Leading the project to restore David is the Opificio Delle Pietre Dure, Italy's premier restoration institute for stone and marble.

NPR: Restoring Michelangelo's David

Perugia's Madonna delle Grazie in the Duomo is a larger-than-life, clearly pregnant young woman, painted in 1515 by one of Perugia's Renaissance greats.

CNN: Amanda Knox: Fascination with 'the evil female'

To encourage the next generation of artisans, Context Travel developed a scholarship program with the Scuola delle Arti Orafe, a prestigious jewellery school in Florence.

BBC: Florence��s fading artisan culture

Rome in its turn will honour Borromini with an exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, which opens later this month and runs until next February.

ECONOMIST: Italian Baroque

Delle-Femine , the union's national director, said in the letter.

FORBES

Italians call Italy il paese delle frane, landslide country.

ECONOMIST: Hand of God, hand of Italian man

Infra-red (IR) camera monitors currently used by firefighters require lenses that can be blinded by intense fire, said researcher Pietro Ferraro, of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Istituto Nazionale di Ottica in Italy.

BBC: fire fighting

Once known as San Gimignano delle Belle Torri, or San Gimignano of the Beautiful Towers, there were originally 72 towers, 50 to 60 metres tall, crammed within the walls of this small, medieval town that crowns a hill in classic Tuscan fashion.

BBC: The perfect trip: Tuscany

Delle-Femine said that's rarely done.

FORBES

"IR cameras cannot 'see' objects or humans behind flames because of the need for a zoom lens that concentrates the rays on the sensor to form the image, " says Pietro Ferraro of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Istituto Nazionale di Ottica in Italy.

ENGADGET: Infrared holography lets rescuers see people through walls, fire, walls of fire (video)