Their American friend

During my first August in Rome, I couldn’t find a cup of coffee.

The whole neighborhood shut down for most of the month, but my go-to coffee bar went furthest of all -- shuttered from the last day of July to the first of September, at least a week longer than everyone else.

When I finally saw signs of life in the bar, relief washed over me. The steel grating was up only halfway, but I could hear voices inside. I ducked my head underneath it and saw the owner, Tony, his wife, and his nephew, who was the main barista. They were all very tan.

“Il nostro amico americano,” Tony declared when he saw me -- “Our American friend.”

“Are you open yet? Could I get a coffee?” I asked in Italian.

The nephew shook his head. “Come back in an hour,” he said in a deep Roman accent. “Even in half an hour.”

Tony cut him off. “Our American friend wants a coffee; we should make him a coffee.” He stepped toward the espresso machine -- one of the old ones, a La Cimbali with a long hand lever instead of buttons. His father had opened the bar when the machine was new, in the 1960s.

Tony delicately placed the coffee on its saucer already sitting on the bar. He and the nephew watched me tear the corner off a packet of sugar, pour it in, stir. The wife came out from the back to watch, too. I raised the cup and smiled. “Salute.”

Then I spit it back into the cup without thinking, so strongly that it splashed onto my hand and dripped to the floor. The coffee was lukewarm, bitter, stale.

“Vedi?” The nephew threw up his hands and glared at Tony. “See? Even the American knows we should dump that coffee into the Tiber!”

A national truce

A year ago, I called Ferragosto “the most Italian of all holidays: born in ancient Rome, claimed by the Church, repurposed by politics, and refusing to adapt to modern life.” That’s all true. But I should have added that it is also eroding, slowly … steadily … probably irreversibly.

Don’t misunderstand: if you’re in Italy on Ferragosto, Saturday this year, you’ll find offices closed, shops shuttered, parking spots appearing out of nowhere -- except at the seaside, which will of course be overwhelmed. Even as I write this essay, in the lead-up to the holiday, there are moments when Rome feels eerily vacant.

But the days of most businesses closing for three, four, even five weeks this time of year, especially in cities, are long gone. Too much competition, too many tourists, life too expensive.

Statistics on this is messy, but it shows an unmistakable trend. In 1960, the average Italian’s August vacation lasted nearly three weeks, according to government data1; today it’s just over a week. And vacations are increasingly staggered: the country’s largest hoteliers’ association estimates that just 41 percent of Italians will take their longest vacation of the year this month, a number that a generation ago was north of two-thirds.

I think the old August break worked because almost everyone was part of it. Tony, the bar owner, could disappear for five weeks because owners of the other bars, his suppliers, and most of his clientele disappeared as well.

Ferragosto wasn’t a ritual about time off as much as it was a national truce. And once the truce began to fray, every owner had to decide -- a month off or a month’s rent.

Progress of a sort

It’s not just August that’s changing.

The riposo is Ferragosto in miniature: a shop closing for a mid-day meal, a restaurant’s empty stretch between lunch and dinner, or the odd weekday when a family business keeps its doors shut. But in city centers and tourist hotspots, the riposo is also disappearing.

Ferragosto itself has survived two millennia in part because it could be reshaped. Caesar Augustus created the Feriae Augusti as a period of rest that he named after himself. Later, the Catholic Church merged the day with the Feast of the Assumption, a Holy Day of Obligation. And during Fascism, the state transformed it into an occasion for mass travel, with cheap train fares encouraging workers to visit parts of the country they might never otherwise see.

Each one demanded people slow down. Now the market forces them to keep going.

Anyone who first arrived in Italy in recent years will still have been astonished by Ferragosto’s reach. And they’re right to marvel. By the standards of most countries, Italy still seems to stop cold in its tracks. What newcomers can’t know is how much more it used to stop, or how much longer it took to start again.

I don’t think Ferragosto itself will disappear completely -- its roots reach too deep to be pulled out. But the perimeter around it keeps contracting.

Much of this is inevitable, and some of it is good. A country where an ill person can find an open pharmacy in mid-August, where there’s easy access to fresh food -- that’s not a loss. But what is lost adds up to more than charm or quaintness: it’s a shared permission to stop.

The coffee I spit back into the cup was bad because there’s more to a good espresso than pulling a lever or flipping a switch. A machine that’s sat cold for weeks has to come back to temperature slowly, and its lines need to be flushed. The barista must pull and discard shots one at a time until the machine finally remembers what it’s for.

I have traveled enough to have had more than my share of bad coffee. It may seem like a strange thing for a coffee lover like me to lament, but I know I’ll probably never again have a cup that bad in exactly that way: lukewarm, bitter, stale -- produced by a machine, and by people, who’d been switched off for more than a month.

📌 And another thing

Aside from good coffee, the biggest boast of my go-to coffee bar in my current neighborhood is that it opens every day of the year: Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter … even Ferragosto.

“People still want their coffee,” the owner, Sergio, told me when I asked about his policy. “Besides, some customers from other bars will come here when their bar is closed and they might like it and not want to go back.”

It makes good business sense.

But regular readers of this newsletter know I have a soft spot for tradition. I’m glad Sergio will be open, but The Italian Dispatch won’t be. I’ll still look in on the comments and will probably pop up in Substack Notes.

Readers will find the next full Dispatch essay on August 25.

Nota Bene: Ferragosto worked because most people took part. Newsletters like The Italian Dispatch work the same way, continuing because readers decide it's worth paying for. If these essays -- the ones that notice a culture shifting one coffee at a time -- are worth something to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You'll also get the full archive of 60-plus essays, a monthly emailed digest of recent posts and the best of the reader comments, and a mailed gift package. Click here to learn more.

The train left Milan only a few minutes late. But outside Reggio Emilia, it slowed and then stopped, sitting motionless for at least ten minutes. When it started again, it never returned to full speed, moving tentatively through the flat countryside and past small stations before finally crawling to a stop in Bologna.

None of it bothered me until I looked at my watch. We were more than an hour behind schedule. I might arrive too late for the tortellini in brodo I’d been craving.

Bologna is Italy’s best food city, and I’d been looking forward to lunch there too long to settle for a bland panino at the station. I stepped down onto the platform and got my bearings. It was a little past three. I’d have to hurry.

I rushed toward Via dell’Indipendenza, scanning every storefront. I stuck my head in the door of the first osteria I found and asked if the kitchen was still open. A waiter tapped his watch and shook his head. “Mi dispiace” -- I’m sorry. At the next two spots, wait staff was already turning chairs upside down on the tables.

Then I turned a corner and found myself outside a simple-looking place with a broad front window. The tables and chairs were mismatched, and it didn’t seem particularly inviting. But that wasn’t always a bad sign, and I could no longer afford to be picky.

Most importantly, it seemed to still be open. There were no lingering diners, but the door was wide open and three well-dressed people -- two women and a man -- were chatting at the back.

I slipped inside and took the seat closest to the door, plopping my backpack onto the floor next to me. I placed the book I was reading on the table, to my side. Once I was settled, they’d have to serve me something, right? The three of them glanced over but kept talking.

I’d lived in Italy long enough to understand how Italian restaurant culture was different than in other countries where I’d lived. Not just the quality of the food, though there was that. But the rituals that come with it.

I knew the old-fashioned notion of a tavolo per la sera -- the table for the evening -- that had no expectation you’d leave early enough for someone else to take your spot. There was the importance locals gave to sitting and enjoying a meal, not just using food as fuel consumed on the run. There were all the unwritten rules an outsider could only learn one at a time, usually by breaking them. And I’d broken enough of them to know.

My stomach reminded me of why I was there.

If they didn’t have tortellini in brodo, I decided, I’d just ask for a recommendation. This was Bologna, la Grassa. A restaurant wouldn’t last long in this city if its food wasn’t worth ordering.

After another minute or two, I raised my hand and caught the man’s eye. He whispered something to the women, smoothed his tie against his chest, and then walked toward me with intent. He was young, but confident.

When he reached me, he stopped with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Buon pomeriggio, signore. Come posso aiutarla?” -- “Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?”

“Could you bring me a menu?” I asked in Italian. “Are there any specials today? Do you have tortellini in brodo?”

The man studied me for a long moment.

“Sir,” he said, “this is a furniture store.”

Nota Bene: In my defense, it was only a small furniture store. If you enjoyed seeing me get this one wrong, a paid subscription keeps these Tuesday essays coming, and it includes a mailed gift packet and a monthly digest built from the sharpest reader comments. Become a paid subscriber.

The reviews

Missiles were in the news again. I can’t remember now whether they were falling in Iran, Ukraine, or somewhere in the Levant. NATO was fraying. Oil markets were a mess. There was a headline about a mass shooting, and another about regulators’ hopeless efforts to rein in artificial intelligence.

My chest tightened.

I folded the laptop shut and called for my dog, Mocha. “Wanna go out? C’mon, girl!” She jumped excitedly.

At my neighborhood bar, they usually start making my caffé macchiato al vetro when they see me coming. That morning, a weary regular coming off a night shift was already at the counter drinking a beer. An old man patted Mocha on the head and asked once again “his” name.

“Mocha,” I told him. “Ma è una femmina” -- “But she’s a female.” His weathered face nodded its approval.

At my desk, I went back to researching a newsletter essay about ridiculous online reviews of Italian landmarks. The premise: visitors who say they’re looking for the “real” Italy won’t find it online. I filtered the reviews to show only the one-star ratings, then bookmarked the funniest. One reviewer wrote that Rome’s Colosseum was “past its prime.” Another called it a “crumbling eyesore.”

Back to the news. Bombs had hit a school. Around a dozen children were confirmed killed and at least three times that number were still missing. Rescue workers combed through the rubble.

And there I was, collecting one-star reviews of the Colosseum.

Important in hindsight

I haven’t always looked away.

As a young journalist, I reported from Sarajevo during the Yugoslav wars and from Perú during the Shining Path insurgency. I spent two decades covering U.N. climate negotiations. I was there for clashes over the fate of one of the last Nazi war criminals, for earthquakes that destroyed dozens of villages in central Italy, and for three papal conclaves. I chronicled the resurgence of European antisemitism and Italy’s mass migration crisis.

Given all that, is it irresponsible for me to also write about Romans’ love affair with dogs, my nervousness at encountering John Updike, the wine I made from stolen grapes, or the last of the old-time paparazzi? It’s a question I haven’t been able to shake.

I talked about it with David Sax, a Canadian journalist, author, and commentator whose work includes Save the Deli, an affectionate and funny hommage to traditional Jewish delicatessens -- a book I enjoyed during lockdown. He started out writing hard news before turning to smaller subjects, and he’s made a career out of them -- with bestsellers and a James Beard Award to show for it.

“I get what you’re saying, but I think there really aren’t any unimportant stories,” Sax told me. “Some stories may be more interesting or better told, but they are all part of the world. And telling the stories about the small parts of life helps to tell the stories of the big parts of life, right?”

A distant war might lead the news, Sax said, but it isn’t always the thing closest to how people live.

That argument found an unlikely ally in Neil Macdonald, an old-school CBC foreign correspondent who spent decades covering big stories I felt guilty about neglecting. He lives in Rome now, too. I expected him to have little patience for my second-guessing. But he surprised me.

If every journalist focused on the same few stories, Macdonald told me over coffee, most of the rest of life would go unrecorded. “Besides, what might look trivial now can turn out to be important in hindsight,” he said.

The avalanche

Still, I wasn’t completely sold.

For years, I’ve held onto a slightly misremembered line by Polish writer and aphorist Stanislaw Lec: In an avalanche, no snowflake is innocent1.

I’ve always thought Lec was writing about complicity. But in my dilemma, I’m unsure where I stand. Am I one of the snowflakes, playing a bit role in whatever is coming down? Am I just an observer? Or am I pretending nothing is happening?

Here’s what I’ve decided: An avalanche contains two stories -- there’s one about what is rumbling down the mountain and one about what is being buried. I think the big stories tell us about the forces bearing down on the world. And smaller stories tell us what risks being covered up.

Italy makes the distinction easier to see. The country’s long history spans empires, barbarian invasions, plagues, earthquakes, fascism, war. But the country lives in what continued around those events: coffee served in a glass with a few drops of hot milk, an old man patting a dog’s head -- even a crumbling amphitheater still standing after 2,000 years and collecting one-star reviews.

📌 And another thing

David Sax didn’t start out writing about delicatessens: he once considered becoming a war correspondent. At 22, he landed in Israel during the Second Intifada -- bus bombings, suicide attacks, no tourists anywhere.

A more seasoned journalist, a family friend, talked him out of the obvious plan. “You’re going to the most covered place on earth,” Sax recalled the man telling him. “What’s the story only you can write?”

So Sax wrote the story in front of him -- not negotiations or body counts, topics better covered by wire services, but the young people still going out to bars and clubs between bombings.

The story ran on the front page of The Globe and Mail -- the first major piece he’d ever published, and, he notes with amusement, the only one to ever appear on the front page.

More than two decades and five books later, Sax says he still thinks less about whether a subject is “important” enough than about the question his family friend posed -- what’s the story only he can write? It’s not a bad question to steal.

Nota Bene: The big stories don’t lack for attention. But this newsletter is for the quieter ones -- stories that risk being buried and that turn out to matter. That kind of writing takes time and effort. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to keep it going. When you do, you’ll also get access to the full archive of 60-plus essays, and a monthly emailed digest of recent posts and highlights from the reader comments. Click here to learn more.

“To Eric,” Franco Zeffirelli wrote on the title page of his just-published book, Francesco. Then he paused.

It was our second meeting, this one at his sprawling villa just off the Via Appia in Rome. Zeffirelli, then 91, was in a wheelchair.

We first met several years earlier at the Excelsior Hotel during the Venice Film Festival, where we had a long, friendly conversation about adapting Shakespeare for the screen. The key, Zeffirelli said, was to concentrate obsessively on one central theme. “Hamlet isn’t about reciting perfect lines like ‘To be or not to be,’” he said. “The story is about revenge, madness. You have to focus on that.”

Zeffirelli would know. His 1968 Romeo and Juliet won two Oscars and may be the most acclaimed and commercially successful Shakespeare film adaptation ever made. He’d directed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in The Taming of the Shrew. He also staged operas around the world, and designed unforgettable stage sets and costumes. He was one of only a handful of Italians to have been awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth.

Twelve years ago, a few months after the election of Pope Francis, Zeffirelli published Francesco, a numbered, limited-edition coffee table book displaying never-released stills from his film Fratello sole, sorella luna (Brother Sun, Sister Moon), about the life of the new pontiff’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. The first copy was to be a gift for the pope.

Zeffirelli held court for a few journalists from his wheelchair, sitting in his opulent, museum-like living room that was crowded with gilded consoles, classical nudes, religious figures, and Grand Tour-era engravings of Venice and Florence, where he was born. His beloved dog, Dolly, sat alert on his lap.

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Spaghetti alle vongole

If you have a weakness for spaghetti alle vongole, let me give you a tip1: order it this summer as often as you can. The vongole -- clams -- are disappearing from Italian waters, and they’re disappearing quickly. Who knows how many summers they have left?

Why? Mostly because of the Atlantic blue crab, an unintended alien import that arrived in Italian waters via container ships that picked them up in ballast from the U.S.’s east coast.

With warmer seas and few natural predators, the northern Adriatic Sea has increasingly become a paradise for the crabs, and, in 2023, their population exploded. Their powerful claws tore through fishing nets and damaged traps, they fed on fish eggs, and, most seriously, they cracked open oysters, mussels … and clams.

Production of vongole veraci -- the most prized type of clam -- fell from nearly 22,000 tons in 2023, to just under 6,000 in 2024, to around 2,000 last year, and it will perhaps be less than 1,000 tons this year.

The Italian government has responded in the most Italian way possible: encouraging people to eat the vicious little creatures and creating a new government bureaucracy to study the situation.

Despite that, the crabs seem to be here to stay.

Waving off the change

At a recent lunch, the blue crab invasion came up in conversation. That’s when fellow Substacker, Eric Beall from , made a quip that helped inspire this essay.

“An unwanted American import that’s changing the way we eat out in Italy?” he asked. “Sounds like tipping.”

He has a strong point. Both the crabs and tipping culture traveled to Italy from the U.S. and have gained significant footholds in recent years. Both threaten long-standing traditions.

And tipping culture is the one that worries me more.

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Thirty-five years ago this summer, New York fashion brand Kenar launched an ad campaign the company said was designed to call attention to the then-burgeoning AIDS epidemic. At the center of the campaign was a photograph: runway model Linda Evangelista, seven elderly Sicilian wido…

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Excellent English

When I lived in Rome’s historic center, I’d often get stopped by tourists asking directions while I was out walking Mocha.

“Scusi,” the visitor might say, then, with raised eyebrows, “Colosseo?” They’d look at me nervously.

“Preferisce parlare in inglese?” I’d ask -- “Do you prefer to speak English?”

A look of relief would wash over the other person. “Yes, yes, please.”

“Do you want the fastest way or the most scenic?”

We’d often end up chatting for a minute or two. They might want to know Mocha’s name or how old she was, or they’d ask where they could get a good coffee or an authentic carbonara. I was usually happy to help.

Before we parted, they’d look at me with sincere eyes and pay me what was intended to be a grand compliment. “By the way,” they’d say, “your English is excellent.”

“Grazie,” I’d reply.

The local language

Savvy travelers already know the standard guidelines for avoiding tourist-trap restaurants.

A sign reading “tourist menu” is a clear give away, for example. Same for photos of food on laminated menus, loitering waiters trying to cajole passers-by in the door, or windows framing a supposed nonna rolling out pasta.

A lesser-known travel strategy I trust more than the advice of almost any influencer or broad online ratings or listicle-style content: filter for reviews in the local language.

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A million seconds ago, tech magnate Elon Musk was not yet a trillionaire. A billion seconds ago, Italy was still using the lira currency and now-deceased media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi was new on the political scene. And a trillion seconds ago was pre-history: people still lived in caves, animals had yet to be domesticated, and the ground beneath modern-day Venice was more than 200 kilometers from the closest shore.

This month, Musk became the first person with a net worth north of a trillion U.S. dollars -- that’s a number with twelve zeros behind it (as of publication, he’s not quite there in euros).

I need help in understanding numbers that large. Thinking in seconds is one way. Here are a few others: His fortune is around the size of the annual economic output of Switzerland or Saudi Arabia. Collected in 100-dollar bills, his wealth would weigh more than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Musk’s net worth is the equivalent of two-thirds of all the physical euro banknotes in circulation.

These kinds of comparisons may help us understand how large Musk’s fortune is. But they do not tell us what comes with that kind of wealth.

For that, we need Caesar Augustus.

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The Borrowed Chevy

A few days after I turned 16, a freshly issued driver’s license in my wallet, my father held out the keys to the family car, a Chevy station wagon. It was going to be my first solo drive. But before handing them over, my father held up a finger.

“Treat it,” he said, “as if it were yours.”

Of course, I didn’t.

I got into so many little fender benders as a young driver that it became a running joke in my family. Once, when I came home with a broken headlight, my mother said the car looked like it was winking. For years, whenever we’d see a dented or scraped car somewhere, someone in the family would turn to me with raised eyebrows and ask: “Eric …?”

I often think about our poor station wagon when I watch visitors “borrow” my adopted city with the same carelessness I had as a teen driver.

Roma! Roma! Roma!

When I first arrived in Rome, I lived in a neighborhood beneath the Campidoglio and looked forward to shopping in Campo de’ Fiori, the closest outdoor market to my apartment.

There, I’d sometimes run into chefs, including the one from my favorite neighborhood restaurant, shopping for the day’s produce. Beneath the stare of Catholic radical Giordano Bruno, vendors showed me how to pick the best Romanesco broccoli (look for sharp tips on the spirals) and puntarelle (the shoots should snap when bent). There was even a gritty coffee bar the Roman stallholders preferred that made me nervous to walk into the first time. But after a few visits, the barista started calling me carissimo.

Today, the Campo de’ Fiori market has turned into a stage set: perfectly arranged baskets of flowers, dried spices, truffle-flavored products, souvenirs. Last time I was there, a man selling Italy-themed aprons, grappa in bottles shaped like the Colosseum, and penis-shaped pasta was standing on a chair shouting, “Roma! Roma! Roma!” The gritty coffee bar? It now has colorful banners outside advertising takeaway coffee and Spritz cocktails.

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I’ve become an absentminded swirler.

The habit took hold over years of conducting and attending wine tastings. And in that context, it makes perfect sense. Swirling releases a wine’s aromas and helps reveal its character. But nowadays I often find myself swirling drinks that make no sense: my water glass, my coffee cup, even diminutive glasses of grappa or other distilled spirits.

At some point, my swirling stopped being a technique and became some kind of ritual, detached from the purpose it was meant to serve.

There’s a lot of that going around.

Wine service has a peculiar choreography. There’s the theatrical flick of the wrist as the cork is pulled, followed by a brief, satisfied sniff. I know one place in Rome where a top-shelf wine makes three stops before the diner can even begin to swirl: from the bottle to a decanter to a small glass to a large crystal chalice. And once the cork is pulled, it’s become increasingly popular for sommeliers to come up with creative new ways to display it.

Of course, the sommelier isn’t the only one performing.

None of this is about whether a diner knows where Valtellina or Taurasi appear on a map or can list the grapes used to make an Amarone. It’s unrelated to understanding the difference between Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo or knowing how to pronounce Cannonau or Sagrantino.

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A quick note: This Dispatch Digest is the first of a new look back at the previous month’s essays -- standout reader comments, additions, and the connections that appeared after publishing. Starting in July, it will be emailed exclusively to paid subscribers and readers whose comments are featured. But this first one is for everyone.

No straight lines

It’s tempting to think about understanding as something that accumulates in a straight line.

We learn a new fact. Read a new book. Have an unexpected conversation. Visit a new place. One by one, pieces are added to each other and over time our understanding of the world takes shape.

But sometimes, important insights arrive differently. Sometimes there’s nothing new except our point of view.

Looking back on May’s essays, I realize every essay ended up being about that kind of change in perspective.

And it turns out that shift doesn’t stop once an essay is published. The conversations continue in the comments section, where “finished” essays often turn into collaborations.

There was the routine bike ride that made me a witness to the tragic fate of a young woman. Or the examination of why one of the most beautiful corners of Italy is overlooked by locals. A trip to the Dominican Republic that made me reconsider Italy’s tourism challenges. And how the simple act of writing this newsletter forced me to see my home city through new eyes.

The Zebra-Print Shoe … this one was among the most difficult things I’ve ever written, mostly because it forced me to confront events I remember vividly but spent years purposely not writing about, examining my role as a witness to a death nobody was meant to notice.

Note: this one is darker than the others. If you’d rather skip it, jump to below the next photo to pick up this post further down.

called the essay a “high wire act” -- a combination of personal essay and reportage, plus a slice of memoir. I think that’s what made it so hard to write. Even now, two weeks later, I still feel a bit drained by it.

“What is so striking in this haunting account is the cynicism, both of the pack of cyclists, so dismissive in their language, and the cops in the area,” wrote , a fellow journalist who spent years writing about human trafficking in Italy. She went into details the essay could only nod at.

There were many comments praising the kind-hearted captain.

“Sometimes the ugly stories also contain moments of goodness, and I think it’s important to be honest about both,” wrote . Ditto for , who joined the cycling team mentioned in the essay a year or two after the events in the story. He said the captain was “a great example of a not unusual experience in which an Italian person goes out of their way, beyond what a stranger would expect.”

But the comment that extended the essay most was from , who asked whether anyone had tried to identify the poor woman in the essay and whether there had been a service for her in Rome. I didn’t know. “So many people are born, struggle, and die without the world really acknowledging them,” I replied, a succinct summary of the essay itself.

The 40-Minute Problem was a gentler essay, where I made a case for visiting the Castelli Romani, a group of more than a dozen hill towns surprisingly close to Rome, but which Romans seem to avoid because the area reminds them of their awkward adolescence.

In one comment, made a case for the Castelli as a “should-be” tourist destination better than I could, even singling out Pagnanelli, a restaurant I’ve been visiting for years. Long-time readers may recall the essay Everyone Was Trying to Help, where my date got charmingly stranded in a restaurant bathroom. That took place in Pagnanelli. I’d kept it anonymous in the original essay, but the comment outed it.

Another reader, , asked a question I’d been bracing for: Was I worried that “by shining a light on this area” I’d invite over-tourism? Part of my reply: I’m not anti-tourism; I’m anti-over-tourism. “The Castelli have a long way to go to reach that point,” I wrote.

I traveled to the Dominican Republic with my mother in late April and early May. I didn’t intend to write about Italy from a park bench in Santo Domingo, but the over-tourism parallels were hard to ignore. The result was Two Countries, One Warning.

Reader visited Italy three times across 50 years, and on his most recent trip to scout property in his ancestors’ Calabria he started off on the wrong foot when he heard U.S. pop music being piped through loudspeakers in Lamezia Terme. “My idealized remembrances of Italy started to fade,” he wrote. By the time he faced the crowds at Cinque Terre, he abandoned his plans to buy property.

, a dual citizen who just moved to Italy from the U.S., was looking for solutions to the problem of over-tourism. She brought up tax policies, incentives for start-ups, and better civic engagement. That made me think about university students in my own neighborhood, San Paolo in Rome, who leave beer bottles and cigarette butts on public steps because, I believe, they’re essentially visitors who don’t feel invested in the area. I think that’s the same detachment that lets a tourist consume a place without noticing the damage to it.

The argument got flipped in a comment from . Instead of asking whether tourism was good or bad, she discussed “who deserves to travel and on what terms.” Her comment focused on the pitfalls of the “easy” answers: tell people to stay home and you entrench provincialism. Require some minimal understanding of the language or culture? That tips toward authoritarianism. Meanwhile, opening the gates presents devastating problems. Monica had obviously been mulling over the topic for a while: soon after her comment, she published her own provocative post delving even deeper into the topic.

Rome, from the Right Angle marked the one-year anniversary of The Italian Dispatch. I used a fascinating 65-year-old photo of Roman actress Anna Magnani in her cluttered apartment to illustrate how I’d always imagined her. Then the essay traced how writing The Italian Dispatch helped me see Magnani in a different context -- in street art.

greeted the essay with Nannarella, Magnani’s old Roman nickname, one I hadn’t heard in a while. Elfin floated a theory I’m still thinking about: that Magnani has come back into fashion more than half a century after her death because her unpolished style suits 2026 better than it did her own era. Nannarella stuck, too -- I had a Note ready calling her La Magnani, but I switched the reference before posting it.

Eric Beall from added to the essay’s closing image of Magnani as Superwoman in Trastevere torn from the wall, reduced to a faint outline. He’d recently walked past a Donald Trump-as-a-brownshirt mural in the same area, also peeling away. He saw it as “a reminder that time sooner or later erases a lot of the posturing and posing of those in power.”

And reader did the most fitting thing of all: she kept looking. Mb saw the Lediesis mural of Magnani as Superwoman I used in the essay and then recognized a different mural -- this one of the Madonna with the infant Jesus strapped to her chest -- by the same artist in Bari, then more of them in Rome. Like me, Mb started seeing the murals everywhere.

This Dispatch Digest is available to all. Future editions will go out by email to those with a paid subscription, which also includes access to the full archive: more than 50 essays and the conversations that followed each one. Annual paid subscribers in the E.U., U.K., or U.S. also receive a welcome package -- a vintage postcard and a Dispatch refrigerator magnet. The three most recent essays are always free to read.

To first-time visitors, the towns of the Castelli Romani feel like a private discovery: Rome spread out in the distance like a stage set, St. Peter’s dome recognizable through the haze, volcanic lakes that remain cool even in August, inexpensive easy-to-drink wines, Renaissance villas, even the pope’s summer palace.

But for many Romans, the Castelli Romani feel like a return to adolescence.

For them, they can recall fidgeting at weddings, long lunches with friends of their parents, their first hangover, or awkward sexual fumbling in the back of a borrowed Fiat. So, as adults, they’re more likely to book a trip to the Dolomites or Sardinia than to the Alban Hills, less than 20 kilometers from Rome’s city limits.

There’s a Lombard phrase I learned while in Milan for the Olympics earlier this year: La tròppa confidenza la fa perd la riverenza -- “Too much familiarity makes you lose respect.” I heard it in connection with a restaurant I thought should be better known. But the phrase could just as easily apply to Romans’ attitude toward the familiar hills in their backyard.

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Note: this essay discusses violence against women and may be upsetting for some readers. --Eric

The Cyclist

I was halfway through a Friday morning bicycle training ride near the sea, turning around to head back to Rome, when a woman’s zebra-print shoe caught my eye at the bottom of a roadside embankment.

I made another pass, stopped, and a dark-skinned leg near the shoe came into focus, partially obscured by the brush. I carefully laid my bike on its side and looked both ways. “Hello? Buongiorno?” I called down the hill. Then, after a moment: “Jambo?” -- the only Swahili word I knew. No movement.

I started to make my way down the embankment but stopped after a couple of steps. She was probably dead. Did I want to risk trampling over evidence? And if she was alive, she didn’t need me, she needed a doctor. I climbed back up to the road and found a rock to mark the spot. As I raced toward Ostia, the closest city, I practiced what I wanted to say in my head.

Before even getting there, I found a police car on the side of the road and two officers leaning against it, smoking. I pulled up to them and announced: “Ho trovato una mignotta morta!”

The Cops

“Che?” one of the officers asked -- “What?”

“I found. A dead. Prostitute,” I repeated, in Italian. I didn’t yet realize how ugly the word mignotta was. I’d learned it from other riders on my cycling team, where I was the only non-Italian. Sometimes one of them would shout it when we rode past certain women standing on rural roadsides during late-in-the-day rides.

“Where did you learn Italian?” the other cop asked.

I was still out of breath, but I repeated the phrase a third time, pronouncing each syllable with more emphasis.

“Allora,” the first officer said, “dov’è questa famosa mignotta morta?”

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There’s a photo of Anna Magnani that fascinated me from the first time I saw it.

Taken in 1961 by Swiss photographer Hans Krebs, Magnani leans against a grand piano in her apartment just off Piazza Venezia. The photograph is intimate; it makes me feel like I’ve walked in on something. The living room is wonderfully cluttered: heavy drapery, candelabras, a portrait, a still life, and -- jarringly -- what looks like a painting of a brutalist tower block. Krebs himself is visible in a gilded mirror, but every time I notice him there, I think for a moment it’s my reflection.

Magnani was Rome before Rome became a tourist backdrop. She was dark-eyed, unpolished, furious, tender. She worked with Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica, and Fellini and won an Oscar. But to me, she seemed to belong to Rome more than to her films.

The image, the one that made me feel like an intruder, was the way I pictured her in my mind -- until about a year ago. That’s when Magnani stepped out of the Krebs photo and started appearing on the walls of Rome.

More likely: that’s when I started noticing her appearing on the walls of Rome. Before then, I hadn’t been paying close enough attention.

That changed with The Italian Dispatch, which made me see the city I’d lived in for more than two decades differently, including my regular encounters with Magnani. I first saw her posing as Superwoman in an alleyway; then in a diver’s mask; soon after, she was peering from behind graffiti on a doorway; and then stretched across an outdoor staircase. She even sneaked into the newsletter’s Notes feed now and then.

But Magnani was just the start.

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The Best Angle for a Photo

The musicians outside the Cathedral weren’t bad. Then again, they play the same few songs over and over, every afternoon.

I picked a park bench under the trees and facing the 500-year-old church and helped my elderly mother sit. It was late April, and the shade and a modest breeze helped make the midday sun bearable. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes before one of the musicians strolled over to us and started crooning.

Bésame!

Bésame mucho!

Como si fuera esta noche

La última vez!1

I am with my mother, I wanted to tell him. But instead, when he finished, I gave him 20 pesos (around €0.35) and a smile. His expression was unchanged as he drifted toward the side of the plaza where a white tourist train waited to fill up.

A few minutes later, the tourist train lurched forward and then disappeared around a corner to wind through the narrow streets past well-preserved Colonial-era buildings and dozens of kitschy souvenir shops selling off-brand rum and second-tier cigars, along with the usual magnets, pins, tee-shirts, and shot glasses, all bearing the Dominican flag.

Inside the Cathedral Primada de América -- free for Dominicans; a small fee for visitors -- the heat and clatter of the colonial zone faded. The bright afternoon light was softer inside, filtered through stained glass. Instead of marble, the Gothic interior is coral and stone, but the atmosphere would feel familiar to anyone who knows European churches.

Back outside, the noise returned.

“The Cathedral is the oldest Christian church in the Americas,” a tour guide droned into a bullhorn. “This is the best angle for a photo.” A group of around two-dozen sunburned visitors held up their phones and momentarily reduced five centuries of history to a backdrop.

The Curse of Punta Cana

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I don’t rattle easily. I’ve covered wars, jumped out of airplanes. I’ve interviewed presidents, been blessed by a pope, attended parties with Hollywood celebrities. Then there was the afternoon when I spotted John Updike having lunch near the Spanish Steps.

He was seated at an outdoor table with a woman in her 50s. Short sandy hair, navy-blue blazer. She could have been his Italian publisher or agent. He wore a plaid coat and a pale tie. They were talking easily. Their plates were gone but the water glasses were still on the table, along with a small, neat stack of books.

I was on my way to the Anglo-American Bookstore, then still years away from closing down. As soon as I saw him, I changed my path to walk toward their table. Words were already forming on my lips: “Hey, John Updike!”

They both looked up before I could make a sound. And I suddenly froze, then turned, then disappeared around a corner.

“Hey, John Updike?” Really? No -- too trite. I needed to approach them like a peer, not a fan. I smoothed out the tuck of my shirt and patted down my hair.

“Are you by chance John Updike?” Better. Then: “My name is Eric. I’m a journalist here in Rome.” They’d say they were happy to meet me and maybe they’d invite me to join them for their after-lunch coffee. I’d laugh at one of Updike’s wry observations.

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How it starts

Imagine this: the most powerful man in the world refuses to see the pope in Rome as a moral counterweight, but instead considers him an impediment -- out of touch, meddlesome. Then the pontiff fires back, warning against the vice of pride, the seduction of power, and the belief that military strength alone cannot settle questions of right and wrong.

It quickly escalates beyond a war of words, with accusations that the pontiff is clinging to outdated values and “a policy, which, while good in other centuries, is no longer appropriate to the century in which we live.”

But the pope doesn’t back down. He doesn’t have his adversary’s armies, resources, and his knack for humiliating adversaries, but the leader of the world’s Catholics is convinced he has the moral high ground.

That political leader was Napoleon Bonaparte; the pope, Pius VII. Their standoff was in 1809. And if the story sounds familiar, that’s the point.

The familiar script

The current clash between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV has so far been mostly rhetorical -- aside from an apparent Pentagon threat that reopened a 700-year-old wound about when the papacy was forced to abandon Rome for 68 years (more on that below).

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I recently spoke at a university campus in Florence, prepared to discuss Italy’s unwritten rules -- the subtle codes and conventions that make daily life in Italy both maddening and legible. Those “rules” have become a central theme of the Dispatch.

My outline covered territory well known …

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The Weirdo

When I was around twelve, my brother and I spent many summer days in different friends’ backyards playing a version of dodgeball I think we might have invented.

Everything was fluid: you could run, be chased, hide behind bushes, push another kid toward the ball holder, deflect or dive out of the way when the ball came at you. When you were hit, you became “it,” the one chasing everyone else.

We could keep going for hours -- sweating, screeching, laughing so hard we teared up -- until our mothers called us home for dinner. Each kid would head back with grass stains on his clothes, dirt under his fingernails, cheeks and hair covered in dust, exhausted. Good times.

One day, one of the kids’ fathers stood at his patio door, deep in thought, hands on his hips, vacantly staring into the yard where we were racing around and giggling. He was surely younger than I am now, but he seemed old -- thinning hair, a slight stoop.

After a while, one of the friends stopped in front of him and asked what he was thinking about. The rest of us gathered to hear.

“One day you kids are going to play together for the last time,” the father said. “Only you won’t know it was the last time until much later.”

Weirdo, I thought.

The unmarked bottle

A phrase I learned during my first years in Rome was tavolo per la sera -- table for the evening. It meant that when you reserved a table at certain restaurants it didn’t matter much what time you arrived or when you left. The table was yours. You could leave before dessert or linger until closing time.

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The biggest mistake most travelers make in Italy is wasting time.

You can’t blame them; it’s easy to get distracted. There’s always another church beyond the one you read about, another piazza around the corner, some hole-in-the-wall coffee bar full of locals. There are villages nobody’s heard of, and unpronounceable dishes listed on osteria menus.

It’s…

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