Mario Scelba – Prime Minister of Italy

Tough interior minister worked for social and economic reform

The Christian Democrat Mario Scelba became Italy's
33rd Prime Minister in February 1954

Mario Scelba, a Christian Democrat who would become Italy’s 33rd Prime Minister, was born on this day in 1901 in Caltagirone in Sicily.

He earned the nickname ‘the Iron Sicilian’ while serving as Interior Minister because of his repression of both left-wing protests and Neo-Fascist rallies.

Scelba had been born into a poor family that worked on land owned by the priest Don Luigi Sturzo, who was to become one of the founders of the Italian People’s Party (PPI).

As his godfather, Sturzo paid for Scelba to study law in Rome. When the Fascists suppressed the PPI and forced Sturzo into exile, Scelba remained in Rome as his agent.

He wrote for the underground newspaper, Il Popolo, during the Second World War. He was once arrested by the Germans but freed after three days as he was considered to be ‘a worthless catch’.

After Rome’s liberation by the Allied Forces, Scelba joined the new Christian Democrats, reborn out of the PPI.

Scelba (right) served in two governments under Prime
Minister Alcide De Gasperi (left)

The Christian Democrats started organising post-Fascist Italy in competition with the centre and left parties, but also at times in coalition with them.

Scelba was Minister of Post and Telecommunications in Ferruccio Parri’s anti-Fascist government and in the two successive Governments of Alcide de Gasperi.

In 1947 as Interior Minister in De Gasperi’s third government, he became infamous for his hard line against the Communists and labour unions. He expelled former partisans from the police and cracked down on left-wing demonstrations, often using violence.

He thought the police were so ineffective at that time he once said if he were a Communist he would start a revolution the next day.

An Italian statute defining and banning fascism is known as the Scelba Law, but he wrote it to restrain the activities of the Communists as well.

Scelba increased police numbers and armed and equipped them with cars and jeeps to deal with riots. He made enemies because of his harsh methods and his concern for law and order but he also favoured social reforms and public works and attacked speculators for pushing up prices.

The bandit Salvatore Giuliano was blamed
for the Portella della Ginestra massacre

He thought it was possible to undermine the Communists with social and economic improvement, particularly in southern Italy.

Scelba was involved in setting up the Gladio network, the clandestine NATO stay behind operation in Italy after the Second World War to organise resistance against an invasion of Europe.

In 1947, a few days after a victory for the left in local elections in Sicily, a Labour Day parade in Portella della Ginestra was attacked, culminating in the killing of 11 people and the wounding of more than 30.

The attack was attributed to the bandit leader, Salvatore Giuliano, and was thought to be punishment for the local election results.

Scelba reported to Parliament the next day that the police believed the massacre to be non-political.

But the Communist deputy, Girolamo Li Causi, claimed the Mafia had ordered the attack, working with landowners and monarchists.

In the summer of 1950 the men responsible for the attack went on trial in Viterbo. Scelba was accused of involvement in the plot to carry out the massacre but at the end of the trial the judge concluded that no higher authority had ordered the massacre and that Guiliano had acted autonomously.

Communist deputy Girolamo Li Causi claimed
the massacre was ordered by the Mafia

The 1948 elections in Italy were overshadowed by the Cold War confrontations between the Soviet Union and the US and Scelba announced that the Government had 330,000 men ready to take on the Communists if they tried to make trouble on election day.

As Prime Minister of Italy between 1954 and 1955, Scelba tried to steer a middle course between the left and the right.

He worked for strong relations with the US and resolved outstanding wartime issues, such as the recovery of Trieste for Italy. In 1954 his Government passed a law introducing an investment plan for the public construction of economic housing.

Scelba was one of the last influential Christian Democrats to oppose the inclusion of left-wing Socialists in Government coalitions. In 1962 he was eventually dropped from Amintore Fanfani’s cabinet for that reason.

He was elected a senator in 1968 and served until his resignation in 1979. He was president of the European parliament from 1969 to 1971.

Scelba died of thrombosis at his home in Rome in October 1991, aged 90.

The city of Caltagirone in Sicily, where Prime Minister
Mario Scelba was born in 1901

Travel tip:

Caltagirone, where Mario Scelba was born, is a municipality about 70 km (43 miles) southwest of Catania in Sicily. In 1987 Caltagirone was given the title of city. It is well-known for the production of pottery, maiolica and terracotta wares. Its main attraction for visitors is the 142-step Scalinata di Santa Maria del Monte, which dates back to 1608. Each step is decorated with different hand painted ceramics using ancient designs. Every year on 25 July, the Feast Day of Caltagirone’s patron saint, St James, the staircase is illuminated with candles in different colours, arranged to look like a large work of art.

The jagged upright stones that mark the bleak site
of the Porta della Ginestra Massacre

Travel tip:

The site of the Porta della Ginestra Massacre, which is about 4km (2.5 miles) southwest of Piana degli Albanesi and about 30 km (19 miles) from Palermo, is marked with 11 jagged upright stones, one for each of the victims, on the spot where they fell. May Day celebrations have been held there every year since 1893.

More reading:

The Porta della Ginestra Massacre

How novelist Leonardo Sciascia exposed the links between Italian politics and the Mafia

Francesco Cossiga's bid to keep the Communists out of power

Also on this day:

1533: The birth of philosopher Giacomo Zabarella

1568: The birth of Tommaso Campanella

1970: The birth of Paralympian Francesca Porcellato


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Bologna railway station bombed

Biggest terrorist atrocity in Italy's history killed 85

The scene outside Bologna railway station in the aftermath
of the explosion on August 2, 1980

Italy suffered the most devastating terrorist outrage in its history on this day in 1980 with the bombing of Bologna's main railway station.

A massive 23kg (51lbs) of explosive packed into a suitcase left in a crowded waiting room was detonated at 10.25am, creating a blast that destroyed much of the main building of the station and badly damaged a train on one of the platforms.

Many people, locals and tourists, Italians and foreign nationals, were caught up in the explosion. Some were killed instantly, others died as a result of the roof of the waiting room collapsing on to the victims. There were 85 deaths and more than 200 other people were wounded.

The bomb was clearly placed to cause mass casualties. It was the first Saturday in the traditional August holiday period, one of the busiest days of the year for rail travel, and the explosive-laden suitcase was left in a room with air conditioning, then still relatively rare in Italy. On a hot day, the room was naturally full of people.

The station clock is now permanently set at the exact time
the bomb exploded on that fateful Saturday morning

The attack was the deadliest of several during a bleak period of 10-12 years in Italian history that became known as the Years of Lead, when the ideological struggle between the left and right in Italian politics was at its height.

It began with the killing of a Milan policeman in a far-left demonstration in November 1969 followed a few weeks later by a number of bomb attacks in Rome and Milan, the biggest of which killed 17 people in a bank in Piazza Fontana, not far from the Milan cathedral.

There were several more bombings in the years that followed and countless assassinations of policemen, military personnel, government officials and other prominent public figures, the most high profile of which was the kidnap and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. In all, it has been calculated that the Years of Lead claimed the lives of 428 people.

Although the killings continued after the Bologna Massacre, they happened with much less frequency after 1980 than in the three years leading up to the bombing, which has led some commentators to regard the August 2 attack as effectively bringing to an end the darkest period in Italian history since Fascism.

The tangled remains of the waiting
room roof after the blast

As is almost always the case in Italy, the process of identifying the perpetrators and bringing justice was a long and torturous process.

Although the Ansa news agency received a call within minutes of the bomb going off, purporting to claim responsibility on behalf of a right-wing terrorist group known as Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Corps), it was seven years before anyone was brought to trial and 10 more years before a series of trials, appeals, acquittals and retrials finally resulted in the confirmed conviction for murder of two NAR members, Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro.

Even now, conspiracy theories still persist over who else might have been involved with the planning and execution of the massacre.

In an era when the Italian Communists were as close to winning power, or a share of power, in the government of the country as they have been at any stage in their history, most of the outrages carried out during the Years of Lead were attributed either to extreme left-wing groups such as the Red Brigades and Prima Linea or to far-right organisations such as Ordine Nuovo, Terza Posizione and NAR.

The attack in Bologna was seen as symbolic because it targeted a city with a history of of left-wing politics along with a strong civic culture and a tradition of supporting the Partisans and rejecting Fascism.

Valerio Fioravanti, pictured in police custody, was one of two
terrorists eventually jailed for carrying out the attack

But many commentators have theorised that behind the NAR, darker forces many have been at work, possibly involving the Italian government and its secret services via the secret movement known as Operation Gladio, or even the subversive Masonic organisation labelled Propaganda Due, of which countless civil servants, military personnel, policemen and politicians were secretly members.

It was even suggested that the Israeli secret services might have supported the attack to punish Italy for a perceived sympathetic stance towards the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The finger of suspicion was pointed at Gladio because of revelations years after the bombing that this was an organisation, in effect a shadow army, that had been put in place at the end of the Second World War, with the tacit backing of the United States, to act initially as a force primed to react to any invasion by forces from the Eastern Bloc, which Italy bordered, but later to prevent, by any means, the Italian Communist Party from forming a government, which it was feared would turn Italy into a de facto Soviet satellite.

None of these theories was ever proven, although three figures connected with Italy’s military intelligence service SISMI, along with P2 grand master Licio Gelli, were convicted during the course of the trials of supplying false information likely to mislead the investigation.

The memorial at Bologna station to the
victims of the 1980 bombing

Travel tip:

Memorial services at which to remember the 85 victims of the Bologna Massacre are held each year, with a march and a concert in Piazza Maggiore, right at the centre of the city.  There is a plaque carrying the names of all the victims, who ranged from three years old to 86, while the clock inside the station has been stopped at 10.25am as a mark of respect for those killed. The reconstructed wall to which the plaque is attached has a jagged-edged gap left in it.

The beautiful Piazza Maggiore in Bologna

Travel tip:

The history of Bologna, one of Italy's most historic cities, can be traced back to 1,000BC or possibly earlier, with a settlement that was developed into an urban area by the Etruscans, the Celts and the Romans.  The University of Bologna, the oldest in the world, was founded in 1088.  Bologna's city centre, which has undergone substantial restoration since the 1970s, is one of the largest and best preserved historical centres in Italy, characterised by 38km (24 miles) of walkways protected by porticoes.  At the heart of the city is the beautiful Piazza Maggiore, dominated by the Gothic Basilica of San Petronio, which at 132m long, 66m wide and with a facade that touches 51m at its tallest, is the 10th largest church in the world and the largest built in brick.

More reading:

December 12, 1969: The Piazza Fontana bombing

How magistrate Felice Casson revealed the existence of Operation Gladio

The kidnapping of ex-prime minister Aldo Moro

Also on this day:

1854: The birth of author Francis Marion Crawford

1945: The death of opera composer Pietro Mascagni

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Piazza Fontana bombing

Blast at Milan bank killed 17 and wounded 88

The office and counter area inside the Banca Nazionale
dell'Agricoltura in Milan after the explosion

Italy found itself the victim of an horrific terrorist attack on this day in 1969 when a bomb blast at a Milan bank left 17 people dead and a further 88 injured.

The bomb exploded at 4.37pm in the headquarters of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, just 200m away from the Duomo.  It was caused by a bomb containing about 18lbs of explosives left on the third floor, killing customers and members of staff.

At around the same time, two bombs exploded in Rome, injuring 14 people. Another device, placed in the courtyard of a bank near Teatro alla Scala in Milan, was deactivated by police.

The explosions followed one month after a policeman was killed during a riot of left-wing extremists in Milan and are generally seen as the start of a period of violent social and political unrest in Italy dubbed the Years of Lead.

Over a period of almost 20 years, the Years of Lead resulted in more than 200 deaths, many committed by the left-wing terrorist group Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades), others by far-right organisations such as Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Groups) and Ordine Nuovo (the New Order).

The plaque outside the bank commemorating
the victims of the bomb

Many of the victims died as a result of targeted assassinations, often aimed at policemen, business leaders, members of the judiciary. The highest profile individual killing was of the former prime minister, Aldo Moro, murdered after being kidnapped in Rome and held captive for 54 days.

Others were killed indiscriminately in large-scale bombings, such as Piazza Fontana and the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, which claimed the lives of 85 travellers when a huge bomb hidden in a suitcase exploded in a crowded waiting room.

Decades of investigations into the Piazza Fontana bombing led to a total of 4,000 arrests, three trials and sentences of life imprisonment for six alleged terrorists, all of which were subsequently quashed.

The acquittals of three neo-fascists in the third trial were announced in 2004, almost 35 years after the bombing took place, and meant that those who carried it out were never conclusively identified.

As a result, the conspiracy theories that surround the incident and much of the Years of Lead have persisted.

On the face of it, the Years of Lead was a struggle for supremacy between the ideologies of the left, represented in the mainstream by the Italian Communist Party, and those of the right, who did not have mainstream representation but were propagated by neo-fascist far-right organisations such as Ordine Nuovo and the Italian Social Movement.

Giuseppe Pinelli, a railway worker, who
died while being held by police

But it was suspected that forces on both sides were being manipulated by western secret service agents as part of the so-called “strategy of tension”, designed primarily to ensure that the Italian Communist Party’s growing popularity in post-War Italy went only so far, and that they were never allowed to take power.

In the case of the Piazza Fontana bombing, the theory is that Ordine Nuovo members were responsible but wanted it to appear that it was the work of left-wing extremists committed to the overthrow of the majority Christian Democratic party and were supported in this aim by agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

This theory was backed up by an investigation in 2000 by the left-leaning Olive Tree coalition, which concluded that that US intelligence agents were informed in advance of the bombing but did nothing to stop it, and that clandestine payments were made to Pino Rauti, the founder of Ordine Nuovo, via a US Embassy press officer.

Furthermore, in a newspaper interview in 2000, Paolo Emilio Taviani, the Christian Democrat co-founder of the secret NATO anti-communist force codenamed Gladio, which stayed behind in Italy after the Allies had withdrawn at the end of the Second World War, said that Italian secret services were also aware of the planned bombing in Milan but that rather than send agents to prevent it, they instead despatched another agent, whose mission was to spread stories blaming left-wing anarchists for the attack.

Indeed, in addition to a plaque on the wall of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura building that lists the names of the victims of the bomb, there are memorials in Piazza Fontana to the anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, who was arrested as part of a sweep of known anarchists in the wake of the bombing and died when he fell from a fourth floor window of Milan’s main police station, supposedly as a result of feeling faint during questioning and needing to take some air.

Pinelli’s fate inspired the satirist and playwright Dario Fo to write his famous play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

One of the memorials to Pinelli in Piazza
Fontana, placed by Milan city council

Travel tip:

Piazza Fontana is literally just a few metres from the back of Milan’s Duomo, accessed via Via Carlo Maria Martini.  There are two simple memorials mourning the death of Giuseppe Pinelli placed on a lawn opposite the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura, in front of a police building (although not the one in which he died). One was placed by students and anarchist friends of Pinelli, the other by Milan city council. Only the former refers to him being killed; the other simply says that he “died tragically.”

Travel tip:

On the other side of Piazza Fontana from the Pinelli memorials is Milan’s 16^th-century Archbishop's Palace, partly modified with neoclassical additions in the 18^th century, which is the official residence of the Archbishop of Milan. The palace owes its grandeur to archbishop Carlo Borromeo, who wanted to live permanently in the palace and commissioned Pellegrino Tibaldi to undertake a reconstruction project in 1585. The façade owes its appearance to Giuseppe Piermarini, who restored the palace in 1784.

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Felice Casson - politician and magistrate

His investigations revealed existence of Operation Gladio

Felice Casson identified the bomber
behind the Peteano killings

Felice Casson, the magistrate whose investigations exposed the existence of the NATO-backed secret army codenamed Gladio, was born on this day in 1953 in Chioggia, near Venice.

A former mayor of Venice and a representative of the Democratic Party in the Italian Senate, Casson devoted much of his career in the judiciary to fighting corruption and rooting out terrorists.

In 1984, his interest in terrorism led him to examine the unsolved mystery of the Peteano bombing in 1972, in which three Carabinieri officers were killed by a car bomb placed under an abandoned Fiat 500 in a tiny hamlet close to the border with Yugoslavia in the province of Gorizia.

Casson discovered flaws in the original investigation into the bombing, which at the time was blamed on the left-wing extremist group the Red Brigades, who would later be responsible for the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro, a former prime minister. 

Afterwards, Italy launched a nationwide crackdown on left-wing organisations and made more than 200 arrests.

Vincenzo Vinciguerra confessed to planting
bomb that killed Carabinieri officers

But Casson found no record of any investigation of the scene of the bombing and discovered that a report claiming the explosives used in the bomb was the same as previously used in Red Brigades activity was a forgery.

He reopened the case and his new investigation established that the explosive used was called C4, a very powerful agent of which large stocks were kept by NATO.

At around the same time he found details of the chance discovery earlier in 1972 by other Carabinieri officers of a hidden arms cache near Trieste, which had been mysteriously hushed up at the time.  Among the weapons and munitions stored there was C4.

Ultimately the investigation led Casson to order the arrest of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a member of the right-wing extremist group Ordine Nuovo – New Order – who confessed that he had planted the car bomb and confirmed a connection Casson had already made between Ordine Nuovo and the Italian secret services.

Marco Morin, the police explosives expert who had provided false evidence about the explosives used at Peteano, was also a member.

Under questioning from judges, Vinciguerra went further, linking a series of atrocities in Italy during the so-called Years of Lead, beginning with the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in 1969, which killed 17 people, and culminating in the massacre of 85 people at Bologna railway station in 1980, to a secret organisation working on behalf of the Italian government and its allies.

Giuliano Andreotti admitted in 1990 that
the Gladio operation existed

He said that the Peteano outrage, after which the secret services helped him flee to a place of refuge in Spain, had made it clear to him that there existed “a structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages” and that it lay “within the state itself.”

Vinciguerra said that it was “composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity, to organise a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army...and which, lacking a Soviet military invasion which might not happen, took up the task, on NATO's behalf, of preventing a slip to the left in the political balance of the country (Italy). This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces.”

The explosives used at Peteano actually came from another hidden arms cache near Verona, which Casson concluded was part of a network of more than 100 such caches belonging to NATO.

Naturally, the revelations of a convicted criminal could easily be dismissed, yet the existence of Operation Gladio was confirmed in 1990 by the Italian Christian Democrat prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, who in 1990 told a parliamentary commission looking into the Years of Lead that Gladio had been set up in 1953 as one of several “stay-behind” armies put in place across Europe as NATO sought to be aware of any potential Soviet military action but also to monitor any signs of Soviet-sponsored political activity.

Italy was a particular concern in the 1960s and 1970s because of the rise in popularity of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party. 

Andreotti admitted that there was “a structure of information, response and safeguard” in place, in which he and the Italian president, Francesco Cossiga, had both been involved.

However, he said that 127 weapons caches had been dismantled and that Gladio had not been involved in any of the bombings committed between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Nonetheless, political historians note that each outrage, whether judged to be committed by left-wing extremists or aimed at them - as in the case of Bologna, a Communist stronghold -  tended to weaken the appetite for change and to strengthen the position of the conservative Christian Democrats.

Parts of Chioggia have the look of Venice

Travel tip:

Chioggia, where Felice Casson was born, is a historic fishing port at the southern limit of the Venetian lagoon, accessible by boat direct from Venice. It is actually a small island, linked by a causeway to the resort of Sottomarina.  Like Venice, it has a number of canals but, unlike Venice, it is not closed to cars. The main street, Corso del Popolo has a number of churches and some fine fish restaurants.

The Piazza della Vittoria in the centre of Gorizia

Travel tip:

Gorizia has the appearance of an historic Italian town but it has changed hands several times during its history, which is not surprising given its geographical location.  It sits literally on the border with Slovenia and, in fact, is part of a metropolitan area shared by the two countries, the section on the Slovenian side being now known as Nova Gorica. It has German, Slovenian, Friulian and Venetian influences, which can be experienced in particular in the local cuisine.

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Antonio Segni - prime minister and president

Sardinian politician famous for tactical cunning

Antonio Segni: Christian Democrat was
twice Italian prime minister

Antonio Segni, the first Sardinian to become Italy's prime minister, was born on this day in 1891 in Sassari, the second largest city on the island.

Sassari was also the home town of another Italian prime minister, Francesco Cossiga, and of the country's most successful Communist leader, Enrico Berlinguer.  Like Segni, Cossiga also served the country as president.

Born into a landowning family and a prominent member of the Christian Democratic party from the time of its formation towards the end of the Second World War, Segni was prime minister from 1955 to 1957 and from 1959 to 1960. He was president from 1962 until he was forced to retire due to ill health in 1964.

Frail in appearance for much of his life, Segni was a strong politician nonetheless, given the affectionate nickname Il malato di ferro - the invalid with the iron constitution - by his supporters.

He was also highly astute, particularly when it came to wrong-footing opponents.

Segni became politically active in his late 20s, joining the Italian People's Party (PPI) - predecessor of the Christian Democrats - in 1919 and by 1924 was a member of the party's national council. He spoke out against extremism on the left and the right and opposed PPI participation in any coalition involving the Fascists.

Alcide de Gasperi led Italy's first government as
a republic after the end of the Second World War

In 1926, the debate became irrelevant as Fascist leader Benito Mussolini banned all political organisations apart from his own and for the next 17 years Segni, who had graduated with a degree in agricultural and commercial law, returned to academic life, lecturing in agrarian law at a number of universities.

He resumed his political career in 1943 - the year in which Mussolini was thrown out by his own party and arrested by King Victor Emmanuel III - helping launch the Christian Democratic Party in Sardinia.  He was part of the wartime governments of Ivanoe Bonimi, Ferrucio Parri and Alcide de Gasperi before being elected to the first parliament of the new Italian Republic, serving as Minister for Agriculture, also under De Gasperi.

It was in that capacity that Segni showed himself to be an innovative thinker in political tactics.  Aware that agricultural workers, still living in a somewhat medieval societal structure dominated by large landowners, were a prime target for left-wing revolutionaries, Segni sought to keep them onside by proposing that areas of uncultivated land should be expropriated from large landowners and given to the workers so that they could grow and sell their own produce.

He was prepared to lose substantial amounts of his own land under the scheme.  In the event, the proposal met with opposition both from the right, who objected to any imposed limitations on property ownership, and from the left, who saw it as a calculated attempt to undermine their support from agricultural workers.  Nonetheless, the watered down version that was passed still led to some 121,000 working class families becoming landowners.

Giovanni de Lorenzo was the head
of Italy's Carabinieri police force

As prime minister, Segni introduced other social reforms to the benefit of ordinary Italians, particularly in the area of pensions, and in insurance against health problems linked to working conditions.

Later, however, it was alleged that his tactics for keeping the left from gaining power in Italy were not always so honourable.

In 1967, after an investigation by the news magazine L'Espresso, it was claimed that, as president, Segni was so uneasy about the growing popularity of the Italian Socialist and Communist parties he had asked General Giovanni de Lorenzo, the head of the Carabinieri - Italy's quasi-military police force - to work with the Italian secret services and the CIA to prepare a coup.

This supposedly would have involved 20,000 Carabinieri officers on the streets around the country, 5,000 of them in Rome, who would occupy government buildings such as the Palazzo del Quirinale, the offices of the television and radio stations, plus the headquarters premises of the Communist and Socialist parties and the Communist party newspaper, L'Unità.  Leaders and prominent supporters of the Communist party were to be detained and interned at a secret base in Sardinia already used by the clandestine anti-Communist organisation, Gladio.

The existence of the plot was never proved.  It was suggested in some quarters that the story was a plant by the right aimed at dissuading progressive Christian Democrats such as Aldo Moro from entering into coalition deals with left-wing parties; others dismissed the story as an attempt by L'Espresso to discredit De Lorenzo, who was a member of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement.

Segni stepped down as president in December 1964, four months after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage.  He died in Rome in 1972 at the age of 81.

Travel tip:

Sassari, the origins of which can be traced to the early 12th century, is a city rich in art, culture and history. It is well known for its beautiful palazzi, for the Fountain of the Rosello, and for the elegant neoclassical architecture that can be found around the central Piazza d'Italia and the Teatro Civico. The city - second in size on Sardinia only to Cagliari - is not heavily industrialised, its economy mainly reliant on tourism and the service industries.

Palazzo Madama is the seat of Italy's Senate

Travel tip:

Rome's four main government buildings can be found within a short distance from one another in the centre of the city.  The prime minister's official residence and cabinet office are in Palazzo Chigi in Piazza Colonna, just off Via del Corso.  The Palazzo Montecitori, where Italy's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, convenes, is little more than 150m from Palazzo Chigi in the Piazza di Monte Citori.  Approximately 600m from Palazzo Chigi, going west, and a stone's throw from Piazza Navona, the upper house, the Senate, sits in Palazzo Madama, which can be found in Piazza Madama. The official residence of the Italian president is the Palazzo del Quirinale, or simply il Quirinale, which is roughly 800m from Palazzo Chigi in the opposite direction.  Sitting atop one of Rome's seven hills, it is often referred to also as il Colle – the Hill.

More reading:

Alcide de Gasperi - the Christian Democrat founder who had been jailed by Mussolini

How Enrico Berlinguer turned Italy's Communist Party in a political force

Why the Aldo Moro tragedy overshadowed career of Francesco Cossiga

Also on this day:

1594: The death of composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

1723: The death of anatomist Antonio Maria Valsalva

1925: The birth of Olympic showjumper Raimondo D'Inzeo

(Picture credit: Palazzo Madama by Paul Hermans; via Wikmedia Commons)


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Giuseppe Pinelli - anarchist

His 'accidental death' inspired classic Dario Fo play

Giuseppe Pinelli

Giuseppe 'Pino' Pinelli, the railway worker from Milan who inspired Dario Fo to write his classic play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was born on this day in 1928.

Pinelli fell to his death from a fourth floor window of the Milan Questura - the main police station - on December 15, 1969, three days after a bomb exploded at a bank in Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people and wounding 88.  A known anarchist during a period of growing political and social tension in Italy, Pinelli had been picked up for questioning, along with a number of other activists, over the Piazza Fontana bomb.

The story put out first by police was that Pinelli had jumped, willing to take his own life rather than face prosecution. Yet three police officers who had been interrogating Pinelli were put under investigation.

No action was taken against them and later a judge ruled that Pinelli's death had been accidental. This time the suggestion was that he had fainted, lost his balance and fallen through the open window, which seemed to many to be somewhat far-fetched.

It did not convince his supporters and when one of his interrogators, Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, was shot dead on his way to work in May 1972, two left-wing activists were convicted of his murder. Pinelli was posthumously cleared of playing any part in the bombing, which was blamed on far-right extremists.

Plaque commemorating the victims
 of the Piazza Fontana bomb

Born in the then working class area of Porta Ticinese, Pinelli left school early to supplement the family income, taking jobs as a waiter and a warehouseman. The opportunity to take a more secure job as a railwayman did not come along until his mid-20s. He was married soon after joining the railway and fathered two children.

Already politically active with anti-Fascist groups, Pinelli became increasingly interested in libertarianism, a philosophy that favours minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens, and in anarchism, whose proponents believe in the abolition of all government and the organisation of society by voluntary co-operation.

Pinelli was a member of a group that eventually evolved into the Ponte della Ghisolfa Anarchist Club, named after a railway viaduct visible from the Porta Garibaldi station, where Pinelli worked.  After the student unrest in France in 1968, such groups saw their memberships swell as young Italians also began to challenge authority and the state.

That period was also the beginning of the so-called Years of Lead in Italy, when social and political tension was frequently punctuated by acts of terrorism, of which the Piazza Fontana bombing, the target of which was the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura, was the first major incident involving civilian deaths.

Over the next decade or so, organisations at both extremes of the political spectrum, from the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) on the left to the far-right Ordine Nuovo (New Order), were responsible for bombings and assassinations, including the kidnap and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro and the bombing of Bologna railway station.

The plaque honouring Giuseppe
Pinelli placed by friends

The situation was complicated by the existence, admitted only later, of the CIA-sponsored Operation Gladio, a secret network that aimed to manipulate events in a way designed to diminish support for Italy's Communist Party.

The Piazza Fontana incident, which was later established as the work of Ordine Nuovo, was initially blamed on left-wing extremists and sparked a crackdown on such groups, although Pinelli was unaware of this when police turned up at his door within just a few hours of the explosion.

The similar plaque placed by
Milan Council

He was used to dealing with the police, although it was usually over matters such as licensing of premises and permission to stage public gatherings.  Luigi Calabresi, at it happened, was the officer he dealt with most, and there was no evidence of serious friction between them.  Pinelli did not need to be arrested, voluntarily following the patrol car to the police station on his motorbike.

What he did not expect was to find the station packed with other activists rounded up in a general sweep and to be detained for well over the 48 hours permitted, and subjected to intense questioning.  He certainly did not foresee that he would never return home.

Dario Fo, a playwright, actor and comic entertainer with a reputation for acidic satire, wrote Accidental Death of an Anarchist within a year of Pinelli's fatal fall.

Dario Fo

In the play, which he presents as a farce, Fo sends up the police as slow and dim-witted, tricked by a fast-talking fraudster known as The Maniac, who employs a series of impersonations to confuse the officers, into contradicting themselves and revealing that there has been a cover-up involving the death of an anarchist.

Still performed today, it is the best known of all Fo's 80-plus plays, certainly outside Italy.  It has been performed in more than 40 countries.  Fo, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997, died earlier this month, aged 90.

Milan's own 'Grand Canal' - part of the now fashionable
Navigli district, where Pinelli grew up

Travel tip:

The area of Milan called Porta Ticinese draws its name from one of the gates in the medieval walls of the city, from which a road led to the Ticino river, which loops around the city to the south and west.  It was rebuilt twice, by the Spanish in the 16th century, and in the 19th century along the current neo-classical lines, comprising massive pillars and columns topped with a triangular decorative tympanum.  The area is part of the Navigli district, once a poor neighbourhood but now very popular for the restaurants and bars that line what remains of Milan's canal system.

Travel tip:

Piazza Fontana is located a short distance from Milan's Duomo, accessible along Via Carlo Maria Martini, behind the cathedral to the right.  As well as a plaque on the wall of the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura, commemorating the 17 people killed when the bomb exploded inside their building, there are two simple memorials to Giuseppe Pinelli on an area of grass opposite the bank, one erected by the city council, which refers to Pinelli's 'tragic death', the other by friends of Pinelli, who use the word 'killed' in their inscription.

More reading:

Dario Fo - playwright and scourge of the corrupt

Antonio Gramsci - the Communist leader Mussolini could not gag

How the death of Aldo Moro changed history

(Photos of Pinelli memorials by Piero Montesacro CC BY-SA 4.0)
(Photo of Dario Fo by Garupdebesanez CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Navagli by Geobia CC BY-SA 2.0)

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