Awesome Italy

Venice has defied its watery surroundings for centuries, but the iconic Italian city still stands. Primal Space explains how medieval engineers built a thriving city atop a smattering of marshy islands. Years later, similar ingenuity was used to solve the city’s fresh water and sanitation needs. It’s incredible that so many original wood pylons are still intact.

The last time we checked in on the Jetson ONE quadrotor, it was buzzing through a forest. The single-seat eVTOL aircraft has continued to improve over the years, and it looks even more impressive as it flies over the hills of Tuscany in Italy. The company is closer than ever to production, with initial shipments scheduled for later in 2024 into 2025.

Known for their ridiculous mods of crappy little cars, Carmagheddon is the Italian equivalent of Russia’s Garage54. Perhaps their greatest achievement to date is this junkyard FIAT Panda hatchback that they turned into the lowest drivable vehicle ever. And yes, there is a driver inside. You can watch the full build process Part One and Two.

Azel is the Italian beatboxing champion. Around the one-minute mark in this clip, you’ll find out why. Between the crazy sounds coming from his mouth to the wild facial contortions, this guy is a true master of his craft. We’re just impressed he didn’t get more spit on the camera lens.

An Italian room with a view is a sure thing at this Airbnb Plus treehouse rental on an olive farm in rural Galluzzo, Tuscany. Located just 20 minutes outside of Florence, the private agrotourismo gem has a wrap-around deck, antique stove, chalkboard walls, and access to the main house’s tennis courts and pool.

The canals in Venice, Italy are swarming with boats, especially the floating city’s iconic gondolas. With the help of the computer graphics software Blender and After Effects, Raffo VFX eased congestion on the waterways by moving the skinny boats to the skies above, making Venice look like a scene out of The Fifth Element.

Chef Ferran Adrià’s brain-trust the elBullifoundation compiled this mouth-watering 416-page encyclopedia of images, menus, reference text, and the history of breakfast. Along the way, it compares the importance of the first meal of the day and how it differs around the globe.

Austrian Red Bull athlete and trial biker Tom Öhler takes a wild ride down the Piz Boé, a mountain in Italy that peaks at more than 10,000 feet. As he descends down the narrow and rocky trails, just inches stand between his custom mountain bike and the deadly drop-offs. Go behind the scenes of the shoot at 3:00.

How It’s Made takes us inside the factory for WEGA, makers of high-end commercial espresso machines. There, industrial machines transform sheets of steel into parts, then skilled workers assemble dozens of components, including a large copper and brass boiler that sits at the center of each machine.

We love the sleek, modern looks of this pocket knife from Italy’s Maserin and designer Alessandro “Bonus” Olivetto. It features lightweight anodized aluminum handles with wood, micarta, or G10 scales, and a 3.15″ straight edge sheepsfoot blade fabricated from satin-finish steel.

Urban explorers The Proper People, Broken Window Theory, and Tobi Urbex take us deep inside a defunct textile factory in Italy. Along the way, they encountered all manner of items just left to rot, from countless vintage computers, to company records, to numerous articles of clothing… and huge mounds of pigeon droppings.

YouTuber Arjen Hartsuiker has a love for building with LEGO, but he’s also into mountaineering. So he decided to combine his two passions, by taking a 7-hour climb in the Italian Alps to an altitude of about 8300 feet, where he set up a LEGO train set with one of the most epic views ever seen by its minifig passengers.

“Maybe they’re shy. They don’t need to be on television to self-validate.” As part of Conan and Jordan Schlansky’s Italian trip, the duo went to Naples to get coffee, invaded a TV show set, and just generally raised the bar for annoying tourists.

Jordan Schlansky has a deep love for Italy, so Conan O’Brien decided to do a good deed and take his associate producer on an impromptu trip to the country. But Jordan’s anal retentive nature might just keep them from getting out of the starting gate at all.

There is something about this time of year and the light in Italy. It is like no other, and Casper Rolsted captures it and much, much more in this beautifully edited time-lapse of the five small villages on the rugged Italian Riviera known as the Cinque Terre.

While we could only think of one particularly rude gesture before watching this clip of a charismatic tour guide Sergio Solazzo, it turns out that Italians have hand gestures for as many things as Indians have headshakes for. What’s the gesture for “turn your phone sideways”?