No Hard Feelings, Right?

Seven centuries after getting kicked out, Dante Alighieri is being invited back to Florence.

The council approved a motion that called for the city's mayor to organize "a public rehabilitation" for Dante, who was sentenced in 1302 to exile from Florence under threat of death, ANSA reported Tuesday.

The motion, which passed by a 19-5 vote, calls for the mayor to head a public ceremony where the sentence would be revoked and the poet would be given the city's highest honor. The award would be accepted by one of Dante's descendants, the motion said. [Link]

For what it's worth, Dante himself seems quite content to stay where he is.

That Brochure Sure Looks Familiar

While in Europe, brothers Frank and Bill Randa stopped by the tiny Italian village where their grandparents had lived before immigrating in 1890. No one they spoke to the first day had heard of the Randas. The cheaper hotels had no rooms, so they ended up in the most expensive establishment in Tiriolo.

It turned out this was the only hotel in town that gave its guests a color brochure about the history of the village, featuring a photo of a woman and two girls dressed in a special costume made by the women of Tiriolo.

That sure looked like their grandmother Giovanna and two of their aunts in the picture, Frank and Bill thought. But how could that be?

The girls had been born in America and had never set foot in Tiriolo.

They found a cousin, Carmen DeAngelis, the next day, who confirmed that Giovanna and her daughters did appear on the brochure.

"But that picture had to be taken in America," Bill said. "How did it get here?"

Carmen smiled and invited the Randa brothers to sit down while she got something out of her bedroom closet. She walked back into the room carrying a handful of pictures, including one of a 2-year-old boy.

"Frank," Bill said. "Isn't that you?" [Link]

The Family Chariot

Forty-two relatives of Isidoro Vannozzi gathered Monday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit a former family treasure—a 2,600-year-old Etruscan chariot Isidoro discovered in 1898 while digging a cellar in Monteleone, Italy. He stored it in his barn, where his grandson—Lou Giovannetti's father—used to play on it when he was a boy.

"Dad would be amazed. I'm sure he would. I don't think he realized that much about it when he was a young kid playing on it."

Neither, apparently, did Isidoro, who -- according to lore -- sold the chariot for two cows and 30 terra-cotta tiles before it was shipped off to America. Other accounts say Isidoro made a tidy profit on the sale.

"We keep talking about Isidoro -- he was a farmer; he gave the chariot away. But the money he got was a lot. He wasn't stupid," Bill Giovannetti said. [Link]

[Photo Credit: Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory... by Mary Harrsch]

The Turks of Tuscany

A just-released DNA study appears to prove that Greek historian Herodotus was right about the origins of the ancient Etruscans of Northern Italy: they really did come from Turkey.

The Tuscan samples were taken from individuals who had lived in the area for at least three generations, and were selected on the basis of their surnames, which were required to have a geographical distribution not extending beyond the linguistic area of sampling. The samples were compared with data from modern Turkish, South Italian, European and Middle-Eastern populations.

"We think that our research provides convincing proof that Herodotus was right", says Professor [Alberto] Piazza, "and that the Etruscans did indeed arrive from ancient Lydia. However, to be 100% certain we intend to sample other villages in Tuscany, and also to test whether there is a genetic continuity between the ancient Etruscans and modern-day Tuscans. This will have to be done by extracting DNA from fossils; this has been tried before but the technique for doing so has proved to be very difficult." [Link]

Call Him 'Merisi da Milano'

Michelangelo Merisi was better known as "Caravaggio," the name of his hometown. Now the residents of that northern Italian town are dismayed to learn that the Late Renaissance painter was born in Milan, and baptized at the church of Santa Maria della Passarella.

Leafing through volumes of church records, Vittorio Pirami, a retired employee of Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest conglomerate, claimed a "special light" guided him to a page which records the baptism of Caravaggio.

"Today, the 30th, Michel Angelo, the son of Mr Fermo Merisi and Mrs Lucia Aratori, was baptised. Mr Francesco Sessa was present," read the Latin document.

Caravaggio's mayor says he can't understand why Milan would try to steal their most famous citizen.

"Perhaps they are lacking a famous 16th century artist to call their own," he said. "This is Italy, there is probably someone who has a birth certificate claiming Leonardo Da Vinci was also from Milan." [Link]

What's Sicilian for 'Carpetbagger'?

Frank Cannonito, a retired math professor from California, is running for a city council seat in Sicily, even though he's never been there.

Cannonito's father, who was from Palermo, immigrated to the United States in 1910, and through that link his son holds dual U.S. and Italian citizenship. There's no residency requirement for him to run in Palermo, and he acknowledges the ticket is unlikely to win any seats. [Link]

Inbreeding Can Be Healthy

Residents of the tiny town of Stoccareddo, Italy, eat all the bad stuff that doctors warn us about. But they rarely develop heart disease or diabetes, and often live into their 90s. What's their secret?

While at first glance nothing seems to be unusual about the town, a closer look reveals almost everyone is related and shares the same last name of Bau (pronounced Bow-ooh). According to Amerigo Bau, the unofficial town historian, the first Bau family arrived in Stoccareddo from Denmark about 800 years ago and ever since, Baus have been marrying Baus.

"It happened because the town was in the mountains," explains Amerigo Bau. "It was isolated, and so the likelihood of marrying another Bau was quite strong."

Most Baus tended to marry more distant relatives and not first cousins, which can cause genetic defects. [Link]