The Local

Italy's Senate was set to vote on next year's budget on December 23rd as the govement made a last-minute amendment worth €3.5 billion, with significant changes to infrastructure spending and pensions. ...

Tourists were waed to expect long delays and disruption to high-speed services throughout August as Italy's rail management company aounced “enhancement works” taking place on many major routes. ...

Snapping a picture of the tree in Milan's central square. Photo: Marco Bertorello/AFP From north to south and east to west, Italy's towns and cities have had a festive makeover ahead of the Christmas holidays. We've gathered together the best snaps of the most magical displays from across the country to help you get into the Christmas spirit -- and maybe offer inspiration for a pre-holiday trip. Rome This mode Christmas tree can be found by the iconic Spanish Steps in the centre of the capital, just a short walk away from one of the main shopping districts. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP The tree and lifesize nativity scene at St Peter's Square is on...

Alitalia cabin crew uniforms presented by designer Ettore Bilotta last summer. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP Italian carrier Alitalia, grappling with debt and fighting to compete with low-cost rivals, aounced on Wednesday it has hired the Alberta Ferretti fashion house to redesign its staff uniforms, 18 months after new outfits were unveiled. The "special collection" will combine "elegance and convenience to ensure that all persoel, both ground and flight staff, are comfortable," the airline said in a statement.It added that wear and tear had prompted the need to replace the current uniforms with "a brand-new collection created by a world-renowned Italian designer".The compan...

Delays on the railway line between Fiumicino Airport and Rome Termini are affecting travel plans during the busiest tourist season of the year in the capital. A train has been held up for over an hour between the stations of Magliana and Ponte Galeria on the Rome Termini - Fiumicino airport railway....

Prime minister Paolo Gentiloni pictured speaking on Wednesday. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFPItaly's govement has delayed a parliamentary vote on a citizenship rights bill as tensions rise over the number of migrants arriving on the country's shores. The proposal to give children bo on Italian soil to ...

Designer Maurizio Montalti poses with some of the everyday objects he has made from mushrooms. Photo: Sophie Mignon/AFPWhat is nicer after a long day than sinking your feet into comfortable slippers? But one Italian designer is hoping to show that shoes made from mushrooms can be just as cosy. A pai...

You may have noticed that a few things have changed around here. Introducing what? Our new design! We’ve changed the look of our site! Have you? Yes, we have. And it’s taken six months of extremely hard work so don’t pretend you didn’t notice. Oh. Thought something looked different. Actually, everything is different. We’ve completely rebuilt our sites to be ‘mobile first’, more secure and 100% responsive using Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology, not to mention adding a - Yeah, whatever - how is this better for me? Well, there are two specific improvements that you will hopefully appreciate. The first is that our new design allows us to present a lot more of our content to our...

The snowshoe was just a few thousand years older than thought. Photo: Roman Clara/Bolzano regional govementA snowshoe discovered over a decade ago in Italy’s Dolomite mountains and previously thought to belong to a nineteenth century cattle farmer is actually nearly six thousand years old, it has been revealed. The shoe was found in 2003 in the melting snow of Gurgler Eisjoch glacier by Simone Bartolini, a cartographer for the Military Geographic Institute in Florence. Bartolini was mapping the Austrian-Italian border in South Tyrol, a German-speaking area of northe Italy. Assuming the shoe to be about a hundred years old, Bartolini displayed the shoe in his office as a memento. He only rea...