The French and Italian Department has assembled a list of internet resources (pertinent web links) that may be useful for students seeking information in a specific category related to the study of French or Italian (language, literature, arts, culture, etc.). Links to the different subject areas can be found below.
Topics of Interest:
Art
Cinema
Cultural Institutions
Economy
Educational Institutions
Francophone World
Gastronomy
General Information
History
Language Resources and References
Literature
Media
Music
Politics
Travel
Art
French Resources: Art
General French and Francophone
L’art du 19e siècle: features 19th century art with links to different periods (neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, impressionism) and artists
Eugène Delacroix: extensive website featuring many of his works, along with a biography and information on the selected paintings
Contemporary
Art Press: bilingual magazine about the contemporary art scene
Other
Web Gallery of Art: good online gallery
Italian Resources: Art
Italian Museums: discover every museum in Italy, listed per name and region
Italian Exhibitions: updated catalogue of the exhibitions held in Italy
Italia Teatri: list of theaters and representations
Cinema
French Resources: Cinema
Cinema in France: examining film history, suggested movies, etc.
Film Terms: English and French film terms and explanations.
French Cinema Vocabulary: base vocabulary for French cinema.
The Language of Cinema: great bilingual site for film vocabulary.
Première: interviews, trailers, reviews…
Vocabulaire Français-Anglais: an online dictionary for film and photography terms.
Italian Resources: Cinema
Film and Chips: Information about films currently playing in Italy.
Internet Movie Database: A searchable database of all film and television.
Museo Nazionale del Cinema: National Museum of Cinema.
Tempi Moderni: Information about modern films.
Cultural Institutions
French Resources: Cultural Institutions
Museums
Cité de la Musique: The Cité de la Musique in Paris offers everyone access to culture through its concerts, museum and exhibitions and a huge media library as well as educational and publishing activities aimed at both adults and young people.
Louvre: Official site of the Louvre.
Musées de la Ville de Paris: A listing of museums in Paris with links to their official websites.
Italian Resources: Cultural Institutions
Museums
I Musei Vaticani Online: The Vatican Museum.
La Galleria degli Uffizi: The Uffizi Gallery.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Museum of art in Venice.
Other
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali: The Ministry of Culture and Environment.
Italica: RAI International website devoted to language and culture.
Radiotelevisione Italiana: Broadcasts and interactive activities offered by RAI International.
Instituto LUCE: The oldest public institution for cinematographic diffusion with both a didactic and informative aim.
Economy
French Resources: Economy
EH.net: Historical exchange rates.
Alternatives Economiques: Alternative perspectives on economics.
Italian Resources: Economy
Istituto Nazionale di Statistica: Italian National Institute of Statistics.
Noise from Amerika: A blog made by Italian Economics Professors who live in the US.
Educational Institutions
French Resources: Educational Institutions
Ecole normale supérieure: university with which Colby is affiliated for a language assistant program.
Ministère de l’éducation nationale: government education website.
Université Paris Dauphine: library website.
Italian Resources: Educational Institutions
L’Università di Bologna: The website for the University of Bologna.
L’Università degli Studi di Padova: The website of the University of Padova.
Pubblica Instruzione: The branch of the Italian Government in charge of the administration of the national school system. This website provides a lot of opportunities to come in Italy with their scholastic program.
RAI SCUOLA: Documentary, cultural and educational television in Italian and English.
University Online Bookshop: Provides an updated catalogue of books and other items.
Francophone World
French Resources: Francophone World
Former Colonies
au-senegal.com: everything you need to know about Senegal – population, geography, history, tourism, with lots of pictures as well.
Histoire de la Martinique: a website with plenty of historical information, along with links for tourism, photo galleries, etc.
Viêt-nam: mon pays natal, ma passion, mon rêve: pictures of old Vietnam as well as the country as it currently is.
Maps
Investir en Zone Franc: detailed map of Africa; links to each country.
Literature
French 128 web links: websites created by students (spring 2005) that provide cultural context and a guide to reading assigned texts for a number of francophone authors.
Literature and Culture of Francophone Africa and the Diaspora: a guide to resources on the web for research.
Women
Curriculum for Franco-American Women of Maine: interesting website with plenty of facts, definitions, resources, and links.
Pages of Franco-American Women’s Institute Initiatives: lots of links pertaining to Franco-American women.
Gastronomy
French Resources: Gastronomy
Food
France des Saveurs: huge database of small businesses and farms in France, searchable by product or region. Information on regions, their products, and their gastronomy.
La Boîte à Recettes: thousands of recipes (not limited to France).
Saveurs du Monde: Recipes, tips, information on ingredients. Very handy site.
Wine
Bordeaux: everything you want to know about Bordeaux wine.
Les Vins de Touraine: short descriptions for different wines from the Sologne to the limits of the Vienne region.
Terroir-France: a guide to French wines, by region.
Italian Resources: Gastronomy
Il Cucchiaio D’Agernto: The oldest and most popular book about Italian recipes with both traditional and avant-garde orientation.
Gambero Rosso: An Italian food and wine magazine.
General Information
French Resources: General Information
Gateway
Douce France: links to everything one could possible want to know about France e.g. administration, boutiques, clothing, education, health, hotels, housing, restaurants, vineyards, work, etc.
La Portail de la Culture: French cultural website. Access information by theme.
The World of French Culture in the USA: from French Embassy’s website. Created to promote French artistic activities in the U.S. to American Francophones.
Search Engines
Google France
Voila: Francophone search engine.
Yahoo! France
Italian Resources: General Information
Gateway
Italia Mia: A guide to Italy, Italian and Italian-American culture.
Life in Italy: All you need to know about Italy, dedicated to modern Italian life and culture – showcasing the Italy of today rather than focusing on Italy’s past.
Search Engines
Yahoo! Italia
History
French Resources: History
Overview
Le Temps des Révolutions: comprehensive, illustrated history of France, organized by centuries.
L’Histoire par l’image, 1789 – 1939: chronology of French history through art.
Middle Ages
French History and Civilization: notes and illustrations on medieval French history (10th – 14th centuries).
19th Century
200 ans de Code Civil: The Civil Code, from the National Assembly’s page.
Afrique au XIX siècle: detailing the situation of every African country during this time period.
Chronologie du XIX siècle: extremely detailed listing of France’s development, including colonization.
L’expansion coloniale francaise au XIX et XX siècles: text-heavy but helpful resource for a thorough summary of French colonization around the world.
L’expédition d’Alger: a long and detailed description of French colonization in Algeria.
Francophone Slavery: 19th century French texts and images related to the debate on abolition.
La guerre d’Algérie: well laid out site, with simple explanations of political events.
La guerre franco-allemande de 1870: a detailed breakdown of events, looking at the before, during, after, and consequences of the war.
Le XIXe siècle: chronology of the 19th century, cross cultural in scope.
Toussaint L’Ouverture: short but helpful biography.
20th Century
The French Resistance: Thorough profiling of the French Resistance, including barriers faced, key players, geography, etc.
Italian Resources: History
Italy 1: Brief analysis of Italian history.La Storia siamo noi: A well-known and accurate documentation about the events of the last century in Italy.
Language Resources and References
Le Conjugateur: University of Alberta site that conjugates more than 7400 verbs (including Quebecois verbs).
Le Conjugueur: conjugates verbs in all tenses.
Verb2verbe: simple, easy to use conjugator for all tenses.Dictionaries and Encyclopedia
The ARTFL Project: from the University of Chicago, has databases, dictionaries from the 17th to the 20th centuries, access to “Le Trésor”, etc.
Lexilogos: online dictionaries, including Le Trésor, Le Littré; synonyms, antonyms, etc.
Wordreference.com: primarily a dictionary, but also includes compound formes and verb conjugations.Grammar
Francais 1B-2B: short grammar review exercises.
French Grammar Central: 580 links with material for advanced grammar courses, with thorough information on the structure of the French language. Conjugations, research, and activities.
La Grammaire Interactive: helpful mini-lessons on spelling, grammar, with tests as well.
Language guide: a well-structured repository of grammar guides that include interactive exercises.
Tex’s French Grammar: clear sections on nouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. Helpful for beginners.
Other
Typing accents: Colby’s LRC page for typing all foreign language accents on your keyboard.
Reading Comprehension
Captage: an interactive create-your-own story.
Italian Resources: Language and References
Dictionaries and Thesauri
Garzanti Linguistica: Online dictionary of Italian and English with a section dedicated to synonyms and antonyms.
Etimo: Etymological dictionary of Italian Language.
Word Reference: Online translation dictionary.
Accademia della Crusca: The official institute of Italian language. It collaborates with universities and research programs in order to be up to date with language changes.
Literature
French Resources: Literature
Renaissance
Les Sonnets de Louise Labé: large collection of her sonnets along with several other works, with some analysis and notations.
17th Century
Phèdre: detailed description, act by act, along with analysis.
18th Century
La mélancolie chez les romantiques: Romanticism in context (social, political, historical, and artistic).
19th Century
19th-Century French Women Poets: by Professor Paliyenko, including Louise Ackerman, Marie Krysinska, Louisa Siefert, and Anais Ségalas.
Charles Baudelaire: a very clean, sophisticated website with detailed biographic information, along with his published critiques and a list and description of the characters in his “univers baudelairien”.
Madame Bovary: summary of the book along with some analysis.
20th Century
L’existentialisme – Jean-Paul Sartre: a helpful description of Sartre’s defining philosophy, “l’existence prècede l’essence”.
General Francophone
ClicNet: localizes or edits virtual resources in French for students, French teachers/professors, and for all interested in francophone culture, art, and literature.
Canadian
Gabrielle Roy: Government of Canada website with articles, documents, biography, links.
Other
Les bijoux: versification.
Europeana: Prototype developed by the National Library of France under the project of a Digital European Library.
Gallica: French national library, all digitized. Free access to 90,000 documents.
Lexique des termes littéraires: every term you’ll need to know for your literature classes, alphabetized and defined.
Outils pour l’analyse littéraire: helpful websites for students looking for assistance and guidance with French essays and analysis in their papers.
Italian Resources: Literature
Letteratura: A complete online catalogue about Italian writers of every period, literary terminology, magazines, bibliography, bookshops and much more.
Letteratura Italiana: The texts of a large number of famous and important Italian works listed both per author and title.
Dante Online: A focus on Dante and the texts of his works. A “resources” section that guides the study in the Italian Universities, foreign Universities, Libraries and research Institutes, sites of specific and general interest.
Media
French Resources: Media
Current Events
France diplomatie: French government site about France.
Magazines and Newspapers
Francophone Newspapers: 140 French language newspaper links from North America (Quebec), Africa, Asia, and Europe
Le Monde: popular, highly read newspaper of France. Equivalent to our New York Times.
Les Inrocks.com: magazine about cultural events.
Libération.fr: online news, particularly covering current politics.
Telerama: French pop culture.
Other
Arrêt sur images: a site analyzing media in France.
Television
Les Guignols sur Canal Plus: “the original Daily Show!” (Professor Davies).
Italian Resources: Media
Magazines and Newspapers
Corriere della Sera: It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers.
La Repubblica: The second largest circulation Italian daily general-interest newspaper.
Gazetta: It is an Italian newspaper dedicated to coverage of various sports. The newspaper, published on distinctive pink paper, sells over 400,000 copies daily – more on Mondays when readers want to catch up on the weekend’s events – and can claim a readership in excess of three million.
RAI – Radiotelevisione Italiana: Known as Radio Audizioni Italiane is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Music
French Resources: Music
Concerts and Live Acts
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal: website detailing the annual summer jazz festival in Montréal.
Radio
Radio France: French radio website with podcasts, information about radio shows and concerts, and an online store.
Italian Resources: Music
Radio
Radio RAI
Le Radio Italia: An online guide for the radio divided by regions and categories – such as university radios, foreign radios, etc.
RAI Radio: A guide about the Italian radio programs promoted by RAI.
Radio Deejay: One of the most popular radio broadcasts.
RDS: Another of the most popular radio broadcasts.
Musica e Canti Popolari Italiani: An interesting and complete collection of famous Italian folkloristic songs with lyrics too.I Migliori Anni: A TV program of the most popular songs, organized by years – 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s…
Live Rock: This site is about concerts, authors and festival news in music.
Politics
French Resources: Politics
France Politique: offers information on french political parties, past elections and the current political scene in France, as well as extensive biographies of major french politicians.
EurActiv.fr: an online journal with articles about the current political situation in France.
Rue 89: information about current events.
Italian Resources: Politics
Presidenza della Repubblica: This site is about the activities of the President of the Italian Republic. It includes interviews, official notes, and news about his work.
Italian Council of Ministers: For information about the Government’s acts and news.
Gazetta Ufficiale: The official gazette of the Italian Republic, or G.U., is the official journal of record of the Italian government laws. Its scope is to make legislative, private and public acts available for everyone.
Annozero: A political and cultural TV show about current events in Italy.
Ballarò: A political and cultural TV show about recent events and topics.
Travel
French Resources: Travel
General
France.com: Information about accommodations, tours, transportation, French culture, shopping, and business.The Paris Pages: explanations of Paris, its culture, tourist info, interactive maps, and endless links to other sites of cultural interest.
Petit Futé: Ideas for where to travel in France.
Voyager en France: Travel site with information on visiting France.
WWOOF: see France in a unique way with a focus on organic farming.
Casamundo: vacation planners for France.
Attractions
Chateau Versailles: official website for the Chateau de Versailles.
Provence and Beyond: French Riviera – local visiting information, travel services, information about famous people from Provence.
Italian Resources: Travel
Italian Tourism: Italian Government Tourist Board. Information about trip, events, accommodation, money, hotels, food and so on.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs: The official website run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where to find information about opportunities, travel, general information and crisis unit.
Tuscany Pass: A guide dealing with every aspect tourism in Tuscany.