Fausto Coppi - cycling great

Multiple title-winner who died tragically young

Fausto Coppi pictured after winning his
second Tour de France in 1952

The cycling champion Fausto Coppi, who won the Giro d’Italia five times and the Tour de France twice as well as numerous other races, was born on this day in 1919 in Castellania, a village in Piedmont about 37km (23 miles) southeast of Alessandria.

Although hugely successful and lauded for his talent and mental strength, Coppi was a controversial character. His rivalry with his fellow Italian rider Gino Bartali divided the nation, while he offended many in what was still a socially conservative country by abandoning his wife to live with another woman.

Fausto, who openly admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs, which were then legal, died in 1960 at the age of just 40 following a trip to Burkina Faso in West Africa. The cause of death officially was malaria but a story has circulated in more recent years that he was poisoned in an act of revenge.

The fourth in a family of five children, Coppi had poor health as he grew up and would skip school in order to amuse himself riding a rusty bicycle he found in a cellar. He left at the age of 13 to work in a butcher’s shop in Novi Ligure, a town about 20km (12 miles) from his home village in Piedmont.

There were many cyclists among the shop’s clientele and it was they who sparked Coppi’s interest in racing. His uncle, a merchant seaman who was also called Fausto, clubbed together with Coppi’s father, Domenico, to have a manufacturer in Genoa build him a racing bike, made to his measurements. The cost was 600 lire, a considerable sum at the time.

Coppi (right) with his great rival Gino Bartali (centre) at the
Giro d'Italia of 1940, which Coppi won in controversial fashion

He won the first race he entered, at the age of 15, and at 19 won one of the races counting towards the Italian championship by a distance of seven minutes, establishing himself as a rider of considerable talent and potential.

His professional career was almost entirely defined by his often bitter rivalry with Bartali, who was the established star of Italian cycling when Coppi came on the scene, having won the Giro in 1936 and 1937 and the Tour de France in 1938.

It began in 1940, when Coppi was hired by the Legnano team to help Bartali win the Giro again.  After Bartali suffered an early fall and struggled to stay with the peloton, a plan was devised in which Coppi would make an escape, leading the race at a punishing pace to tire the other contenders before dropping out and allowing Bartali to take charge.

Coppi is said to have agreed to the plan on the basis that he was unsure if he was in good enough physical condition to win the gruelling, 21-day race. Yet in the event he made his escape and never relinquished his lead, claiming afterwards that he felt stronger than he had anticipated and that, given that no one chased him, it was a chance to win the Giro that was too good to miss.  Bartali, predictably, was furious and never lost his sense of indignation.

Once Coppi had the lead in a race, he
was often not caught

All their subsequent meetings, therefore, became intense personal duels, in which both at times cared less about winning titles than beating each other, sometimes landing themselves in trouble with the national federation as a result. Following the world championships in the Netherlands in 1948, they were both suspended for three months for refusing to help one another, to the detriment of the Italian team.

The rivalry caused a sharp split among Italian cycling fans, too, and was seen by some commentators to represent the divides in the country. Bartali was seen as insular, conservative and religious, taking time to pray while he competed, and had the support of traditionalists, mainly in the south (although he was from Florence); Coppi, willing to be innovative with his training and diet, and to challenge convention in his private life, was seen as the more cosmopolitan, modern Italian, and as such became the hero of the economically ambitious urban north.

Coppi was the most successful, partly because he was prepared to travel in search of victories, winning prestigious races in France and Belgium and elsewhere, while Bartali preferred to stay close to home, although they each won the Tour de France twice. Coppi, however, took five Giro d’Italia titles to Bartali’s two.

The Second World War interrupted their rivalry.  Coppi spent much of the war as a prisoner, having been captured by the British while fighting in northern Africa. Bartali, famously, risked his life by acting as a clandestine courier involved in helping Italian Jews escape from being deported to Nazi concentration camps.

Coppi with Giulia Occhini, with whom he had an extra-
marital affair that caused a national scandal in Italy

Coppi was particularly dominant after the war, although Bartali did win the Tour de France in 1948, a remarkable 10 years after his first triumph. In other races, it was notable that once Coppi established a lead it was rare that he was caught.

Famous for his so-called innovative thinking in what he ate and drank in order to maximise his ability in the saddle, Coppi admitted he used supplements that would subsequently be banned, including amphetamines. Bartali became obsessed with what Coppi was taking during races, even sneaking into his rival’s hotel rooms to examine the contents of his waste bin, reasoning that if he could not accuse Coppi of cheating, since the use of pharmaceutical aids was not against the rules, he could at least anticipate how he was planning to ride.

Any opprobrium relating to his drug use, however, paled alongside the reaction to the news that broke in 1954 about Coppi’s private life and his relationship with Giulia Occhini, which caused a huge scandal in Italy and alienated many of his supporters.

Both he and Occhini were married, she the mother of two young children with her husband, who had been one of Coppi’s most passionate fans. At the time, adultery was still a criminal offence in Italy and eventually Coppi and his lover were arrested and put on trial for adultery, receiving suspended jail sentences. Later they married and had a child together, but the legitimacy of neither the marriage nor their son was recognised by the Italian authorities.

The monument to Fausto Coppi at Passo Pordoi, a
mountain pass on the route of the Giro d'Italia

Coppi continued to race until, in 1960, following an invitation to race in Burkina Faso, he returned to Italy unwell.  He was diagnosed at first with hepatitis, then yellow fever and typhoid fever.  By the time it was concluded he had malaria it was too late for successful treatment and he died in Tortona, where he and Giulia shared an apartment.

In 2002, a report in the Italian newspaper Corriere dello Sport claimed that a French Benedictine priest working in Burkina Faso had been told while listening to a confession that Coppi had actually been poisoned in revenge for the death of an Ivory Coast rider he had forced off the road during a race in the country two years earlier.  Requests were submitted to exhume his body and but they were declined.

Coppi’s honour has been rebuilt in recent years.   A bonus prize in the Giro, the Cima Coppi, is now awarded to the first rider to reach the course’s highest summit, while the village of his birth was renamed Castellania Coppi by the Piedmont regional council in 2019.  Numerous monuments to Coppi have been created, including one on the route of the Giro d'Italia at Passo Pordoi in the Dolomites,

The Palazzo delle Piane, one of several historic palaces
in the Piedmont town of Novi Ligure

Travel tip:

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the town of Novi Ligure, where Coppi was introduced to the world of cycling, was a renowned resort for rich Genoese families, whose numerous noble palaces adorn the historical centre. These include Palazzo Negroni, Palazzo Durazzo and Palazzo Delle Piane, situated in Piazza Delle Piane.  Novi has retained part of its walls, erected in 1447 and partly demolished in the 19th century, together with the tower of the Castle.  There is a museum, the Museo dei Campionissimi, devoted to Coppi and another famous cyclist, Costante Girardengo.  The town is now a centre for the production of chocolate, notably the Novi brand.

The Piazza del Duomo in Tortona, the city in which Coppi
lived at the end of his career

Travel tip:

Tortona is an elegant small city of around 27,000 inhabitants in the eastern part of Piedmont, roughly halfway between Milan and the Ligurian coast at Genoa.  It sits on the right bank of the Scrivia river between the plain of Marengo and the foothills of the Ligurian Apennines.  Lorenzo Perosi, along with his brother, Carlo, is buried at the Duomo, where his father was the choir director.  The Duomo has a 19th century neoclassical facade but the building itself dates back to the 16th century.

More reading:

Gino Bartali: The story of a secret war hero

Fiorenzo Magni, the last link with cycling's golden age

The tragedy of Marco Pantani

Also on this day:

1616: The first free public school opens in Frascati

1881: The birth of car manufacturer Ettore Bugatti

1904: The birth of Umberto II, the last king of Italy


Home

Valentino Mazzola – footballer

Tragic star may have been Italy’s greatest player

  

Valentino Mazzola scored more
than 100 goals in Serie A

The footballer Valentino Mazzola, captain of the mighty Torino team of the 1940s, was born on this day in 1919 in Cassano d’Adda, a town in Lombardy about 30km (19 miles) northeast of Milan.

Mazzola, a multi-talented player who was primarily an attacking midfielder but who was comfortable in any position on the field, led the team known as Il Grande Torino to five Serie A titles in seven seasons between 1942 and 1949.

He scored 109 goals in 231 Serie A appearances for Venezia and Torino and had become the fulcrum of the Italy national team, coached by the legendary double World Cup-winner Vittorio Pozzo.

In just over a decade at the top level of the Italian game he achieved considerable success and some who saw him play believe he was the country’s greatest footballer of all time.

His life was cut short, however, when he and most of the Grande Torino team – and at the same time the Italian national team – were killed when a plane carrying them home from a friendly in Portugal crashed in thick fog on its approach to Turin airport on May 4, 1949.

The Superga Disaster – so-called because the aircraft collided with the rear wall of the Basilica of Superga, which stands on a hill overlooking the city – claimed the lives of 18 players, including all bar one of the Torino first team, as well as the team’s English coach, Leslie Lievesley, and four other officials, plus three journalists and all of the crew. Of the 31 on board, no one survived.

Mazzola in action for the Italian
national team in 1947

It was a tragedy of which there were eerie echoes in the Munich Disaster of nine years later, when many members of a talented Manchester United team were killed, including Duncan Edwards, who though much younger had similar qualities to Mazzola and many thought had the potential to become the English game’s greatest player.

Mazzola was il Grande Torino’s leader and inspiration, known for literally rolling up his sleeves when his team were not playing up to the standard he demanded, a habit that came to symbolise his determination and to lift those around him. If a game was not going well, the crowds in Torino’s old Filadelfia stadium would watch for the moment Mazzola gave the cue and would respond with a roar of encouragement for the team.

His character on the football field was a reflection of his life, which had seen him show bravery in the face of adversity in many ways.

Born in a poor neighbourhood, he had to leave school early after his father, a labourer, was laid off as the Wall Street Crash of 1929 began to reverberate across the world, taking a job as a baker’s boy and, at the age of 14, in a linen mill on the Adda river.

He had demonstrated his selfless courage at the age of 10 when he dived into the fast-flowing waters of the Adda to save the life of a six-year-old boy.  By an extraordinary coincidence, the boy who would likely have drowned had Mazzola not come to the rescue was Andrea Bonomi, a future footballer who would go on to captain a title-winning AC Milan team.

Mazzola played for two local teams, Tresoldi and Fara d’Adda, where his talent was noted by an employee of Alfa Romeo, the car manufacturer which had a plant in Arese, on the outskirts of Milan.

Valentino with his son Sandro, who would
grow up to be a star like his father

Factories at the time in Italy regarded a successful football team as good for prestige and Alfa Romeo were particularly proud of theirs, which played at a semi-professional level in Serie C, the third tier of the Italian league system.  Companies were keen to find good players and the reports they heard about this boy from Cassano d’Adda prompted Alfa Romeo to offer him training as a mechanic if he would play for their team.

For the Mazzola family, the timing could not have been better. His father, sadly, had been killed when he was hit by a truck and this offer of a job enabled Valentino to become a breadwinner. 

His career evolved despite the outbreak of war in 1939.  Conscripted to the Royal Italian Navy, he was based in Venice and was soon invited to play for Venezia, making his Serie A debut in 1940 at the age of 21.

He moved to Torino after Venezia won the Coppa Italia in 1941 and finished third in Serie A in 1942, just a point behind the Turin team, who paid 200,000 lire for his services.  In Turin he worked for FIAT at their Lingotto plant. 

Mazzola won his first scudetto in 1943, his second in 1945 and then three in a row from 1947 to 1949, by margins of 13 points, 10 points and a record 16 points. The names of Eusebio Castigliano, Mario Rigamonti, Rubens Fadini, Romeo Menti, Ezio Loik, Gugliemo Gabetto and Franco Ossola as well as Mazzola became the talk of Italy, giving hope to the national team too.

The wreckage of the plane in which Mazzola and
his Grande Torino teammates perished

In the desperate poverty of the immediate post-war years, life in Italy was grim but when the Italian national team beat Hungary 3-2 in a friendly in 1947, with 10 of the 11 Azzurri players coming from Torino, it gave the country a considerable fillip. Mazzola won 12 caps, although it would have been more but for the Second World War, which also denied him the chance to participate in a World Cup.

Away from football, Mazzola was a quiet person who valued his privacy.  In Turin in 1942, he married Emilia Rinaldi, moved into an apartment on Via Torricelli and they had two sons, Ferruccio and Sandro. The latter would grow up to play for Internazionale of Milan and become even more decorated than his father, winning the scudetto four times and the European Cup twice, as well as winning a European championship winners’ medal with Italy in 1968 and playing in the World Cup final in 1970.

He and Rinaldi separated in 1946 and he married for a second time in April 1949 to 19-year-old Giuseppina Cutrone, only to be killed just 10 days later.  He is buried in the Monumental Cemetery in Milan.

The Borromeo Castle by the Adda at Cassano d'Adda

Travel tip:

Cassano d’Adda sits on the eastern bank of the Adda, the river that has shaped its history in may ways. The town developed as a result of the crossing there, which gave it a strategic importance that led it to be the site of several battles over the centuries, from Roman times to the French Revolutionary Wars of the 18^th century. It is notable for the Borromeo Castle, built in around 1000 and significantly expanded by Francesco I Sforza in the 15^th century. At different times it has been owned by the Venetians, the Spanish and the Austrians as well as by different Italian families.  Connected by canals with Milan and Lodi, Cassano d’Adda grew prosperous in the 19^th century through linen manufacture using watermills.

The Basilica di Superga, near Turin

Travel tip:

The Superga tragedy is commemorated with a simple memorial at the site of the crash, at the back of the magnificent 18^th century Basilica di Superga.  Mounted on a wall, the damaged parts of which were never restored, is a large picture of the Grande Torino team, with a memorial stone that lists all the names of the 31 victims of the disaster, under the heading I Campioni d’Italia.  The basilica, which sits at an altitude of some 425m (1,395ft) above sea level and often sits serenely in sunlight while mist shrouds the city below, can be reached by a steep railway line, the journey taking about 20 minutes.

Home

Paolo Soleri - architect

Italian greatly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright

Paolo Soleri envisaged buildings in
harmony with their environment

The groundbreaking architect and ecologist Paolo Soleri was born on this day in 1919 in Turin.

Soleri is largely remembered for the Arcosanti project, an experiment in urban design in the Arizona desert that was like no other town on the planet, a unique fusion of architecture and ecology.

Originally conceived as providing a completely self-sufficient urban living space for 5,000 people when it began in 1970, only about five per cent of the proposed development was ever completed.

At its peak, Arcosanti’s population barely exceeded 200 yet the buildings Soleri erected in accordance with his vision are still there, rising from the desert as an assortment of concrete blocks, domes and soaring vaults, resembling a cross between the remains of some ancient civilisation and a set from Star Wars.

It has never been abandoned, however, and although Soleri died in 2013 the project is still home to between 50 and 100 of his most ardent disciples, still seeking to live as Soleri envisaged.

Although Soleri grew up in Italy and acquired his formal training in architecture and design at the Politecnico di Torino, where he obtained his master’s degree, it was a visit to the United States in 1946 that had the most profound influence on his life.

It was there that he met Frank Lloyd Wright, whose views on what he called organic architecture, in which buildings were designed in harmony with their environment, would form the basis of Soleri’s philosophy.

Soleri's ceramics factory in Vietri sul Mare

He returned to Italy, where in 1954 he built an extraordinary factory for a producer of ceramics in Vietri sul Mare, of which the exterior interspersed conical shapes covered with multi-coloured ceramic tiles and inverted triangles of glass.  Among many wonders of Campania’s spectacular Amalfi coast, the Ceramica Artistica Solimene is a tourist attraction in its own right.

It was not long, however, before he returned to the United States and to Scottsdale, Arizona, close to Wright’s concept home, Taliesen West, which on a smaller scale in that it was home also to a commune of Wright’s disciples could be seen as a forerunner of Arcosanti.

Soleri’s admiration for Wright waned over the latter’s Broadacre City project, an essentially low-rise development that went against the Italian’s belief that the urban sprawls that proliferated across America were a wasteful and inefficient use of land.  Soleri believed that in future man needed to build upwards rather than outwards.

In 1956, he settled in Scottsdale with his American-born wife Colly and established the Cosanti Foundation.  He built trial dwellings using a process he called "earthcasting", in which mounds of earth were built, concrete was poured over the top to create a shell, and the earth then dug away from beneath.

Soleri in Arizona in the early days of the Arcosanti project

In Arcosanti, which he began in 1970, one of his favoured methods was to dig out troughs in the ground in order to create buildings that appeared to be semi-submerged in the earth as if they were a natural phenomenon in the landscape.  Every building in the town was carefully oriented to maximise the use of solar energy, which Soleri harnassed for heat and power.

In Vietri he had learned the techniques of ceramics and bronze casting, which he put to use in Arconsanti by setting up a small factory producing wind bells, which were sold to provide the town with an income.  

Soleri blamed himself for Arconsanti’s failure to grow much beyond its conceptual beginnings, admitting that he did not do enough to promote his work and persuade others to believe in the wisdom of his vision for urban living.

Nonetheless, through the Cosanti Foundation he and Colly devoted themselves to research and experimentation in urban planning and the support of innovative architectural ideas. Arconsanti may not have achieved its goals of becoming a cost-effective infrastructure, conserving water, minimizing the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and pollution, yet it remains an active project in which more than 6,000 people have had an input since it began.

Soleri died in Paradise Valley, Arizona, at the age of 93.

The distinctive dome of the Chiesa di San Giovanni
Battista in Vietri sul Mare

Travel tip:

The town of Vietri sul Mare is considered to be the southern gateway to the Amalfi coast. The town is best known for the production of ceramics, which goes back to the 15^th century. The church of St John the Baptist is notable for its dome, which is decorated with blue and white ceramic tiles. Vietri borders the historic town of Cava dei Tirreni and is separated from the port of Salerno by nothing more than a sea wall.

Travel tip:

The historical base of the Politechnic University of Turin, as it is now, is the Castle of Valentino, a 17^th-century House of Savoy on the River Po that houses the main teaching campus. The main campus of engineering is in Corso Duca degli Abruzzi in central Turin. Other facilities can be found close to the Mirafiori Motor Village and the Lingotto Building, which were both once car production centres for FIAT.

Home

Giulio Andreotti - political survivor

Christian Democrat spent 45 years in government

Giulio Andreotti, pictured in 1979

Giulio Andreotti, who was Italy's most powerful politician for a period lasting almost half a century, was born on this day in 1919 in Rome.  He was a member of almost every Italian government from 1947 until 1992, leading seven of them.

He would have certainly gone on to be president were it not for the scandals in which he became embroiled in the 1990s, when his Christian Democrat party collapsed as a result of the mani pulite - clean hands - bribery investigations.  Andreotti himself was accused of an historic association with the Mafia and of commissioning the murder of a journalist, although he was acquitted of the latter charge on appeal.

The youngest of three children, Andreotti was brought up in difficult circumstances by his mother after his father, who had taught at a junior school in Segni, about 60km (37 miles) south-east of the capital in Lazio, had died when he was only two years old.

In contrast with the unassuming, mild-mannered persona for which he became known as an adult, the young Andreotti had a fiery temper.  On one occasion, in church, he attacked another altar boy, stubbing out a lit taper in his eye after feeling he had been ridiculed.

He attended the prestigious Liceo Torquato Tasso in Via Sicilia, not far from the Borghese Gardens and the Via Vittorio Veneto, before going on to graduate with honours after studying law at the University of Rome, while at the same time working in a tax office.

An opponent of Fascism, Andreotti's instinct was to keep his head down during Mussolini's reign but he did join the Italian Catholic Federation of University Students (FUCI), which was the only non-fascist youth organisation allowed to exist at the time.  Membership of the group enabled him to meet Aldo Moro, the future Christian Democrat prime minister, whom he succeeded as FUCI president in 1942.

Alcide de Gasperi, the founder of the
Christian Democrats and Andreotti's sponsor

Italy voted to become a republic in 1946 and Andreotti's political career began at the same time.  With the support of the first prime minister of the republic, Alcide de Gasperi, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, the provisional parliament which had the task of writing the new Italian constitution.

De Gasperi had been a fierce opponent of Mussolini and was imprisoned in 1927 before being released on the grounds of poor health and being given refuge by the Catholic Church. He met Andreotti at the Vatican Library, where he worked as a cataloguer between 1929 and 1943.  The latter showed enthusiasm for the Christian Democrat party De Gasperi had been secretly establishing and when the party was formally launched it was not long before Andreotti was appointed as De Gasperi's assistant.

Andreotti began his government career in 1947, when he became Secretary of the Council of Ministers in De Gasperi's cabinet at the age of just 28. The following year he was elected to the newly formed Chamber of Deputies, representing the constituency of Rome-Latina-Viterbo-Frosinone, which would remain his stronghold until the 1990s.

During Andreotti's long period of influence, there were many groups with a vested interest in making sure that the country was run by a Catholic party, and it was Andreotti's ability to form unlikely alliances across the country's fragmented political spectrum that held the line for so many years.

Those groups included, naturally enough, the church itself - still a massive part of the fabric of Italian society.  The United States, meanwhile, was determined to keep Italy out of the hands of the Italian Communist Party, which also suited the drivers of Italy's post-War industrial and financial recovery. The Mafia, too, feared that their ability to strike clandestine deals would be compromised by a shift to the left.  Andreotti, a quiet, self-effacing man who carried an aura of calm, emerged as the perfect figure to stand untouched at the centre of the whirlwind of Italian political life, skilfully maintaining the status quo.

In that Italy did not become communist and grew at one point to be the fifth largest economy in the world, he succeeded.  But his time at the forefront was not without difficult moments, most notably the kidnap and murder of his friend, Aldo Moro, by the Red Brigades in 1978.

Andreotti, left, with Aldo Moro in 1978, shortly before the
latter was kidnapped by the Red Brigades terrorist group

Andreotti refused to negotiate with the terrorist group, despite personal pleas from Moro, while the police and Italian secret services attracted criticism for failing to locate the apartment in which the former prime minister was being held, even though it was under their noses in central Rome.

Theories began to circulate that Andreotti was somehow complicit in the kidnap because Moro had been one of the politicians pushing for the so-called 'historic compromise', in which the Communists would be invited to play a direct role in government for the first time, in return for keeping the Christian Democrats in power.

Nothing was ever proved, although what is fact is that, after Moro had been killed, Andreotti took the opportunity to propose a government of 'National Solidarity' in the face of the possibility of more acts of terrorism, strengthening his grip on power. The Communists supported the move but when they asked to participate directly in a new coalition, they found the 'historic compromise' was no longer on the agenda.

The theories resurfaced in the 1990s when Andreotti admitted the existence at the time of the kidnap of Operation Gladio, an undercover network sponsored by NATO and the US secret services to bolster Italy as the last line of defence against the advance of Soviet communism.

Similar theories lay behind the accusation that Andreotti had colluded with the Sicilian Mafia to arrange the murder of a journalist, Carmine Pecorelli, in Rome in 1979, to prevent the publication of a book by Pecorelli which contained information related to the Moro kidnap that would probably have ended Andreotti's career.

In 2002, Andreotti was sentenced, along with Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, to 24 years in jail for Pecorelli's murder. The sentence was thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court in 2003.

A long-running investigation into Andreotti's suspected links with the Mafia ended with no sentence handed down after a court in Palermo decided that, since no links could be proved after 1980, too much time had elapsed for Andreotti to be prosecuted.

The disbanding of the Christian Democrats after the mani pulite revelations did not spell the end of Andreotti, although his role in politics became increasingly peripheral. He died in Rome in 2013 at the age of 94.

The Palazzo Chigi in Rome is the official residence
of the Italian prime minister

Travel tip:

During the six and a half years in total that Giulio Andreotti was Italy's prime minister, his official residence was the Palazzo Chigi in Piazza Colonna, a square just off Via del Corso, about equidistant from the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. Originally built in 1580 for the Aldobrandi family - Ippolito Aldobrandi was Pope Clement VIII - it was bought by the Chigi family in 1659.  In 1878 it was acquired by the Austro-Hungarian empire to be the residence of their ambassador in Rome before the Italian state took ownership in 1916.

Travel tip:

First-time visitors to Rome might be daunted by the prospect of so much to see in such a large area and not know where to start.  In fact, most of the city's major attractions and contained within a four sided area that can be defined on a map by drawing a line between the Vatican and the Borghese Gardens, Stazione Termini, the Baths of Caracalla and back to the Vatican. Even so, it would take the best part of a week to see everything contained within that area.

More reading:

Alcide de Gasperi - the prime minister who rebuilt Italy

The kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro

Enrico Berlinguer - the leader who turned Italy's Communists into a political force

Also on this day:

1883: Birth of fashion designer Nina Ricci

(Picture credit: Palazzo Chigi by Jordiferrer via Wikimedia Commons)


Home

Dino De Laurentiis – film producer

Campanian pasta seller helped make Italian cinema famous 

Dino De Laurentiis, pictured in about 1950

The producer of hundreds of hit films, Agostino ‘Dino’ De Laurentiis was born on this day in 1919 at Torre Annunziata, near Naples in Campania.

He made Italian cinema famous internationally, producing Federico Fellini’s Oscar- winning La Strada in 1954 in Rome.

After moving to the US he enjoyed further success with the film Serpico in 1973.

De Laurentiis was the son of a pasta manufacturer for whom he worked as a salesman during his teens.

While selling pasta in Rome in the 1930s he decided on impulse to enrol at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the city as an actor.

He quickly realised he had more talent for producing and after gaining experience in the different sectors of the industry made his first film, L’Amore Canta - 'Love Song' - in 1941 when he was just 22.

After serving in the army during the second world war, De Laurentiis became an executive producer at one of Rome’s emerging film companies, Lux.

Among the films he produced for Lux was Riso Amaro - 'Bitter Rice' - starring Silvana Mangano, whom he later married and had four children with. The film was a box-office success both at home and abroad.

An early publicity poster for the De
 Laurentiis production La Strada

Proud of his Campanian origins, De Laurentiis made Napoli Milionaria, - 'Naples Millionaire' - a comedy presenting a slice of life in Naples during and after the war.

In 1950 De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti formed their own film company and produced Fellini’s La Strada which won the Oscar for best foreign language feature in 1957.

The soundtrack was written by Nino Rota, who scored many of Fellini's films and is also known for the music that accompanied the first two Godfather films.

He moved to the US in the 1970s where he made Serpico starring Al Pacino and Conan the Barbarian, which helped launch the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Although De Laurentiis became an American citizen, he returned to Italy frequently, shooting scenes in Florence for Hannibal in 2001 starring Anthony Hopkins.

De Laurentiis and Silvana Mangano divorced shortly before her death in 1989 and he married Martha Schumacher in 1990, with whom he had another two daughters.

De Laurentiis died in 2010 at the age of 91 at his residence in Beverly Hills.

The harbour at Torre Annunziata, just outside Naples

Travel tip:

Torre Annunziata, where De Laurentiis was born, is a city near Naples in Campania. Close to Mount Vesuvius, it was destroyed in the eruption of 79 AD and was rebuilt over the ruins. Its name derives from a watch tower - torre - built to warn people of imminent Saracen raids and a chapel consecrated to the Annunziata (Virgin Mary). It became a centre for pasta production in the early 19th century. The Villa Poppaea, also known as Villa Oplontis, believed to be owned by Nero, was discovered about ten metres below ground level just outside the town and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Travel tip:

The Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Film Centre) was established in 1935 in Rome to promote the art and technique of film making. It is located near Cinecittà, the hub of the Italian film industry, to the south of the city. Cinecittà was bombed during the Second World War but rebuilt and used again in the 1950s for large productions, such as Ben-Hur. A range of productions, from television drama to music videos, are filmed there now and it has its own dedicated Metro stop.

More reading:

Federico Fellini - the cinematic legacy of Rimini's favourite son

Carlo Ponti - the man who married Sophia Loren twice

Sergio Leone - distinctive style of 'spaghetti western' producer

(Photo of movie poster by Pabloglezcruz CC BY-SA 3.0)

Home

Benito Mussolini and the founding of the Italian Fascists

Milan rally in 1919 launched the National Fascist Party

Benito Mussolini pictured
in around 1914

Italy's notorious dictator Benito Mussolini officially formed what would become known as the National Fascist Party on this day in 1919 at a rally in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro.

A war veteran and former socialist activist who had moved towards a more nationalist political stance, Mussolini initially drew his followers together as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group).

This group evolved into the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) two years later, sweeping to power in 1922 when King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war after 30,000 of Mussolini's supporters, the Blackshirts, marched on Rome, asked Mussolini to form a government.

Born the son of a blacksmith in Predappio, in Emilia-Romagna, Mussolini had been an active socialist, first in Switzerland, where he had moved as a 19-year-old to seek work and avoid military service, and again when he returned to Italy.  He became a leading figure in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and edited the left-wing newspaper Avanti.

But he was expelled by the PSI because of his opposition to the party's neutral stance on the First World War, in which he saw intervention as an opportunity to further the revolutionary aims of the left, particularly by overthrowing the Habsburg monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

He began to lose faith in orthodox socialism, believing that national identity had become more important than class struggle in forging the kind of society that was central to his vision, one in which the removal of class divides was still key but which also recognised culture, tradition, language and race.

Italy in the early 20th century was a unified country but still a long way from unity in political terms, with an appetite for revolution still rife, particularly among those who disagreed with the monarchy. Different groups went under the name of fasci, the plural form of the word fascio, meaning bundle or sheaf, that had become a symbol of strength through unity.

After his shift away from conventional socialism, Mussolini became prominent in the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria - Revolutionary Action Group -- whose followers were the first to refer to themselves as Fascisti (Fascists).

Mussolini's political activity was curtailed when he signed up for the Italian Army but resumed on his return following wounds suffered when a mortar bomb accidentally exploded in a trench.  He relaunched FAR as Fasci Italiani di Combattimento -- Italian Combat Group -- attracting support among war veterans and a variety of malcontents at the Milan rally in 1919, which he had promoted via his new newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia.

The group began with around 200 members and grew rapidly, Mussolini promoting a vision of Italy as a global power on a level with its Roman past while at the same time being a nation without social divisions.  They encountered violent opposition from communists, socialists and anarchists but Mussolini's attitude was to meet force with force.  Soon, squads of his followers, armed and wearing the black shirts that had become their uniform, began patrolling the streets to keep order.

Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan, looking
across to the church of the same name

It was a sign of things to come.  Although Mussolini retained many socialist principles, he believed authoritarian dictatorship was essential to effective government.  Once in office, he introduced changes to electoral law and by 1928 the PNF was effectively the only legally permitted political party.  He remained in power until 1943, at which point World War Two had left Italy on its knees and the Grand Council of Fascism finally threw him out.

Travel tip:

The Piazza San Sepolcro, where Mussolini staged the 1919 rally that led to the formation of his Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, is situated in central Milan, not far from the Duomo and immediately adjacent to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, which houses thousands of historic manuscripts and dates back to 1609.  The Ambrosiana's Sala Fredericiana reading room was open to the public at that time, which makes it the second oldest public library in Europe, after the Bodleian at Oxford.

The entrance to the Mussolini
mausoleum in Predappio

Travel tip:

Predappio, where Mussolini was born in 1883, is a small town in Emilia-Romagna situated around 18 kilometres south of Forli.  The former dictator was buried in a family mausoleum in a cemetery just outside the town, which has become a tourist attraction, albeit a somewhat macabre one. Controversially, Predappio has also been adopted as a pilgrimage site for neofascists, with some shops openly selling neofascist memorabilia.

Home