Showing posts with label 1905. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1905. Show all posts

5 January 2018

Dr Michele Navarra – physician and Mafia boss

Hospital doctor who headed Corleone clan


Michele Navarra was an eminent  physician in Corleone
Michele Navarra was an eminent
physician in Corleone
Michele Navarra, an extraordinary figure who became the leading physician in his home town of Corleone while simultaneously heading up one of the most notorious clans in the history of the Sicilian Mafia, was born on this day in 1905.

Dr Navarra was a graduate of the University of Palermo, where he studied engineering before turning to medicine, and became a captain in the Royal Italian Army. He could have had a comfortable and worthy career as a doctor.

Yet he developed a fascination with stories about his uncle, Angelo Gagliano, who had until he was murdered when Navarra was a boy of about 10 years old been a member of the Fratuzzi – the Brothers – a criminal organisation who leased agricultural land from absentee landlords and then sublet it to peasant farmers at exorbitant rates, enforcing their authority by extorting protection money, as well as by controlling the hiring of workers.

As the son of a land surveyor, Navarra already enjoyed privileges inaccessible to most of the population and his medical qualifications only further lifted his standing in the community. Somehow, though, it was not enough.

After the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, having co-operated with the Anglo-American forces, Navarra took advantage of his relationship with Angelo di Carlo, a Sicilian cousin in the American marines who had used his Mafia connections to become a vital go-between for the Office of Strategic Services (precursor of the CIA) in obtaining intelligence ahead of the invasion.

Navarra, along with a fellow doctor, was killed in his  car in an ambush on a country road
Navarra, along with a fellow doctor, was killed in his
 car in an ambush on a country road
The occupying army were determined to remove Fascist party members from power on the island, so Navarra presented himself as an anti-Fascist and, with Di Carlo’s help, secured the right to round up and take possession of all military vehicles abandoned by the Italian army.

He used some of these to set up a regional bus service but others became vital to his cattle rustling operations, which enabled him to establish himself as an important figure in the criminal underworld, to the extent that, when Corleonese clan boss Cologero Lo Bue died in 1944 – from natural causes – Navarra was able to fight off a challenge from Vincenzo Collura, a Sicilian-born American gangster, to take over as Lo Bue’s succssor.

At the same time, remarkably, Dr Navarra was advancing his medical career.  In 1946, he was appointed the lead physician at Corleone’s local hospital (after his predecessor was mysteriously murdered) and enjoyed enormous respect in the community for his skill and diligence, and his generosity in waiving fees for those in financial hardship. Often, he would be invited to be godfather to the children of grateful patients.

When Corleone people spoke of him, they called him 'u patri nostru - Sicilian dialect for 'our father'.

Luciano Leggio, Navarra's former lieutenant, ultimately betrayed his boss
Luciano Leggio, Navarra's former lieutenant,
ultimately betrayed his boss
Yet it was his criminal activity that was the real source of his wealth and power. The Corleonese clan controlled not only cattle rustling but all manner of other activities, legitimate or otherwise, thanks to Dr Navarra’s influence in the award of local government contracts.

As a member of the Christian Democrat party, he did what he could to keep the party in power locally and was duly rewarded, even if his methods were somewhat unusual.  Voters were often escorted into the polling booths by gang members to ensure they voted the right way, Dr Navarra having issued certificates to say they were blind had to be assisted at the ballot box.

More sinisterly, he despatched his young lieutenant, Luciano Leggio, to murder Placido Rizzotto, a trade union leader who was gaining popularity for the Socialist party.

Navarra exploited his standing to develop powerful political allies, who in turn handed him prestigious positions.  For a while, for example, he was the official medical adviser to Ferrovie dello Stato, the state rail network.

He was always well dressed, genteel even, yet almost every week he would issue the order for someone to be killed, either an opponent or an individual who in some way was an impediment to his progress.

Navarra was careful to keep his own hands clean, always commissioning murders through a third party. Seldom could a killing be traced back to him, although he was sent into exile in Reggio Calabria after being accused of personally silencing, though a lethal injection, the only witness to the Rizzotto murder.

It was during his exile that his former underling, Leggio, developed his own rackets and tried to seize power. Navarra tried to have him killed in the summer of 1958 but the plot failed and it was only a few months later that Navarra's car was ambushed on an isolated country road and he died, along with an innocent colleague from the hospital, in a hail of machine gun fire.

Among the suspected killers were two notorious future bosses of the Corleonese clan, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.

The Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri
The Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri
Travel tip:

The University of Palermo, founded in 1806 but with roots in learning traceable to the 15th century, when medicine and law were first taught on the site, is home to about 50,000 students.  It is notable among other things for the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri, the 14th century palace that was once the home of the powerful Sicilian ruler Manfredi III Chiaramonte, which now houses the rector’s office and a museum, and the 30-acre Orto Botanico (Botanical Gardens).

The Palazzo Comunale overlooks the Piazza Garibaldi
at the heart of Corleone
Travel tip:

Although the town of Corleone was immortalised in fiction by Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather and the film of the same name, its Mafia past is only too real and citizens lived an oppressed life for many years, fearful of even admitting that the secret society existed.  Nowadays, there are organisations that are proudly anti-Mafia and the confiscated home of one-time leader Bernardo Provenzano has been turned into an anti-Mafia museum and art gallery in memory of Paolo Borsellino, the anti-Mafia magistrate who was murdered in 1992.







30 March 2017

Ignazio Gardella – architect

Modernist who created Venetian classic


The architect Ignazio Gardella
The architect Ignazio Gardella
The engineer and architect Ignazio Gardella, considered one of the great talents of modern urban design in Italy, was born on this day in 1905 in Milan.

He represented the fourth generation in a family of architects and his destiny was determined at an early age. He graduated in civil engineering in Milan in 1931 and architecture in Venice in 1949.

Gardella designed numerous buildings during an active career that spanned almost six decades, including the Antituberculosis Dispensary in Alessandria, which is considered one of the purest examples of Italian Rationalism, and the Casa alle Zattere on the Giudecca Canal in Venice, in which he blended modernism with classical style in a way that has been heralded as genius.

During his university years, he made friends with many young architects from the Milan area and together they created the Modern Italian Movement.

He worked with his father, Arnaldo, on a number of projects while still studying.  On graduating, he set up an office in Milan, although he spent a good part of his early career travelling, sometimes with a commission but at other times to study.

Gardella's Casa delle Zattere in Venice
Gardella's Casa delle Zattere in Venice
He expanded his knowledge and ideas by visiting Germany, Finland, Sweden and Norway before the Second World War.  After the conflict he travelled to the USA, Greece, France and Spain.

During the 1930s, Gardella designed both the Antituberculosis Dispensary and the Provincial Laboratory of Hygiene in Alessandria. The first building is considered one of the purest examples of Italian Rationalism.

The bulk of his work came as Italy rebuilt in the 1940s and 1950s, although he was still working even into his 80s and 90s, when he designed a new Faculty of Architecture for the University of Genoa and collaborated with a number of architects in renovating the Teatro San Felice in the same city.

He also worked with his son, Iacopo, on building a new railway station, Milano Lambrate, with its distinctive rounded copper roof.

Gardella is best remembered, though, for the projects he undertook in the post-War years, including the Case Borsalino apartments in Alessandria, the PAC (Padiglione Arte Contemporanea) in the Villa Reale in Milan, which Gardella rebuilt, without payment, after it was badly damaged in an explosion in 1996, the Olivetti Dining Hall at their factory in Ivrea and, in particular for the Casa alle Zattere in the Dorsoduro district of Venice, built between 1953 and 1958.

The Olivetti Dining Hall at Ivrea
The Olivetti Dining Hall at Ivrea
The building, again built as apartments, is one of the finest examples of Italian post-war Modernism coming to terms with its historical surroundings, a triumph for Gardella given that few architects are given the chance to build in Venice and none wants to leave something detrimental to its appearance.

The linear components of Casa alle Zettere are unmistakably contemporary, yet Gardella’s careful selection and manipulation of architectural elements and their subsequent assembly in a well thought-out scheme allowed him to create something that perfectly complements the surrounding buildings, even down to the church of Santo Spirito next door, and would not look out of place among the palaces on the Grand Canal.

Away from architecture, Gardella was an influential figure in interior design, starting as early as 1947, when he founded the Azucena Agency with Luigi Caccia Dominioni, designing primarily decorative furniture.

Gardella, who won numerous prizes for his work, also had an important academic career as a professor at IUAV – the architectural university in Venice. He died in Oleggio, a town about 60km north-west of Milan adjoining the Ticino national park, in 1999.

The Casa alle Zattere has the appearance of a palace
The Casa alle Zattere has the appearance of a palace
Travel tip:

The Casa alle Zattere can be found on Fondamenta Zattere allo Santo Spirito between Calle Zucchero and Calle larga della Chiesa in the Dorsoduro quarter of Venice, looking out over the Giudecca Canal towards the Giudecca island, almost directly opposite Palladio’s striking white marble church, the Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore, built to commemorate the plague of 1575-76, which claimed more than a quarter of the population of the city.

Travel tip:

The town of Oleggio in Piedmont sits next to the Park of the Ticino, an area of just under 100,000 hectares situated largely in Lombardy but straddling the border of its neighbouring region.  A beautiful area of rivers and streams, moorlands, conifer forests and wetlands, it is home to almost 5,000 species of fauna, flora and mushrooms, as well as a variety of wildlife, from the purple herons, white storks and mallards that populate the waterways to sparrowhawks and peregrine falcons, tawny and long-eared owls, rabbits, foxes, squirrels and stone martens.


More reading:


Giovanni Michelucci - the man who created Florence's 'motorway church'

How Marco Zanuso put Italy at the forefront of contemporary style

What Milan owes to Ulisse Stacchini

Also on this day:


1282: Sicilians rise up against the French

(Picture credits: Top picture from WhipArt archive)

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22 February 2016

Enrico Piaggio - industrialist

Former aircraft manufacturer famed for Italy's iconic Vespa motor scooter


The Vespa is still among the most popular scooters in the world
The Vespa is still among the most
popular scooters in the world
Enrico Piaggio, born on this day in 1905 in the Pegli area of Genoa, was destined to be an industrialist, although he cannot have envisaged the way in which his company would become a world leader.


Charged with rebuilding the family business after Allied bombers destroyed the company's major factories during World War II, Enrico Piaggio decided to switch from manufacturing aircraft to building motorcycles, an initiative from which emerged one of Italy's most famous symbols, the Vespa scooter.

The original Piaggio business, set up by his father, Rinaldo in 1884, in the Sestri Ponente district of Genoa, provided fittings for luxury ships built in the thriving port. As the business grew, Rinaldo moved into building locomotives and rolling stock for the railways, diversifying again with the outbreak of World War I, when the company began producing aircraft.

In 1917 the company bought a new plant in Pisa and in 1921 another in nearby Pontedera, which became a major centre for the production of aircraft engines and is still the headquarters of Piaggio today.   Aeroplanes remained the focus of the business, which Enrico and his brother, Armando, inherited with the death of their father in 1938, and the Pisa and Pontedera plants again became important production centres with the outbreak of World War II.

But their vital role in the manufacture of war planes made them a major target for Allied bombing and both were flattened during sustained raids on August 31, 1943.

Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn rode around Rome on  a Vespa motor scooter in the 1953 film, Roman Holiday
Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn rode around Rome on
 a Vespa motor scooter in the 1953 film, Roman Holiday

Italy suffered enormous damage to its cities and the country's efforts to get back on its feet after the War ended were hampered in particular by the terrible state of the roads.  It was this that prompted Enrico, who had responsibility for rebuilding the Pisa and Pontedera factories, to take the bold decision to switch from producing aircraft to motorcycles.

He had been impressed by the agility of the tiny American-built military motorcycles that were dropped by parachute to be used by Allied troops on the ground as they fought against the Germans in Milan and Turin and asked his designers to come up with something similar for civilian use.

It was Corradino D'Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer, whose design ultimately met with his approval. As it happened, D'Ascanio was no fan of motorcycles, which he thought were dirty and difficult both to ride and to maintain, so he set about eliminating all the elements he disliked.

His prototype featured small wheels, a large, well-padded seat, a completely enclosed engine and a tall shield at the front, protecting the rider's clothes from dust and mud.  Crucially, he moved the engine from its traditional central position, which required the rider to straddle the machine when mounting, to a position alongside the rear wheel.  This created a gap between the handlebars and the seat that facilitated easy, step-through mounting even for skirt-wearing women.

D'Ascanio (left) and Piaggio with the machine that made both their names
D'Ascanio (left) and Piaggio with the machine
that made both their names
Enrico looked at the distinctive body shape, listened to the buzz of the engine, and immediately commented that it reminded him of una vespa, a wasp.  The name stuck, and an icon was born.

The Vespa was immediately popular.  In the first year of production, in 1946, Piaggio produced just under 2,500 machines. By June 1956, one million Vespas had rolled off the production line.

As Italy embraced the freedom and optimism that came with peace, the Vespa became a symbol of the nation, almost a fashion accessory for handsome men and beautiful girls, its image as likely to adorn the cover of a style journal as a motorcycle magazine.

Its popularity spread around the world, particularly after Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck rode around Rome on one in the 1953 film, Roman Holiday.  As well as Italy, Piaggio found another huge market for the machine in Britain, where it became the conveyance of choice for the style-conscious Mod movement in the 1960s.

Enrico Piaggio, who lost a kidney when he suffered gunshot wounds in Florence in 1943, died in 1965, aged only 60. The company had by then passed into the control of the FIAT empire and has changed hands several times since but remains a major player in the motorcycle industry, with an annual turnover in the region of €1,200 million.

Travel tip:

The seafront at Pegli, near Genoa, the largely residential area where Enrico Piaggio was born
The seafront at Pegli, near Genoa, the largely
residential area where Enrico Piaggio was born

Pegli, where Enrico Piaggio was born, is a mainly residential area of Genoa but boasts a lively seafront promenade and a number of hotels. There are good links by road, rail and boat to the central area of Genoa, which is a city founded on its status as a busy port, but which offers many historic attractions, the most notable of which is probably the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, with its striking black slate and white marble exterior, originally built in the sixth century.









The Piaggio Museum has examples of railway engines and aircraft as well as the Vespa scooter
The Piaggio Museum has examples of railway
engines and aircraft as well as the Vespa scooter
Travel tip:

The town of Pontedera in Tuscany, situated about 30km from Pisa in the direction of Florence, is home to the Piaggio Museum, which was opened in 2000 and occupies 3,000 square metres of the complex where Piaggio started production in the 1920s. Visitors can see examples of Piaggio railway engines and aircraft as well as a large area devoted to the Vespa motor scooter, which celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2016.  For more information, visit www.museopiaggio.it.


15 November 2015

Annunzio Mantovani - conductor

Orchestra leader brought light relief during World War Two


Mantovani moved to England as a child and made his career there
Mantovani moved to England as
a child and made his career there
Conductor and composer Annunzio Paolo Mantovani - best known simply as Mantovani - was born on this day in Venice in 1905.

The music produced by his orchestras, which became known as ‘the Mantovani sound', brought pleasure to millions and his recordings were best sellers in Britain and the US before the Beatles came on the scene.

Mantovani’s father, Benedetto Paolo Mantovani, who was known as ‘Bismarck’, was a violinist and leader of the orchestra of Teatro alla Scala opera house in Milan, at the time Arturo Toscanini was conductor.

The Mantovani family moved to England in 1912 after Bismarck was appointed conductor of the orchestra at Covent Garden.

Young Annunzio Mantovani studied the violin and piano in London before joining a touring orchestra. He quickly became a violin soloist and then a conductor.

Mantovani's popularity was based on light orchestral 'easy listening' music
Mantovani's popularity was based on light
orchestral 'easy listening' music
He went on to form his own orchestra, which toured the country, made radio broadcasts and recorded albums for Columbia and Decca.

His music was popular with the troops, who danced to it with their sweethearts when they came home on leave during the Second World War. It became known as ‘light orchestral’ or ‘easy listening’ music.

After the war, Mantovani concentrated on recording and developed his trademark ‘cascading strings’, or ‘tumbling strings’ effect with arranger Ronald Binge. The sound was used for the first time on the 1951 single, Charmaine, which sold more than one million copies.

Mantovani's father was orchestra leader at Teatro alla Scala under Arturo Toscanini.

More than 40 of his albums had also registered in the US pop charts before his recording career came to an end in 1972.

Annunzio Mantovani died in 1980 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, aged 74.

Mantovani's father played in the orchestra at La Scala under conductor Arturo Toscanini
Mantovani's father played in the orchestra at La Scala
under conductor Arturo Toscanini
Travel tip:

Visitors can have a look inside Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where Mantovani’s father played in the orchestra, by touring the theatre’s museum. Costumes and memorabilia from the history of the theatre are kept on display there. The museum entrance is in Largo Ghiringhelli, just off Piazza Scala. It is open every day except the Italian Bank Holidays and certain days in December. Opening hours are from 9.00 to 12.30 and 1.30 to 5.30 pm.

The Palazzo della Ragione in the centre of Mantua
The Palazzo della Ragione in the centre of Mantua
Travel tip:

The surname Mantovani originates from the Italian name given to people from Mantova in northern Italy. Mantova (in English, Mantua) is an atmospheric old city, to the southeast of Milan, in Lombardia. It is well known for its renaissance Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the Gonzaga family, which has a famous room, Camera degli Sposi, decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna. 

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