The Local

After we published our own recommendations of some of the best books to read for those considering a move to Italy, The Local's readers weighed in with suggestions of your own. ...

If you’re plaing on upping sticks and moving to Italy, there are some reads that can help you get a useful insight into the nuances of life in the country. Please tell us your own recommendations. ...

Life in Milan can be pretty chaotic at times, but the city's ‘literary cafes’ are the perfect places to wind down. ...

Rome's Libreria Croce, which shut down in 2011. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP Italy will introduce tax credits for bookshops, with independent stores eligible for the biggest breaks. It’s a bid to help save Italy’s bookshops, which “are at continual risk of closure all across the country,” according to Culture Minister Dario Franceschini. The scheme, which the senate budget committee approved this week, will reduce council, property and waste taxes on bookshop owners. If they don’t own their premises, they can also claim a tax credit on their rent. Independent shops will be eligible for up to €20,000 in tax credits, while chain stores are limited to €10,000. ...

Project Director Rebecca Benefiel uses an iPad to take a photograph of a drawing in Herculaneum. Photo: Ancient Graffiti ProjectNo site in the world has been continually excavated for so long as Pompeii, the city that lay buried after being destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted, until its accidental...

Europe's refugee crisis is moving from newsprint to the pages of children's books, as writers try to help parents help their kids understand an often disturbing drama shaping their world. Distressing images of African migrants being plucked from heaving seas or the coffin-strewn aftermath o...

A Twitter account claiming to belong to Anita Raja on Tuesday night "confirmed" media reports that the translator was behind the successful Elena Ferrante novels, sending Italian media into a frenzy. But by Wednesday moing, it seemed that the account was a fake. The account, was created on Tuesday evening, with a tweet saying it would only stay open temporarily to allow for an "explanation".It used the handle @AnitaRajaSta - 'Sta' being an abbreviation for the suame of Raja's husband, writer Domenico Staone - and followed 48 accounts of joualists and news organizations (including The Local Italy). "I confirm it. I'm Elena Ferrante. But this doesn't change anything regarding readers' relation...

Ferrante gained fame for writing about the working class districts of Naples. Photo: Carlo Raso/FlickrOne of literature's unresolved mysteries appears to have been cracked with the unmasking of the true identity of Italian publishing sensation Elena Ferrante. In its wake, a literary row erupted on Monday over joualistic ethics and writers' right to protect their identities and the personal back stories that may, or may not, inform their work.Claudio Gatti, an Italian investigative joualist, says he has established that Ferrante is a pen name for Anita Raja, a Rome-based translator who is married to a well-known novelist, Domenico Staone.Ferrante's best-selling novels, particularly her Naples...

An image of a customer meeting a prostitute. Photo: Italian investigatorsA court in Rome has handed down an unusual penalty to the client of an underage prostitute, ordering him to buy her 30 books on the theme of women's dignity, Italian media reported Friday. In addition to a two-year jail sentence, the uamed man, 35, will be required to give the 15-year-old victim works including novels by Virginia Woolf, Ae Frank's diary and the poems of Emily Dickinson, as well as two feminist-themed films. Judge Paola Di Nicola's ruling follows an investigation launched in 2013 into a Rome-based prostitution ring that pimped two girls aged 14 and 15 in the upmarket Parioli suburb of the Italian capita...