Tina Anselmi - ground-breaking politician

Former partisan became Italy’s first female cabinet minister

Tina Anselmi was the first Italian woman to
hold a position inside an Italian cabinet

The politician Tina Anselmi, who made history in 1976 as the first woman to hold a ministerial position in an Italian government and later broke new ground again when she was appointed to chair the public inquiry into the infamous Propaganda Due masonic lodge, was born on this day in 1927 in Castelfranco Veneto.

Anselmi was chosen as Minister for Labour and Social Security and then Minister for Health in the government led by Giulio Andreotti from 1976 to 1979.

In 1981, she became the first woman to lead a public inquiry in Italy when she was asked to head the commission looking into the clandestine and illegal P2 masonic lodge, which had among its members prominent journalists, members of parliament, industrialists, and military leaders and was suspected of involvement in many scandals in pursuit of an ultra-right agenda.

Anselmi’s political views were heavily influenced by her upbringing in the Veneto during the years of Mussolini and war. She was from a comfortable background - her father was a pharmacist in Castelfranco Veneto, while her mother ran an osteria with her grandmother - but became aware of the threat to freedom posed by the Fascist system when he father was persecuted by Mussolini’s supporters for expressing socialist views.

The Via dei Martiri in Bassano del Grappa
celebrates the memory of the massacred partisans

The defining moment came in 1944, by which time she had finished high school in Castelfranco and was attending a Teaching Institute in nearby Bassano del Grappa. On September 26 of that year, aged 17, she and her fellow pupils were summoned to the town’s main square to witness the hanging of 31 young partisans, many of them not much older than her, by soldiers of the occupying German army.

The executions were intended to strike fear into anyone thinking of joining the growing resistance movement. On Anselmi, it had the opposite effect.

Under the nom de guerre Gabriella, she became a courier for the partisans, making journeys by bicycle of up to 70 miles (113km) a day on behalf of the Cesare Battisti brigade - named after the Italian patriot hanged by the Austrians in 1916 - smuggling weapons and ammunition and delivering messages.

It was extremely dangerous work. Her commander had told her that if she were caught, the best she could hope for was that she would be killed at once.

The experience made her understand what democracy meant and she resolved to spend her life defending the values it enshrined and the rights of the individual, especially those of women.

When the Second World War had ended, she studied literature at the Catholic University of Milan and became a primary school teacher. She held positions in Christian trade unions, including the primary teachers' union from 1948-55.

Anselmi chaired the inquiry into
the illegal P2 masonic lodge

Her career in politics began in earnest in 1959. Unlike other partisans drawn towards communism, Anselmi had joined the Christian Democracy Party at the end of the war and in 1959 she became a member of the party’s national council as head of youth programmes.

Re-elected five times as a deputy for the Venice-Treviso district, Anselmi served three times as under-secretary to the Department of Work and Social Services, and in 1976 she became the first woman to be a member of an Italian cabinet.

She is best known for having been the main proposer of Italian laws on equal opportunities. She passed a bill which recognised fathers as primary caregivers for their children and supported legislation on gender parity in employment conditions. She played a significant role in the introduction of Italy's National Health Service.

Throughout her career, Anselmi earned respect as a straight-talking campaigner, but also as a politician whose first thought was for her responsibility to the public, rather than the direction of her career.

When she was appointed to lead the P2 enquiry, it soon became clear that she had every intention of disturbing the established order and with so many high-profile and well-connected individuals under suspicion she found herself variously followed, threatened - dynamite was found at her house in Rome - and spied on as part of several attempts to warn her off.

Yet after four years and almost 500 sessions, the inquiry reported in 1984 and concluded that P2’s network of power represented a clear threat to democracy. It was a triumph for Anselmi, although much to her frustration and disappointment, her proposed reforms were left to gather dust.

In the broader picture, however, the work of Anselmi’s commission was an important part of the process of exposing corruption in the Italian political system, which would reach a conclusion a decade later with the dismantling of both the Christian Democrats and the Italian Socialist Party, along with the Social Democrats and the Liberals, with new groups emerging in their place.

After her retirement, Anselmi was mooted as a potential candidate for the presidency of Italy, although ill health counted against her. She died in Castelfranco in 2016 at the age of 89.

Travel tip:

Bassano del Grappa is an historic town at the foot of Monte Grappa in the Vicenza province of the Veneto, famous for inventing grappa, a spirit made from the grape skins and stalks left over from wine production, which is popular with Italians as an after dinner drink to aid digestion. The town’s main attraction is the Ponte degli Alpini, also known as the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge across the Brenta river designed in 1569 by Andrea Palladio. It has been rebuilt several times after being damaged or destroyed by wars but always to the original design. The painter Jacopo Bassano was born in Bassano del Grappa and took his name from the town.

Hotels in Bassano del Grappa by Booking.com

The walls of Castelfranco Veneto have been providing
protection for the old city since 1211

Travel tip:

Castelfranco Veneto, a small town midway between Treviso and Vicenza in the Veneto region, is notable for its fortified old city, which lies at the centre of the town surrounded by high walls and a moat. Inside are a number of streets and the old city’s Duomo, which contains an altarpiece by the town’s most famous son, the High Renaissance artist Giorgione, thought to have been painted between 1503 and 1504. Next to the Duomo is the Casa Giorgione, thought to have been the artist’s home, which is now a museum.

Search Tripadvisor for a hotel in Castelfranco Veneto

More reading:

How Giulio Andreotti became the great political survivor

Which names were on the P2 list?

Cesare Battisti - the patriot who fought to reclaim Trentino from Austrian rule

Also on this day:

1541: The birth of Francesco I, the Florentine ruler at the heart of a Medici murder mystery

1940: The birth of pop singer Mina, Italy's all-time best-selling female recording artist


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Enzo Bearzot - World Cup-winning coach

Led Italy to 1982 triumph in Spain

The pipe-smoking Enzo Bearzot was in
charge of the azzurri for a record 104 games

Enzo Bearzot, the pipe-smoking coach who plotted Italy’s victory at the 1982 World Cup in Spain and at the same time changed the way the national team traditionally played, was born on September 26, 1927 in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northwest Italy.

Italy had a reputation for ultra-defensive and sometimes cynical football but in 44 years had won only one major competition, the 1968 European championships, a much lower-key affair than the current four-yearly Euros, which Italy hosted.

But Bearzot was an admirer of the so-called ‘total football’ philosophy advanced by the Dutch coach Rinus Michels, with which the Netherlands national team reached two World Cup finals in the 1970s, albeit without winning.

Italy did not impress at the start of their Spain adventure, recording three fairly lacklustre draws in their group matches, and were expected to be eliminated in the second group phase when they were obliged to play Argentina, the holders, and a Brazil side brimming with brilliant players.

Bearzot and the team attracted scathing criticism in the Italian press, to the extent that the players and management refused to speak any more to journalists during the tournament, imposing their so-called silenzio stampa - press silence.

Bearzot, right, playing cards on the plane home from Spain with
Dino Zoff, Franco Causio and the Italian president Sandro Pertini

Instead, they made their critics eat their words by beating both Argentina (2-1) and Brazil (3-2), the latter hailed as one of the greatest World Cup matches of all time after Italy led twice and Brazil equalised twice before Italy took the lead again 16 minutes from the end and goalkeeper Dino Zoff pulled off a miraculous late save to deny Brazil another equaliser, which would have taken them through to the semi-finals on goal difference.

All three goals against Brazil were scored by Italy’s wiry centre-forward, Paolo Rossi, whose selection had brought Bearzot more criticism. Rossi had just returned from a two-year suspension for alleged match-fixing, which was controversial enough. He was also a long way behind the rest of the squad in fitness, yet he had scored three goals in the World Cup finals in Argentina in 1978, from which Italy were eliminated by the Netherlands in their final second-phase match, and Bearzot wanted him on board.

Not content with destroying Brazil’s hopes, Rossi scored both goals in Italy’s 2-0 semi-final victory against Poland, and another in the 3-1 win over West Germany in the final, to take the tournament Golden Boot award as top goalscorer, with six.

Bearzot in his playing days at Torino

Although Italy delighted their fans with the gusto of their attacking, they did not entirely abandon tried and trusted methods. Deployed as an old-fashioned man-marker, Claudio Gentile fulfilled his duties to the letter, kicking a young Diego Maradona out of the match with Argentina and doing a similar job on the Brazilian magician Zico, albeit at the cost of a booking that ruled him out of the semi-final.

The final confirmed Bearzot’s transformation from villain to hero in the eyes of the press and earned him four more years in the job, although the 1986 World Cup in Mexico earned him renewed criticism, this time for showing too much faith in his 1982 players, who had lost some of their edge and went out to France in the round of 16.

Bearzot resigned after that defeat but his 104 matches as national coach - seven more even than the legendary Vittorio Pozzo, who was in the dug-out for 97 games - is unlikely ever to be surpassed.

Born in the village of Aiello del Friuli, about 45km (28 miles) northwest of Trieste and about 25km (16 miles) southeast of Udine, Bearzot was the son of a bank manager who had little interest in football and whose wrath he risked by missing two crucial university exams to play in the first team for his club, Pro Gorizia, ruining his chances of completing his degree.

Marcello Lippi, who won the World Cup in
2006, was mentored by Bearzot

Tall and strongly built, Bearzot usually played as what would now be described as a defensive midfielder. In his club career, he helped the Sicilian team Catania win promotion to Serie A and had long spells with both Inter Milan and Torino. He made one appearance for the azzurri - the  national team.

He took up coaching with Torino but his only head coach role before he joined the technical staff of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) was with the Serie C club Prato. This lack of club experience meant that, when he worked his way through the ranks to be under-23 coach and then senior coach in 1975 meant there was scepticism from the start over his credentials for the job, even among his fellow coaches.

Bearzot’s success, however, silenced them all.  After Mexico ‘86, he disappeared from football for the most part, never taking another coaching job. He rejoined the FIGC as president of the technical sector in 2002 and was a mentor to Marcello Lippi, who was to match Bearzot’s achievement  by winning the World Cup himself as coach in 2006.

Bearzot retired for good in 2005. He died in 2010 after a long illness and was buried at the church of Santa Maria al Paradiso in Milan, where goalkeeper Zoff and midfielder Bruno Conti were among the pallbearers, with Rossi part of a congregation that included Antonio Cabrini, Giuseppe Bergomi,  Alessandro Altobelli and Marco Tardelli among other members of the 1982 World Cup winning team.

The beautiful Piazza della Libertà is one of the features
of the Friulian city of Udine

Travel tip:

Udine, the nearest city to Bearzot’s home village of Aiello, is an attractive and wealthy provincial city which is the gastronomic capital of Friuli. Udine's most attractive area lies within the medieval centre, which has Venetian, Greek and Roman influences. The main square, Piazza della Libertà, features the town hall, the Loggia del Lionello, built in 1448–1457 in the Venetian-Gothic style, and a clock tower, the Torre dell’Orologio, which is similar to the clock tower in Piazza San Marco - St Mark's Square - in Venice.

The church of Santa Maria at Paradiso
in Milan, where Bearzot is buried

Travel tip:

The church of Santa Maria al Paradiso is in the Ticinese district of Milan, about 1.5km (1 mile) south of the city centre, near the Crocetta metro station. It was begun in 1590 for the Third Order of Saint Francis, after designs by Martino Bassi. The facade, however, was only added in 1897 in a Neo-Baroque style by the architect Ernesto Pirovano. Ticinese is one of the oldest parts of central Milan. It takes its name from Porta Ticinese, a 16th century gate to the city rebuilt in the early 19th century with large ionic order columns. The area also includes the remains of a Roman amphitheatre and the basilicas of San Lorenzo and Sant'Eustorgio, and has a thriving nightlife with a large choice of bars and restaurants.

More reading:

How Paolo Rossi made the difference in a World Cup classic

Marco Tardelli and THAT celebration

How Marcello Lippi led Italy to glory in 2006

Also on this day:

1973: The death of the actress Anna Magnani

1977: The Assisi earthquake


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Marella Agnelli - noblewoman and socialite

Married for 50 years to Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli

Marella Agnelli enjoyed a lifestyle
of wealth and privilege

Donna Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto, the noblewoman from an old Neapolitan family who married the jet-setting chairman of car giants Fiat, Gianni Agnelli, was born on this day in 1927 in Florence.

Simply known as Marella Agnelli, she was propelled by her marriage at the age of 26 into a world in which she became a socialite and style icon, devoting her life to collecting art, decorating the numerous homes she and her husband kept in Europe and beyond, and attending and hosting lavish, exclusive parties.

The couple would eventually have homes in Rome, Paris, New York,  Corsica and Saint-Moritz, as well as several houses in and around Agnelli’s home city of Turin, including the Agnelli estate in the foothills of the Italian Alps.

As member of the House of Caracciolo, she was regarded as high Italian nobility, although she admitted that the conservative aristocratic circles in which she grew up were a long way removed from the new life she took on at Agnelli’s side.

Her father was Don Filippo Caracciolo, 8th Prince di Castagneto, 3rd Duke di Melito, and hereditary Patrician of Naples, who married an American whiskey heiress, Margaret Clarke. One of her brothers, Don Carlo Caracciolo, founded the newspaper La Repubblica.

She and Agnelli met when she was 18. Marella was familiar with him both through the gossip columns - he was a notorious playboy - and through the tales she heard of his wartime exploits as part of a tank regiment on the Eastern Front and in north Africa.  He was 24 and, after his parents had both died young, became head of the Agnelli family.

Marella and Gianni Agnelli arriving at a function in 1966

The couple did not become engaged until the summer of 1953, marrying in November of the same year in the chapel of Osthoffen Castle, just outside Strasbourg, the French city where her father was based as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

Before they were married Marella had been developing her photography skills in the New York studio of Erwin Blumenfeld and returned to Italy as a correspondent for the upmarket magazine publisher Condé Nast but effectively gave up her career to be a wife and society hostess.

She and Agnelli’s lives revolved around late autumns in New York, the skiing season in Saint-Moritz and summers on the French Riviera, entertaining a circle of friends that included the Kennedys, the Kissingers, the Rockefellers.

Their son, Edoardo, was born in New York in 1954, their daughter, Margherita, in Lausanne the following year.

Each year, from mid-August until the end of September, while Gianni attended to business in Turin, Marella and the children would be based at the Agnelli family estate at the foot of the Alps at Villar Perosa, 40km (25 miles) from Turin. It had been home to the family since the early 19th century.  She and Agnelli also had a city residence in Corso Matteotti in Turin.

Marella Agnelli became known for elegance and style

Their homes were known for their elegance and style, much of it the work of Marella, for whom the artistic talents that might have flourished had she maintained her budding career in photography were channelled into interior design, whether at Villa Frescot, in the hills above Turin, their duplex apartment on Park Avenue in New York, or the country estate, where Marella enlisted the garden designer Russell Page in transforming the grounds into a living work of art.

It was their love of art on canvas that drew the Agnellis to New York, where they became friends with Leo Castelli, the contemporary art dealer from Trieste who had emigrated to New York, who introduced them to upcoming young artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann, Frank Stella and Robert Indiana, whose paintings they collected with such enthusiasm they had an apartment in Milan designed by Gae Aulenti, the architect who designed the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, specifically for their collection.

Among the circle of friends they built in New York was the author Truman Capote, who famously who dubbed Marella and a group of elegant and beautiful socialites of the time, including Barbara “Babe” Paley, Lucy Douglas “CZ” Guest and Nancy “Slim” Keith, as his “swans”.

Marella and Capote became very close, the American spending much time in Italy as well as keeping their company in New York, but they fell out eventually after Marella saw a chapter of his novel Answered Prayers, in which he  exposed the lives and secrets of many people who had regarded him as a confidant.

After Gianni Agnelli’s death in 2003, Marella acquired Ain Kassimou, a villa in Marrakech, Morocco, that had been built in the 19th century for a relative of Leo Tolstoy, and she spent a good deal of her time there.  Nowadays, aged 91, she still lives in the family house at Villar Perosa.

The Agnelli house in Villar Pelosa has been in the family
since the early part of the 19th century

Travel tip:

The country house and estate at Villar Perosa, a 45-room stuccoed rococo villa with commanding views of the Alps,  has been in the the Agnelli family since 1811. The Fiat founder, Giovanni Agnelli - Gianni’s grandfather - had been born there in 1866. As well as Russell Page, the English landscape gardener, the Agnellis hired Gae Aulenti to create the timbered pool house.

The Tarot Card Garden at Garavicchio

Travel tip:

The Caracciolo family’s country estate in Tuscany, spread over 500 acres, is near the medieval village of Garavicchio, some 200km (125 miles) south of Florence and 125km (78 miles) northeast of Rome along the Tyrrhenian Sea coast. At the heart of the estate is a 16th century farmhouse positioned so as to enjoy views towards the sea on one side and rolling Tuscan hills on the other.  An unusual feature of Garavicchio is its Tarot Card Garden, a wooded area featuring 22 brightly coloured sculptures inspired by Tarot symbols.

More reading: 

How Gianni Agnelli became the most powerful man in Italy

Giovanni Agnelli - the man who founded Fiat

Gae Aulenti, trailblazer for women in architecture

Also on this day:

1527: Mutinous troops sack Rome

1655: The birth of Bartolomeo Cristofori, inventor of the piano


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Laura Betti - actress and jazz singer

Long-time companion of director Pier Paolo Pasolini

Laura Betti made her screen debut in Fellini's 1960 classic
about fame and decadence, La Dolce Vita

The actress and singer Laura Betti, who appeared in a number of important Italian films in the 1960s and 1970s, including Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, was born on this day in 1927 in Casalecchio di Reno, in Emilia-Romagna.

In addition to Teorema, which won her the coveted Volpi Cup for best actress at the 1968 Venice Film Festival, Betti appeared in six other Pasolini films as the two developed a special and unlikely relationship.

Betti, a vivacious blonde with striking good looks, had no shortage of suitors among the authors, artists, singers and aspiring actors that made up her circle in Rome in the 1950s, but Pasolini was homosexual and had no interest in her in a romantic sense.

Yet he became a regular guest at her apartment near the Palazzo Farnese and she wrote many years later that a kind of love developed between them. They met while he was an unknown poet and it was with her encouragement that he realised his aspiration to become a director.

Betti the jazz singer was a popular
performer in Rome nightclubs

Over time she effectively became his cook and housekeeper and after his death in 1975, the victim of a brutal murder that was never fully explained, she devoted much of her time to preserving his memory and championing his work.

She was the driving force behind the establishment of the Pasolini Foundation in Bologna, where he was born. She also set up an annual literary prize in his name.

The daughter of a barrister, she was born Laura Trombetti. Her first interest was in singing, particularly jazz, and she moved to Rome at a young age, acquiring a following on the cabaret circuit, for which her husky voice was ideal.  Both Pasolini and Alberto Moravia supplied material for her act.

Her interpretations of jazz tunes and songs by Bertolt Brecht brought comparisons with the sultry-voiced French singer Juliette Greco. She released a number of albums, which sold well.

Betti's first venture into theatre came with a 1955 production of Arthur Miller's Crucible staged by Luchino Visconti, although the night clubs continued to be her domain for much of the late 1950s until Fellini launched her film career with a cameo role in La Dolce Vita (1960), as one of the authentic Roman eccentrics in the beach villa orgy sequence.  It was the first of 76 movies in her career.

Her first Pasolini film was La Ricotta, a controversial 40-minute short that featured Orson Welles as an American director shooting a film about the Passion of Christ in Rome, with Betti a temperamental Madonna.

Laura Betti was for many years the companion of
enigmatic director Pier Paolo Pasolini (left)

In 1968, her first substantial Pasolini role, as the peasant maid in a bourgeois household in Teorema, won the best actress award at the 1968 Venice festival.

After returning to the stage to give an electrifying performance in Samuel Beckett's Not I for the Rome Municipal Theatre, her next Pasolini film role was in The Canterbury Tales (1972), shot in England, in which she was the Wife of Bath.

In the early 1970s, she also appeared in films by Marco Bellocchio, Mauro Bolognini, Miklos Jancso and the Taviani Brothers. She was also in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris (1972), Novecento (1976) and La Luna (1979).

After Pasolini's murder, Betti was sceptical, like many, of the explanation for his death and the confession by Giuseppe Pelosi, a 17-year-old youth he had paid for sex, when the evidence suggested the involvement of more than one attacker.  She preferred the idea that, as a communist sympathiser, he had been the victim of a conspiracy of the political Right, perhaps because he knew damaging secrets about senior figures, a theory that gained credence when it emerged that the Italian secret services were involved in the investigation into his death.

She continued to appear in films for her whole life, although at the same time devoting much time to travelling in Italy, and around the world, to fight Pasolini's corner. In 2001, she made a 90-minute documentary, Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Reason For A Dream, emphasising what she considered to be his optimistic vision of the future.

Betti, who never married, struggled with her health in the early 2000s and died of a heart attack in 2004.

The Villa Marescalchi, outside Casalecchio di Reno

Travel tip:

Casalecchio di Reno, which takes its name from the Roman word for a small collection of houses, in this instance clustered around the Reno river, is nowadays effectively a suburb of Bologna. An important industrial area in the early part of the 20th century, it was heavily bombed by the Allies in the Second World War, its population growing rapidly as it was rebuilt after 1945. The Villa Marescalchi, just outside the town, once contained paintings by the noted Bolognese painter Cesare Baglioni, but these were destroyed in a bombing raid.

The Palazzo Farnese now houses the French Embassy

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Farnese is one of the most important High Renaissance palaces in Rome, which currently serves as the French Embassy in Italy. Designed in 1517 for the Farnese family, it was expanded when Alessandro Farnese became Pope Paul III in 1534. The palace was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and the development involved input from Michelangelo, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Giacomo della Porta, who were alls prominent in Rome in the 16th century.

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Giovanni Arpino – writer and novelist

Stories inspired classic Italian films

Giovanni Arpino had a distinguished career as both
a sports writer and a novelist

The writer Giovanni Arpino, whose novels lay behind the Italian movie classics Divorce, Italian Style and Profumo di donna – later remade in the United States as Scent of a Woman – was born on this day in 1927 in the Croatian city of Pula, then part of Italy.

His parents did not originate from Pula, which is near the tip of the Istrian peninsula about 120km (75 miles) south of Trieste. His father, Tomaso, was a Neapolitan, while his mother, Maddalena, hailed from Piedmont, but his father’s career in the Italian Army meant the family were rarely settled for long in one place.

In fact, they remained in Pula only a couple of months. As Giovanni was growing up, they lived in Novi Ligure, near Alessandria, in Saluzzo, south of Turin, and in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna. His father imposed a strict regime on Giovanni and his two brothers, who were required to spend a lot of their time studying.

In fact, Giovanni was separated from his family for a while during the Second World War, when his mother returned to the Piedmontese town of Bra, not far from Saluzzo in the province of Cuneo, to deal with the estate of her father, who passed away in 1940. He left the family a villa on the hill overlooking the Sanctuary of the Madonna dei Fiori, on the outskirts of the town.  Giovanni remained at school in Piacenza.

After the armistice of 1943, his father left the military and they settled in Bra, where he attended high school before enrolling in the faculty of law at the University of Turin.  He later switched to literature, completing a thesis on the Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin.

Arpino died prematurely in 1987 after a
year-long battle with cancer

Arpino spent several periods of his life working in journalism, including a stint writing about football, for which he had a massive enthusiasm. Gianni Brera, the celebrated football writer, had brought his literary style to the sports pages a few years earlier and Arpino was encouraged to do the same.

His time working for La Stampa, the Turin daily newspaper, enabled him to travel to the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina, from which his reports attracted a substantial following. 

It was as a novelist, however, that he truly made his mark. He wrote in a dry and sardonic style to which readers responded well.

His first novel, Sei stato felice, Giovanni (You’ve been happy, Giovanni), was published by Einaudi in 1952. At around the same time, having completed his own military service – compulsory rather than voluntary – he began courting his future wife, Caterina, whose parents owned the Caffe Garibaldi in Bra.

They married in 1953 and moved to Turin, where he began to work in the sales department of the Einaudi publishing house and at the same time wrote a column for the Rome newspaper Il Mondo about provincial life.

His first big break came when his fourth novel, Un delitto d’onore (An Honour Killing), published in 1962, formed the basis for the hit movie Divorzia all’Italiana – Divorce, Italian Style – a satirical comedy directed by Pietro Germi and starring Marcello Mastroianno.

Vittorio Gassman (left) and Alessandro Momo in a scene
from Dino Risi's film Profumo di donna

Two years later, his sixth novel, L’Ombra delle colline (The Shadow of the Hills), about the apprehensions and delusions of a young man who, as a child, had witnessed partisans fighting for their country towards the end of the Second World War, won the Strega Prize – the Premio Strega – which is Italy’s most prestigious literary award.

The film industry gave him another massive sales boost in 1969 when his novel Il buio e il miele – The Darkness and the Honey – was turned into the film Profumo di donna, directed by Dino Risi and starring Vittorio Gassman, both of whom received David di Donatello awards.

Another version of the film was made in 2012, when Martin Brest directed Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, in which Pacino’s performance as Frank Slade, a retired Lieutenant Colonel who had lost his sight in an accident with a hand grenade, won him an academy award for best actor.

Arpino, whose enjoyment telling stories to his son, Tommaso, led him to write for children as well as for his established adult readership, developed cancer in his late 50s, which ultimately led to his early death in 1987 at the age of just 60.

Piazza dei Caduti in Bra with the Bernini church of
Sant'Andrea Apostolo on the left

Travel tip:

The town of Bra in Piedmont, situated some 50km (31 miles) southeast of Turin, is renowned as the birthplace of the Slow Food movement, founded by Carlo Petrini in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions. Every two years, Slow Food organizes the cheese festival in Bra, with artisanal cheese makers invited from across the world.  There are a number of attractive churches in the town, including the beautiful Chiesa di Sant’Andrea Apostolo, just off the main Piazza dei Caduti, which was built to a design by the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, famous for the impact his designs made in the city of Rome in the 18^th century.

The Castiglia, historic residence of the Marchesi di Saluzzo

Travel tip:

The Piedmontese town of Saluzzo, about 30km (19 miles) west of Bra on the edge of the southern part of the Alpine arc, is notable for a beautifully preserved 15^th century historic centre characterised by a network of cobbled streets and steep passages by which to explore a number of fine palaces and churches, including the 15^th century cathedral built in the Lombard-Gothic style.  At the summit of the town is the Castiglia, built in the 13^th century by the Marquis Tommaso I and renovated in 1492 by Ludovico II of Saluzzo, at the time when the town was a powerful city-state.

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Gae Aulenti – architect

Designer who made mark in Italy and abroad

Gae Aulenti forged a career in design
when female architects were rare

The architect Gae Aulenti, who blazed a trail for women in the design world in post-War Italy and went on to enjoy a career lasting more than half a century, was born on this day in 1927 in Palazzolo dello Stella, a small town about midway between Venice and Trieste.

In a broad and varied career, among a long list of clients Aulenti designed showrooms for Fiat and Olivetti, furniture for Zanotta, department stores for La Rinascente, a railway station in Milan, stage sets for theatre and opera director Luca Ronconi and villas for wealthy private clients.

She lectured at the Venice and Milan Schools of Architecture and was on the editorial staff of the design magazine, Casabella.

Yet she is best remembered for her part in transforming redundant buildings facing possible demolition into museums and galleries, her most memorable project being the interior of the Beaux Arts-style Gare d'Orsay railway station in Paris, where she turned the cavernous central hall, a magnificent shed lit by arching rooflights, into a minimalist exhibition space for impressionist art.

Aulenti also created galleries at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Palau Nacional in Barcelona as well as turning San Francisco’s Beaux Art Main Library into a Museum of Asian Art.

The frontage of Milan's Cadorna railway station was
restored in 1999 to a design by Gae Aulenti

She restored Milan’s Cadorna railway station and the adjoining square, oversaw the expansion of Perugia Airport and designed six stores for the American fashion designer Adrienne Vittadini, including one on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles.

Aulenti was born Gaetana Aulenti in Palazzolo dello Stella, in the region of Fruili-Venezia Giulia, a town through which the Stella river passes a few kilometres north of the Laguna di Marano.  At home, she read and learned the piano and it was because her parents had no ambitions for her beyond finding an eligible husband that she was determined to forge her own path in life.  She went to Milan and enrolled at the Milan School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University.

When she graduated, one of only two women in a class of 20, she set up a private practice in Milan and joined the staff of Casabella magazine.

She became part of a Neo-Liberty movement, reacting against the growing dominance of modernism and arguing for a revival of local building traditions and individual expression.

Piazza Gae Aulenti is part of Porta Nuova Garibaldi
renovation project in central Milan

Aulenti's distinctive outlook soon attracted clients, among them Gianni Agnelli, chairman of the Fiat empire, for which she designed showrooms in Turin, Zurich and Brussels. Agnelli became a close friend and when Fiat bought the rundown Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal in Venice, he commissioned her to renovate the building as an exhibition space. She also built a ski lodge for Agnelli in St Moritz.

For Olivetti she created shop windows for showrooms in Paris and Buenos Aires, where with the skilful use of mirrored steps she produced a display of typewriters that wrapped around a street corner and appeared to multiply infinitely.

During the 1960s and 70s, Aulenti designed furniture for many of Milan's major design houses, including Knoll, Zanotta and Kartell, as well as lighting for Artemide, Stilnovo and Martinelli Luce. Her folding chair made from stainless steel and a coffee table made from a thick square of glass supported on four black casters have found their way into museums of modern art.

Her major breakthrough came in 1980, when she was chosen to design the new interior of the Gare d’Orsay, where she tore out the majority of the building’s interior features, in their place creating airy galleries that preserved the original Beaux-Arts features of the old railway station while offering a modern environment in which to give the collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces maximum impact.

The main hall of the Orsay Museum in Paris

In 1997, Aulenti refurbished the dilapidated Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, transforming the former stables into an exhibition space.

She left her mark on Milan, which became her adopted home city, with the restoration of the Cadorna railway station in 1999. 

Aulenti died in 2012, a few weeks short of what would have been her 85^th birthday, having been in failing health for some time.

Two months later, a modern circular piazza at the heart of the Porta Nuova Garibaldi development next to the Porta Garibaldi railway station, featuring a continuous flowing circle of seating surrounding a vast reflecting pool, 60 metres in diameter, was named Gae Aulenti Piazza in her memory.

The Scuderie del Quirinale was restored by Aulenti in 1999

Travel tip:

The Scuderie del Quirinale is a palace in Rome situated in front of the Palazzo del Quirinale, official residence of the President of the Republic. It was built between 1722 and 1732, commissioned by Pope Innocent XIII. It maintained its original function as a stable until 1938, when it was adapted to a garage. In the 1980s it was transformed into a museum of carriages. It was restored by Gae Aulenti in time for the 2000 Jubilee and inaugurated by President Azeglio Ciampi.

Aulenti was commissioned by her friend Gianni Agnelli
to restore Palazzo Grassi after it was acquired by Fiat

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Grassi – sometimes known as the Palazzo Grassi-Stucky – was designed by Giorgio Massari in the Venetian Classical style and built between 1748 and 1772. It is located on the Grand Canal, between the Palazzo Moro Lin and the Campo San Samuele.  It has a formal palace façade, constructed of white marble, but lacks the lower mercantile openings typical of many Venetian palaces.  After it was sold by the Grassi family in 1840, the ownership passed through many individuals until it was bought by the Fiat Group in 1983, at a time when there was talk of it being demolished. Restored by Gae Aulenti, it is now owned by the French entrepreneur François Pinault, who exhibits his personal art collection there.

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Hugo Pratt – comic book creator

Talented writer and artist travelled widely

Hugo Pratt pictured in 1989

The creator of the comic book character, Corto Maltese, was born Hugo Eugenio Pratt on this day in 1927 in Rimini.

Pratt became a famous comic book writer and artist and was renowned for combining strong story telling with extensive historical research.

His most famous character, Corto Maltese, came into being when he started a magazine with Florenzo Ivaldi.

Pratt spent most of his childhood in Venice with his parents, Rolando Pratt and Evelina Genero. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Pratt, was English and Hugo Pratt was related to the actor, Boris Karloff, who was born William Henry Pratt.

Hugo Pratt moved to Ethiopia with his mother in the late 1930s to join his father, who was working there following the conquest of the country by Benito Mussolini.

Pratt’s father was later captured by British troops and died from disease while he was a prisoner of war.

Pratt and his mother were interned in a prison camp where he would regularly buy comics from the guards.

After the war, Pratt returned to Venice where he organised entertainment for the Allied troops. He later joined what became known as ‘the Venice group’ with other Italian cartoonists, including Alberto Ongaro and Mario Faustinelli.

In the late 1940s he moved to Buenos Aires to work for an Argentine publisher where he published some of his important early cartoon series. He then produced his first comic book as a complete author, both writing and illustrating Ann of the Jungle -  Anna della jungla.

He moved to London and drew a series of war comics for Fleetway Publications working with British scriptwriters.

Pratt's most famous character on the cover
of his most famous story

When Pratt moved back to Italy he collaborated with a children’s comic book magazine, for which he adapted classics such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped.

After starting a comic magazine with Florenzo Ivaldi, he published his most famous story in the first issue, A Ballad of the Salty Sea - Una balata del mare salato, which first introduced Corto Maltese.

Corto’s adventures continued in a French magazine with many of the stories taking place in historical eras that were well researched by Pratt.

Corto was a psychologically complex character as a result of the travel experiences and inventiveness of his creator.

He brought Pratt much success and his series was published in an album format and translated into 15 languages.

Pratt died of bowel cancer in 1995 in Switzerland . In 2005 he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame at the Will Eisner Comic Industry awards in San Diego.

Rimini's duomo - the Tempio Malatestiano

Travel tip:

Rimini, where Hugo Pratt was born, has wide sandy beaches and plenty of hotels and restaurants. It is one of the most popular seaside resorts in Europe, but it is also a historic town with many interesting things to see. The Tempio Malatestiano is a 13th century Gothic church originally built for the Franciscans. It was transformed on the outside in the 15th century and decorated inside with frescos by Piero della Francesca and works by Giotto and many other artists.

Golden mosaics cover the ceilings inside
the Basilica of St Mark in Venice

Travel tip:

St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, where Hugo Pratt spent most of his life, is the Cathedral Church and one of the best examples of Italo-Byzantine architecture in existence. Because of its opulent design and gold ground mosaics it became a symbol of Venetian wealth and power and has been nicknamed Chiesa d’Oro (Church of Gold). The spacious interior with its multiple choir lofts inspired the development of the Venetian polychoral style used by the Gabrielis, uncle and nephew, and Claudio Monteverdi.

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Graziella Sciutti - operatic soprano

Vivacious performer who became a successful director

Graziella Sciutti became an opera star in the 1950s

The operatic soprano Graziella Sciutti, a singer known for a vivacious stage presence and engaging personality who excelled in the work of Mozart, Puccini and Verdi, was born on this day in 1927 in Turin.

The daughter of an organist and pianist, she grew up in a bilingual household, speaking both Italian and her mother’s native tongue, French. Her early childhood was spent in Geneva in Switzerland before the family moved to Rome, so that she could attend the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, which is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious musical institutions.

Sciutti wanted to play the piano like her father but it became clear she had a notable voice and she caught the eye as a soloist when she was still a student.

She was asked at the last moment to appear in a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, the up-and-coming Austrian who would become one of the greatest conductors in the world.  It was a daunting prospect, forced on her at short notice after another singer became ill, but she rose to the challenge and won accolades as a result. 

It led her to be spotted by Gabriel Dussurget, founder and leading light of the Festival at Aix-en-Provence Festival, who had enough confidence in his new discovery to cast her in 1951 in the one-woman opera, Menotti's The Telephone, a role regarded as a test for a young, immature singer.

Sciutti's vivacious character made her
a popular performer in Italy and beyond

Her ambition at that stage was to be a concert singer and she was unsure at first whether she could master the dramatics of opera, yet she was to return to Aix many times. It was there, in fact, that she began to acquire her association with the heroines of Mozart, singing Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Despina in Così Fan Tutte and Zerlina in Don Giovanni with distinction.  

In 1954, she made her debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, playing Rosina in Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville). In subsequent years she enchanted audiences as Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff and again visited the Mozart roles of Susanna and Despina.

Sciutti undertook the role of Carolina in Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto (The Secret Marriage) in the inaugural performances of the Piccola Scala, the small theatre in Milan that adjoined the famous Teatro allaScala, in 1955.  At one stage she was nicknamed ‘the Callas of the Piccola Scala’.

Some critics felt her voice to be too thin for her to be seen as one of the great sopranos but she had the technique to project to all corners of the theatre and, for all her early doubts, she had the acting skills to make up for any shortcomings in her voice. Pretty and petite in comparison with many singers, the innocence, perkiness and coquetry demanded of many of her roles seemed to come naturally.

Her debut at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden followed in 1956. In 1961 she appeared on stage in America for the first time at the San Francisco Opera, going on to make her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York soon afterwards.

Sciutti excelled in the arias of Mozart, Bellini and others

At the Vienna State Opera she sang many of her best roles, including Nannetta in a staging of Falstaff conducted by Leonard Bernstein and directed by Luchino Visconti.

Sciutti was a regular at the Salzburg Festival for 20 years, her Mozart interpretations always in demand. Her final appearance there came in 1972 as Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale, conducted by Riccardo Muti.

Her voice proved enduring enough to appear at Glyndebourne even at the age of 50 as Elle in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine. This was a production she also directed, paving the way for a new career.

She directed Figaro and L'Elisir d'Amore for Canadian Opera and in 1983 her production of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Juilliard School won praise.  A year later she directed at the Met for the first time. Her 1995 staging of La Bohème at the New York City Opera won her an Emmy Award after it was broadcast on live television.

Always eager to pass on her knowledge to opera students and would-be performers, she taught at both the Royal College of Music in London and the Lyric Centre in Chicago.

She married an American singer, Robert Wahoske, in 1955, but they divorced in 1960.  She died in Geneva in 2001, a few days before what would have been her 74^th birthday, and was survived by her daughter, Susanna.

The historic headquarters of the Accademia
was in central Rome, near Piazza di Spagna

Travel tip:

Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, founded by a papal bull (public decree) issued by Pope Sixtus V in 1585. Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music. Its historical headquarters was in Via Vittoria, not far from Piazza di Spagna, but since 2003 it has been headquartered in Viale Pietro de Coubertin at the Renzo Piano-designed Parco della Musica in Rome. It has had a permanent symphony orchestra and choir since 1895. Alumni include Beniamino Gigli, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ennio Morricone and Cecilia Bartoli.

An audience at the Piccola Scala in 1978

Travel tip:

The Piccola Scala, next to Teatro alla Scala, the opera house in Milan considered to be one of the world’s great opera venues, was opened in 1955 as a theatre dedicated to ancient works that were suited to a fairly intimate setting.  It had room for no more than 600 people. As well as Cimarosa's Matrimonio Segreto, early productions included works by Handel and Monteverdi. Later it staged operas by contemporary composers, including Nino Rota, who was better known for his film music but actually wrote the score for 11 operas.  Sadly, the theatre closed in 1985 after the capacity was reduced to 350 because of new regulations, too small to make it economically viable.

More reading:

How mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has helped revive lesser-known composers

Giacomo Puccini - musical genius who assumed Verdi's mantle as Italy's greatest

Maestro Muti shows no signs of slowing down

Also on this day:

1598: The birth of astronomer Giovanni Riccioli

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