Virtual Villa Le Balze: Italian Cooking & Entertaining Through the Centuries

Explore the complexities and fun of Italy’s world-renowned cuisine and traditions.

Prof. Tommaso Astarita (Department of History) will guide us through the Italian styles and traditions that played a prominent role in shaping the eating and entertaining of elites across Europe in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.

Then we’ll learn about the changes that came with New World foods, especially the tomato, and around 1700 the impact of the growing influence of French cuisine, which came to rival Italian styles.

And finally, we’ll arrive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where Italian cooking developed many of the elements that still make it popular across the world today, such as many pasta dishes and pizza. In this illustrated lecture, we will survey all these developments.

This free event will be hosted on Zoom. Registration is required.

Accommodation requests related to a disability should be indicated in your registration. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill requests.

All events in the series are in support of Villa Le Balze. Giving to the Villa Le Balze legacy will make a lasting impact on the lives of students, faculty, alumni, and many others who use the Villa as a space for transformative educational and scholarly activities.