For centuries the town at the centre of Sicily was called Castrogiovanni. In 1927 the Fascist regime made it a provincial capital and, before the year was out, restored its ancient classical name: Enna. Girgenti met the same fate that year, renamed Agrigento by royal decree. Yet the cancelled names never quite died: in 2016, at the suggestion of the writer Andrea Camilleri, Agrigento's historic centre officially took back the name Girgenti.
In the small spring-fed lake of Posta Fibreno, in the Lazio region south-east of Rome, floats a genuine wandering island. Locals call it la Rota, the wheel: a disc of peat, rhizomes and roots about thirty metres across and four metres thick, shaped like a cone with its tip pointing down. A light breeze, or a surge from the springs below, is enough to send it drifting and spinning inside its flooded sinkhole. Nothing new, either: Pliny the Elder described it almost two thousand years ago.
📍 Posta Fibreno →As summer fades, the white truffle, Tuber magnatum, begins to ripen, and the woods of southern Piedmont, in north-west Italy, fill again with searchers. The capital of the trade is Alba, in the Langhe hills, home to the oldest fair devoted to the white truffle, a tradition linked to the name of Giacomo Morra; every year the nearby castle of Grinzane Cavour hosts a world auction of the tubers. The season starting now runs through autumn and into winter.
📍 Alba →3 towns with a guide celebrate their patron saint on September 25
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📅 Every year, from 25 to 28 September
Alberobello's patrons are two physicians, Cosmas and Damian, and their feast runs four days: 25 to 28 September, with the relics kept in the basilica named after them.
