#1 Al Bar
Sinner, schede elettorali, and the summer hit nobody admits to loving.
Welcome back to Al Bar.
Every Thursday at 6 PM Italian time, we pull up a stool next to you and walk you through what Italians are actually arguing about this week. Six short sections, served like an aperitivo: Una Coca Zero, una birra, un’altra, uno spritz, un gin tonic, il conto. Ten minutes to read. The price of a coffee a week, not a spritz.
New here? Start with the manifesto. Si comincia.
On the counter this week:
Italy spent seven days doing what it does best: turning a tennis tournament into a national group hug, then immediately starting a fight about everything else.
Inside this week’s menu:
Sinner just did something no Italian had done in fifty years — and the country can’t stop talking about who else was in the stands.
900 towns vote this weekend, and Venice is the city to watch. Why a local election is being read as a national verdict — and what to say when your Italian friend asks who’s winning.
A man drove a car into a crowd in Modena last Friday. What we’re learning isn’t what anyone expected — and the conversation Italians are actually having about it is not the one on TV.
Eurovision and the final of Amici owned the weekend back-to-back. We’ll tell you which one mattered, why the schedule itself became news, and the one sentence that signals you’re plugged in.
The summer tormentone race is on. What a tormentone is, why Italians claim to hate it, and the five songs fighting to own June, July, and August — with a leaderboard.
Plus three lines to drop next time an Italian friend asks “hai visto?”
Pour yourself something. The first round is below.
0. Una Coca Zero
You just sat down. Still sober. Warming up.
This week Italy did the thing Italy does best: it turned a tennis tournament into a national group hug.
