Tag: years

The Cristallo Hotel in Cortina turns 120 years old – Italian Cuisine


From the dawn of skiing to Vanzina's "Christmas Holidays", passing through "The Pink Panther", Cortina has already lived at least five lives. Now with the World Ski Championships and the next Olympics the future is planned

2021 is a historic year for Curtain: in February it will host the Alpine Ski World Championships and the foundation of theHotel Cristallo, the symbol of the city, and inextricably linked to the birth of Alpine tourism. 120 years after the birth of the myth of the “pearl of the Dolomites”, a new phase opens up.

The first rich adventurers

The start of Cortina's tourist fortune is due to the spread of mountaineering at the end of the nineteenth century. In fact, towards the middle of the century the railways arrived in the basin of the city, bringing the first European travelers and making them discover its beautiful mountains. First the rich Central European nobility, the French, English and American bourgeoisie then fell in love with the spectacle offered by the massive Dolomites, but not only. The mountains were still only places of adventure: in Cortine, on the other hand, modern tourism and the myth of the white week was born. And this history is inextricably linked to the Hotel Cristallo: the first luxury hotel to be inaugurated at the dawn of the twentieth century and a great promoter of the sports that will make the village a world-famous destination.

The intuition of sport and mass tourism

In 1901 Giuseppe Menardi founded the Hotel Cristallo, an imposing building in art nouveau style on the model of the great Viennese palaces; Cortina at the time was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1903 the first ski club arrives and gradually gets equipped to welcome the first adventurous skiers. Until the outbreak of the First World War, the turmoil continued, but it was after the crisis of 1929 that the small town became a renowned tourist center: between the end of the thirties and the beginning of the forties the first ski lifts were also built. In the Second World War the hotel was almost totally destroyed and finally reopened in 1947: it was the birth of mass tourism, obviously the prerogative of nobles and the upper middle class.
The son of the founder, Leo, knows that breathtaking mountains are not enough and he senses that the sports that were then increasingly popular among the elite of the time could make a difference. Skiing of course, but also hockey, curling, skating, motor racing and tennis in the summer. At the Cristallo one of the first indoor swimming pools was inaugurated in the 1930s; still used.

La Dolce Vita in the snow

In 1956 the Winter Olympics consecrate Cortina as a winter destination and make it known thanks to the first television images all over the world. Actors, artists and celebrities arrive, the historic Monkey disco bar is inaugurated and the Cristallo becomes the place to be of nightlife with the opening of the Monckey disco; in the sixties everyone passed through here, so much so that in 1963 an entire cult film was shot right in the hotel, The Pink Panther by Blake Edwards with David Niven and Peter Sellers. It is only the first in a series that will bring the rooms and the lobby into the scenes of Christmas holidays by Vanzina. It is 1983, Christian De Sica is very young and Cortina becomes popular. Golds, furs, big cars and parvenu become the image of Cortina and in the media supplant that of writers and poets who fell in love with a worldly but elegant Cortina. Ruyard Kipling had already called it "kitch", decades before the players and showgirls of Lele Mora's stable arrived, attraction in the attraction of the almost 50 thousand presences counted in the pre-Covid seasons.

The last three lives of Cortina, beyond the nightlife

Mayor Giampietro Ghedina saw his Cortina change its skin at least three times: "There was that of cinepanettoni, then that of the crisis, and finally today's Cortina", he declared to Corriere della Sera in 2019. "There have been years in which it seemed that to count for something, in Italy, it was mandatory to spend the Christmas holidays in Cortina. And so there were characters who rented the Ferrari just for the ski week, or ladies who walked up and down the street showing off the shopping bags of the boutiques that, in reality, were empty. It was only the appearance that mattered. Today, fortunately, we have returned to the tourist of substance . The Milanese ugly of the song Skiing holiday di Il Pagante has once again given way to mountain lovers, to the "citizens" of second homes and to a new luxury tourism. Discos, night clubs and nightlife are no longer what they used to be, the city center seems to have stopped in an indefinite era of the nineties, but a new process of transformation has begun.

The Cristallo celebrates 120 years of Cortina's history

Once again, the Hotel Cristallo marks a piece of the city's history. Celebrating 120 years, it has already gone through two wars, a reconstruction and a renovation for the centenary. It has evolved allowing city tourism to evolve, because to be luxury today you need to have structures, mentality and services up to international standards and guests. The imposing building retains its charm, but rather than basking in a glorious past, it thinks about the future: it has launched the Destination Authority concierge service, a special guide that helps guests find "their" Cortina, away from the beaten path of the mass tourism. In addition to the two restaurants Gazebo and Veranda led by chef Marco Pinalli, it offers hotel guests and external customers the Ampezzo cuisine at LaStube 1872. At the spa you can experience the exclusive Transvital treatments, yoga combined with mountain sports, healthy eating ; and then there is the Thermal Suite Private Experience with which to book an entire area with sauna and wellness program. It reopens on January 15th because for 2021 Cortina and the Cristallo are preparing to welcome the Alpine Ski World Championships.

Via della Spiga, Hotel Cristallo in Cortina: 2 hours, 54 minutes and 27 seconds… Alboreto is nothing !!

Cortina 2021-2026

"We want to communicate to the world that in Cortina we are ready to win the challenge of organizing a major international sporting event in the midst of a pandemic", declared Alessandro Benetton, president of the Cortina 2021 Foundation. "How the Cortina Olympics in 1956 were the showcase of an Italy that had put the turbo of the economic miracle after the Second World War, so the next World Championships in Cortina 2021 are the icon of a country that fights the pandemic and gets up, to return to looking to tomorrow with with the pride of being Italian ". Sportsmen and journalists will arrive in the city but, unfortunately, few fans because the World Cup will have to play behind closed doors. But we are already looking to 2026, when Cortina, together with Milan, will be the site of the XXV Winter Olympic Games. Milan-Cortina? Far away? "Make the eye dance on the tick! Via della Spiga, Hotel Cristallo in Cortina: 2 hours, 54 minutes and 27 seconds… Alboreto is nothing! . Docet Christmas holidays are very close.

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90 years of Fisher-Price .. with a touch of art! – Italian Cuisine

90 years of Fisher-Price .. with a touch of art!


Fisher-Price joins Vogue Italia for a collaboration that brings an artist's touch to the heart of the brand: Eva Cremers, Dutch illustrator and digital artist, has been selected to create, for the November issue of Vogue Italia, a reworking of visual key to some of the most iconic Fisher-Price products

2020 was a very important and significant year for Fisher-Price: the most loved and known brand in the world in the childhood and preschool category has celebrated its first 90 years of life. In fact, it was in 1930 that Herman G. Fisher, Irving L. Price and Helen M. Schelle founded the company in East Aurora: since then Fisher-Price toys have entered the childhood memories of entire generations around the world.
Fisher-Price, for 90 years, has been working alongside families to invite them to discover the wonder of being children and to see the world with their own eyes, just like when they play with a Fisher-Price product. To end the year with a flourish and to effectively show what it means to see the world through the eyes of the little ones, Fisher-Price joins Vogue Italia for a collaboration that brings an artist's touch to the heart of the brand: Eva Cremers, Dutch illustrator and digital artist, has been selected to create, for the November issue of Vogue Italia, a visual reworking of some of the most iconic Fisher-Price products.

Eva Cremers is an emerging Dutch illustrator and digital artist who has made fantasy and humor the strengths of her works. The artist for Fisher-Price has combined the contemporaneity of shapes with the characteristic and inimitable features of the brand, giving life to a unique reinterpretation of 3 "historic" Fisher-Price products, which shows at 360 ° the playful and imaginary potential that springs from Fisher-Price toys, so even the older ones can enjoy it. Playfulness and dream are therefore the two keywords that have guided the Dutch illustrator and digital artist in her reinterpretation of the iconic Telefono Chiacchierone, Cagnolino Ridi & Learn and the 5 ring Pyramid.

It is not the first time that Fisher-Price, in the year of celebrations for its 90th anniversary, joins the world of art: to celebrate the legacy of the brand, on October 16 it was inaugurated, on the account of the same name Instagram, the digital experience "Fisher-Price Toy Museum" a real exhibition with more than 90 different images of as many exhibits organized for decades, so that visitors can find and rediscover the vintage toys of their childhood. The Fisher-Price Toy Museum digital exhibition was conceived by American designer Leila Fakouri, who in the past has created sets for brands such as Nike, Chanel and Gap.

Farewell to the art historian Philippe Daverio: he was 70 years old – Italian Cuisine

Farewell to the art historian Philippe Daverio: he was 70 years old


Gallerist, publisher, television host, columnist and even politician, died last night at the Cancer Institute in Milan

He was an art historian, gallery owner, publisher, television host, columnist and also a politician: Philippe Daverio, 70, died last night at theCancer Institute from Milan. The director Andree Ruth Shammahe, director of the Franco Parenti theater, made it known. "His brother wrote me this morning to tell me that Philippe passed away tonight," he explained. "My friend … your silence forever is a piercing scream this morning."

Who was Philippe Daverio

Daverio, fourth of six children, was born on 17 October 1949 in Mulhouse, Alsace, to a French mother, Aurelia Hauss, and an Italian father, Napoleone Daverio, a builder. He moved to Italy and he studied at Bocconi of Milan, but without graduating. He often said: "I'm not a doctor because I didn't graduate, I was enrolled at Bocconi in 1968-1969, in those years people went to university to study and not to graduate". Instead, in Milan he opened his first gallery (which soon became one of the most important in the city), and found himself a publisher and popularizer of art.

Councilor for Culture, Leisure, Education and International Relations of the Municipality of Milan from 1993 to 1997, he oversaw the reconstruction of the Contemporary Art Pavilion, which had been destroyed by a bomb in 1993. But the great public got to know him thanks to television, starting from 1999, when he started working as a broadcast correspondent Art on Raitre. The following year he led Art.tù (of which he was also the author), and from 2002 to 2012 Passepartout, a successful art and culture program that brought art to the homes of Italians. Increasingly known as a television personality, in recent years he has often participated in Strip the news, on Canale5.

In politics collaborated with Vittorio Sgarbi, mayor of the Municipality of Salemi, in various cultural and artistic initiatives and was a candidate in the province of Milan in 2009 in the list of Filippo Penati. According to him, who had an idea of ​​politics as a noble service to the community, "left and right no longer make sense".

Daverio was also a university professor: he taught History of Art at the IULM in Milan, History of Design at the Polytechnic of Milan and Industrial Design at the University of Palermo. He wrote many popular books, including The good way, Art on the table, The game of painting. And the last, in 2019, My Europe in small steps, for Rizzoli.

Daverio and the kitchen

Since October 2019, on the occasion of the celebrations for the magazine's 90th anniversary, Philippe Daverio has also collaborated with "La Cucina Italiana" making 10 videos of the history of food. Fascinating as always, full of anecdotes, Daverio has revealed to us curiosities and secrets with his innate elegance, his humor and a boundless love for knowledge.

You can review them here.

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