An Idea of Beauty, on view at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS) at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, sets out to explore the work of eight contemporary international artists and will encourage visitors to reconsider the concept of beauty and to question not only the ‘need’ for it but also its function, value and purpose.

Snow, ice and rain over the Italian general elections, even in Tuscany. The bad weather will continue across much of Italy through early Monday, according to the Tuscan Protezione civile.

Marrying in Florence is the dream of many foreign people like Americans, British, Japanese, South Americans who come to Florence to legally marry. Now it is possible to legally wed open air and in the magnificent Garden of the Roses and in other beautiful places in the heart of the Tuscan city.

A piece of a 16th-century fresco that fell from the ceiling of a corridor in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery on February 6 has been put back, Florentine museums chief Cristina Acidini said Wednesday. ”The restoration achieved the expected results and the fresco is nicely back together,” she said.

Chianti Classico sales up 10% in 2012, thanks mainly to exports. An upward trend that’s consolidated after somewhat smaller growth in 2011 (+4% from 2010). The United States, Germany and Canada are, in order, the Black Rooster’s biggest markets.

To honour Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici the historic parade of the “Florentine Republic” will start at 10.40 am at the “Palagio di Parte Guelfa”, then continue on the central streets accompanying the municipal authorities to the Medici Chapels where they pay a floral tribute to the tomb of the Elettrice Palatina.

After restoration work, the Renaissance-era Rucellai Chapel with its tiny architectural model of the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre by Leon Battista Alberti will reopen to the public on Saturday.

Giant reproductions of Michelangelo’s David and the Venus de Milo are raising eyebrows in the Japanese town of Okuizumo because of their oversize nude bodies.

The “Casa di S. Andrea” in Percussina, fraction of San Casciano, along with several farm complexes, was owned by the family of the Writer Nicolò Machiavelli,  secretary of the Florentine Republic in the years between 1498 and 1512, is one of the greatest and most interesting figures of the Renaissance.

In January the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF), at the European University Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, released a policy report on European Union Competencies in Respect of Media Pluralism and Media Freedom.