Memories come flooding back when Susan Buckland revisits a city of grace and grandeur.

The combined turnover of Italy's Mafia groups has now overtaken that of the European Union's budget as the Mob spreads its tendrils overseas.

There has been much water under the Bridge of Sighs since Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Venice, ending 1100 years of independence in the city state.

Live like the royals did - if only for a night. Lynn O'Rourke Hayes scopes out cool castles.

Italy's head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano, has set in train his third prime ministerial appointment in less than three years.

Among the ruins, Russell Maclennan-Jones imagines life in ancient Ostia.

An Italian MP has “blacked up” to deliver a staggering anti-immigration rant in the country’s parliament.

The Italian Senate has expelled three-time ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi from Parliament over his tax fraud conviction, ending, for now, his two-decade legislative run but not his political career.

An Italian prosecutor has suggested Amanda Knox may have killed her British roomate over an argument about an unflushed toilet.

Italy wants to buy back a Mediterranean island owned by New Zealand businessman Michael Harte, who bought it just two months ago.

The prosecutor seeking to reinstate the conviction of Amanda Knox for the murder of her roommate has urged an appeals court not to repeat mistakes he says were made by the court that freed her.

The Mediterranean island of Sardinia, prized by the jet-set for its white sand beaches and crystal-clear seas, became a flood-ravaged mud bath after a freak torrential rainstorm killed at least 17 people, downed bridges and swept away cars.

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's political heir yesterday pledged to keep Italy's fragile coalition Government afloat, now that he has split with the media mogul and formed a rival centre-right party.

A witness in the Costa Concordia shipwreck trial has described how the captain jumped aboard a lifeboat, testifying how the commander wasn't the last to abandon the rapidly capsizing luxury cruise ship.

US student Amanda Knox's defence got a boost this week when a new DNA test on a kitchen knife failed to conclusively prove that it was the murder weapon used to kill her British roommate.

Shouting "murderer" and "executioner," hundreds of people jeered as the coffin of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke arrived Tuesday for a funeral Mass celebrated by a splinter Catholic group opposed to the Vatican's outreach to Jews.

From fair Verona, where we lay our scene, to Mantua, Padua and Rome, Shakespeare was fascinated by Italy.

Former SS captain Erich Priebke participated in one of the worst massacres of German-occupied Italy. Now he's died - and no one wants to bury him.

The head of the European Commission announced during a visit to Lampedusa that Italy would receive an additional €30 million in EU funds to help settle and receive new refugees.

Italian divers have recovered 38 more bodies from a smugglers' boat that capsized and sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea with hundreds of migrants on board.

A ship carrying African migrants to Europe has caught fire and capsized off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, killing at least 114 people as hundreds were dumped into the sea.

New Zealand businessman Michael Harte has just bought his own Mediterranean island, but he won't be partying on its beach with his mates.

A New Zealand businessman has forked out nearly $5 million for a pristine island in the Mediterranean.

A court hearing Amanda Knox's second appeals trial accepted a request to run additional DNA tests on the presumed weapon in the murder of Meredith Kercher.