A Day in the Life of Italy [antikvár]

Italy is proof that life is not fair. It's a small country, really, a slender peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean with two major islands. Yet it has the great majority of the Wests.art and architectural treasures, a sensual climate that has inspired dreamers and lovers for thousands of years, one of the moun- tains, valleys, beaches, and cities that bleed with color and sparkle with light! WMfcjSfehis. played oi^e rest of the world? What's left for the rest of us? ' It's a trick that delights, ultimately, because Italy's very excessiveness is its charm. Why have one language when you can have dozens of dialects? Why have one world-class city when you can have several? And why travel around the globe for a lifetime when you can see nearly as much in Italy in a year-or even, in the case of April 27, 1990, a day? What the photographers who blanketed Italy on that day found was more tha^a land blessed many times over. They found a country standing on, and in many cases breaking away from^a liast filled with Roman caesars and Renaissance painters. The epochs hurtle against Qfe another as Italy approaches the 1992 unification of Europe, and the results are often surprising. The agricultural economy has given way to the industrial, and Italy has quietly become^ richest nations, with an annual gross domestic product of $825 billion. Typically for a peop distrusted centralization and large-scale enterprises, the burst into the world's economic elite I by mega-corporations, but by thousands of mid-sized companies and family-owned businesses. ' come new urgency to an old problem, however, for the lire washing through the streets of Milan and. j served to underscore the traditional gulf between the country's monied north and its threadbare south. The role of the Catholic Church, too, is changing. While its treasures dominate''feny a small town^nd disaw,^ millions of tourists to Rome each year, it is no longer the official state religion, and the^Pope can no longer insist " that city authorities in Rome ban films, plays, or books that the Holy See fipds objectionable. Both divorce arid ' ¦ abortion are now legal. j. i, Fortunately, change has its limits. There are no plans to raze the P.flintheo||^ .and much of the c^ountry looks -as it has for years, decades, and in some cases centuries-albeit several ^adis diji^^er for the wear of'modern ppHh4 ; tion. The respect for history in Italy is all the more impressive becauseimpi?lse'an(i'^l^^c'isip araieVei^where,-^~ as'ubiquitous as the cappuccino at dawn and the yellow light of sunset. . 'v ^ ' ' ^ . Give yourself over to this excessive land of impulse and history, maidening^as it^miiy be,- the coumry over^^ whelms those who resist. And as you turn the pages of this moment in Italian'hlitBiy, may yo\i find SRSurielf as ' smitten as the poet Robert Browning, who wrote more than a century ago: Open my heart, and you will see ' Graved inside of it, 'Italy'.