Prosecco Hills Added to UNESCOW World Heritage List

Italy’s Prosecco Hills, the region that cultivates grapes for its famous prosecco sparkling wine, has been added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage List. It became Italy’s 55th such site, tying with China for the country with the most UNESCO heritage sites.

Photo by Elena Zamprogno

Prosecco Hills Added to UNESCO World Heritage List

From AFP/The Local

Italy’s Prosecco hills northeast of Venice, which have been cultivated for centuries, were added to the World Heritage list by the UN cultural organization.

The Conegliano and Valdobbiadene hills, where the grapes that produce the famous Prosecco sparkling wine are grown, got the green light at a meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in Baku.

“The landscape is characterized by ‘hogback’ hills, ciglioni -- small plots of vines on narrow grassy terraces -- forests, small villages and farmland,” UNESCO said in a statement announcing the decision.

“For centuries, this rugged terrain has been shaped and adapted by man. Since the 17th century, the use of ciglioni has created a particular checkerboard landscape consisting of rows of vines parallel and vertical to the slopes.”

Italy has been lobbying to have the hills, which stretch for 30 kilometers, receive this recognition for a decade.

The region became Italy’s 55th World Heritage site, putting it level with China as the two countries with the world’s highest number of UNESCO honors.

The Prosecco sparkling white, which has the highest classification available to an Italian wine, is produced in a territory spread over nine provinces in Italy’s north-east.

While the region spans over 500 towns in total, only 15 make Prosecco Superiore DOCG, the top-quality bubbly produced around the Venetian towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, where complex geology is thought to make for a more diverse, flavourful taste.

As well as its ancient tradition of wine-making, the territory is known for its well-preserved early settlements.

Sales of Prosecco rose six percent in 2018 to 460 million bottles, of which 75 percent were exported.

Horse-Drawn Carriages Will Soon Disappear From Rome’s Streets

From The Local

The famed tourist carriages, known as “botticelle,” would be restricted to parks only in a measure the city council said was aimed at stopping the horses from suffering on the hot cobbles.

“Among the key aims of the measure is to avoid all suffering to the horses, taking the botticelle activities to more suitable locations like parks and historic villas,” stated Daniele Diaco, head of Rome’s environmental committee.

And the carriages could soon disappear altogether, as the city will no longer issue new botticelle licenses.

Instead, it’s offering drivers the option of applying for taxi licenses, Diaco said.

The new law is seen as a victory for the capital’s Five Star Movementled council, which has been pushing for its approval since last year.

The legislation is seen as one step away from banning the botticelle outright, as promised by Rome’s mayor Virginia Raggi in her election campaign almost four years ago. Animal rights groups have long protested that the horses are stressed and suffer in the summer heat, while motorists rail against the carriages obstructing Rome’s heavy traffic.

However, some carriage drivers claimed authorities simply dislike the carriages and were using concerns about the horses’ wellbeing as a cover to get rid of the carriages.

“It’s a regulation against the coaches, not for the animals,” driver representative Angelo Sed told reporters in 2018.

The horse-drawn coaches are popular with tourists, who pay an average of €75 per person per hour to be transported around the city.

At Vatican, Empty Tombs Add New Twist to Missing Girl Mystery

From Reuters

The Vatican recently opened two tombs to see if the body of a girl missing since 1983 was hidden there and ran into a new mystery when nothing was found, not even the bones of two 19th century princesses supposed to be buried there.Experts were looking for the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican clerk who failed to return home following a music lesson in Rome. Her disappearance has been the subject of wild speculation in the Italian media for years.

Exhumation work began after a morning prayer in the Teutonic Cemetery, a burial ground just inside the Vatican walls used over the centuries mainly for church figures or members of noble families of German or Austrian origin.

Officials were expecting to find at least the bones of Princess Sophie von Hohenlohe, who died in 1836, and Princess Carlotta Federica of Mecklenburg, who died in 1840, but there was no trace of either.

“The result of the search was negative. No human remains or funeral urns were found,” Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said.

Gisotti said the Vatican would now examine records structural work done in the cemetery at the end of the 19th century and again about 60 years ago to see if they could shed any light on the new mystery.

Princess Sophie’s tomb led to a large empty underground room and no human remains were found in Princess Carlotta’s tomb, he said.

“They went down and found a room measuring 4 meters by 3 meters (13 feet by 10 feet), which was the first surprise ...There was absolutely nothing inside,” Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, told reporters outside the Vatican.

The two tombs were opened in the presence of the Orlandi family and descendants of the princesses.

The Orlandi family had received an anonymous letter saying Emanuela’s body might be hidden among the dead in the Teutonic Cemetery where a statue of an angel holding a book reads “Requiescat in Pace,” Latin for “Rest in Peace”.

Theories about Orlandi’s disappearance have run the gamut from an attempt to secure freedom for Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk jailed in 1981 for trying to assassinate Pope John Paul II, to a connection to the grave of Enrico De Pedis, a mobster buried in a Rome basilica. His tomb was opened in 2012 but nothing was revealed.

Last year, bones found during ground work at the Vatican embassy in Rome sparked a media frenzy suggesting they might belong to Orlandi or to Mirella Gregori, another teenager who disappeared the same year. DNA tests turned out negative. Police in 1983 did not exclude the possibility that Orlandi may have been abducted and killed for reasons with no connection to the Vatican or been a victim of human trafficking.