Many of us who come frequently to a place do so because the culture fascinates us. Italy is particularly interesting, because compared to the US, it's a fairly "new" country, or at least recently unified. That leaves a lot of room for regional cultural and language differences. Go to a place like Sicily and the atmosphere will be totally different than, for example, Tuscany.
I like it when expats settle in and begin to document those things about a place that they find fascinating. Jann Huizenga, a photographer and writer who lives part-time in Sicily, has recently started a blog called Living in Southeast Sicily. The blog is a kick to read; I especially enjoyed Strung Out in Sicily, an interesting look at how different (and socially important) doing the laundry "properly" can be in some cultures.
Jann Huizenga is in Sicily working on a book called Kissing Sicilians. It's on my list already. She lives in Ragusa Ibla, the old town we loved visiting last year. See our Ragusa Pictures to see how the old town looks, a town that Huizenga describes as "a stony village where lemons roll in the streets and bees grow fat as hummingbirds, where the local gelateria offers up cream of anise and petal of rose, where public clocks as well as people are way behind schedule, where street names are snatches of poetry."
Yup, that's the place. Exactly.