Italian travel facts and trivia

Rome, Venice, Syracuse, Padua, Turin, Anchiano, Matera & more.

Mar 9, 2007 David Whitley

Italy: Information and statistics on the world's oldest museum, the first ghetto, Archimedes, black magic, Passion Of The Christ, Battle of the Oranges & Messina bridge.

Think you know everything there is to know about Italy? Well here are a few trivia snippets that may surprise you...

• The Musei Capitolini in Rome are the oldest museums in the world. They started off with just a few vases donated by the Pope at the time.
• The word ‘ghetto’ comes from the Ghetto area of Venice, where all the city’s Jews were forced to live in the 16th century.
• Famous Greek philosopher and mathematician Archimedes had his “Eureka” moment whilst having a bath in Syracuse, Sicily.
• Turin is supposedly one corner of a black magic triangle with London and San Francisco. It is also supposedly one corner of a white magic triangle with Prague and Lyon.
• The Botanic Garden in Padua is the oldest one in the world.
• Leonardo Da Vinci wasn’t born in Florence, as some people think. Neither was he born in the nearby town of Vinci, as others believe. He was actually born a few kilometres away in the small town of Anchiano.
• Mel Gibson’s blood and guts The Passion Of The Christ wasn’t filmed in Jerusalem at all. Matera in the Basilicata province of Italy was used instead.
• If the proposal ever gets off the ground, the planned bridge between Messina in Sicily and the Italian mainland will be the longest bridge in the world. However, the costs involved in bridging the Strait of Messina mean that this issue is a bit of a political hot potato.
• Europe’s biggest railway museum can be found in Portici, which should get all the train enthusiasts rather excited.
• Christopher Columbus, although usually thought of as Spanish, was actually born in the northern Italian port city of Genoa.
• Ancient poet Homer thought that the Campo Flegrei in the Campania region, near Naples, was the entrance to Hades.
• The Sicilian island town of Lipari was once ransacked by legendary pirate Barbarossa – he murdered most of the citizens.
• Over two-thirds of the city of Siena’s population was wiped out when the plague struck in 1348. It was the worst hit of all the towns in Tuscany.
• In the town of Ivrea, Piedmont, they have a strange festival every February in which locals throw oranges at each other. It is, unsurprisingly, known as The Battle of The Oranges.
• The cathedral in Genoa still contains an unexploded bomb. It was dropped on the city by the British during the first world war, and no-one has ever got round to removing it.
• The Spedali degli Innocenti in Florence was Europe’s first orphanage. It opened in 1421.

MORE FACTS AND TRIVIA

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Cities: Sydney, Venice, Rome

US States: Virginia

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