Rome Day Trip: SPA Destinations Near Rome

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Walking Rome's cobblestone streets is for sure the best way for a traveler to Rome to learn about the Eternal City. Wandering Rome's streets, slipping into an artist's studio, marveling Bernini's sculptures, counting Egyptian obelisks in Rome, sitting by a Roman fountain with a gelato, enjoying an afternoon espresso people watching, shopping in Rome's fashionable boutiques or strolling a fabulous Rome street market all the while walking in Rome on cobblestones laid by the ancient Romans 2000 years ago takes its toll on the Rome-walker's feet.

Upon leaving Rome a slow Italy traveler would be wise to think about a few days relaxing at one of Lazio's thermal spring water SPAs that are just a short trip outside Rome. This a great way for the Italy traveler to relax and re-charge along the Italy vacation before moving on to another fabulous Italian city like Florence, Naples, or Milan.

Salute per acqua - good health through water - is a saying going back to the ancient Romans, who learned from the Etruscans, which civilization settled around the thermal springs near Civitavecchia (old city) in Lazio, the curative powers of water. Of course, Italy is a volcanic land that is spotted with thermal springs across the Italic peninsula providing all types of thermal water springs and mud bath resort and SPA destinations for Italy travelers to visit.

2000 years since the Etruscans and ancient Romans lived on this land, benessere (well being) is the buzzword for Italian spas that are still the pick of the best thermal water spring SPAs in the world.

Below are Italy travel videos of SPA destinations outside Rome. Looking for exclusive Italy itineraries to off-the-beaten path destinations near Rome, Florence, Naples, and Venice contact WebVisionItaly's Italy travel specialists "travel@webvisionitaly.com"


"Salute Per Acqua" - good health through water.

Acqua di Fiuggi preferred by Europe's royalty, was site of Rossellini & Bergman love affair.

SPA outside Rome in medieval Viterbo full of lovely fountains, Est Est Est wine & Dante's favorite thermal spring.

Ancient Etruscan spring baths in Rome's port Civitavecchia, perfect for cruise shore excursion and Rome day trip.

Outside Rome is Castelli Romani. Etruscan & ancient Roman water spas.

For more Rome day trips visit WebVisionItaly.com Lazio Television Channel.


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Rome show commemorates Palma Bucarelli

Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art (GNAM) is celebrating the 20th-century Italian art critic Palma Bucarelli. Bucarelli, who was GNAM superintendent for 34 years, turned the museum into an international attraction and helped popularize contemporary trends in Italy and abroad. The exhibition commemorates the centenary of her birth with over 150 display items.

The main attractions will be Italian 20th-century painting and sculpture masterpieces but the exhibition will also feature everyday mementos of Bucarelli's life, including photographs, music and evening dresses. Mariastella Margozzi, the exhibit's curator, highlighted her support for Italian art. ''She managed to select the best Italian art of the post-war period and bring it to public attention abroad, through collective exhibitions supported by the Foreign Ministry around the world,'' said Margozzi. But as well as taking Italian art abroad, she also promoted an interest in foreign art in Italy. ''She introduced the Italian public to the new, abstract informal art by highly prestigious European and American artists,'' said Margozzi. The curator cited exhibitions on Pablo Picasso (1953), Piet Mondrian (1956) and Jackson Pollock (1958) as particularly popular events organized by Bucarelli.

Bucarelli - who was once described as being ''as famous as a movie star and as talked about as a politician'' - was renowned for her love of controversy.

One move that created particular outrage was her decision to showcase some of the 90 tin cans in a 1961 series by Piero Manzoni, 'Artist's Shit'.

The cans, which purportedly contained Manzoni's excrement, even triggered a debate in the Italian parliament at the time - but the fact that can number 19 recently sold for 80,000 dollars are a sign of Bucarelli's accurate instinct.

Bucarelli acquired a number of now priceless works for the GNAM, including masterpieces by Gustav Klimt and Vincent Van Gogh.

Bucarelli also built up one of the best collections of Italian modern classics in the world, largely due to her networking skills and lasting friendships, which brought donations of works by names such as Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri. GNAM Director Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli said one of Bucarelli's most lasting achievements had been positioning the GNAM within an international network of museums that recognized the important of modernity. ''She had a museum-centric vision of the contemporary art system, a view that placed the museum at the core of art,'' she said. Palma Bucarelli: Il Museo Come Avanguardia (Palma Bucarelli: The Museum as Avant-Garde) runs at the GNAM until November 1.

ANSA photo: Bucarelli with sculptor Giacomo Manzu

For more about Italian Arts visit WebVisionItaly.com Italian Arts television channel.

Capucci "Fabric Sculpture" Exhibit at Odescalchi Castle

Roberto Capucci's legendary 'fabric sculptures', exploring the fashion maestro's creations in his 60-year career, will soon grace the halls of the lakeside Odescalchi Castle at Bracciano, a day trip from Rome in region of Lazio. The 15th century castle, which was location of the Tom Cruise wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006, is owned by one of Capucci's most loyal clients, Princess Maria Pace Odescalchi, from one of Italy's most ancient noble families.

The show, entitled 'Royal Elegance: Roberto Capucci at Castello Odescalchi at Bracciano', begins next month, September 17th, and will run through December 13. Fall travelers to Italy this is a great day trip from Rome.

The 66 outfits and 25 costume designs will be displayed in the castle's public halls, amid medieval armour and tapestries, in a ballroom-like scenario, the princess said at the event's presentation recently. All the creations, including seven bridal gowns and an outfit worn by Nobel medicine laureate Rita Levi Montalcini at the 1986 award ceremony, were personally chosen by the 79-year-old designer.

CAPUCCI'S CREATIONS HAVE APPEARED IN MANY MUSEUMS.

Many of the 66 outfits featured have appeared in galleries around the world.

The stylist's personal collection of 600 creations, 300 colour illustrations and 22,000 sketches are permanently housed in a new museum devoted entirely to his work in Florence, where his work first came to international notice at a fashion show in 1951.

Housed in the 17th-century complex of Villa Bardini, overlooking the Ponte Vecchio in the heart of Florence, the museum showcases the vast archive collected by the Roberto Capucci Foundation over more than half a century.

The Florence museum and itinerant shows, including at Moscow's prestigious Pushkin Museum, tell the story of the designer who elevated fashion into art.

In fact, from the time of his earliest creations, Capucci's origami-like designs have been closer to elaborate works of sculpture than clothing.

He has dressed film stars, first ladies and royalty over the decades but the wearers have usually showcased his creations rather than the other way round. Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Gloria Swanson and scores of noblewomen have all worn his outfits.

Capucci has cheerfully admitted that his works are not intended as everyday contributions to women's wardrobes.

''Frankly, I have never let myself be influenced by the idea of 'but when will I wear this, where will I go?','' he once remarked.

''There would be no history of fashion if people had thought like that in past centuries''.

Capucci was considered something of a wunderkind in the fashion world in the 1950s, breaking onto the international scene at the age of just 21 in 1951.

He had already opened an atelier on Rome's Via Sistina the previous year, in 1950, when his work was spotted by fashion entrepreneur Giovan Battista Giorgini, who invited him to display five outfits at a Florence show.

The other designers in the show demanded Capucci's elaborate creations be withdrawn, fearing their own work would be upstaged.

But when the press found out, they called for a separate showing of Capucci's designs, which were greeted with instant acclaim.

Since then, Capucci's work has appeared in galleries in Munich, London, Vienna, New York and various Italian cities.

For more about Italian Fashion click WebVisionItaly.com Italian Fashion television channel.

Deredia in Rome

Rome's two most famous archaeological sites are for the first time playing host to a contemporary art exhibition, with a series of large-scale sculptures by Costa Rican artist Jorge Jimenez Deredia.

A number of massive bronze and marble statues are on show in front of the Colosseum and in the Roman Forum as part of a wider display of Deredia's work around the Italian capital.

Deredia's sculptures have been erected in several key sites, including Piazza Barberini, San Lorenzo in Lucina and in the courtyards of Rome's art museums, such as Palazzo Massimo and Palazzo Altemps.

There are also a number of smaller works by the artist at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, along with several of Deredia's bronze pieces from his renowned Genesis series.

The Forum is hosting 17 separate sculpture groups located at sites along the Via Sacra. The idea of showing Deredia's statues in the Forum and the Colosseum was first raised two years ago but met with resistance in some quarters among those who felt the contemporary nature of the work was inappropriate for the ancient sites. But thanks to firm backing from Rome's municipal council, centre-left former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni and the current centre-right mayor Gianni Alemanno, the initiative has finally come to fruition. Discussing the idea at its inauguration, Culture Undersecretary Francesco Maria Giro said the contrast between old and new was a crucial element of the scheme.

''This is a project that unites the new, which is the future, with the old, which never dies,'' he said. As well as marking a first for Rome's archaeological sites, the exhibition also offers a preview of a new international initiative by Deredia entitled La Ruta de la Paz (The Path of Peace).

The Ruta de la Paz comprises nine new sculpture groups that will eventually be located in nine different countries across the Americas, from Canada down to the Tierra del Fuego, with stops en route in the US, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru and Chile. The idea is to pull together peoples, legends, myths, symbols and traditions from an array of different backgrounds into a single, overarching project. The Rome exhibit features several of these pieces, while the Genesis group at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni has been described as ''the heart'' of the Ruta de la Paz. Deredia's art will be on display around the Italian capital until November 30.