Florence

Spain sweltered under an unrelenting heat wave Wednesday as temperatures started to build toward what is forecast to be a torrid weekend across southern Europe.

This much-anticipated festival is known for bringing together up-and-coming artists with world-celebrated established acts, and this year's lineup only proves this further, as it includes the much-adored Florence + the Machine, as well as the Editors, Warpaint, Goatgirl and Royal Arch. Tickets are available exclusively at viva.gr. 

Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died Saturday. He was 81.

Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who took more than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds to trade secrets with Moscow in one of the most notorious spying cases in American history, died in prison Monday.

Italy on Friday returned to Turkish authorities a funerary stele, dating from the second century and carrying a loving inscription to the dead woman's spouse, after investigation determined that it was illegally excavated from southeastern Türkiye.

Italy will push for a law imposing stiff, five-figure fines on vandals who damage monuments or other cultural sites, to help pay for the repairs and clean-up.

At a Cabinet meeting on April 11, the government approved proposed legislation championed by the culture minister that would impose fines starting at 10,000 euros (nearly $11,000) and as high as 60,000 euros (about $65,000).

The number of national flags hung from the balconies of private homes in the streets of the Greek capital grew sharply in the wake of the contentious name deal between Athens and Skopje, according to a new study which explores the impact of symbolic conflict resolution on nationalist sentiment. 

Leonardo da Vinci, the painter of the "Mona Lisa" and a symbol of the Renaissance, was only half-Italian, his mother a slave from the Caucasus, new research revealed on March 14.

Da Vinci's mother had long been thought a Tuscan peasant, but University of Naples professor Carlo Vecce, a specialist in the Old Master, believes the truth is more complicated.

Slovenia has opened a consulate in Naples, south Italy, to promote the development of economic, cultural and science relations between the two neighbouring countries.

The new consulate, headed by Jacopo Fronzoni as honorary consul, was launched on 13 January, the Foreign Ministry announced on Twitter.

The Uffizi museum in Florence said on Oct. 10 it was suing French fashion house Jean Paul Gaultier for "unauthorized use" of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus," its Italian Renaissance masterpiece.

Painted by Sandro Botticelli in the mid-1480s, it shows the nude goddess Venus standing on a giant scallop shell, covering her loins with her long blonde hair.