Lilli Gruber - groundbreaking TV journalist

Writer and broadcaster was first female to host prime time news bulletin

Lilli Gruber today conducts the current affairs
talk show Otto e Mezzo on Italy's La7 channel

The journalist Lilli Gruber, who in 1987 became the first woman to be appointed anchor of a prime time news show on Italian public television, was born on this day in 1957 in Bolzano.

In a distinguished career, as well as being the face of major news programmes for the national broadcaster Rai, Gruber has reported on many major international stories as a foreign correspondent, presented shows on German television, served as a Member of the European Parliament for five years, and written many books.

Since leaving politics in 2008, she has been the host of the long-running political talk show, Otto e Mezzo, on the Rome-based independent TV channel La7.

Nicknamed La Rossa both for her red hair and her political views, Gruber was born Dietlinde Gruber into a German-speaking family in Bolzano, the provincial capital of South Tyrol in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of northeast Italy, which borders Austria and Switzerland.

It was her father, Alfred, an entrepreneur, who gave her the pet name Lilli, which stayed with her into adulthood.

Educated partly in Verona, where her father built up a business making machinery for the construction industry, and in the town of Egna, near Bolzano, where she attended a language school, Gruber graduated in foreign languages and literature from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, before embarking on a journalistic career in her home region.

Alongside reporting for the regional newspapers L’Adige and Alto Adige, she gained some television experience with the local channel, Telebolzano, before landing a job on Rai Südtirol, also known as Sender Bozen, a German language channel for Trentino-Alto Adige, where despite being part of Italy, around a third of the population speak German.

Gruber made Italian TV history in 1987 as the first
female journalist to host a prime time news show

From there, she moved to the Bolzano office of TGR, the regional news arm of Rai, and in 1984 was recruited as a reporter for TG2, which was responsible for news programming on Rai Due.

Her career flourished under the guidance of Antonio Ghirelli, TG2’s editor and a major figure in Italian journalism. As a foreign correspondent, Gruber reported in 1989 on the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, an experience that would become the subject of her first book, Quei giorni a Berlin - Those Days in Berlin - which was published in 1990.

In the meantime, Ghirelli had enabled her to make history by handing her the job of anchoring TG2’s main evening news programme, which aired at 7.45pm each weekday evening. The move broke new ground, Gruber’s professionalism meaning that what had been a glass ceiling on the career progression of women in Italian TV news coverage was shattered.

Her career soon continued on its steep ascent with a move to Rai’s flagship channel, Rai Uno, where she again combined foreign assignments with hosting. She became anchor for TG1’s main eight o’clock evening news programme while also reporting on the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Iraq and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in the United States.

It was while in Baghdad to report on the second Iraq war that she met Jacques Charmelot, a French journalist she would later marry.

Gruber was elected an MEP
in the 2004 elections

Gruber’s decision to pursue a career in politics was rooted in her opposition to the restrictions on freedom of information introduced by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi after his return to power in 2001.  By curbing their rights of access to information, Berlusconi made it more difficult for journalists to call out corruption and maladministration in government departments.

Gruber allied herself to the Uniti nell’Ulivo coalition, a centre-left alliance, and was elected as an MEP for central Italy in the July elections of 2004. She quickly became an effective politician, joining the parliamentary group of the European Socialist Party, becoming president of the delegation for relations with the Gulf States, a member of Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and of the delegation for relations with Iran. She also became a member of the EU’s Ethics Commission.

Yet she missed journalism and when an offer was made by the ambitious management of La7, which has become Italy’s largest TV company outside the auspices of Rai or Berlusconi’s Mediaset, to front their evening political debate, Otto e Mezzo, she felt she could not turn it down.

A versatile presenter fluent in four languages - Italian, German, French and English - she has also worked for a number of German TV companies and conducted an exclusive interview with the Italian actress, Sophia Loren, for the American network, CBS.

Famed for her dogged questioning in interviews with political figures, Gruber also became known as a stylish dresser, often presenting the news in tailored Armani suits. She became friends with Giorgio Armani, the designer who founded the brand in 1975 and who designed the honey-coloured gown she wore at her wedding to Charmelot in Montagna, a village near Bolzano, in 2000.

Gruber’s books have drawn on her experiences in journalism but also her passionate interest in women’s rights, particularly the rights of women in Islamic societies. Her book I miei giorni a Baghdad - My Days in Baghdad - sold more than 100,000 copies.

More recently, she has written a trilogy of novels about the history of her family and of South Tyrol between the 19th and 20th centuries, entitled Eredità (Inheritance), Inganno (Deceit) and Tempesta (Storm). 

The city of Bolzano sits in a wide valley in the
Alpine region of Trentino-Alto Adige (Südtirol)

Travel tip:

Gruber’s home city of Bolzano is the capital of the South Tyrol region of what is now northern Italy, also known as Alto Adige. Occupying a valley flanked by hills covered in lush vineyards, it has a population of 108,000, swelling to 250,000 with all the surrounding communities. One of the largest urban areas in the Alpine region, it has a medieval city centre famous for its wooden market stalls, selling among other things Alpine cheeses, hams and bread. Places of interest include the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, the imposing 13th-century Mareccio Castle, and the Duomo di Bolzano with its Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Three languages - Italian, German and a local language called Ladin - are spoken in the area, which consistently polls high among the Italian cities reckoned to have the best standard of living.  The nearest airport to Bolzano is at Verona, about 150km (93 miles) to the south and accessible in approximately an hour and a half by train, although some visitors arrive from Innsbruck in Austria, just over two hours by train in the opposite direction.

Verona is a beautiful city in northern Italy,
flanking the Adige river 

Travel tip:

Verona, where Gruber spent part of her upbringing, is the third largest city in the northeast of Italy, with a population across its whole urban area of more than 700,000. Among its wealth of tourist attractions is the Roman amphitheatre known as L’Arena di Verona, which dates back to AD30. With a seating capacity of 22,000, it is best known now as a venue for large-scale open air opera performances and other music concerts. Verona was chosen as the setting for three plays by William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew - although it is unknown whether the English playwright ever actually set foot in the city.  Each year, thousands of tourists visit a 13th century house in Verona where Juliet is said to have lived, even though there is no evidence that Juliet and Romeo actually existed and the balcony said to have inspired Shakespeare’s imagination was not added to the house until the early 20th century.

Also on this day:

1588: The death of Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese

1768: The death of painter Canaletto, known for views of Venice

1937: The birth of chef and restaurateur Antonio Carluccio

1953: The birth of Olympic high jumper Sara Simeoni

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Beatrice Borromeo - journalist and model

Glamorous aristocrat who specialises in gritty real-life stories

Beatrice Borromeo built a career as a
hard-hitting news journalist

The journalist Beatrice Borromeo, a descendant of one of Italy’s oldest aristocratic families and married to a member of the Monegasque royal family, was born on this day in 1985 in Innichen in the German-speaking province of South Tyrol in northeast Italy.

Although born into wealthy high society, Borromeo was driven by her political and humanitarian beliefs from an early age, taking part in demonstrations in Milan against the government of Silvio Berlusconi in her teenage years and deciding to pursue a career in journalism, working full time for the Italian daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Since marrying long-time boyfriend Pierre Casiraghi - grandson of Prince Rainier III and the actress Grace Kelly - and having two children, she has devoted much of her energy towards making documentary films, but always on hard-hitting topics such as climate refugees, the women of ‘Ndrangheta - the Calabrian mafia - and the slum children of Caivano, an impoverished area northeast of Naples.

Her looks and family connections have also helped her to have a parallel career in modelling, in her early days as a catwalk model for high-end fashion houses and more recently as the face of Italian jewellery house Buccellati and as the 2021 Dior ambassador.

Beatrice’s father is Carlo Ferdinando Borromeo, Count of Arona, through whom she is descended from the 16th century Archbishop of Milan, Charles (Carlo) Borromeo, a leading Catholic figure who led the movement to combat the spread of Protestantism and after his death in 1584 was made a saint.

Beatrice was in demand as a model for
Milan's top fashion houses

Her mother is Countess Donna Paola Marzotto, the daughter of fashion designer Marta Marzotto. Her uncle, Count Matteo Marzotto, is the former president and director of the Valentino fashion house.

A measure of the Borromeo family’s wealth is that they own most of the Borromean Islands in Lago Maggiore and many other estates in Lombardy and Piedmont.

Eligible and beautiful, Beatrice could have led the life of a socialite before settling into a suitable marriage but instead went on from high school to obtain a law degree at the Bocconi University in Milan before studying for a Masters in Journalism at Columbia University in New York, where she graduated in 2012.

By then she was already a working journalist, writing for Newsweek magazine and the American news website Daily Beast, contributing to TV shows including the Rai Due current affairs talk show Anno Zero and hosting her own weekly radio show.

Her journalistic scoops included an exclusive interview with Roberto Saviano, whose Mafia exposé Gomorrah had forced him to go into hiding, and, while working as a reporter for Il Fatto Quotidiano, and an interview with Marco dell’Utri, a co-founder of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, in which he admitted entering politics in the hope of obtaining immunity from arrest on various criminal charges.

She also wrote a story revealing that Prince Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy, the only son of Umberto II, the last King of Italy, had admitted in a recorded conversation that he was guilty of a murder of which he had been cleared in a Paris court.  The prince sued Borromeo’s newspaper but a court judgment ruled in favour of the newspaper.

Beatrice Borromeo with the Monaco royal
Pierre Casiraghi at their wedding in 2015

Her television documentary work has involved topics such as drug trafficking, underage prostitution, toxic waste dumping by the Camorra in the Naples area, and forced child marriage in the developing world.

In an interview with the magazine Glamour, Borromeo said that her interests had expanded from politics and corruption to numerous causes around the world, explaining that she was “afraid of wasting my life in doing things that help only myself.”

“I don't want to go away from this earth without having improved at least a couple of lives,” she said.

She admitted she spent much of her working life dressed in jeans and T-shirts, or a jacket and trousers if interviewing a politician face to face, yet her wedding to Casiraghi, the younger son of Caroline, Princess of Hanover, was anything but low key. 

After a civil ceremony in July, 2015, in the gardens of the Prince's Palace of Monaco, they were joined in a religious ceremony a few days later on Isola Bella, one of the Borromean Islands in Lago Maggiore.

The media coverage of the event made much of Beatrice having four bridal dresses - a pale pink, gold laced Valentino dress for the civil ceremony at the Prince’s Palace, a long-sleeved bohemian gown by Valentino at a rehearsal for the religious ceremony, an ivory-laced Armani Privé gown for the Isola Bella service itself, and an Armani Privé silk tulle gown in glistening white for the reception.

She and Casiraghi have two children - Stefano (born February 2017) and Francesco (born. May 2018).

The colossal Sancarlone
statue outside Arona

Travel tip:

Beatrice’s father inherited the title of Count of Arona, the town on Lago Maggiore that was the birthplace of Saint Charles Borromeo. Situated in the province of Novara on the Piedmont side of the lake, around 70km (43 miles) northwest of Milan, it is a popular destination for tourists. One of its main sights is the Sancarlone, a giant statue of Saint Charles Borromeo made from bronze. It is second in size only to the Statue of Liberty and is believed to have been looked at by the architects of the Statue of Liberty when they were producing their own design. Built on a hill overlooking the lake near the ancestral castle of the Borromeo family, it was designed by Giovan Battista Crespi and stands 23.5m (77ft) tall on a granite pedestal measuring 11.5m (38ft). A series of narrow stairs and ladders on the inside allows visitors to peer through the eyes and ears.

Isola Bella, with is elaborate palace and
gardens, is an island in Lago Maggiore

Travel tip:

Until 1632, Isola Bella - 320m long by 400m wide - was a rocky outcrop in Lago Maggiore about 400m offshore from the town of Stresa, occupied only by a tiny fishing village. It was in that year that Carlo III of Borromeo decided it would be home to a palace dedicated to his wife, Isabella D'Adda, and commissioned the Milan architect Angelo Crivelli to build it. Carlo III did not live to see the palace finished after a devastating outbreak of the plague caused construction to be halted. It was completed instead by his sons, Gilberto III and Vitaliano VI, with the help of another Milanese architect, Carlo Fontana.  The palace, with its adjoining terraced gardens, became a place of sumptuous parties and theatrical events for the nobility of Europe.

Also on this day:

1497: The birth of lute player and composer Francesco Canova da Milano

1750: The birth of composer Antonio Salieri

1943: The birth of footballer and politician Gianni Rivera

1954: The birth of astronaut Umberto Guidoni

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Arrigo Benedetti - journalist and author

Founder and editor of three major news magazines

Arrigo Benedetti had a passion
for news journalism

Arrigo Benedetti, one of the most influential figures in postwar Italian news journalism, was born on this day in 1910 in Lucca.

Benedetti was the founding editor of three of Italy’s most important news magazines, one of which, L’Espresso, still ranks as one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies, alongside Panorama.

Of the other two, L’Europeo, which was launched in 1945, ceased publication in 1995, although the title was briefly revived in the 2000s, while Oggi continues to be published some 82 years after its inception, making it one of Italy’s oldest still-active magazines.

Arrested by the Fascist regime during World War Two, Benedetti escaped after the prison in which he was being held was bombed during an Allied air strike.

Born Giulio Benedetti, the son of a sales representative, he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Pisa and had some literary works published in the early 1930s. 

But he had ambitions to pursue a career in journalism rather than academia and in 1937 moved to Rome to join his boyhood friend, Mario Pannunzio, in working for a new weekly news magazine, Omnibus, edited by Leo Longanesi.

Omnibus was closed on the orders of prime minister Benito Mussolini in 1939, deemed to be a subversive publication. Benedetti follows Longanesi in writing for another newspaper, Tutto, which was also suppressed.

At this point, Benedetti decided to leave Rome, accepting an invitation along with Pannunzio from the publisher, Angelo Rizzoli, to go to Milan with the aim of launching a new newspaper. They decided on a weekly publication along the lines of Omnibus, inviting young intellectuals not aligned with the Fascist regime to write social commentaries, and launched Oggi on June 3, 1939.

A modern edition of L'Espresso, which
was launched by Benedetti in 1955

Oggi’s existence was tolerated until 1942 before the regime finally moved to close its offices and prevent the publication of further editions.

When Mussolini was overthrown and arrested in 1943, Benedetti celebrated. In collaboration with Pannunzio and Longanesi, he wrote a leader column in Il Messaggero, the Rome newspaper, hailing the return to freedom.

It was only a matter of weeks, however, before Mussolini was freed from his house arrest by a daring Nazi raid on the Apennine mountains ski lodge where he was being held.

Benedetti left Milan with his pregnant wife, Caterina, whom he had married in 1938, to live at her parents' home outside Reggio Emilia, reasoning that they would be safer there than in the Lombardy capital. 

Italy by then had signed an armistice with the Allies, but much of northern Italy was still under the control of the Nazis, who installed Mussolini as the leader of a new Italian Social Republic.

Benedetti was soon arrested, along with many other opponents of the regime, and detained in a prison in Reggio Emilia. He was accused of aiding and abetting the Allies and of being in possession of weapons. On the eve of his trial, however, the prison was almost destroyed in an air raid and Benedetti escaped.

Back in Milan, he joined the anti-Nazi resistance before returning to journalism as soon as he could once the German surrender was secured.

Politician Eugenio Scalfari,
pictured in 2016

In 1945, along with the entrepreneur Gianni Mazzocchi, he launched the news magazine L'Europeo, which quickly established a following among Italian readers thanks to the contributions of journalists such as Tommaso Besozzi, Enzo Biagi, Giorgio Bocca, Oriana Fallaci and Indro Montanelli.

In 1953 the Rizzoli publishing company bought the publication, but Benedetti’s relationship with the publisher became difficult and he left the magazine and teamed up with politician Eugenio Scalfari to launch another new weekly, L'Espresso, in October 1955, with backing from the progressive industrialist Adriano Olivetti.

Benedetti was the editor-in-chief until 1963, having uncovered major scandals in the health and housing industries. He handed over to Scalfari, who was strongly focussed on corruption and clientelism by the Christian Democrat party. 

In addition to his journalism, Benedetti wrote novels notable for their meticulous attention to detail and a narrative style that drew comparisons with Italian neorealist cinema, in particular in his last novel, Rosso al vento (Red in the Wind), describing life in Italy during World War II. 

He intended to spend his last years living in his villa outside Lucca but became increasingly ill in his later years and died of kidney failure in a Rome clinic in October, 1976. 

The oval Piazza Antifeatro is a point of interest
in the Tuscan city of Lucca

Travel tip:

Lucca is situated in western Tuscany, just 30km (19 miles) inland from Viareggio on the coast and barely 20km (12 miles) from Pisa, with its international airport.  It is often overlooked by travellers to the area in favour of Pisa’s Leaning Tower and the art treasures of Florence, 80km (50 miles) to the east, yet has much to recommend within its majestic walls, where visitors can stroll along narrow cobbled streets into a number of beautiful squares, with lots of cafes and restaurants for those content to soak up the ambiance, but also a wealth of churches, museums and galleries for those seeking a fix of history and culture.   Of particular interest is the oval Piazza Antifeatro, which owes its shape to a second century Roman amphitheatre. The Renaissance walls, still intact, are an attraction in their own right, providing a complete 4.2km (2.6 miles) circuit of the city popular with walkers and cyclists. 

The Basilica di San Prospero in the square
of the same name in Reggio Emilia

Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia, a city in the Po Valley 28km (17 miles) southeast of Parma and 32km (20 miles) northwest of Modena, has an attractive historic centre with a number of notable buildings, including the Basilica della Ghiara and the 10th century Basilica di San Prospero, which overlooks the elegant Piazza of the same name.  The city is believed to have given Italy its tricolore national flag. There are historical records that suggest that a short-lived 18th century republic, the Repubblica Cispadana, had a flag of red, white and green that was decreed in Reggio Emilia in 1797.  The city today lacks the cultural wealth of neighbouring Parma and is consequently less visited but it Italy's world famous hard cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano - known in English as Parmesan - is thought to have originated in nearby Bibbiano, about 15km (9 miles) to the southeast.

Also on this day:

1675: The birth of playwright Francesco Scipione

1819: The birth of Francis V, the last reigning Duke of Modena

1858: The birth of mezzo-soprano Alice Barbi

1901: The birth of Princess Iolanda of Savoy, one of the Italian royals banished in 1946

(Picture credits: Piazza Antifeatro by Saverio Giusti from Pixabay; Basilica di San Prospero by RatMan1234 via Wikimedia Commons)

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Gianni Vernetti – politician and writer

Ecologist who now provides support for emerging economies

Gianni Vernetti's political roots
were in the Italian Greens

Former centre-left politician Gianni Vernetti was born on this day in 1960 in Turin, the capital city of the Piedmont region of Italy.

While serving in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament he promoted initiatives on renewable energies and, after he was elected to the Senate, he served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Romano Prodi’s government between 2006 and 2008.

Vernetti is married to the television journalist Laura De Donato and they have four children.

In 1985, Vernetti graduated in architecture from the University of Turin and in 1989 obtained a PhD in urban ecology at the University of Milan. For 10 years, between 1985 and 1995, he worked as an architect and urban planner.

As the child of politically active parents - his father, a philosophy professor and ex-partisan and his mother, an architect, were both former members of the Italian Communist Party - it was always likely he would enter politics himself. 

Vernetti was a student protester in the late 1970s and founder-member of the anti-nuclear committee of the town of Trino Vercellese, in Piedmont, later becoming a founder-member of the Federation of Italian Greens.

Vernetti was a prominent
member of the Daisy party

He was elected to Turin city council as a Green in 1990, serving as Deputy Mayor between 1993 and 1999 in charge of public works, environment and sustainable development and urban renovation.

He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2001 and was a member of the national steering committee of his party, Democracy is Freedom, better known as La Margherita - The Daisy.

After he was elected to the Senate and the centre-left coalition won the general election, he served in the second Prodi government from 2006 to 2008. He coordinated all the Italian initiatives in Afghanistan when Italy was taking part in the NATO military mission. He implemented aid projects in Central Asia and coordinated Italian aid to the countries affected by the 2004 tsunami.

He promoted Italy’s entrance into the Pacific Islands Forum and represented Italy on the UN Human Rights Council.

In 2008, Vernetti was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for a third term, this time on the Democratic Party list and served as a member of the foreign affairs committee and the Italian delegation to the NATO parliamentarian assembly.

Laura De Donato is a presenter
of TG3's Leonardo programme

He decided not to stand for parliament in 2013, but instead founded Geo Solar, a company supporting countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.

Since 2018, Vernetti has been a columnist on foreign affairs for the Turin newspaper, La Stampa, and in May this year began writing for the Huffington Post.

Laura De Donato has been a journalist with Rai’s TG3 news programmes since 1999. She is a presenter of Leonardo, a show dedicated to investigating topics related to science, technology, health, environment and society.

She met Vernetti when he was 18 and she 15 and they were friends for many years before deciding to get married. They became parents for the first time in 1996.

Turin is renowned for its elegant squares and
a thriving coffee house culture

Travel tip:

The city of Turin, once the capital of Italy and traditionally the seat of the Savoy dynasty, is best known for its royal palaces and as a travel destination benefits from being somewhat overlooked by visitors to Italy, especially new ones, who flock first to Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan. Yet as an elegant, stylish and sophisticated city, Turin has much to commend it, from its many historic cafés to 12 miles of arcaded streets and some of the finest restaurants in Piedmont. Turin’s café culture is concentrated in the area around Via Po, Turin’s famous promenade linking Piazza Vittorio Veneto with Piazza Castello, and nearby Piazza San Carlo, one of the city’s main squares. In the 19th century, these cafès were popular with writers, artists, philosophers, musicians and politicians among others, who would meet to discuss the affairs of the day.

La Stampa is one of
Italy's oldest newspapers

Travel tip:

The Turin newspaper La Stampa, established in 1867 and one of the oldest newspapers in Italy, has since 2012 been produced from one of the most technologically advanced newspaper offices in the world, in Via Lugaro in the San Salvario area of the city, having been previously based for 40 years in Via Marenco . The newsroom has an open space layout in concentric rings, designed so that all the workers can see the entire news production process, from paper to digital.  Its former headquarters is now part of the University of Turin. The ground floor of the newspaper’s new headquarters is now a museum dedicated to the history of the city seen through the pages of its newspaper.

Also on this day:

8BC: The death of the Roman poet Horace

1570: The death of architect Jacopo Sansovino

1758: The death of the castrato singer Senesino

1964: The birth of football manager Roberto Mancini

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Dino Buzzati - author

Novelist likened to Camus whose short stories remain popular

Dino Buzzati was a journalist, author and
painter in an extraordinary career

The multi-talented author Dino Buzzati, whose output included five novels, several theatre and radio plays, a children’s novel, five opera libretti, some poetry, a comic book in which he also drew the illustrations, and several books of short stories, was born on this day in 1906 in Belluno.

Buzzati’s most famous novel, Il deserto dei Tartari (1940), titled The Tartar Steppe in the English translation, saw Buzzati compared to Albert Camus and Franz Kafka as a work of existentialist style, but it is for his short stories that he still wins acclaim.

A new collection entitled Catastrophe and Other Stories, which showcases Buzzati’s talent for weaving nightmarish fantasy into ordinary situations, was published earlier this year.

Buzzati, who worked as journalist for the whole of his adult life and also painted prolifically, was the second of four children born to Giulio Cesare Buzzati, a distinguished professor of international law, and Alba Mantovani, a veterinarian born in Venice.

The family’s main home was in Milan but they had a summer villa in San Pellegrino, a village just outside Belluno in the foothills of the Dolomites, which was where Dino was born.

Dino Buzzati, pictured in his studio, was almost as
prolific as a painter as he was a writer

After studying at high school in the Brera district of Milan, Buzzati enrolled in the law faculty at the University of Milan in respect for his father, who had died when he was only 14. After graduating, he joined the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, beginning a relationship that would be maintained until his death in 1972.

At different times he was a war correspondent, embedded with the Italian navy, editor, essayist, foreign correspondent, crime reporter and art critic.

He began to write fiction in the early 1930s with two novels set in the mountains, inspired by the landscapes around Belluno. Barnabò delle montagne (Barnabus of the Mountains, 1933) and Il segreto del bosco vecchio (The Secret of the Ancient Wood, 1935), both of which were made into films in the 1990s, introduced the Kafkaesque surrealism, symbolism, and absurdity that was a characteristic of all his writing.

Buzzati pictured near the offices of Corriere
della Sera on Via Solferino in Milan

The novel generally considered his finest, Il deserto dei Tartari, a tale of garrison troops at a frontier military post, poised in expectancy for an enemy who never comes and unable to go forward or retreat, drew comparisons with Camus’s philosophical essay The Myth of Sysyphus.

The novel was turned into a movie in 1976 under the direction of Valerio Zurlini and starring Vittorio Gassman and Giuliano Gemma, with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

Buzzati’s collections of short stories include Sessanta racconti (Sixty Tales, 1958), while other novels include Il grande ritratto (Larger Than Life, 1960), a science fiction novel, and Un amore (A Love Affair, 1963). 

Of his plays, which were hugely popular, the most important is Un caso clinico (A Clinical Case, 1953), a Kafkaesque horror story in which medical specialists and machinery freakishly kill a perfectly healthy man. His children’s novel, La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia (The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily, 1945) is still a favourite today.

Buzzati’s paintings ranged from his early landscapes, depicting his beloved mountains, to the Italian black comic art and the pop art that dominated his work in the 1960s.  His most famous painting is probably his Piazza del Duomo (1952), in which Milan cathedral’s distinctive grid of pinnacles and spires becomes a jagged Dolomite mountain, surrounded by green pastures.

He was also a devotee of the opera, writing the libretto for four operas for which the music was composed by his friend, Luciano Chailly.  Away from his extraordinary productivity in words and pictures, he would spend every September in the mountains around Belluno, climbing difficult routes in the company of mountain guides.

Buzzati, who did not marry until he was almost 60 years old, died in 1972 after developing pancreatic cancer. His ashes were scattered on Croda di Lago, a mountain in the Dolomites near Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Piazza dei Martiri is one of the central squares in the
beautiful town of Belluno in northern Veneto

Travel tip:

Belluno, in the Veneto region, is a beautiful town in the Dolomites, situated just over 100km (62 miles) north of Venice, more than 325km (200 miles) from Milan. It occupies an elevated position above the Piave river surrounded by rocky slopes and dense woods that make for an outstanding scenic background. The architecture of the historic centre has echoes of the town's Roman and medieval past. Around the picturesque Piazza Duomo can be found several fine buildings, such as the Palazzo dei Rettori, the Cathedral of Belluno and Palazzo dei Giuristi, which contains the Civic Museum.

The Villa Buzzati is now available for guests to stay in
bed and breakfast accommodation

Travel tip:

Visitors to Belluno can stay at Buzzati’s family villa in Via Visome, about 4km (2.5 miles) from the centre of the town. It is managed by Valentina Morassutti, whose grandmother was Dino Buzzati’s sister.  The Villa Buzzati has two rooms that are available all year round for guests wishing to stay on a bed and breakfast basis. On the first Sunday of each month from April to October, Morassutti can arrange small-group visits to the Villa and the places that were dear to Buzzati.

More reading:

Why Alberto Moravia is remembered as a major literary figure

The brilliance of Strega Prize winning novelist Corrado Alvaro

What made Vittorio Gassman one of Italy's finest actors

Also on this day:

1885: The birth of athlete Dorando Pietri, famous for being disqualified

1978: The election of Pope John Paul II


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Tiziano Terzani - journalist

Asia correspondent who covered wars in Vietnam and Cambodia

Tiziano Terzani spent 30 years working
as a journalist in East Asia

The journalist and author Tiziano Terzani, who spent much of his working life in China, Japan and Southeast Asia and whose writing received critical acclaim both in his native Italy and elsewhere, was born on this day in 1938 in Florence.

He worked for more than 30 years for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, who took him on as Asia Correspondent in 1971, based in Singapore.

Although he wrote for other publications, including the Italian newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, it was Der Spiegel who allowed him the freedom he craved. To a large extent he created his own news agenda but in doing so offered a unique slant on the major stories.

He was one of only a handful of western journalists who remained in Vietnam after the liberation of Saigon by the Viet Cong in 1975 and two years later, despite threats to his life, he reported from Phnom Penh in Cambodia after its capture by the Khmer Rouge.

He lived at different times in Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok and New Delhi. His stay in China came to an end when he was arrested and expelled in 1984 for "counter-revolutionary activities".

By chance, in the summer of 1991, Terzani was on holiday in Siberia, exploring the region's boundary with China, when news of the coup against President Gorbachev reached him.

Terzani at first saw life in Asia as an
 antidote to western capitalism

Realising that the Russian empire was on the brink of collapse, he decided to stay in the country, embarking on a journey westwards that took him through Central Asia to the Caucasus, speaking to people about how they felt about what was happening and what they hoped for from the future. He wrote a book based on his experiences, Buonanotte, signor Lenin (Goodnight Mr Lenin), which was a bestseller.

Another book, another hit with Italian readers in particular, described how an encounter with a fortune teller in Hongkong persuaded Terzani to spend the whole of 1993 avoiding air travel - a huge challenge in a continent the size of Asia. Despite their scepticism, Der Spiegel again indulged him and for 12 months he travelled only by rail, road, on foot or by water.  It was a decision in which he felt vindicated when a helicopter he would have travelled on did indeed crash, as foreseen by his mystic soothsayer.

Terzani was born into a working-class family in Florence, a city he loved but at the same time despaired of for having allowed itself, in his eyes, to become an open-air museum, overrun with tourists.

Exceptionally intelligent - in time, he could speak five languages fluently - his teachers encouraged him to study law at the University of Pisa, where his room-mate was Giuliano Amato, a future Italian prime minister.

Tiziano Terzani, pictured on a visit
to his homeland, Italy, in 2002

After graduating, he worked for Olivetti, the office equipment manufacturer, in Japan and South Africa, enjoying the experience of being abroad but quickly becoming bored with the job. Interested in trying his hand at journalism, he sent a story to an Italian newspaper while working for Olivetti in Cape Town, about the assassination of Henrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid.

Terzani then decided to go to America, taking advantage of a Harkness scholarship to study Chinese at Stamford and Columbia universities, before returning to Italy and finding work with the daily newspaper, Il Giorno.  He found Italy’s news values to be too parochial, however, and after knocking on many doors in different countries across Europe at last found someone who would take him on and allow him to base himself in the part of the world he most wanted to explore.

Terzani’s fascination with Asia stemmed in part from his disillusionment with the capitalist west. Left-leaning in his politics, for a time he saw Asian communism as a kind of antidote.

He immersed himself in Asian culture, learning their languages, adopting their dress, melting into the crowd so that he could prowl about without attracting attention and grow to understand fully the countries and people about whom he was writing. In time, though, after his experiences in Vietnam, Cambodia and China, he came to realise that communism was no more an ideal than capitalism.

Terzani's book on the end of the Soviet
 Union, Goodnight Mister Lenin

Eventually, he decided the country and the people with whose values he would feel spiritually most at home was India, although the realisation coincided, unfortunately, with the discovery in 1997 that he was suffering from stomach cancer.

He was warned, initially, that he might have only a short time to live, but after treatment in the United States he survived, in the event, for seven years, finding the energy to carry on working and to campaign against western intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he visited after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Terzani remained in India, where he drew comfort from meditation and spending periods in isolation in the Himalayas, returning to Italy only towards the end of his life and spending his final days in Orsigna, a village in the Apennines, near Pistoia.  His book, Un altro giro di giostra (One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round), which was in part about coming to terms with his illness, was another bestseller.

He died in 2004 and was survived by his wife Angela, whom he had met in Florence before moving to Singapore, and by his two children, Fulco and Saskia.

Piazza della Signoria - the Loggia dei Lanzi

Travel tip:

Terzani’s description of Florence as a museum was thought to be a reference mostly to Piazza della Signoria, situated right in the heart of the city, close to the Duomo and the Uffizi Gallery, which is home to a series of important sculptures, including Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women and his Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I, Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, the Medici Lions by Fancelli and Vacca, The Fountain of Neptune by Bartolemeo Ammannati, copies of Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes and Il Marzocco (the Lion), and the copy of Michelangelo’s David, at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio.  Most days, summer and winter, will see the square thronged with tourists.

The mountain village of Orsigna, in the Apennines
above Pistoia in Tuscany

Travel tip:

The village of Orsigna, close to the border of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna about 30km (19 miles) north of Pistoia, was once an important centre for timber cutting and sheep farming. It has been in decline in recent years, although a mill has recently been renovated, for the drying and milling of chestnuts for chestnut flour.  The village was used  for location shooting of a film about Tiziano Terzani , entitled La fine è il mio inizio (The End Is My Beginning), taken from his book of the same name. The church of Sant'Atanasio has some 19th century frescoes by the Pistoia painter Bartolomeo Valiani.

More reading:

How foreign correspondent Oriana Fallaci became one of Italy's most controversial journalists

How Enzo Biagi became the doyen of Italian political journalists

The story of pioneer war photographer Felice Beato

Also on this day:

1321: The death of the poet Dante Alighieri

1937: The birth of award-winning architect Renzo Piano


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Guglielmo Ferrero - journalist and historian

Nobel prize nominee who opposed Fascism

Guglielmo Ferrero is best known for his five-volume
history of power and collapse of the Roman Empire

The historian, journalist and novelist Guglielmo Ferrero, who was most famous for his five-volume opus The Greatness and Decline of Rome, was born on this day in 1871.

The son of a railway engineer, he was born just outside Naples at Portici but his family were from Piedmont and while not travelling he lived much of his adult life in Turin and Florence.

A liberal politically, he was vehemently opposed to any form of dictatorship and his opposition to Mussolini’s Fascists naturally landed him in trouble. He was a signatory to the writer Benedetto Croce's Anti-Fascist Manifesto and when all liberal intellectuals were told to leave Italy in 1925, he refused. Consequently he was placed under house arrest.

It was only after four years, following appeals by officials from the League of Nations and the personal intervention of the King of Belgium, that he was allowed to leave Italy to take up a professorship at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Ferrero’s earliest works were in the field of sociology and criminology, inspired by his friendship with Cesare Lombroso, sometimes called the ‘father of modern criminology’, who he met during his studies. Ferrero attended the universities of Pisa, Bologna and Turin. They collaborated on a book called The Female Offender about crime among women.

Cesare Lombroso, the criminologist who
inspired Ferrero's early work

In the course of his work with Lombroso, Ferrero was introduced to Gina Lombroso, Cesare’s daughter, and they subsequently married.

From 1891 to 1894 Ferrero traveled extensively in Europe, working in the libraries of London, Berlin, and Paris on a planned history of justice. As a result of his travels he produced a sociological study entitled Young Europe, in which he noted the differences in societal structure developing in the industrial north compared with the agricultural south of the continent.

It was after musing on how ascendant civilisations could become decadent that he turned his attention to Rome.

His defining work, The Greatness and Decline of Rome was translated into all the major European languages and was a popular success, even though it was scorned by classicists, who took exception to his use of contemporary comparisons and on his attempts at sociological analysis of Roman politics. They did not care either for his assessment of Julius Caesar, usually portrayed as a leader who brought order from chaos, as a major catalyst in the collapse of the Roman Republic.

For the next few years, Ferrero wrote political essays and a number of novels, before turning his attention to the French Revolution, which he analysed as an attempt to establish a new liberal order that unintentionally led to the first modern dictatorship.

Once invited by Theodore Roosevelt, the United States president, to visit him at the White House and to give a number of lectures, Ferraro was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature no fewer than 20 times in six years.

He spent a good deal of his time in his declining years at his villa in Strada in Chianti, in the Tuscan countryside, but was in Mont Pèlerin-sur-Vevey in Switzerland when he died in 1942.

The Royal Palace at Portici, near Naples

Travel tip:

Portici, which lies at the foot of Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples, about 8 km (5 miles) southeast of Naples, is a metropolitan suburb these days but essentially evolved as a port, rebuilt after it was destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631. Its neighbour is Ercolano, where excavations revealed the city of Herculaneum, which had disappeared at the same time as Pompeii, following the eruption of 79AD.  Portici is famous for its Baroque royal palace, built as a grand residence by Charles III of Spain, King of Naples, between 1738 and 1742.

The church of San Cristoforo in Strada in Chianti

Travel tip:

Situated almost 300m (984ft) above sea level, Strada in Chianti is a small town that is increasingly favoured as a place to stay when visiting Florence, which is only 20km (12 miles) away to the north, barely half an hour by car and bus. Many Florentines escape to such places in the countryside during the summer, because the heat there is a little less oppressive. The town stages its annual fair in late September. The five parishes once competed in a horse race similar to the Palio di Siena, but they now vie for superiority in a series of games, including football and volleyball, over the course of a week.

More reading:

How Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall became the world's most famous history book

Cesare Lombroso, the first to encourage study of the criminal mind

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, the historian who was both a soldier and a pacifist

Also on this day:

1914: The birth of Suso Cecchi D'Amico, the scriptwriter behind some of Italy's greatest movies

1948: The birth of Beppe Grillo, the comedian and founder of Italy's new political force, the Five Star Movement

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Irene Pivetti – journalist and politician

From top political office to TV presenter

Irene Pivetti now works as a journalist
and television presenter

Irene Pivetti, who was only the second woman to become president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, was born on this day in 1963 in Milan.

Once a key figure in Italy’s Lega Nord party, Pivetti has now quit politics for a career as a television presenter.

Pivetti obtained an honours degree in Italian literature from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan and afterwards worked in publishing, editing books on the Italian language. In this she was following in the footsteps of her maternal grandfather, Aldo, a renowned linguist.

While working as a journalist, she became involved with the Lega Lombardia (Lombard League), which later became the Lega Nord (Northern League) and in 1992 was elected as a deputy, the Italian equivalent of a Member of Parliament.

Two years later, after the vote had gone to a fourth ballot, Pivetti was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies. At the age of 31, she was the youngest president in the Chamber’s history. She occupied the role from 1994 to 1996.

Pivetti was re-elected as a deputy in the 1996 election but later that year was expelled from the Lega Nord because of her opposition to some of their ideas.

Pivetti pictured with the former head of Fiat, Gianni Agnelli
(right), while on official duty as Chamber of Deputies chairman

Since 2002, Pivetti has worked as a professional journalist, winning a television Oscar for journalism in 2004. Between 2011 and 2013 she made regular appearances on Domenica In, a popular Sunday programme on Rai Uno. Pivetti’s older sister, Veronica Pivetti, is an actress, television presenter and director.

Irene Pivetti is now president of Italia Madre, an organisation that lobbies on behalf of Italian companies to promote their reputations with international organisations.

Pivetti has been married twice. She is now divorced from her second husband, with whom she had two children, and lives in Rome.

Travel tip:

The Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, where Irene Pivetti studied literature, was founded in 1921. It originated in Largo Gemelli in Milan but now has other sites in Brescia, Piacenza, Cremona and Rome.

The Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome

Travel tip:

The Camera dei Deputati, the Chamber of Deputies, is one of Italy’s houses of parliament, the other being the Senate of the Republic. The Camera dei Deputati meets at Palazzo Montecitorio, a palace originally designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and completed by Carlo Fontana in 1697 to the north of the Pantheon.

More reading:

Umberto Bossi - the fiery former leader of Lega Nord

The campaigning politics of Marco Panella

The political survivor Emma Bonino

Also on this day:

1951: The birth of Italy's 'Bob Dylan', the singer-songwriter Francesco de Gregori

1960: The birth of leading Italian businesswomen Daniela Riccardi



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Raffaele ‘Raf’ Vallone – actor

Movie star who had four careers

Raffaele Vallone, pictured in a scene from the Giuseppe
de Santis neorealist movie Bitter Rice

Raffaele Vallone, the stage and screen actor who was born on this day in 1916 in Tropea, Calabria, was remarkable for having embarked on three starkly different career paths even before he made his acting debut.

Usually known as Raf, he grew up from the age of two in Turin, where his father, an ambitious young lawyer, had relocated to set up a legal practice.  A natural athlete, he was a fine footballer – so good, in fact, that at the age of 14 he was snapped up by Torino FC, who made him an apprentice professional.

Compared with the average working man, he was handsomely paid as a footballer, and he won a medal as part of the Torino team crowned Coppa Italia winners in 1936.  Yet he quickly became bored with football and enrolled at Turin University, where he studied Law and Philosophy with a view to joining his father’s firm.

Ultimately, he baulked at the idea of becoming a lawyer, too, and instead joined the staff of the left-wing daily newspaper L’Unità, where he rose quickly to be head of the culture pages, at the same time establishing himself as a drama and film critic for the Turin daily La Stampa.

It was in his capacity as a journalist that he was invited to meet Giuseppe De Santis, the film director, who wanted him to help with background information for a new film in the growing neorealist genre called Bitter Rice, about a woman working in the rice fields in the Po Valley.

Vallone in his days as a young footballer
with Torino FC

This was a time when, partly out of budget restrictions, partly out of a desire to cast real people rather than rely solely on established stars, directors were weighing up everyone they met as a potential actor.

De Santis was immediately impressed with Vallone, who had served with the anti-Fascist resistance during the Second World War, both for his depth of knowledge but also for the passion of his views, particularly on the subject of exploitation of workers.

The director also noted Vallone’s physical stature and his rough-hewn features and decided he would be perfect for the role of a soldier from peasant roots, competing with Vittorio Gassman for the love of another relative unknown, Silvana Mangano. In fact, not only was Vallone an educated man, his mother was descended from nobility, which only illustrates how appearances can be deceptive.

The film, made in 1949, was a box office hit, commercially one of the biggest successes of the neorealist era.  Unlike some of the unknowns plucked from real life, discarded after one movie, Vallone went on to enjoy a successful career.

He worked again with De Santis in 1950 in  Non c'e Pace tra gli Ulivi (There’s No Peace Among the Olive Trees), playing a shepherd who antagonised local Mafiosi, and in Rome 11 O'Clock (1952), based on a true story of a rickety staircase that collapsed under a queue of unemployed girls hoping for a job interview.

Raf Vallone (left) in a scene from Il Cammino della Speranza,
in which he starred with his future wife, Elena Varzi (right)

In Pietro Germi’s Il Cammino della Speranza (The Road to Hope, 1951) Vallone starred alongside Elena Varzi, whom he later married and with whom he had three children.

The popularity of neorealist films declined as Italy’s shattered post-War economy began to recover, when audiences decided they no longer wished to be reminded of the hard times they had left behind. For a while, Vallone’s career stalled.

Ever eager to try different things, however, Vallone now set his sights on the stage.  He travelled to Paris and London, where he was inspired in particular by Peter Brook’s production of the Arthur Miller play A View From the Bridge, in which he felt the role of the Italian-American longshoreman Eddie Carbone, tormented by a sexual fixation with a niece, was made for him.

He had the chance to play the character when Brook took the play on tour to Paris. Vallone’s performances at the Theatre Antoine, where the play ran for 550 nights, were frequently received with ovations from the audience, and earned him the same part in Sidney Lumet’s 1961 film version of the play, which he shot in both English and French.

That movie helped cement Vallone’s popularity with American movie-going audiences.  During that time he also gave well received supporting roles in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women (1960) and Anthony Mann’s El Cid (1961), both co-starring Sophia Loren. Other actresses he co-starred with on included Gina Lollobrigida, Anna Magnani, Melina Mercouri and Simone Signoret.

In his later years, Vallone tended to play only cameos, such as in The Italian Job (1969) and The Godfather Part III (1990). He also directed for the stage, even trying his hand at opera with a production of Bellini’s Norma, with Renata Scotto in the lead role.

Tropea in Calabria enjoys a spectacular cliff-top location

Travel tip:

Tropea, where Vallone was born, is for obvious reasons not a resort that attracts many holidaymakers other than Italians. Situated on the western coast of Calabria, the region that occupies the toe and the instep of the Italian peninsula, it is more than 400km (250 miles) south of Naples and though relatively close to Sicily – Messina is just 112km (70 miles) away – it tends to be a place flown over en route.  Yet it has much to recommend it, from its beautiful soft sandy beaches to the spectacular cliff-top setting of its historic old town, with its maze of narrow streets and sleepy southern Italian feel.  On a stretch of scenic coastline known as the Costa degli Dei – the Coast of the Gods – it is regarded by some regular visitors as one of Italy’s hidden gems.

Submerged rice fields are a feature of the countryside
around Vercelli in the Po Valley

Travel tip:

The rice fields of the Po Valley represent the largest rice production area in the whole of Europe.  The Po Valley, or Po Plain, is vast, stretching about 650km (400 miles) from the Western Alps to the Adriatic Sea, bordered by the Alps to the north and the Apennines to the south, with an area of 46,000 sq km (18,000 sq mi).  Rice production is mainly centred on the province of Vercelli, between Milan and Turin, in which the town of Vercelli is surrounded in the summer months by submerged paddy fields, for which water is supplied by a canal from the Po River.  Rice has been grown in the area since the 15^th century.

More reading:

Silvana Mangano - actress whose big break came with Bitter Rice

Vittorio De Sica and the neorealist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves

The earthy beauty of Oscar-winner Anna Magnani

Also on this day:

1600: The death of  'heretic' philosopher Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake

1653: The birth of composer Arcangelo Corelli

1796: The birth of composer Giovanni Pacini

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