Published by Scala. The ideal book to accompany your art travels in Umbria as it provides an overview of the late medieval and early Renaissance frescoes in the area and includes the artists Duccio, Giotto, Simone Martini, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Filipo Lippi and Montefalco's own Benozzo Gozzoli. Beautiful colour images.

Art & Society in Italy 1350 to 1500 by Evelyn Welch

Dramatically revises the traditional story of the Renaissance and takes into account new issues that have greatly enriched our understanding of the period. From paintings and coins to sculptures and tapestries, Welch examines the issues of materials, workshop practices, and artist-patron relationships, and explores the ways in which visual imagery related to contemporary sexual, social, and political behavior.

What makes a masterpiece? The author discusses the stories the works portray, their meticulous composition, the questions they raise, and their place within the artistic context of the time. This volume includes the famous Aldous Huxley essay "The Best Picture," which inspired Pope-Hennessy to seek out the enigmatic works that now constitute the pilgrimage known as the Piero della Francesca Trail. 56 full-color photos are featured.

Ross King's captivating narrative brings to life the personalities and intrigue surrounding the 28-year-long construction of the dome, opening a window onto Florentine life during one of history's most fascinating eras.

Italians are passionate about their food and love to celebrate together. At annual village festivals the food is cooked in mammoth proportions and happy crowds sit and enjoy a communual meal that is a ritual of connection and neighbourly love. In this text, Carol Field takes the reader to these civic feasts and highlights their special, ancient recipes, including the victory dinner of risotto fratacchione, sorbir d'agnoli and pane di cena.

In her most intimate and personal cookbook to date, popular cooking-show host Mary Ann Esposito takes us through Umbria with 60 authentic recipes, anecdotes, profiles, and cooking tips. You'll visit bustling food markets, glorious street festivals, aroma-filled home kitchens, family-run vineyards, top-secret truffle fields, and a heavenly chocolate museum. You'll also find information on mail-order sources, web sites, and Umbrian restaurants.

Experience Umbria - explore the simple, yet refined cuisine of this undiscovered region with award-winning author and chef Julia Della Croce. In this title, she unveils the foods, recipes, and culinary folklore of a region that has its roots in Etruria, Italy's oldest civilization. Beginning with the classic ingredients of the Umbrian pantry, this book presents a wide range of delicious, authentic recipes for the home cook, from simple basics such as black truffles on toasted bread to more challenging dishes like pollo in porchetta. Lush colour photos of the Umbrian countryside, village markets, and, of course, the food, are highlighted by tidbits of history and quotes from the locals. This comprehensive volume is more than a cookbook: it's an inviting look at one of the most enchanting regions of Italy.

Although she was a daughter of Pope Alexander VI and chiefly remembered as a raven-haired poisoner, Bellonci depicts a passionate woman moving uncertainly through the Papal court and the intrigues, ambitions and political chicanery that swirled about her. Winner of the Viareggio Literary Award and the Galante Prize in Italy in 1953

Lucrezia Borgia by Sarah Bradford

Carol Searle of Living Italy says, "this is my current favourite, with an excellent insight into the lives of the rich & privileged during the high renaissance. It also helps sort out the order of the Popes and their contributions. And you will be relieved to know that none of it was her fault!"

The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain's most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.  

Transports the reader to Italy and back in time, portraying a land that retains the grandeur of Rome, the sights, sounds and smells of Tuscany, the richness of the North, the poverty of the South and the elegance of modern times.

There is a natural inclination among lovers of the travel journal genre to compare Annie Hawes's Extra Virgin to the idyllic and idiosyncratic tales by Frances Mayes or Peter Mayle. Don't. This is a much better book!

A realistic, first-person insight into life in Umbria, written by a neighbour, Virginia Ryan, who purchased an abandoned olive mill in the hill-town of Trevi and came to regret that impulsive decision as she experienced the massive reconstruction of the building.

In this delightful garden memoir, the author recounts the challenges, elations, setbacks, and revelations that accompanied the process of making an acclaimed garden out of the sprawling, overgrown grounds of a Renaissance Tuscan hunting lodge. This lyrical portrait of an antique Italian villa with its charming caretaker, olive groves, and vineyards is filled with hilarious garden misadventures, witty sketches of eccentric fellow gardeners, and sensuous studies of Tuscan daily life.

A contemplative, multifaceted study of the estate of La Foce, located amid 3,500 acres of sweeping Tuscan landscape and containing one of the most important and best-kept early 20th-century gardens in the world. This volume includes an historical essay and memoir by the daughter of La Foce's creators, Antonio and Iris Origo, along with photographs, sketches, and a critical analysis of the gardens. It focuses not only on the beauty of the gardens themsel

Elizabeth Helman Minchilli has created a coffee-table book with rich text and beautiful photography, the first comprehensive work to celebrate the design and evolution of the famed ceramics of the same name. These fine pieces evoke the spirit of the Italian countryside and have a history going back some 6 centuries.

Insight Guides – Umbria (APA Publications)
 

Many enticing full-page colour photos and an enthusiastic text by a number of writers

Umbria (Blue Guide)

A perennial essential, densely packed with information. Small print, but an excellent reference.

In 1995 Giulio Andreotti, seven-time prime minister of Italy, went on trial both for murder and for his association with the Sicilian mafia. "Midnight in Sicily" chronicles the development of the extraordinary events surrounding this scandal, exposing the sordid connection between Italy's politicians and organized crime.

The rich, recorded history of Sicily reaches back for more than three thousand years. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy and the modern era have all held sway, and left lasting influences on the island's culture and architecture. Tourists, armchair travelers, and historians will all delight in this fluid narrative that can be read straight through, dipped into over time, or used as a reference guide to each period in Sicily's fascinating tale.