When a territory becomes a story

Architect, photographer, food writer. Apulian by birth, nomadic by vocation, he crosses Italy in search of food and wine infatuations. The flavours and images that catch in his memory become stories. He writes for Food&Wine Italia, Foster, Italia Squisita and his blog Il Ventre dell'Architetto. He lives and works between Apulia and Sicily.

Born in Palermo and a mother of two daughters, Serena has built a twenty-year career in luxury tourism, placing hospitality and the promotion of her home region at the heart of her work. After graduating in Tourism Economics and Management, she began her career at Villa Igiea in her hometown before moving to London, where she gained international experience with leading global hotel groups, including Hilton and Hyatt. Upon returning to Sicily, she joined Belmond, then known as Orient-Express, working in public relations and guest services between Taormina and the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. She subsequently spent six years overseeing ground operations and cruise activities across Southern Italy as Country Manager for a leading American tour operator. She later returned to luxury hospitality, joining Rocco Forte Hotels as PR & Communication Manager for Villa Igiea and Verdura Resort. For the past three years, Serena has served as Executive Manager at Essence of Sicily, combining her extensive knowledge of luxury hospitality with the creation of bespoke experiences designed to immerse international travellers in the island’s culture, traditions and authentic local identity. In this role, she also develops new strategic projects across the region.

Helena Attlee is a British, bestselling author of non-fiction about Italy and its landscapes. Her latest book, The Fire in The Mountain: Sicily, Etna and Her People, was published in April 2026 and broadcast as BBC Radio 4's 'Book of the Week'. Her award-winning The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit has been translated into several languages including Italian, and is published this month as Là dove crescono i limoni by Touring Club Italiano. Helena lives in Wales and teaches creative writing in Britain and abroad.

Fabrizia Lanza was born in Palermo on 8 March 1961 and left Sicily at 18. She graduated in Humanities with a focus on Art History and worked for twenty years in museums. At 45 she closed her life as an art historian and decided to return to Sicily, where her mother Anna had founded a cooking school. Fabrizia began working with her mother, who introduced her to the American public; in 2007 she found herself at a Boston University conference speaking about ritual foods in Sicily. Gradually she took the reins, helping Anna, travelling, shaping the school's programmes and building new contacts. Since 2009 she has directed the school, hosting workshops with chefs, designers and writers on food and the Sicilian land; in winter she runs Cook the Farm, a six-week course on the relationship between agriculture and food. She travels regularly to the United States, cooking and producing Sicilian events in the best restaurants on both coasts — Alice Waters' Chez Panisse among them — and has lectured on Sicilian gastronomy at Boston University's Master in Gastronomy, Harvard, Berkeley and Yale. She has produced and directed short documentaries on the foods of the feasts of St Joseph and St Lucy, Amuri on festive food in Sicily, and Amaro on bitterness as an identity trait of Sicilian food. She is the author of Olive, a history of oil (Reaktion, London 2011), two cookbooks — Coming Home to Sicily (Sterling 2010) and Food of Sicily (Artisan, 2023) — the memoir Tenerumi (Manni 2019) and L'ultimo dei Mosù (Mondadori 2023).

Francesco Fisotti opened Gelateria Fisotti in 2012 in Otranto, building over time a strong identity, which he himself defines as “authentic, funky, hipster gelato, but for everyone”. Born in 1986, he trained at Gelato University, Babbi and Gelato Naturale Academy, and in courses with masters such as Pino Scaringella and Roberto Lobrano, as well as through intense practical experience. Production is based on carefully sourced raw ingredients such as different types of vanilla, local fruit, nuts selected from different parts of the world and cocoa masses of various types. No flavouring pastes, industrial nut pastes, ready-made bases or emulsifiers are used in the workshop. The specialities include iconic flavours such as cellina olive, wild rocket, olive oil with taralli alla contadina, cucumeddrha and mint, fig, prickly pear, mulberry, Apulian almond and, more recently, pistachio made in Puglia. The gelateria appears in the Gambero Rosso guide and in the Dissapore ranking and also stands out for a creative soul beyond gelato: Fisotti is a record label with 27 vinyl releases to its name, underlining the bond between gelato and underground culture.