Radio Big World APS - Italy

Massimiliano Iocco, Suddenly [in Rome], Watercolor en Plein Air, 2026, Artist Collection.

A famous bull mosaic at the centre of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan now requires substantial restoration after being worn down by tourists honouring a tradition involving its delicate body parts. As the legend goes, visitors who grind their heels on the bull’s testicles and spin three times in place are guaranteed good fortune and destined to return.

Over time, the crowds twirling clockwise for luck have carved, by May 2026, a small crater into the bull’s “lucky spot.”

“Thousands of people every day have performed the famous heel‑spinning gesture,” city councillors said. “The pink tiles that form its testicles are being worn away.”

In 2014 artists Caitlin Levin and Henry Hargreaves created a series of maps made entirely out of the foods for which the countries and continents are known.

“Exploring new places through the food you eat is often a portal to the cultural complexities of that place,” Hargreaves told TIME in an email. “While we know that tomatoes originally came from the Andes in South America, Italy has become the tomato king. These maps show how food has traveled the globe—transforming and becoming a part of the cultural identity of that place."

Rome in Terracotta: a scale model of ancient Rome, made entirely of terracotta using selective laser sintering (SLS)

Hugh Hayden, Huff and a Puff, Island of Saint James (San Giacomo), Venice, Italy. Photo: Jacopo Trabuio

The interior of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, built with LEGO bricks by Luca Petraglia, on display in Chieri (Turin).

Inner cloister of the former Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio, which now houses the Giorgio Cini Foundation, one of Venice’s major centers for arts, humanities, and cultural research, combining historical preservation with contemporary scholarship.