts of the latter. He was among those Greek scholars and prelates who came as the delegation from the fading Byzantine Empire to discuss the re-unification of the Eastern and Western churches. When he arrived, the power of the Medici had just begun and Florence was not yet very far from the violence and austerity of its Middle Ages. The city was not yet adorned with statues purposefully remindful of Classical Antiquity and the dome of Brunelleschi had still to gentrify the fierce skyline formed by the multitude of spear-like towers. Born in Greece and raised on the texts of divine Plato, Plethon is among those, who bringing Platonism back to the West contributed immensely to giving Umanesimo its form. Benozzo Gozzoli represented him in the center of his fresco in the Cappella de' Magi: the philosopher stands side by side to the artist, as if the latter wanted to underline a spiritual offspring from the former. Plethon stands out from the middle of the crowd for his intense look and his penetrating eyes that provoke the observer. He was indeed a father-like figure to many geniuses who populated that period: Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Poliziano, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Botticelli, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo all fed and debated (sometimes harshly) on the rediscovered words of Plato and Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius opened up to them by Plethon: from this fermentation the idea of homo copula mundi finally came out as an unshakable cornerstone, on which Europe and the Western world founded its astonishing development. Maybe there is no more powerful symbol of this new spirit and its view on man and the world than Michelangelo's David: a miracle of beauty, balance and nobility incarnated in the decisive and strong gaze of a young boy, who stands in front of Palazzo Vecchio as an image of the daring attitude of this new Athens that is Florence. Constantinople was then agonizing, the whole of Greece was already under foreign yoke: yet, in its ultimate struggle the Greek world gave us its most delicate and fruitful flower. Without Greece there would have been no Renaissance, no Michelangelo, no Ficino, no Botticelli. Maybe, it is worth keeping this in mind, in this period in which Greece seems again caught in an agonizing struggle.