Walter Audisio - partisan and politician

Claimed to be the man who killed Mussolini

Walter Audisio addressing a Communist Party rally a
couple of years after the end of the Second World War

The partisan and later politician Walter Audisio, whose claim to be the man who executed Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in April 1945 is generally accepted as likely to be true, was born on this day in 1909 in Alessandria in Piedmont.

Mussolini was captured in the town of Dongo on the shore of Lake Como as he tried to flee from Italy to Switzerland, having accepted that the Axis powers were facing near-certain defeat to the Allies as the Second World War moved into its final phase.

He was taken along with his entourage to the village of Giulino di Mezzegra, 20km (12 miles) south of Dongo along the lakeside road, and after spending the night under guard in a remote farmhouse was taken back into the village, where he and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were ordered to stand against a wall.

There they were shot dead by a partisan who went under the nom de guerre of "Colonnello Valerio", before their bodies were taken to Milan and hung by their feet from the roof of a petrol station in Piazzale Loreto, which had been the scene of the massacre of 15 partisans a year earlier.

A simple cross marks the place where Mussolini and his
mistress, Claretta Petacci, were killed in a lakeside village

Two years after the event, the Communist Party of which he was a member revealed that Colonnello Valerio was, in fact, Walter Audisio, and that it was he who had pulled the trigger.

Audisio claimed that, as an official of the National Liberation Committee (CLN) and the head of the Italian resistance in Milan, he had been ordered to carry out the sentence in accordance with a CLN directive that all Fascist leaders were liable to the death penalty.

His account of the execution described how the dictator and his mistress cowered before him as they awaited their fate, their agony prolonged as his own machine gun and then his pistol each jammed as he pulled the trigger. Another partisan, standing nearby, handed him a second machine gun, which did successfully discharge.

Audisio claimed that he felt he was shooting “not a man but an inferior being” and said that Mussolini had shown no dignity. He said that his mistress, who he also killed, had pleaded for her lover to be spared.

Audisio served as a Deputy
from 1948 to 1963

Before the war, Audisio had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on the island of Ponza for his anti-Fascist activities in his home town of Alessandria, where he worked for the Borsalino hat company before becoming an accountant.

Upon his release, he resumed his activities against the government of Benito Mussolini, and in September 1943 he started to organize the first bands of partisans in Casale Monferrato, not far from Alessandria. During this time he managed to hold down a job in the Fascist civil service.

He joined the Italian Communist Party and became the inspector of the Garibaldi Brigades, a faction of the National Liberation Committee, commanding formations operating in the Province of Mantova and the Po Valley.

By January 1945, he had become the principal figure of the Italian resistance movement in Milan, where he acquired his nom de guerre. Confusingly, the name Colonnello Valerio may also have been used by Luigi Longo, another partisan.

Once the conflict was over, Audisio continued to work with the communist movement, and in 1948 was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Alessandria as an Italian Communist Party member and part of the Popular Democratic Front. From 1948 to 1963, he served three consecutive terms as a Deputy.  As a legislator, he was a consistent supporter of bills to outlaw or curb fascism.

Audisio's tomb at the Cimitero Comunale
Monumentale Campo Verano in Rome

He supported the party until 1963, when he entered the Senate. In 1968 he left to work for Italian fuel company Eni.

Audisio died five years later in 1973 of a heart attack. He was buried at the Cimitero Comunale Monumentale Campo Verano in Rome.

His memoirs, titled In nome del popolo italiano - In the Name of the Italian People - were published two years after his death, in 1975.

Dongo is a picturesque town on the shore of Lake Como

Travel tip:

Dongo is one of many picturesque towns along the shore of Lake Como, with a number of hotels, restaurants and shops.  It is very popular during the summer months and also attracts walkers, who can explore nearby mountain villages on foot. Dongo has a small harbour adjoining the town's main square, where one can find the Palazzo Manzi, built in 1803 and now Dongo's town hall.  The ground floor houses the Museum of the End of the War, refurbished in 2014, dedicated to the partisans and in particular to the capture of Mussolini.

The city of Alessandria, with the famous
Cittadella in the foregroud

Travel tip:

The historic city of Alessandria became part of French territory after the army of Napoleon defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in 1800.  It was ruled by the Kingdom of Sardinia for many years and is notable for the Cittadella di Alessandria, a star-shaped fort and citadel built in the 18th century, which today it is one of the best preserved fortifications of that era, even down to the surrounding environment.  Situated across the Tanaro river to the north-west of the city, it has no buildings blocking the views of the ramparts, or a road bordering the ditches.

More reading:

The founding of the Italian Fascists

Mussolini's last stand

The death of Benito Mussolini

Also on this day:

1503: The birth of Giovanni della Casa, advocate of good manners

1952: The birth of Olympic sprint champion Pietro Mennea

1971: The birth of footballer Lorenzo Amoruso


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Norberto Bobbio - political philosopher

Intellectual regarded as foremost 20th century commentator

Norberto Bobbio was a university professor
and a forthright political commentator

Norberto Bobbio, a philosopher of law and political sciences who came to be seen as one of Italy’s most respected political commentators in the 20th century, died on this day in 2004 in Turin, the city of his birth.

He was 94 and had been in hospital suffering from respiratory problems. His funeral was attended by political and cultural leaders including the then-president of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.  He had been writing essays well into his 90s, despite for much of his life suffering from bouts of what was described as “fatigue and melancholy”.

His extensive catalogue of work spanned almost seven decades of Italian political life and societal change from the rise of Fascism in the 1930s to the second premiership of Silvio Berlusconi, of whom he was an outspoken critic.

For much of his career, Bobbio was a professor at the University of Turin, where he was chair of philosophy of law from 1948 and, from 1972, of the faculties of legal and political philosophy and political science.

He was made a Life Senator in 1984, although he stayed away from playing an active role in Italian politics after failing to gain election to the parliament of the new Republic in 1946, standing on a liberal-socialist ticket.  Later he confessed that he was much relieved when a move to make him President in the 1990s did not succeed.

Bobbio was part of a famous group of Turin
intellectuals who opposed Fascism in the 1930s

Many of his books and collections of essays are regarded as seminal works, but among them The Future of Democracy: A Defence Of The Rules Of The Game (1984), State, Government and Society (1985), The Age of Rights (1990) and Right and Left (1994) are considered to have particular importance.

Right and Left was an analysis of left-right political distinctions, in which he argued that the incompatibility of the two poles boiled down to the Left's belief in attempting to eradicate social inequality, set against the Right regarding most social inequality to be the result of inherent natural inequalities, and seeing attempts to enforce social equality as utopian or authoritarian.

Bobbio was born into a middle-class Turin family, the son of a doctor  whose attitude to Fascism was that, set against Bolshevism, which was gathering pace in Italy at the time, it was the lesser of two evils.

His own political thinking was influenced by the group of friends he made at the Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio in Turin, where he became part of the intellectual movement that included the novelists Cesare Pavese and Carlo Levi, his future publisher Giulio Einaudi, the critic Leone Ginsburg and the radical politician Vittorio Foa. 

Bobbio argued in favour of the 'historic compromise' between
the Communists and the Christian Democrats in the 1970s

They were all involved with the anti-Fascist magazine Riforma Sociale - Social Reform - published by Einaudi’s father, Luigi, a future President of Italy - that Mussolini had closed down and spent several weeks in jail as a result.

He was imprisoned again in 1943, this time by the Germans, after the illegal political party of which he was a member, the Partito d’Azione - the Action Party - became involved in resistance activity. Arrested in Padua, he was released after three months.

The party - for a while the main non-Communist opposition group - lacked popular support, however, and Bobbio failed in his bid for election to the assembly of the new Republic in 1946, after which he devoted himself to his academic life, taking positions at various universities teaching the philosophy of law.

Throughout his intellectual life, he was a strong advocate of the rule of law, and although by nature a socialist, he was opposed to what he perceived as the anti-democratic, authoritarian elements in most of Marxism. He was a strong supporter of the so-called 'historic compromise' - the proposed coalition of the Italian Communist Party and the Christian Democrats in the strife-torn 1970s - and a fierce critic of Silvio Berlusconi, whom he accused of presiding over a moribund political system that lacked idealism and hope.

Turin is famous for its beautiful royal palaces

Travel tip:

Turin was once the capital of Italy. It has a wealth of elegant streets and beautiful architecture, yet over the years has tended to be promoted less as a tourist attraction than cities such as Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice, possibly because of its long association with the Savoy family and subsequently the Italian royal family, who were expelled from Italy in disgrace when Italy became a republic at the end of the Second World War, their long-term unpopularity with some sections of Italian society compounded by their collaboration with Mussolini’s Fascists. Yet there is much to like about a stay in Turin. Aside from the splendour of the royal palaces, it has an historic café culture, 12 miles of arcaded streets and some of the finest restaurants in northern Italy.

Rivalta di Torino, looking towards the castle

Travel tip:

Norberto Bobbio was laid to rest at the cemetery in Rivalta di Torino, a small town in Piedmont, located about 14km (9 miles) southwest of Turin in the Sangone valley.  It is home to a medieval castle, which formed the heart of what was then a village in the 11th century. The castle and the village were owned by the Orsini family - long-standing Italian nobility dating back to medieval times - until 1823. In 1836, the French writer Honoré de Balzac was guest at the castle of its new owner, Count Cesare Benevello, as is recorded in an inscription on the wall.


More reading:

How Cesare Pavese introduced Italian readers to the great American novelists

Why the murder of Aldo Moro ended hopes for a 'historic compromise'

Giulio Einaudi - the publisher who defied Mussolini

Also on this day:

1878: The death of King Victor Emmanuel II

1878: Umberto I succeeds Victor Emmanuel II

1944: The birth of architect Massimiliano Fuksas


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Amedeo Guillet – army officer

Superb horseman helped keep the British at bay

Amedeo Guillet, pictured in his military dress
uniform, was a brilliant horseman

Amedeo Guillet, the last man to lead a cavalry charge against the British Army, was born on this day in 1909 in Piacenza.

His daring actions in Eritrea in 1941 were remembered by some British soldiers as ‘the most frightening and extraordinary’ episode of the Second World War.

It had seemed as though the British invasion of Mussolini’s East African empire was going like clockwork. But at daybreak on January 21, 250 horsemen erupted through the morning mist at Keru, galloping straight towards British headquarters and the artillery of the Surrey and Sussex Yeomanry.

Red Italian grenades that looked like cricket balls exploded among the defenders and the guns that had been pointing towards Italian fortifications had to be quickly turned to face a new enemy.

The horsemen later disappeared into the network of wadis - ravines - that crisscrossed the Sudan-Eritrean lowlands.

Guillet’s actions at Keru helped the Italian army regroup and go on to launch their best actions in the entire war. Guillet was to live on until the age of 101 and become one of the most decorated people in Italian history.

Guillet was born into a Savoyard-Piedmontese family, who were minor aristocracy that had, for generations, served the Dukes of Savoy and later the Kings of Italy.

Guillet in action on the battlefield in 1940

He spent most of his childhood in the south and said he remembered the Austrian biplane bombing of Bari during the First World War. He followed family tradition by joining the army and, after attending the military academy at Modena, went into the cavalry.

Guillet excelled as a horseman and was selected for the Italian eventing team to go to the Berlin Olympics in 1936. But Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia interrupted his career as a competition rider.

He had himself transferred to a cavalry division and fought repeated actions with them. He witnessed the aerial gas attacks on Emperor Haile Selassie’s lightly-armed warriors, which appalled the world.

In Guillet’s opinion, gas was largely ineffectual against an enemy that could flee. He fought with horse, sword and pistol. He suffered a painful wound to his left hand and was later decorated for his actions.

He was flattered to be chosen by General Luigi Frusci as an aide de camp, in the division sent to support Franco in the Spanish Civil War, where he suffered shrapnel wounds, but helped to capture three Russian armoured cars and crews.

Guillet disapproved of  the pro-
Nazi alliance and anti-semitism

But he disapproved of the pro-Nazi alliance and the anti-Semitic race laws adopted by Italy and asked for a posting to East Africa, where a family friend, Amedeo Duke of Aosta, had been appointed viceroy.

Mussolini’s decision to enter the war on the side of Germany in 1940 cut off Italian East Africa, which was surrounded by the territories of its enemies. Aosta gave Guillet command of 2,500 men, both cavalry and infantry. With almost no armour, Guillet’s horsemen were used to delay the British advance.

His actions at Keru and in subsequent battles won time for the Italian army, but eventually the British broke through. Most of the Italian army surrendered but Guillet refused to do so.

Aosta ordered his men to fight on to keep as many British soldiers as possible in East Africa.

For nine months Guillet launched a series of guerrilla actions against British troops with his mistress, Khadija, an Ethiopian Muslim, at his side. He believed he would never see Italy, or the woman he had planned to marry there, ever again.

Two British intelligence officers pursued him. One of them, Major Max Harrari, would later become an art dealer and one of his close friends. But Guillet managed to escape across the sea to neutral Yemen where he became a friend of the ruler Imam Ahmed. He sneaked back to Eritrea in 1943 in disguise, from where he returned to Italy on the Red Cross ship, Giulio Cesare.

He married his Neapolitan cousin, Beatrice Gandolfo, in 1944 and spent the rest of the war as an intelligence officer.

At the end of the war, after the decision to abolish the monarchy in Italy, Guillet told Umberto II he intended to leave the country for good, but the deposed King asked him to keep serving Italy, whatever sort of Government was installed.

Despite being wounded many times, Guillet not only survived
his wartime experiences but lived to be 101 years old

Guillet joined the diplomatic service and because his Arabic was fluent he served in the Middle East. He was later ambassador in Jordan, Morocco and India.

In 1975 he retired and went live in County Meath in Ireland to enjoy the fox hunting.

According to his biographer, Sebastian O’Kelly, Guillet was ‘a kind, generous man who thought himself lucky to have survived many bullet and grenade wounds, sword injuries and bone fractures.’ Guillet’s wife, Beatrice, died in 1990.

In 2000, Guillet was presented with the Knight Grand Cross of the Military Order of Italy, the highest military decoration, by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Guillet’s life story was the subject of a film made by Elisabetta Castana for the national TV channel RAI in 2007.

In 2009 he was still well enough to be able to celebrate his 100th birthday at the army officers’ club in Palazzo Barberini in Rome.

When Guillet died in June 2010 in Rome he was widely respected as one of the last men to have commanded cavalry in a war.

One of Francesco Mochi's
 statues in Piacenza

Travel tip:

Piacenza, where Guillet was born, is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. The main square in Piacenza is named Piazza Cavalli because of its two bronze equestrian monuments featuring Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma and his son Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma, who succeeded him. The statues are masterpieces by the sculptor Francesco Mochi.

The Palazzo Barberini in Rome

Travel tip:

Palazzo Barberini, where Guillet celebrated his 100th birthday, is just off Piazza Barberini in the centre of Rome. The palace was completed in 1633 for Pope Urban VIII to the design of three great architects, Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

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Riccardo Cassin – mountaineer

Long life of partisan who was fascinated by mountains

Riccardo Cassin developed a fascination
with mountains as a boy

The climber and war hero Riccardo Cassin was born on this day in 1909 at San Vito al Tagliamento in Friuli.

Despite his daring mountain ascents and his brave conduct against the Germans during the Second World War, he was to live past the age of 100.

By the age of four, Cassin had lost his father, who was killed in a mining accident in Canada. He left school when he was 12 to work for a blacksmith but moved to Lecco when he was 17 to work at a steel plant.

Cassin was to become fascinated by the mountains that tower over the lakes of Lecco, Como and Garda and he started climbing with a group known as the Ragni di Lecco - the Spiders of Lecco.

In 1934 he made his first ascent of the smallest of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the Dolomites. The following year, after repeating another climber’s route on the north west face of the Civetta, he climbed the south eastern ridge of the Trieste Tower and established a new route on the north face of Cima Ovest di Lavaredo.

In 1937 Cassin made his first climb on the granite of the Western Alps. Over the course of three days he made the first ascent of the north east face of Piz Badile in the Val Bregaglia in Switzerland. Two of the climbers accompanying him died of exhaustion and exposure on the descent.

The Tre Cime di Lavaredo, where Cassin embarked on some
of his earliest climbing challenges

This is known today as the Cassin Route, or Via Cassin and he confirmed his mountaineering prowess by climbing the route again at the age of 78.

His most celebrated first ascent was the Walker Spur on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc massif in 1938, which was universally acknowledged as the toughest Alpine challenge. Even though Cassin knew little about the area before going there he reached the summit and made a successful descent during a violent storm.

Cassin made a total of 2,500 ascents, of which more than 100 were first ascents.

During the Second World War, Cassin fought on the side of the Italian partisans against the Germans. In 1945 along with another partisan he attempted to stop a group of Germans escaping along an alpine pass into Germany. His comrade was shot dead by them but Cassin survived and was later decorated for his heroic actions.

Cassin was supposed to have been part of the Italian expedition that made the first ascent of K2 in the Karakoram, having sketched the route and done all the organisation.  But the expedition leader left him out after sending Cassin for a medical examination in Rome where he was told he had cardiac problems.

The Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc
massif, where Cassin scaled the Walker Spur

Cassin realised the expedition leader had felt threatened by his experience and from then on he organised and led expeditions himself, such as the first ascent of Gasherbrum IV in the Karakorum range and an ascent of Jirishanca in the Andes.

In 1961 he led a successful ascent of Mount McKinley in Alaska. The ridge was later named Cassin Ridge in his honour and he received a telegram of congratulations from President Kennedy.

Cassin began designing and producing mountaineering equipment in the 1940s and formed a limited company in 1967. In 1997 the CAMP company bought the Cassin trademark from him.

Cassin wrote two books about climbing and received two honours from the Italian Republic. He became Grand’Ufficiale dell Ordine al merito in 1980 and Cavaliere di Gran Croce Ordine al merito in 1999.

The book, Riccardo Cassin: Cento volti di un grande alpinista, was produced for his 100th birthday, containing 100 testimonials from people who had been associated with him, including President Kennedy.

Cassin died in August 2009, more than seven months after his 100th birthday, in Piano dei Resinelli, Lecco.

The main square - Piazza del Popolo - in
San Vito al Tagliamento

Travel tip:

San Vito al Tagliamento, where Riccardo Cassin was born, is a medieval town in the province of Pordenone in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, about 80 kilometres northwest of Trieste . It still has three towers of its medieval walls and a Duomo with a triptych by Andrea Bellunello. Mussolini’s brother, Arnaldo, taught there for several years and his nephew, Vito, also lived and worked there.

Lago di Lecco

Travel tip:

Lecco, where Riccardo Cassin eventually settled, lies at the end of the south eastern branch of Lago di Como, which is known as Lago di Lecco. The Bergamo Alps rise to the north and east of the lake. The writer Alessandro Manzoni lived there for part of his life and based his famous novel, I promessi sposi, there.  

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Lamberto Maggiorani - unlikely movie star

Factory worker who shot to fame in Bicycle Thieves

Maggiorani with Enzo Staiola, who played his son, Bruno,
in Vittorio de Sica's Bicycle Thieves

Lamberto Maggiorani, who found overnight fame after starring in the neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948), was born on this day in 1909 in Rome.

Maggiorani was cast in the role of Antonio Ricci, a father desperate for work to support his family in post-War Rome, who is offered a job pasting posters to advertising hoardings but can take it only on condition that he has a bicycle – essential for moving around the city carrying his ladder and bucket.

He has one, but it has been pawned.  To retrieve it, his wife, Marie, strips the bed of her dowry sheets, which the pawn shop takes in exchange for the bicycle. They are happy, because Antonio has a job which will support her, their son Bruno and their new baby.

However, on his first day in the job the bicycle is stolen, snatched by a thief who waits for Antonio to climb to the top of his ladder before seizing his moment.  The remainder of the film follows Antonio and Bruno as they try to find the bicycle.

As a portrait of life among the disadvantaged working class in Rome in the late 1940s, the film is hailed as a masterpiece, director Vittorio de Sica and his screenwriter Cesare Zavattini fêted by the critics for turning a little-known novel by Luigi Bartolini into a piece of cinema genius.

For Maggiorani, however, his participation was something of a bitter-sweet experience.

An original poster from the 1948 movie

De Sica, who had won an Academy Award two years earlier with Shoeshine, attracted plenty of interest when news spread of his new project, with one American producer willing to offer a lucrative deal to cast Cary Grant in the lead role.

It did not interest De Sica, who was determined to be faithful to the principles of the burgeoning neorealist genre be picking actors who would infuse his characters with realism, regardless of whether they had any experience.

Maggiorani was not an actor at all, but a worker in a steel factory. He had himself experienced unemployment as Rome and De Sica saw him as perfect for the role of Antonio.

Delighted, Maggiorani accepted De Sica’s offer, taking time off work for the filming. He was paid $1,000 dollars, the equivalent of about $10,500 dollars (€8,800) today, with which he was able to give his family their first real holiday and buy new furniture for their home.

His performance was magnificent.  Sometimes, De Sica had to use another actor to dub Maggiorani’s dialogue because his strong Roman accent was occasionally hard to follow, but otherwise he was delighted with how his unlikely protégé understood the way he wanted his character to be portrayed. The critics hailed the arrival of a new star.

Yet once the fuss died down and his pay cheque was spent, Maggiorani found his life had changed. One thousand dollars might have been a large sum but it did not set him up for life.

The director Vittorio de Sica

He went back to the factory, but when orders fell away he was told he was no longer required, the perception being that he must be worth millions of lire after his movie success and that there were others whose need for work was greater.

Shunned by many of his friends, too, after failing to share his perceived wealth, he went back to the movie industry, assuming he would be offered more parts.

He was given some, but usually they were minor roles. Pier Paolo Pasolini gave him a bit part in Mamma Roma, a film about a prostitute trying to start a new life and starring Anna Magnani, but only because he thought his name in the credits would raise the movie’s profile.

De Sica was reluctant to use him at all as anything but an extra. Zavattini recognised and sympathised with his predicament and wrote a screenplay entitled ‘Tu, Maggiorani’ about how non-professional actors such as Maggiorani were sometimes used to execute one particular role and then cast aside.

Maggiorani made 16 movies, the last one a comedy entitled Ostia, directed by Sergio Citti and produced by Pier Paolo Pasolini, but none was particularly successful nor earned him much money.

He died at the San Giovanni Hospital in Rome in 1983 at the age of 73, having never regained the standing he enjoyed with Bicycle Thieves.  It is ironic that the film has recently been recognised as one of the greatest of all time.

The Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura adjoins
the Campo Verano cemetery

Travel tip:

Lamberto Maggiorani is buried at the Cimitero Comunale Monumentale Campo Verano, situated beside the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, in the Tiburtino area of Rome. It is the city's largest cemetery, with some five million internments. The name 'Verano' is thought to date back to the Roman era, when the area was known as Campo dei Verani.

The San Giovanni Addolorata Hospital is built on top of
Roman Ruins on Celio hill, south-east of the city centre

Travel tip:

The hospital complex San Giovanni Addolorata, where Maggiorani died, is on the Celio hill, an area of ancient Roman urban settlements. Under the existing buildings are archaeological remains, including the Villa of Domitian Lucilla, mother of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.  Renovation work has also uncovered a villa belonging to the powerful Valerii family, great landowners, which contained historic mosaics preserved in perfect condition.

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Vittorio Erspamer - chemist

Professor who first identified the neurotransmitter serotonin

Dr Vittorio Erspamer

Vittorio Erspamer, the pharmacologist and chemist who first identified the neurotransmitter serotonin, was born on this day in 1909 in in the small village of Val di Non in Malosco, a municipality of Trentino.

Serotonin, also known as 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT), is found in the gastrointestinal tract, blood platelets and central nervous system of animals, including humans.

It is popularly thought to be a contributor to feelings of well-being and happiness. A generation of anti-depressant drugs, including Prozac, Seroxat, Zoloft and Celexa, have been developed with the aim of interfering with the action of serotonin in the body in a way that boosts such feelings.

The name serotonin was coined in the United States in 1948 after research doctors at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio discovered a vasoconstrictor substance - one that narrows blood vessels - in blood serum. Since it was a serum agent affecting vascular tone, they named it serotonin.

However, in 1952 it was shown that a substance identified by Dr Erspamer in 1935, which he named enteramine, was the same as serotonin.

Dr Erspamer made his discovery when he was working as assistant professor in anatomy and physiology at the University of Pavia, having graduated there in medicine and surgery in 1935.

His speciality was pharmacognosy - the study of drugs from natural sources. In particular, he was interested in the extraction of pharmacologically active substances from animals, which was the focus of much of his life’s work.

An illustration of how scientists believe the dopamine and
serotonin neurotransmitters affect brain function

Dr Erspamer’s early research in the Institute of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology at Pavia focussed on the smooth muscle constricting or contracting properties of various compounds – known as amine - found in the skins and intestinal tracts of a number of species, including rabbits, mollusks, and frogs.

One substance which interested him was found in certain cells of the gut. An acetone isolate of the cells caused smooth muscle contraction, especially in the uterus of the female rat.

He carried out tests to prove that the substance was not another neurotransmitter, epinephrine - also known as adrenaline – and named the new substance enteramine.

During his career, Dr Erspamer held positions at the universities of Rome, Bari and Parma and also studied in Berlin.

The Ghislieri College at the University of Pavia, where
Vittorio Erspamer graduated and worked for several years

He was one of the first Italian pharmacologists to realize that strong relationships with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries could yield vital funds for research.

In the late 1950s, he established a long-term collaboration with chemists at the Farmitalia company, thanks to whose funding he collected more than 500 species of marine organisms from all around the world, including amphibians, shellfish, sea anemones and other species.

During more than 60 years he was able to conclude the isolation, identification, synthesis and pharmacological study of more than 60 new chemical compounds, most of which were isolated from animals, predominantly amphibians.

His other major discovery was octopamine, a substance similar in function to epinephrine in that it mobilises the body and the nervous system for action. He found this in the salivary glands of the octopus.

Twice nominated for a Nobel Prize, he was obliged to retire from official academic positions in 1984 on the grounds of age but continued to work at the Sapienza University of Rome, alongside his wife Giuliana Falconieri, a long-time colleague he married in the early 1960s, up until the time of his death in 1999 at the age of 90.

Malosco Castle, restored in the 16th century

Travel tip:

Vittorio Erspamer’s birthplace, Malosco, is a small village in the upper Val di Non valley situated on a high plateau about 54km (34 miles) north of Trento in an area of forests and meadows. The discovery of coins in the vicinity points to Roman origins. More recently, it belonged to the family of count Gerolamo Guarienti, who rebuilt Malosco Castle in the 16th century. Today it is a popular centre for cross-country skiing and there is a network of trails for walkers to enjoy.

Travel tip:

Although not established until 1361 – almost 300 years after the University of Bologna, which is recognised as the oldest in Europe – the University of Pavia can claim to have its roots in an educational institution in the Lombardy city of which the first known mention was in 825, in an edict issued by the Frankish king of Italy, Lothar I. That would make it older even than Al Quaraouyine University, in Morocco, which was founded in 859 and is officially the oldest continually operating educational institution in the world.

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The first Giro d'Italia

Tour of Italy cycle race ran from Milan to Naples and back

An exhausted Luigi Ganna after
his 1909 Giro d'Italia triumph

A field of 127 riders left Milan on this day in 1909 as Italy's famous cycle race, the Giro d'Italia, was staged for the first time.

Those who lasted the course returned to Milan 13 days later having covered a distance of 2,447.9 kilometres (1,521 miles) along a route around Italy that took them through Bologna, Chieti, Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa and Turin.

The winner was Luigi Ganna, an Italian cyclist from Lombardy who had finished fifth in the Tour de France in 1908 and won the Milan-San Remo race earlier in 1909.  Only 49 riders finished.  Second and third places were also filled by Italian riders, with Carlo Galetti finishing ahead of Giovanni Rossignoli.

The race was run in eight stages with two to three rest days between each stage. It was a challenge to the riders' stamina. The stages were almost twice as long as those that make up the Giro today, with an average distance of more than 300 km (190 miles). The modern Giro covers a greater distance in total at 3,481.8 km (2,163.5 miles).

Thankfully, the route was primarily flat, although it did contain a few major ascents, particularly on the third leg between Chieti in Abruzzo and Naples, which took the race across the Apennines. The sixth stage, from Florence to Genoa, and the seventh, from Genoa to Turin, were also classified as mountainous.

Ganna led the overall standings after the second stage but was behind Galetti when the race reached Naples.  However, after he won the Naples-Rome leg he regained the overall lead and held it for the remainder of the race, winning two more stages.  Rossignoli won two of the three mountain stages.

Map showing the route followed by the first
Giro d'Italia in 1909

Galetti could count himself unlucky not to have finished at the top of the standings.  With a crowd of 30,000 turning out to see the participants return to Milan, an escort of mounted police was organised to clear a path for a sprint finish into the Arena Civica.  Just as the sprint was beginning, a police horse fell, causing several riders to crash and allowing Dario Beni, who had also won the opening stage, to pass Galetti, pushing him back into second place.

Ganna finished third but only after the race directors took pity on him after he suffered two punctured tyres, stopping the race to allow him to catch up.  The final points margin was so small that had Galetti won the final stage and Ganna finished only a couple of places further back, then Galetti would have been champion.

In the event, Galetti won by an 18-point margin in 1910 and defended his crown successfully the following year.

The Giro had been the idea of the sports newspaper, La Gazzetta dello Sport, who saw an opportunity to boost their sales by giving Italy its own version of the Tour de France, which had proved hugely popular after its launch in 1903.  The paper raised 25,000 lira to stage the event and provide prize money and the starting line was outside its headquarters in Piazzale Loreto, the square that would 26 years later acquire notoriety as the place where the body of the slain dictator Mussolini was put on public display.

The popularity of the race grew rapidly and it has been staged every year since the 1909 contest, with interruptions only because of the world wars.

The controversies that have cast a shadow over cycling's recent past with the use of performance enhancing drugs were unknown in those early days, although cheating reared its ugly head in the very first Giro.  Three riders were disqualified before the start of the third stage when it was discovered they had taken a train for part of the Bologna-Chieti leg, while the French rider, Louis Trousselier, the 1905 Tour de France winner, had his chances scuppered outside Rome when spectators threw tacks into the road just as he was about to pass.

The main grandstand at Milan's historic Arena Civica

Travel tip:

The Arena Civica, which can be found in the Parco Sempione behind the Castello Sforzesco, is one of Milan's main examples of neoclassical architecture, an elliptical amphitheatre commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte soon after he became King of Italy in 1805. At one time the home of the Milan football club Internazionale, it is known nowadays as the Arena Gianni Brera and is a venue for international athletics, also hosting rugby union as well as Milan's third football team, Brera Calcio FC.

Travel tip:

Chieti is amongst the most ancient of Italian cities, reputedly founded in 1181BC by the Homeric Greek hero Achilles and named Theate in honour of his mother, Thetis. The city is notable for the Gothic Cathedral of San Giustino, which has a Romanesque crypt dated at 1069 but is mainly of later construction, having been rebuilt a number of times, usually because of earthquake damage.  The main part of the cathedral is in early 18th century Baroque style.  Situated about 20 kilometres inland from Pescara, the city consists of Chieti Alta, the higher part and the historic centre, and the more modern Chieti Scalo.

More reading:

Italy's first football championship


(Photo of Giro d'Italia map by Cruccone CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Arena Civica by Sergio d'Afflitto CC BY-SA 3.0)

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