Off Season Italy: How Artist Alessandro Florio Spends Winters in Taormina, Sicily

What is there to like about this catalogue of Provençal quirks, most of which are inconvenient and seem to have been devised with the express purpose of taking up as much of your time as possible? An errand that might take half an hour in other, more streamlined societies can easily occupy an entire morning. Appointments are postponed or forgotten.

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Public space is not designed for a person on their own. Private romance and the family are the units by which leisure is parcelled out. I want for myself and for others bars with generously sized individual booths, a little locker to stash your valuables while you use the bathroom, a light you can switch on and off to read. Beautiful spaces that li

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“No, no, carissima, that was a thousand and one coffees’ worth of entertainment!” says Orso, pulling on his loden coat and preemptively brushing past Shay as he plucks a five-euro note from his wallet and, with a flourish, hands it to the unsmiling Irish cashier. “Yes, quite a yarn,” he continues, as he gallantly holds open the brass-barred front d

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