A young New Zealander is rubbing shoulders with some of the stars of the World Cup - and living the life of training and discipline that took them there.

It was a clash that pitted one of the finest journalists of his generation against a now-disgraced former world leader, but this was no modern-day Frost-Nixon.

Prince Harry has paid tribute to the terrible price paid by Kiwis who fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino in the Second World War.

Paul Abercrombie gets to grips with Venice's watery warrens during a once-in-a-lifetime rowing lesson.

Amanda Knox's alibi for the murder of a British student could now be in doubt after CCTV footage was released which appears to show her on the night of the killing.

Chris Wiltshire feasts until he can feast no more in the region known as the bread basket of Italy.

For more than half a century it has been seen as one of the most potent landmarks of Italy's fascist era.

The leasehold of a Venetian island described as one of the most haunted places in Italy is to be auctioned next month as the state desperately seeks to raise revenue.

Memories come flooding back when Susan Buckland revisits a city of grace and grandeur.

The combined turnover of Italy's Mafia groups has now overtaken that of the European Union's budget as the Mob spreads its tendrils overseas.

There has been much water under the Bridge of Sighs since Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Venice, ending 1100 years of independence in the city state.

Live like the royals did - if only for a night. Lynn O'Rourke Hayes scopes out cool castles.

Italy's head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano, has set in train his third prime ministerial appointment in less than three years.

Among the ruins, Russell Maclennan-Jones imagines life in ancient Ostia.

An Italian MP has “blacked up” to deliver a staggering anti-immigration rant in the country’s parliament.

The Italian Senate has expelled three-time ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi from Parliament over his tax fraud conviction, ending, for now, his two-decade legislative run but not his political career.

An Italian prosecutor has suggested Amanda Knox may have killed her British roomate over an argument about an unflushed toilet.

Italy wants to buy back a Mediterranean island owned by New Zealand businessman Michael Harte, who bought it just two months ago.

The prosecutor seeking to reinstate the conviction of Amanda Knox for the murder of her roommate has urged an appeals court not to repeat mistakes he says were made by the court that freed her.

The Mediterranean island of Sardinia, prized by the jet-set for its white sand beaches and crystal-clear seas, became a flood-ravaged mud bath after a freak torrential rainstorm killed at least 17 people, downed bridges and swept away cars.

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's political heir yesterday pledged to keep Italy's fragile coalition Government afloat, now that he has split with the media mogul and formed a rival centre-right party.

A witness in the Costa Concordia shipwreck trial has described how the captain jumped aboard a lifeboat, testifying how the commander wasn't the last to abandon the rapidly capsizing luxury cruise ship.

US student Amanda Knox's defence got a boost this week when a new DNA test on a kitchen knife failed to conclusively prove that it was the murder weapon used to kill her British roommate.

'When you are someone's lover, no one asks you for a ticket.' A Moldovan dancer testifies at trial that she was with the captain of the doomed Costa Concordia.

Shouting "murderer" and "executioner," hundreds of people jeered as the coffin of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke arrived Tuesday for a funeral Mass celebrated by a splinter Catholic group opposed to the Vatican's outreach to Jews.