Velvet was once among the most coveted fabrics in the world, but now only one family in Italy produces it the traditional way – and can trace its textile tradition back to 1499.

Both companies violated several consumer codes.

This is how the Italian city of Bologna is getting people to leave their cars behind.

Eleven people are confirmed killed as storms and floods hit the west and north of Italy.

Mario Balotelli is expected to receive another Italy call-up, but injury rules out Marco Verratti. Calciomercato.com reports 22 of Roberto Manciniâs squad for next monthâs Nations League matches against Poland and Portugal â which will be announced on Saturday â âare already certain of their placesâ.

The New York Times has reconstructed how the disaster happened, from beginning to end.

Italian state schools will no longer demand parents prove that their children have been vaccinated, the country’s new populist government has announced. Lega leader Matteo Salvini said he considered 10 vaccines - the amount Italian schoolchildren are required by law to have - to not only be useless, but potentially dangerous, in the run-up to the general election in March 2018. The new policy is likely to stoke fears that the coalition government, which also includes the Five Star Movement, may look to legislate other campaign promises which critics argue are not grounded in scientific proof.

The European Union has not learnt the lessons of Brexit and could force Italy to reconsider its membership of the bloc, a senior government adviser has told The Telegraph. Ignazio Corrao, adviser to Luigi Di Maio, the deputy prime minister and leader of the Five Star Movement, attacked the arrogance of the European Commission and EU leaders for making no changes since Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.

Davide Ballardini took decisive action to make Genoa less âpassiveâ against Lazio, but couldnât prevent the 4-1 defeat. The Grifone were ultimately knocked down 4-1 at the Stadio Olimpico by a Ciro Immobile brace, Felipe Caicedo and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic. âThe game was open up until their fourth goal.

Hinwil, 25th September 2018 - Alfa Romeo and the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team are delighted to announce that Antonio Giovinazzi will race alongside 2007 Formula One World Champion Kimi Räikkönen, completing the team's driver line-up for the 2019 season. Following its tradition of discovering and nurturing young talents, the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team has appointed the Italian driver, who has worked with the team for the past two years, to race in place of Charles Leclerc.

Two years after a devastating earthquake, the town of Visso still looks as if the disaster happened yesterday. Bureaucratic chaos has forced many to move away, and reconstruction has yet to begin. Ylenia Gostoli reports.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini has threatened to shut down airport access a German plane returning illegal immigrants to Italy. A flight scheduled to arrive from Germany in Italy on Thursday will be carrying 40 illegal immigrants and Salvini said they would not be allowed to enter Italy once the plane had touched down.

The grave of a 'vampire child' buried more than 2,000 years ago has been excavated by stunned archaeologists who found the body had been weighed down, over fears it would rise from the dead. Evidence of a ritualistic burial was found deep underground when a team in Rome, Italy, dug up the remains of a child aged 10, which had a stone placed in its mouth.

Burano, the beautiful fishing village in Venice. It is said that the houses were painted in different colours so the sailors and fishermen could identify their houses as they came in from the sea.

The last Lamborghini Gallardo has left the company’s production line in Sant’ Agata, marking an end to the Italian manufacturer’s most successful ever model. In total 14,022 Gallardos were made in a 10-year production run, almost matching the total number of all other Lamborghini cars built since the company was founded in 1963.

Dan Brown’s new thriller, Inferno is set primarily in Florence, Italy, and Brown shows his readers hidden spots of wonder in that well-known city at every turn of the page. Brown’s famous character, symbolist Robert Langdon, picks up after the “Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” and is asked once again to save the world. Readers immediately turned Inferno into a best-seller and even those familiar with Florence found exciting new places to explore through Langdon’s adventures.

The woman who kissed a riot policeman during protests near the northern Italian city of Turin in November has been detained for "sexual violence" and "offence to a public official".

With its greenery and crumbling ruins, the small island of Poveglia in the Venetian Lagoon seems a pleasant enough place.

Supreme court overturns 60-year-old's conviction for sexual acts with minor, saying verdict did not take into account 'amorous relationship'

Italian police on Wednesday issued arrest warrants for 90 suspected members of a Naples mafia clan and seized assets worth millions of euros, including dozens of well-known pizza restaurants in Rome. One suspect, a 42-year-old Roman man charged with extortion, killed himself by jumping off his fourth-floor balcony when police arrived at his home to arrest him, police said.

Coca-Cola actually had a campaign in the summer of 2011 to encourage Italians to drink Coke with their meals. This might not seem radical to Americans, but this is the land where people drink water or wine at mealtime.

After nearly 12 hours of deliberations Thursday, the court reinstated the guilty verdict first handed down against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in 2009.

Well, this one’s horrifying. The New York Daily News ispointing people’s attention to a story from Italian newspaper Il Mattino. Apparently a 50-year-old man in the northern region of Lombardy in Italy was adopting cats from nearby shelters only so he could cook them and serve them as meals.

The Italian state arrived in the heartland of the Camorra mafia this month bearing a backhoe. Police officers in polished black boots posed for television cameras as the backhoe clawed into an overgrown field, searching for barrels of toxic waste or some other illegal industrial sarcophagi.

A diver died Saturday while working on the shipwrecked Costa Concordia, apparently gashing his leg on an underwater metal sheet while preparing the wreck for removal, officials and news reports said. Italy’s civil protection agency, which is overseeing the removal of the Concordia from Tuscany’s coast, said the diver hailed from Spain.

Milan is a famous city of Italy. It has both the historic as well as modern attractions.

Italy's navy has rescued 1,123 people from inflatable boats in the space of 24 hours, as clandestine migration from North Africa reaches record levels.

Manarola may be the oldest of the towns in the Cinque Terre, with the cornerstone of the church, San Lorenzo, dating from 1338. The local dialect is Manarolese, which is marginally different from the dialects in the nearby area. The name "Manarola" is probably dialectical evolution of the Latin, "magna rota". In the Manarolese dialect this was changed to "magna roea" which means "large wheel", in reference to the mill wheel in the town. Photo by Dominic Kamp.

Mafia killings don't typically shock Italians -- as disturbing as the occasional hit may be, the tragedy usually affects only friends and families of the victims. But a coldblooded, point-blank killing this month in southern Italy has a nation grieving - for a 3-year-old child.

Italy's constitutional court has overturned a law that tripled sentences for selling, cultivating and possessing cannabis, declaring it "illegitimate". Prison rights group Antigone say the law has caused prison overcrowding, with 40% of all inmates serving sentences for drug crimes. It could affect some 10,000 people who may be released from jail as a result.

It speaks to the strange state of Italian democracy that Silvio Berlusconi, the disgraced former prime minister, is now claiming the high moral ground in politics — and that his claim is not completely without merit as Italy prepares for its third consecutive unelected prime minister.

Italy's new prime minister, Matteo Renzi, and his cabinet have been sworn into office at a ceremony in Rome. The new government is the youngest in the recent Italian history.

The new subcompact SUV will be built in Italy and sold in 100 countries around the world.

Voting begins Sunday on a referendum on whether Venice and its surrounding region should secede from the rest of Italy, in an attempt to restore its 1,000-year history as a sovereign republic.

Coke-mentos propelled rocket!