Towering above the quaint tile roofs of Valdagno. a village in Northern Italy, are two imposing structures—a huge textile mill, now being enlarged into Europe's biggest spinning and weaving plant, and an eight-story grey marble mansion. Both belong to the Marzotto family. So do the village's hospitals, orphanages, parks, cafes, hotels, shops and just about everything else, including the railroad station and the 20-mile electric railway that links Valdagno with the outside world. As feudal as such a family fief ...

Since the time of Phoenician sailors and Greek settlers, Sicily's Most coveted resources have been the sun and the wind. These days, drive nearly any stretch of the Mediterranean island and you'll likely come across wind farms, looming like giants from behind the mountains. In some parts of Sicily, solar-power plants alternate with farmers' fields; in some cases the two are even combined in photovoltaic-covered greenhouses. Italy is now the third-largest producer of wind power in Europe and its production of solar ...

Xenophobes in homogenous European countries often complain that immigrants will erase their most precious cultural norms. The race riots in southern Italy last weekend may be one indicator that change is inevitable, as African immigrants who don't live by the country's infamous omert code of silence violently protested against the powerful Mafia clans that control their lives, says Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah, an anti-Mob book that earned him both critical praise and a 24-hour police guard. ...

For days beforehand, news stories went round the world direly reporting that nothing less than freedom itself was at stake in Sicily. And as the time came for Sicilians to elect a new regional assembly, Christian Democratic orators by the Fiat-ful raced about the island tirelessly echoing the warning of Italy's Premier Antonio Segni: "We must be on our guard if we are not to awaken in the bear hug of Communism." Last week, in hundreds of arid mountain villages ...

Only eight major nations in the world, all Catholic, do not allow divorce. They are Italy, Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Paraguay. Of the eight, the one closest to ending its prohibition is the home of the church it self. Italy's Chamber of Deputies last week began full debate on a bill that would allow civil divorce for one of seven reasons. Parliamentary observers predict that the bill will pass, probably before the end of the year. Divorces ...

When France temporarily blocked trains from Italy headed to French coastal destinations over the weekend, the move marked a dramatic escalation in the two countries' spat over how to handle migrants fleeing unrest in North Africa — and raised legal questions about fundamental travel accords long embraced many European Union member states. But the clashes over the trains carrying Tunisian passengers from Italy in to France — and E.U. points beyond — are even more significant in ...

Greatest single news event of 1938 took place on September 29, when four statesmen met at the Führerhaus, in Munich, to redraw the map of Europe. The three visiting statesmen at that historic conference were Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain, Premier Edouard Daladier of France, and Dictator Benito Mussolini of Italy. But by all odds the dominating figure at Munich was the German host, Adolf Hitler. Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & ...

Some students arrive in Bologna, Italy, with just a secret indulgence — without shop locations, business plans or $70,000 on hand for must-have machinery. They head to Carpigiani Gelato University to learn how to turn sacks of sugar and crates of oranges, kiwis, lemons and persimmons into spoonfuls of earthly bliss. Gelato is the ultimate refinement of a Mediterranean flavored-ice tradition that supposedly dates back to the ancient Egyptians. In the past half-century, Italians have designed machines — engineered and ...

Italy's influential Northern League Party has stood out over the past decade for its particular knack in finding new ways of offending people based on country of origin and color of skin. In 2003, Umberto Bossi, founder of the party, which once espoused separatism, told an interviewer that police should open fire on the boatloads of undocumented Africans arriving on Italian shores, calling the would-be immigrants "bingo-bongos." Other Northern League pols have proposed everything from separate trains ...

In his 1934 travel book Beyond the Mexique Bay, Aldous Huxley compared Guatemala's Lake Atitlan to Italy's Lake Como. The Italian body of water, he wrote, "touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque." Atitlan, however, "is Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing." Guatemalans have interpreted this declaration by the author of Brave New World to mean that Lake Atitlan is the most beautiful lake in the ...