The New King Of Alitalia?

LONDON -Robert Colannino, the chief executive of scooter maker Piaggio, seems the most likely choice to become chairman of the "new" Alitalia, after a group of investors help relaunch the airline.

The 65-year-old executive is among a group of 16 investors, who include some of Italy's biggest names. Among them are the Ligresti family, which controls Italian insurer Fondiaria-SAI; and Carlo Toto, the head of rival Air One airline, according to Italian press reports on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Despite the heavyweight backing, getting Alitalia (other-otc: ALAIF - news - people )back on track is no small feat. Colaninno's résumé presents a mixed picture of whether he would be up to the challenge. Sogefin, the auto parts maker he founded over two decades ago, is now a successful, 116.2 million euro ($170.6 million) cap company.

Generali places 30 pct of property fund

The Scarlatti real estate fund was set up in December 2006 with property assets worth 1.4 billion euros, consisting mainly of offices in Milan and Rome, it said in a statement.

"The unit price was based on NAV (net asset value) at 31 March 2008, net of income for the period," Generali said.

With a residual life period of 8.5 years, the fund is managed by Generali Immobiliare Italia SGR, a unit of the insurer's asset management arm Generali Investments SpA.

Campaigners are trying to save a ramshackle Tuscan villa

Conservationists in Livorno have appealed to the Tuscan regional authorities to preserve the Villa Dupouy where the poet stayed for three months until his friend Shelley’s death by drowning in the nearby Gulf of La Spezia in July 1822.

A year later Byron stopped again at Livorno while sailing from Genoa to join the fight for independence in Greece, where he died in 1824. A local road, Via Giorgio Byron, was named after the poet in 1900 to commemorate his association with Livorno.

Fabio Roggiolani, a Green Party councillor in Livorno, said that the Villa Dupouy – formerly owned by Count Pietro Dupouy, a wealthy banker and also known as the Casa Rossa, or Red House – had been allowed to fall into disrepair and was nearly derelict. The 17th century two-storey villa boasts a once elegant façade with niches for statues. It has interior and exterior stone staircases and ceilings frescoed with cherubs and classical scenes. However the property, long uninhabited, has been subdivided into 15 apartments.

Italian Property helps breathe new life into renaissance ruins

Many Brits will return from a holiday in Italy this summer with grand designs of investing in a rustic ruin to restore to its former glory. However, turning a tumbledown building into an idyllic holiday home can be fraught with hazards: people often realise too late that the required renovation is beyond their financial and practical means.

Italian Property, one of the country's largest, independently operated real estate agencies, provides a bespoke restoration service to help buyers avoid the common pitfalls and ensure that work is completed to specification - and budget.

The company currently has a number of historic houses, ripe for restoration, available in a relatively undiscovered area of unspoilt Umbria. Often touted as "the new Tuscany", Umbria is a charming 'cousin', offering undulating olive groves, Renaissance towns and traditional houses. With its environment under enforced 'no new build' protection laws and annual appreciation beating the credit crunch, Umbria has the property renovation potential to match its dramatic landscape.

Italy: Exploring sun-splashed Venice's city squares

I liked going out in the relative cool of the early morning, getting a newspaper, having my first cappuccino at the Bar all'Orologio and watching one of the last authentic neighborhoods in Venice come to life. In the last several decades, rising real estate prices have driven residents out; the population dropped from 171,000 in 1951 to fewer than 62,000 in 2006, leaving the city a tourist ghetto.

But you wouldn't know it in this campo, where I watched men with briefcases hurrying to work. Old women pushing shopping carts quarreled at the vegetable stand. Finally, the tourists started coming out, studying maps until they got the idea of looking up at the church.

It is one of the most companionable in Venice, with two main facades, one facing the canal, the other overlooking the campo where tourists enter. As the interior restoration proceeds, visitors can watch workers on ladders scour stone moldings and chip away old paint.

An Italian villa insists on food that's authentic and local

When Giovanna Grado decided to oversee the restoration of the abandoned 16th-century villa her family acquired years ago in Tuscany, her first thought was, "This is a nightmare!" But there was one aspect of the final objective – to make it an attractive destination for tourists – that was definite in her plans: "The food had to be authentic."

So along with period-accurate furnishings, traditional gardens, and renovations that had to conform to the property's status as a national monument, Ms. Grado insisted that, "We serve only traditional meals using local ingredients." To accomplish this, she tracked down Giuseppe Scarpellini, who, as a young man, had been to culinary arts schools during the winters and trained in hotel restaurants in the summers, but wanted to settle where his family still lives. And she engaged him to be resident chef at the Buonvisi Estate.

"It was my grandmother who showed me how to cook the first time," the shy Mr. Scarpellini observed as he navigated his way around the imposing wooden island at the center of the large kitchen at the back of the villa.