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Spanish street types

In Toponymy by Silvio DellʼAcqua

Chi è stato in un paese di lingua spagnola avrà notato che i termini “calle”, “avenida” e “plaza” sono l’equivalente di “via”, “viale e “piazza” della toponomastica italiana: sono le denominazioni stradali generiche. Ma esistono molti altri termini come “bulevar”, “callejón”, “corredera”, “rambla”: che cosa significano, da dove derivano e quali sono le differenze?

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Street types

In Toponymy by Silvio DellʼAcqua

What’s the differences between street and road, but also avenue boulevard, esplanade, place… and likes: the 100+ street types in English!

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Italian street types

In Toponymy by Silvio DellʼAcqua

In Italy the streets are called “via”, and the squares “piazza”. But we can find also “largo”, “corso”, “vicolo”, “bastioni”, “chiasso”, “gradinata”, “mura”, “tresanda”… did youn know that there are more than 300 street types in Italy?

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Polenta with the “O”, Civitanova Marche

In Folklore, Food by Silvio DellʼAcqua

The “pulénda de Citanò” aka “pulénda co’ lu O” (polenta with the “O”) is a type of “polenta” -an Italian peasant food made by boiling cornmeal into a dense porridge- that was typical of a very limited area: the surroundings of Civitanova Marche, a small town on the eastern coast of central Italy.

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Is Bishop Rock the smallest island in the world?

In Islands by Silvio DellʼAcqua

1861. The British administration, for technical and bureaucratic reasons, decided to fix the limit between “island ” and ” rock ” stating that an island, if uninhabited, must have enough room to ensure the «summer pasturage of at least one sheep»; this latter condition would be met, according to the bureaucrats, by having an area of at least two acres. So, hired the sheep as the measure unit, the smallest island in the world turn out to be Bishop Rock in the Scilly. This story is pretty famous, but there’s something that doesn’t add up.