Nigeria’s industry needs more support, particularly for new entrants in the business
The art in this beautiful city evokes a world of
decadence and indulgence. And so does the cuisine.
Italian researchers will dig up bones in a Florence convent to try to identify the remains of a Renaissance woman long believed to be the Mona Lisa.
![]()
By tradition, the heavens beneath which Italy’s Azzuri train for a World Cup is of a blue as deep as the team’s shirts. But this campaign at the retreat in Coverciano on the edge of Florence began under a weeping, leaden sky. ”Even God wants to piss on us,” shrugged a security official at the gates.
Hopes of finding a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci have been fired by the discovery of a tiny cavity in a wall in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Leonardo is known to have begun a vast work, the Battle of Anghiari, on the same wall in 1505. A Florentine writer who saw it described it 44 years later as ”miraculous”.
Michelangelo’s David had centuries of gunk picked out of every nook and cranny of his perfect marble body last year in honour of his 500th birthday. But it seems the statue will be dirty again soon if it is not protected from the millions of visitors who traipse past it every year. Experts are considering blasting air from behind the 5m-high statue at the crowds of admirers.
No image available
/ 17 November 2004
Fed up with living with his mother, a 26-year-old Italian got himself arrested on Wednesday by hurling a rock at a police car and smashing one of its windows, the Ansa news agency reported. The incident took place in Florence after police were asked to intervene in a family squabble between a woman and her son.
Michelangelo’s statue David may be clean in time for his 500th birthday this year, but experts are concerned that his left ankle may not be strong enough to keep him standing forever. A Bologna University team has begun analysing tiny cracks in the marble masterpiece since restoration work began on the statue last September. Sophie Arie reports from Florence.