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“The giuggiole, or jujube fruit, resembles an olive and tastes, at first, like a woody apple. After withering off the vine, it takes on a sweeter flavor, closer to a honeyed fig. Among the medieval elite, the fruit was so popular that it gave birth to an idiom: "andare in brodo di giuggiole"--- "To go in jujube broth"--- defined in one of the earliest Italian phrase books as living in a state of bliss. Every fall, the handful of families that still cultivate the fruit in the village gather in medieval garb to celebrate the jujube and feast on the fine liquors, jams, and blissful sweet broth they create from it. Italy is full of places like Arquà Petrarca. Microclimates and artisanal techniques become the basis for obscure local specialties celebrated in elaborate festivals from Trapani to Trieste. In Mezzago, outside Milan, its rare pink asparagus, turned red by soil rich in iron and limited sunlight. Sicily has its Avola almonds and peculiar blood-red oranges, which gain their deep color on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna. Calabria has 'nduja sausage and the Diamante citron, central to the Jewish feast of Sukkot.”

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Book:The Best American Food Writing 2023: Eye-Opening Essays on Culture, Inequality, and Justice
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“But life seemed fuller, more populated than it had a year ago. She went to exhibitions and films, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, and when she’d saved enough of Neil’s money, which was her money, she went on a solo trip to Italy, role-playing a character in a Forster novel. In Florence, she read performatively in cafés and sat in the cool of exquisite churches, straining for some kind of spiritual feeling. In Rome, she visited the Non-Catholic Cemetery and sought out the graves of Keats and Shelley and found herself moved and mortified by being moved.”

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Book:You Are Here
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“An Italian romance may begin in a gondola amid the marvel of Venice, but a traveler looking for the great stories of Italy will board a sailboat amid the gale force of mistral winds, confront the rough seas and warnings of “the insane mountains” that have addled visitors for thousands of years, and then traverse the Strait of Bonifacio in search of Sardinia.”

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Book:In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy
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“In fact, it might be more accurate to speak of “le Sardegne,” as in plural, instead of “la Sardegna,” a singular entity, with a singu- lar culture or set of ways. The “fundamental misunderstanding” in the Mediterranean, as historian Abulafia wrote in The Great Sea, was the illusive search for some sense of unity and clarity in such a place. Instead, he suggested, “we should note diversity,” among the shores in a “constant state of flux.”

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Book:In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy
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“One map, titled “Mediterranean without Borders,” by French cartographer Sabine Réthoré, turns our view ninety degrees to the right, the “west” facing up—imagine North Africa to the left and Europe into Turkey to the right with equal stature, the Levant stretching to Egypt at the bottom, and the Rock of Gibraltar at top. Our perspective shifts, the Mediterranean Sea unfolding almost like a lake, the shores mirroring each other along these ancient corridors dotted by islands and waterways. It’s a busy thoroughfare. The Mediterranean is “probably the most vigorous place of interaction,” as eminent historian David Abulafia observed, “between different societies on the face of this planet.” There in the upper reaches, the island of Sardinia sits in the middle, a focal point of entry and inspection. Instead of being on the periphery of empires or a nebulous island west of the Italian mainland, Sardinia is central to the Mediterranean story and a nexus for navigators heading in any direction. The idea of isolation, as one medieval historian would note, no longer appears “tenable.”

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Book:In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy
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“The second map is of Sardinia itself: the main island with its many islets. It is not a floating green mountain with a defining valley that splices along the south by southwest, as a topographical map would show. Instead, this map is as colorful as a neon strip of nightlife you might download on a cell phone for the latest cultural events. In fact, devised as a geoportal and online app by a volunteer organization called Nurnet in 2013, the map pinpoints the thousands of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments across the islands with the fanfare of an open museum. As part of Nurnet’s mission to “promote a different image of Sardinia in the world,” the map is nothing less than astounding. If you actually illuminated all of these ancient monuments, from the Neolithic array of Stonehenge-like dolmens and menhir stone formations to the thousands of burial tombs, Bronze Age towers and complexes called nuraghes or nuraghi, the entire island would light up like a prehistoric hotspot. The vastness of the uninterrupted cycles of civilizations and their architectural marvels still standing today would be incomparable with any place in Europe on that first Mediterranean map. The Sardinians call it the “endless museum.”

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Book:In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy
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