SUMMER TO SAVOR: Italians gather to celebrate pasta, seasoned pork fat and the almighty tomato
UNITED KINGDOM SUMMER PEARLS: London's architectural gems along the banks of the Thames
MUSIC: Europe's best pop and rock gatherings
BAGPIPES: The plaintive sounds of Scotland
SUBMARIUM: Journey to the bottom of the sea FESTIVALS: Fun in the sun in West Belfast
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FRANCE and SWITZERLAND VULCANIA: Blow your top at France's volcano park
ART: Berthe Morisot, the unknown Impressionist
FESTIVALS: Aix-en-Provence has it all
ART: The Barbizon School painters come to life
ART: Take a stroll through medieval gardens of delight
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SPAIN, PORTUGAL, ITALY and GREECE SALAMANCA: The city splashes out on culture
MUSIC: God's rock stars: the singing Greek monks
FOOD: Italy's unusual culinary delights
FILM: Great outdoor viewing in Rome
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GERMANY and BENELUX HORTICULTURE: The world blossoms at Floriade
BRUGGE: Belgium's second city shines
ART: Berlin's homage to multiculturalism ART: The best of the world's artists on show at Documenta 11
DANCE: Czech twin ballerinos steal the show in Hamburg MORE ..
CENTRAL and EASTERN EUROPE ART: Yugoslavia's modern art museum is back
ART: A retrospective of Samizdat art and writing from the Communist bloc
GRAZ: Austria's little-known city of culture
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THE NORDIC REGION DESIGN: Denmark celebrates Arne Jacobsen
MUSEUM: Get a blast from the past at Stalin World
STOCKHOLM: Welcome to the Venice of the North
MUSIC: Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on tour MORE ..
PLUS LISTINGS: Other things to see and do in each region
There's no better time to eat in Italy that the summer season of local food festivals
Few cuisines evoke summer as Italy's does. The chilis hidden in that heaping plate of pasta with ragš have the heat of the day, while a chilled summer minestrone brings a bowlful of cool. Crusty bread piled with chopped vine-ripened tomato and fresh crushed herbs tastes of a picnic in the shade. And on what American poet Frances Mayes has called "long days when I can taste the sun," a glass of prosecco, spicy and crisp, is like drinking "a liquid form" of evening air.
Few countries, too, celebrate their food — and celebrate with food — as Italy does. A summer sojourn can easily become an endless feast as you eat your way around the country. For centuries, villagers have ritualized local specialties with food festivals. There are, of course, feasts for the tomato (Zeddiani, Aug. 11) and basil (Pesaro, July 24-25). And there are festivals for pastas, such as the familiar tortellini (Cento, the last week of June and the first two weeks of July) and fusilli (Felitto, Aug. 14-24), as well as the less well-known cavatelli (Vitorchiano, Aug. 3) and the buckwheat tagliatelle called pizzoccheri (Teglio, July 27-28).
The barbecue is a rite of summer in Italy as elsewhere. For a good slab of grilled meat, head for the hills of Tuscany. In this part of the country, writes Anna del Conte in Gastronomy of Italy, the people have a "passion for shooting almost anything that moves." Fortunately in Cortona, one of the region's oldest cities and the setting for Mayes' best-selling memoirs Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, that's only cows. Beef is on the menu for Ferragosto — Aug. 15, the Catholic feast day marking the Assumption of Mary — and the Sagra della Bistecca, when townspeople head for the Parterre gardens, pop open bottles of Chianti and throw thousands of steaks onto a 15-sq-m grill.
The pig features prominently in the Italian cucina as a source of cured meats, hams and sausages. San Daniele del Friuli's prosciutto is honored with a 10-day do (Aug. 22-31). The people of Santo Stefano di Sessanio like lentils with their sausage (Sept. 7-8). And lovers of lardo should go to the town of Arnad, where they season pork fat with herbs, slice it thin and serve it as an antipasto (Aug. 25).
A more common treatment of the pig is a good roasting. You'll find porchetta — suckling pig oven-roasted until the skin is crisp and the meat fragrant with garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper — in many marketplaces and at village fetes. For the real thing, go to Ariccia, an ancient town just outside Rome and the original home of porchetta, for its annual festival in honor of this culinary specialty (July 7).
For the curious carnivores who find beef and pork a little quotidian for their tastes, snails are celebrated in Lacugnano (second week of June) and in Casumaro (Aug. 3-11). Pietraviva, in Arezzo, has frogs' legs (July 8-14). And Livorno has its cacciucco, a rich, peppery tomato-based soup made with red mullet, mussels, octopus and squid (July 21).
There's no better end to a meal — or a gastronomic journey — than the fruits of the season. The lakeside town of Nemi is known for both its delicate fragoline di bosco — strawberries of the wood — and its festival, when girls in traditional costume offer punnets to passersby (June 2). If you miss Canale's peach fest (July 20-28), Atessa has one (first week of August), as does the papal retreat of Castel Gandolfo (July 28).
By the end of this, you may just have a bad case of heartburn. Or, full but ready for more good eating, you may want to raise a glass — beer (Arsoli, July 27-28) or wine (Montefiascone, Aug. 1-15) — and join Mayes, who, enchanted by this season in Italy, writes, "May summer last a hundred years."
For more information on Italy's festivals, visit the website of the Italian National Tourist Office, www.enit.it, or Dan Hostetler's online database of Italian holidays, festivals and street parties, www.hostetler.net/italy/italy.cfm.
