As many people know, Christmas is a really important and significant day in every region of our country. Everyone hurries up for buying presents, the cities shine brightly with their gleaming lights, and there are Christmas trees everywhere, but in particular the Italian city of Christmas is…Rome!

Rome is so beautiful that it’s always difficult to stay far from it, but with the Coliseum covered by shining lights and brilliant and colored decorations…well, it’s an unmissable spectacle.

Therefore, if you haven’t seen Rome yet or you would like to go to once again, Christmas time is the perfect period, also because the city is cheerful, festive and most of all on the occasion of this festivity, many events are organized such as concerts, markets and festivals.

This year, “Natale all’ Auditorium” (“Christmas at Auditorium”) and the traditional “Mercatino di Natale in Piazza Navona” (“Christmas market in Navona Square”) will make Christmas Rome a special Christmas.

“Natale all’ Auditorium” is a festival organized by Fondazione Musica per Roma at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, which for a month, from 6th December to 6th January, will

Lucca, one of the most beautiful cities in Versilia, dedicates an exhibition to a great Italian 18th century artist: “Pompeo Batoni l’Europa delle Corti e il Grand Tour” (“Pompeo Batoni, Europe with its Courts and the Grand Tour”).

Organized to celebrate the 300th anniversary since the artist’s birth, the exhibition has been inaugurated the last 6th December, and the picturesque rooms of Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) of Lucca will house it until 29th March 2009.

With this exhibition, the entire artistic itinerary of Pompeo Batoni will be retraced, with a path which is branched into 100 artworks belonging to some European and American public and private collections, testimony of the great artistic sensibility of this painter, who

As always, the city of Venice, with the collaboration of Confartigianato Venezia, organizes the marvelous ‘Natale in Laguna’!

The event, traditionally located in Campo Santo Stefano, will take place from 29th November to 23rd December, when it will turn into a wonderful location for the Venetian Christmas, with the fantastic Christmas market, where you can find all that the rich world of Venetian handicraft is able to make, from Murano glass to the laces, from toys in wood to soaps, from candles to the amazing little handmade statues to put up your Nativity scene.

But the part that from time immemorial draws the attention of the most, especially the foreigners, is

Once a year, on 7th December the city of Milan is proud to celebrate the day dedicated to its patron saint who is Saint Ambrose, called by Milan’s citizens “Sant’Ambrös”!

Saint Ambrose Day has really ancient origins and through the years it has been keeping the affection and the participation of all Milan’s inhabitants, who between the ritual mass of 7th December in the beautiful Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio and the stalls of “Oh bej oh bej” fair, cram the streets of the city to celebrate this great event.

The fair, which dates back to 1288, takes its name from the exclamation of Milan’s children who, between the stalls full of toys and sweets, couldn’t help marveling and shouted “Oh bej oh bej” (that it means “Oh, how nice! How nice!”).

Usually this event, which is a real festival of colours, lights and

Do you feel like a traditional Christmas?

The lovely letters to ask your presents, the sled dragged by reindeers, the colored house of Santa Claus and many, many delicious sweets, candies and cakes…Well, then you feel like a Florence Noël !!

“Florence Noel” is an exhibition market organized every year by Stazione Leopolda to put the Christmas of our dreams up. From 29^th November to 8^th December in fact, the Stazione fills with lights, colours and fragrances typical of Christmas time.

Every year, several exhibitors take part to this great exhibition, and in a magical atmosphere, they

After Neoimpressionism, Milan goes on with its great artistic season and dedicates an extraordinary exhibition to Renè Magritte, entitled “Magritte e la Natura” (“Magritte and the Nature”).

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The exhibition, which will start next 21^st November in Milan, shows as protagonist one of the most eclectic personages in the panorama of last century’s art. One hundred artworks on view, among collages and paintings, which retrace the artistic itinerary of Magritte from the first futurist paintings to 50s’ advertising campaigns.

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The whole exposition revolves just around one theme: the nature. The continuous presence of nature in the painter’s artworks, its importance, and the peculiar way to develop this theme. Magritte shows his surrealist fingerprint by using nature as a fragment of reality to reach a surreal world.

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Managed by Michel Draguet, the exhibition underlines

The Museo Nazionale of Palazzo Reale (National Museum of Palazzo Reale) of Pisa dedicates an extraordinary exhibition to a very important chapter of the city’s and Tuscany’s history: the reign of Lorraine from 1737 to 1859.

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The exhibition entitled “Sovrani nel giardino d’Europa: Pisa e i Lorena” (“Kings in the Eden of Europe: Pisa and the Lorraine”) focuses its attention on the exposition of artworks and cartographies which prove the mark that the reign of Lorraine left in history, and underlines the importance that Peter Leopold’s reign had on social and cultural growth of the grand duchy of Tuscany.

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The exhibition puts on show a wide variety of pictorial and plastic artworks, drawings and furniture which come from the great Italian and foreign museums. In particular, about 100 artworks come from

The Festival dei popoli, Festival Internazionale del Film Documentario (“International Festival of Documentary Film”) is on the calendar of the city of Florence from 14th to 21st November.

The Festival dei popoli, which this year celebrates its 49th birthday, enjoys a huge prestige all over the world and it’s considered one of the most important events dedicated to the documentary production.

This festival edition is entitled “L’eredità di Nanook” (“Nanook’s Heritage”), a homage to the noted film “Nanook” by Flaherty, which was the first one to be called “documentary” by Grierson.

The Festival dei popoli represents a real platform where the sector’s experts can meet each other and where young film makers and aspirant documentary film makers can get to

Until 10^th December the Opificio Ostiense in Rome will house the Romaeuropa Festival.

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The Romaeuropa Festival, this year on its 23^rd edition, is one of the most famous Italian cultural events abroad. The reason of its prestige is just the festival’s international quality, which every year attracts artists who come from every corner of Europe and the world to be protagonists of this event.

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This event is dedicated to art as human feeling, and to all its expressions. Dance, music, theatre and shows are waiting for you with a rich calendar full of performances of the most famous artists in the world.

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The Romaeuropa Festival is a young festival for young people who go in search of lively and sincere emotions that have no masks, and who see in comparison with other cultures a necessity.

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Comparison and dialogue between different cultures are the festival’s unquestioned prerogatives, where it is possible to find

For all the people who are keen on comics, the most important comics event in Italy Lucca Comics and Games comes back.

Lucca Comics and Games is the International trade fair of comics, cartoons, illustration and games, and it’s a traditional appointment with the picturesque city of Versilia, which most of all in the last years gained the undisputed qualification of comics’ capital.

At Lucca Comics and Games, ongoing from 30th October to 2nd November, it is impossible not to find something connected with imagination and fantasy world.

Lucca Comics and Games this year is dedicated to 30th anniversary of Goldrake’ first appearance on Italian TV.

The event, extravant and freakish in each detail, is divided into an itinerary of 8 exhibitions which will take place at Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) of Lucca: 4 personal exhibitions, dedicated