16/05/2021
I am so excited about introducing the first episode of Italy from the Heart. - A show about Italians, you'll love to meet on your travels.
Episode 1 is entitled "Italy: North & South.” In this episode the creators of this show share their own personal Italian roots with you. Between the two of us: Allison Salerno, the producer of “Italy from the Heart” and myself, Tullia Maffei - your host, we represent both the North and South of Italy - two very different parts of Italy in terms of landscape and history, cuisine, language and outlook.
My parents come from the Italian Alps in the region of the Trentino Alto-Adige. It was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I and became the last of Italy’s 20 administrative regions in 1919. They had always spoken Italian but just 30 miles north of the Trentino, German was and is the mother tongue of the Alto Adige. My mother went to school under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and when she turned 7 years old her village came under Italian rule. The same is true for my father who at the age of 17 went from being a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian empire with its capital in Vienna to being considered Italian, with its capital in Rome. That had to be quite a switch.
Allison's family roots hail from the Campania region, just northeast of Naples by Caserta. This region was last ruled by the Spanish Bourbon Family under The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples being considered the other “Sicily”) This Spanish Bourbon Kingdom united the southern part of Italy with Sicily from the mid-15th up until the mid-19th centuries when Garibaldi invaded Sicily and Naples and proclaimed these areas Italian in 1860.
As you can see from the maps below, they are two totally different parts of Italy encompassing the mountains and the sea - the North and the South - two very different orientations.
In Episode One you’ll learn the dramatic story of how Allison’s grandfather came to America. I share what made life bearable for my parents - Italian immigrants who settled in Brooklyn, NY. We’ll talk about our own personal formative experiences with Italy. We talk about the differences as well as the values that unite and identify what being Italian means.
Episode One will be launched this week. You will be able to hear it on Apple podcasts, Spotify and I Heart Radio.
Please subscribe. If you have a special connection to italy we want to hear from you. If you know someone that might be a good guest for a show, let us know.
If you haven’t heard our promo, give a listen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/italy-from-the-heart/id1561013993
We are always happy to hear from you.
Tullia and Allison
