The best of the bathroom: The hydro massage tub in the Penthouse Suite at the Rome Cavalieri hotel is so spectacular, it has earned its own separate bathroom-within-a-bathroom in the guest suite. Up a few steps and glassed-in for gazing, the tub lets you take a dip while drinking in a view of St. Peter’s Basilica. The ceiling over this Roman bath glitters with starry fiber optics, and you can set the lighting to green, blue, yellow, or—look out—red.

The rest of the bathroom: Paneled in a rare marble with malachite inlay, the palatial bathroom is trimmed with Swarovski crystals; there’s an LCD TV above the opulent vanity, and the luxe triple-head shower is equipped with a tropical storm–inspired mister, plus scent therapy. The rest of the suite’s no slouch, either, with Andy Warhol artwork and an oversize Karl Lagerfeld sofa set that was originally designed for Lagerfeld’s home in Paris.

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Aielli & Benevento has the Perfect Wine Escape …and it may surprise you. **********Clients can always pick their hotels, guides and dates of travel…we just manage the details. Call us at +1.212.695.1511 and ask to speak with a travel specialist.

The Academy Award winner stars in the title role of the yet to be released suspense thriller titled, “The American”  and no surprise most it was filmed on location in Italy. (Besides Rome, shooting took place in Castel del Monte, L’Aquila, Abruzzo.)

Alone among assassins, Jack (Clooney) is a master craftsman. When a job in Sweden ends more harshly than expected for this American abroad, he vows to his contact that his next assignment will be his last. Jack reports to the Italian countryside, where he holes up in a small town and relishes being away from death for a spell. The assignment, as specified by a Belgian woman, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten of “In Bruges”), is in the offing as a weapon is constructed. Surprising himself, Jack seeks out the friendship of local priest Father Benedetto (Italian stage and screen veteran Paolo Bonacelli) and pursues romance with local woman Clara (Italian leading lady Violante Placido). But by stepping out of the shadows, Jack may be tempting fate. This suspense thriller will hit limited U.S. theaters on September 1.

Malta is just a few hours’ flying time from most European cities. (Yes we know Malta is its own country and not a part of Italy…but its close enough and worthy of an adventure when you’re in ‘bella Italia’.)

********As in previous years, Aielli & Benevento will offer its September bound Venice clients a unique set of specialized touring experience in and around the festival’s 10 day program. All told, the festival will include 79 world premieres, including the entire in-competition lineup for the fourth time in five years. The out-of-competition lineup had its share of highlights as well, with brothers Ben and Casey Affleck both appearing with directorial efforts — Ben with “The Town,” a crime thriller, and Casey with “I’m Still Here,” a documentary about actor Joaquin Phoenix, who is Casey Affleck’s brother in law. It will be the directorial debut for the younger Affleck. Venerable Italian directors Marco Bellocchio and Michele Placido return to the Lido with “Sorrelle Mai” and “Vallanzasca – Gli angeli del male,” respectively, and Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie,” the actor’s 1971 directorial follow-up to “Easy Rider,” will screen as an unofficial homage to the actor, who died in May at the age of 74. As usual, Italian films were the best represented in the overall lineup, with 41 full-length features. But U.S. productions were second, with 19, followed by France with 11 and Japan and China with 7 each. A total of 34 countries are represented with at least one official screening, including the Dominican Republic, which will see a film screen on the Venice Lido for the first time ever in “Jean Gentil,” a film about neighboring Haiti that will screen in the Orizzonti sidebar.

67TH ANNUAL VENICE FILM FESTIVAL LINEUP

• “Black Swan,” Darren Aronofsky, U.S. (Opening Film)
• “La Pecora Nera,” Ascanio Celestini, Italy
• “Somewhere,” Sofia Coppola, U.S.
• “Happy Few,” Antony Cordier, France
• “The Solitude of Prime Numbers,” Saverio Costanzo, Italy, Germany, France
• “Silent Souls,” Aleksei Fedorchenko, Russia
• “Promises Written in Water,” Vincent Gallo, U.S.
• “Road To Nowhere,” Monte Hellman, U.S.
• “Balada Triste de Trompeta,” Alex de la Iglesia, Spain, France
• “Venus Noir,” Abdellatif Kechiche, France
• “Post Mortem,” Pablo Larrain, Chile, Mexico, Germany
• “Barney’s Version,” Richard J. Lewis, Canada, Italy
• “We Believed,” Mario Martone, Italy, France
• “La Passione,” Carlo Mazzacurati, Italy
• “13 Assassins,” Takashi Miike, Japan, U.K.
• “Potiche,” Francois Ozon, France
• “Meek’s Cutoff,” Kelly Reichardt, U.S.
• “Miral,” Julian Schnabel, U.S., France, Italy, Israel
• “Norwegian Wood,” Tran Anh Hung, Japan
• “Attenberg,” Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece
• “Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame,
• ” Tsui Hark, China “Three,” Tom Tykwer, Germany

A breath-taking, private, self-contained Mid Century gentlemens lodge of stone and custom wood framing above Palm Springs. Only 15 minutes from El Paseo. Built by Sinatra for privacy & seclusion to entertain family and friends, the Rat Pack boys and other celebs. The property boasts a main estate with mother-in-law quarters, a detached guest house with 3 separate suites, baths and mini-kitchens, and a pool house. Features a custom pool, a full size tennis/ sports court, and a Helo pad. Private road w/gated access, with breath taking views of the entire valley. Sellers have restored this property to original condition and are motivated! This sale includes a 5 acre parcel, and two 2.5 acre parcels.

Has a wonderful courtyard.  The restaurant had its 15 minutes of fame (again) when Julia Roberts of ‘Mystic Pizza’ fame frequented during the 2009 filming of best seller “Eat, Pray, Love”.  ( Not that these Hollywood types are evidence of good food but Santa Lucia has been a hit with such VIPs as Rupert Everett, Ridley Scott, Sofia Loren, Dante Ferretti, Bernardo Bertolucci and Harvey Keitel. Bill Clinton has been back many a time with his daughter Chelsea, while Kirstie Alley gave the paparazzi the international finger sign having been spotted leaving the restaurant.  During the never-ending filming of Gangs of New York at Cinecittà, Martin Scorsese and Leo di Caprio were a permanent fixture at the restaurant.

Roberts is quoted as saying her favorite location scenes were “when people were speaking Italian athousand miles a minute and there was plenty of pasta and wine”.  We agree.  Menu favorites include scialatielli and spaghetti.

2 Via di Tor Sanguigna ; info@santaluciaristorante.it ; Tel#:  +39 06.68802427

The Henri Chenot Spa  has 1500sqm dedicated to the well-being of body and mind. From windsurfing or boat rides on the breathtaking Lago Iseo, weaving down the country lanes on a bicycle to explore the neighbouring villages, taking a tour of a vineyard on horseback, or hiking in the surrounding hills.  L’Albereta accommodation 57 rooms including 19 suites & junior suite. All rooms have air conditioning, satellite television, DVD (on request).

Getting to: L’Albereta: Fly to Bergamo or to Verona followed by a 45mins drive.  Excursions with a tour guide can be arranged to Brescia, Lake Garda, Verona, Bergamo, Milan. Boat trips & hiking trips available.

Villa Italian Specialties
7 Railroad Avenue
East Hampton,
New York 11937
Tel#  631-324-5110
Info@villaitalianspecialties.com
Hours: Monday – Saturday 7:30am -7:00pm; Sunday 8:00am – 5:00pm.

> Marea

www.marea-nyc.com; 240 Central Park S; New York, NY 10019-1457; (212) 582-5100. ”One of Chef White’s great pasta specialties is fusilli smothered in a delicately braised pork-shoulder ragù. Deprived of pork, he substitutes octopus then loads this already heavy dish with lumps of heart-stopping bone marrow. The sense of overkill is magnified by the grand entrée-size pasta portions, among them a dank pile of spinosini obscured in a swarm of pricey but tasteless langoustines, and tubes of house-made gramigne overwhelmed with smoked cod and too much speck. A heaping portion of crab-and-sea-urchin spaghetti had a lustrous, exotic quality to it, but nothing on the pasta list was quite as satisfying (or, at $23, as comparatively cheap) as the little ricotta-filled “pansotti” ravioli (served with a pesto artfully flavored with nettles), which contains no seafood at all. The seafood entrées, come in all sorts of baroque shapes and sizes. If it’s freshness you’re after, try the ivory-colored black bass (with artichokes, pine nuts, and pools of salsa verde) or the skate, piled over morels and a bed of green, butter-soaked summer peas. A seafood risotto is also available, along with an elaborate $45 “bordetto di pesce” soup from Italy’s Adriatic coast, which could have used a little more broth. Scallops were sweet and fresh, though weirdly slippery (they’re touched with more lardo), and if you’re not dieting, you’ll probably enjoy the Columbia River salmon, which the calorie-happy chef poaches in duck fat.—New York Magazine

> Lupa Osteria Romana

www.luparestaurant.com; 170 Thompson Street; NYC; (212) 982-5089. Lupa opened its doors on October 1, 1999 under the partnership of Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich, and Chef Mark Ladner. A salumeria serves Italian artisan meats and cheeses, house-made products such as canned tuna and guanciale, and a kitchen that is dedicated to creating dishes as traditionally Roman as possible, while skillfully substituting and supplementing ingredients that are out of season or unavailable in New York. The result is a Roman menu with a New York balance.

> Locanda Verde

www.locandaverdenyc.com; 377 Greenwich Street; New York, NY 10013-2338; (212) 925-3797  “The latest Italian restaurant in Robert De Niro’s star-crossed space is called Locanda Verde (“green inn”), and in style, conception, and tone it’s as different from its predecessor Ago as a raucous, deceptively sophisticated pop band is from the provincial touring company of a tattered old Broadway show.  The most radical overhaul, however, is in the kitchen, which is now overseen by the celebrated chef Andrew Carmellini. Carmellini is a protégé of Daniel Boulud (he was head chef at Café Boulud for years), and he later ran the critically acclaimed Italian restaurant A Voce before leaving in a dispute with the owner. Carmellini is a master of classical French (and Italian) technique, but at Locanda Verde (where he is a partner), he chucks it all to cook “family style” food for the masses. His menu is filled with lots of fashionable, small-plate “cicchetti,” including mounds of fresh sheep’s-milk ricotta (sprinkled liberally with sea salt) and melty slices of “testa della casa” (headcheese) antipasti decked with tangy pickled vegetables. The best of these early finger foods, though, are the crostini, which the chef piles alternately with faintly spicy summer corn (over toasted prosciutto bread), smooth dabs of puréed chicken liver, and mounds of blue crab leavened with jalapeño and a light touch of cream. There are only seven “secondi” entrées on the menu at Locanda Verde, and, in line with Carmellini’s populist mission, none costs over $25.”—New York Magazine

> Peasant

www.peasantnyc.com; 194 Elizabeth Street; New York, NY 10012-4255; (212) 965-9511. “The crowd at this rustic restaurant is stylishly urban. Inspired by the proverbial “peasant” cuisine where meals were prepared in the kitchen hearth, chef-owner Frank DeCarlo cooks all of his wonderful food in a bank of wood- or charcoal-burning ovens, from which the heady aroma of garlic perfumes the room. Don’t fill up on the crusty bread and fresh ricotta, though, or you’ll miss out on other flavorful Italian fare like sizzling sardines that arrive in terra-cotta pots, or rotisserie lamb that’s redolent of fresh herbs.”—Fodor’s

> Convivio

convivionyc.com; 45 Tudor City Place; New York, NY 10017; (212) 599-5045  “Convivio is chef Michael White’s ambitious reimagining of an upscale Italian restaurant in Tudor City that was called L’Impero. To provide a sense of sunny, Italian lightness (Convivio is also the name of a famous restaurant in Rome), the interior designer, Vicente Wolf, has covered the walls with white reflective glass and fitted them with installations of shimmering nylon string. The old lamp shades have been replaced with modish ones hung with orange glass spheres. The waiters have been outfitted with rust-colored shirts and the banquettes covered in Italianate crimson, like the inside of a grand Sicilian railway car. The four-course, $59 prix fixe dinner is $5 cheaper than the old one, but now you can choose from a mind-boggling 53 items, many of which change on a daily, or seasonal, basis. There are nine authentic varieties of the pre-antipasti finger food called sfizi (artichokes tossed with slivers of mint, fat risotto croquettes colored with saffron, soft bits of baby eggplant touched with chile), and enough antipasto to feed a small army of Sicilian peasants. Try the skewer of grilled quail with sweet onions, the faintly boozy chicken-liver crostini made with onions sautéed in Marsala wine, and the breaded sardines, which are dunked in creamy salmoriglio sauce (like Sicilian tartar sauce) and filled with smoky provolone. It’s in the realm of pastas that White demonstrates why he’s become known, in certain Rabelaisian circles, as midtown’s answer to Mario Batali. Like Batali, the rotund, gregarious chef is a voracious scholar of regional Italian cuisine. And like Batali, he has the ability to take classic recipes and imbue them with his own combination of lightness and soul. I’m thinking of the handcrafted maccheroni, folded Roman style with egg yolk, pepper, salty bits of pancetta, and summer peas, which was followed to our table by a bowl of baby-size orecchiette dunked in a rich Sicilian ragù made with tripe and lightened with fennel. There are densely textured ragùs made with braised pork shoulder (served over a nest of fusilli and finished with a lush fonduta made with caciocavallo cheese), fat tortelli ingeniously stuffed with tomato, onion, and cured pork jowl, and a weirdly ethereal recipe from Sardinia called malloreddus made with saffron, blue crab, and a hint of fresh sea urchin.” —New York Magazine