From the time it emerged from the ruins of the Roman Empire, Italy has been one of the world’s most important centers of art and architecture, spirituality and science; in short, of la bella vita. In literature alone, work ranging from early medieval philosophy to the Divine Comedy to modern and postmodern fiction and critique demonstrate Italy’s vital place in every area of human achievement. This week, we'd like you to blog about you memories or impressions of Italy. Please tag your entry Italy blog in order to be featured in this list.

If you’ve lived in or visited Italy, please share your most vivid memory. Did you glide in a gondola, read Umberto Eco in Umbria, eat pizza in view of Vesuvius? If you haven’t, how did you come by your most powerful impression of the country which Mark Twain said “the Creator made from designs by Michelangelo”?

A few bloggers will win books by Red Room authors:

• As the appeals trial of Amanda Knox begins this week, The Fatal Gift of Beauty, Nina Burleigh's book about the Italian context of the case becomes especially relevant. It's "a thoughtful, compelling examination of an enduring mystery, an ancient, storied place, and a disquieting facet of Italian culture: an obsession with female eroticism. It is also an acute window into the minds and personalities of the accused killers and of the conservative Italian magistrate striving to make sense of an inexplicable act of evil."

• In her groundbreaking classic The Italian Baker—now thoroughly updated for today’s modern kitchen—Carol Field introduces artisanal doughs and techniques used by generations of Italian bakers. Every city and hill town has its own unique baking traditions, and Field spent more than two years traversing Italy to capture the regional and local specialties, adapting them through rigorous testing in her own kitchen.

• A young Englishman embarks on a journey of self-discovery in an exotic locale when he is sent to the Mediterranean in A. Colin Wright's novel Sardinian Silver. It's a "captivating and oftentimes hilarious novel follows the exploits of a young man trying to find love while assimilating to an archaically orthodox society.

So post a blog entry today about Red Room's topic of the week

"Memories or Impressions of Italy"

For help on how to blog, please see the directions here. We'll choose one of these blog posts to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week. Post your entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT (GMT-08:00) for consideration, and be sure to tag it with the keyword term Italy blog in the Blog Keyword Tags field so we can find it. (Please don't forget the exact tag. For more information about tags, click here.) 

And don't forget to check out the entries for our last blog topic, The Moment Everything Changed. From birth and death to an unsent letter and a middle-of-the night phone call, Red Roomers wrote wrenching accounts of how it was never the same again.

Please let us know if you have trouble posting a blog entry on the all-new Red Room, and thank as always for blogging!

–Huntington W. Sharp, Senior Editor, Red Room