As annual floods return to Italy's canal city of Venice, a newly installed flood barrier manages to keep the rising waters at bay -- a success hailed as vital to its tourism recovery

When Giuseppe Chiodi, 77, came down with the flu in February, he didn't think much of it. Winter in his hometown — the northern Italian hamlet of Montello — can be harsh. Fevers, at least for the elderly, are a seasonal nuisance. He and his wife, Giuseppina, 78, had each migrated to the north of Italy from the poorer south in the 1960s. They met in their 20s at the company for which they both worked, and they had been married for 54 years. Both were healthy. They were looking forward to spending the rest of their retirement together.

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.