Free Republic

Church's taxation enrages Italians By Bruce Johnston LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ROME - The people and politicians of a Tuscan village are in revolt against their bishop after he reinstated a medieval church property tax at heavy new levels. In protest, many devout Roman Catholics are boycotting Mass and withholding collection payments. The bills began arriving over Christmas at the homes of hundreds of property owners in Terricciola, a picturesque village of 4,000 people that sits in rolling, vine-covered hills near Pisa. Many are for large sums, some as high as $2,000. The diocese of Volterra insists that the money is...

It was six in the morning local time. The aeroplane's in-flight monitor read "Welcome to Ashkhabad". But something was wrong. Because on either side of the airbus as it had taxied to a halt had been burnt out fighter jets and bombed buildings, the wreckage of a relatively low-level but long-term conflict. If this was Ashkhabad, capital of Turkmenistan, we'd all be missing a big story. Kabul remains a city of destroyed buildings. In fact it was Kabul, the Afghan capital. The brass band of the Turkish Army reached up into overhead lockers, fretting over their creased uniforms. And...

Discovering Dante's Damsel in Distress Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News A Majolica Jug: Missing Link? Dec. 1, 2003 — A 14th century jug unearthed in a Tuscan castle might shed new light on one of the most touching and mysterious female figures in Dante's Divine Comedy, according to Italian archaeologists. Legend has always linked Castel di Pietra, a castle near the village of Gavorrano in the Tuscan Maremma, with the sad fate of Pia dei Tolomei, a lady supposedly imprisoned there and then murdered by her jealous husband. "Do thou remember me who am the Pia/ Siena made me, unmade me...

Ghost fleet 'shows Pisa was an ancient Venice' By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 22/11/2003) The chance discovery of a Roman "ghost fleet" buried in mud just outside Pisa has led experts to conclude that the city was built on a lagoon much like an early Venice. Archaeologists believe that traces of a community dating back to a pre-Roman era, a sort of "Etruscan Venice", may lie beneath the ships. The end of the lagoon civilisation may also offer clues to the fate of modern Venice - the waterways were silted up by violent floods over a long period. "The...

Over the centuries the belief lingered on that here had been a great, wealthy, powerful commercial city that dominated the mouth of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic, a city of luxury and splendor, a kind of ancestor and predecessor of Venice, founded more than a thousand years later. Classical scholars also knew about Spina, for ancient literary sources indicated that there must once have existed a thriving maritime trading settlement of great economic importance, until the Celtic invasion of the Po valley destroyed it... The final key to its ultimate discovery came from aerial photography. Some...

Yet even the catalog is wary of answering the question central to the "mystery" of the Etruscans: where did they come from? Did they migrate from Greece or beyond? Did they travel down from the Alps? Or, as their pre- Indo-European language might suggest, were they a people indigenous to today's Tuscany who suddenly acquired the tools for rapid development? Such are the pros and cons of each theory, the French historian Dominique Briquel notes in his catalog essay, that "the problem must be held to be unresolved." ...[T]hey spoke the same language, which also existed in a written...

50 ancient tombs uncovered From correspondents in Athens July 18, 2004 ARCHEOLOGISTS have discovered 50 tombs dating back to the late Minoan period, around 1400 BC, and containing a number of artifacts on the Greek island of Crete, ANA news agency reported today. The tombs were part of the once powerful ancient city of Kydonia, which was destroyed at the time but later rebuilt. The oldest among them contained bronze weapons, jewellery and vases and are similar to the tombs of fallen soldiers of the Mycenaean type from mainland Greece, said the head of the excavations, Maria Vlazaki. The more...