Contact Page - Italian Culture Courses in Tuscany, Italy

Learn Italian in Tuscany @ Il Sasso, Montepulciano:
Il Sasso is a high quality, accredited Italian language school located in Montepulciano, a beautiful, Renaissance town in Southern Tuscany, approximately 124 km south-east of Florence, and 186 km north of Rome. As one of the best Italian language schools in Italy, Il Sasso offers a wide range of Italian language classes, as well as a variety of Italian cultural courses. The school was founded in 1983 by the people who are still running it today. Our Italian language teachers are highly experienced and qualified in the teaching of Italian as a foreign or second language, and are particularly experienced in instructing adult students.

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Italian Culture Courses:
We believe that to know a language, it's not enough to simply learn its grammatical structure and communicative function. To learn a language well, it's also necessary to study its history, its roots and evolution, as well as its literary and poetic works. Therefore, our language program is complemented by a program of cultural courses covering a range of topics from history and literature to current affairs, art and wine, for students who would like more in depth studies of various aspects of Italian society and culture.

The Italian cultural courses start every Monday and run for either one or two weeks. They consist of two hours (55 minutes each) of lessons every afternoon for a total of 10 hours per week.

* Wine course:  Montepulciano is the ideal spot in which to improve your Italian in a relaxed and informal way while learning something about the excellent red wine of our region. We're proposing a course that combines theoretical lessons with visits to wine cellars and wine tastings. We'll talk about the region, cultivation of the vines, production of wine in Montepulciano, characteristics of the local wines, and the regulations that govern and protect Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and its famous neighbours, Chianti and Brunello.

* Italian Literature course:  This courses are dedicated to works of fiction and poetry of the great masters of the 20th Century, as well as to the study of contemporary authors who, in the last twenty years, have produced works of considerable literary value and publishing success - Alessandro Baricco, Niccolo Ammanniti, Andrea De Carlo, Margareth Mazzantini, Carlo Lucarelli, Andrea Camilleri and more. We'll deal with the new themes and the new forms of Italian literature.

- A brief history of twentieth century Italian literature
- Contemporary prose
- Iris Origo: a cosmopolitan intellectual in the heart of Tuscany

* Italian History course:  These courses are devoted to those who want to learn how modern Italy came to be. We will discuss the course of events from the Risorgimento (the Resurgence) to the period following World War II.

- The Italian Facism
- Italy today

* Italian Art History course:  Montepulciano, "the pearl of the 16th century", and Pienza, model city of the Italian Renaissance, are counted among the Tuscan centers in which the Italian Renaissance reached its highest expression. Thanks to the local artistic heritage and the passion of our instructor, our courses on the history of the Renaissance have become a great classic of Il Sasso.

- Art in the Renaissance
- Art walks