Beatrice d’Este – Duchess of Milan

The brief life of a politically astute noblewoman from Ferrara

Beatrice D'Este, portrayed in a painting by the
19th century Italian artist Francesco Podesti

Beatrice d’Este, who became Duchess of Bari and Milan after her marriage to Ludovico Sforza and was an important player in Italian politics during the late 15th century, died on this day in 1497 in Milan.

The Duchess was said to have shown great courage during the Milanese resistance against the French in what was later judged to be the first of the Italian Wars. At the time of the French advance on Milan, with her husband ill, Beatrice made the right decisions on his behalf and helped prevent the Duke of Orleans from conquering her adopted city.

Sadly, she died when she was just 21, after giving birth to a stillborn baby.

Beatrice was born in the Castello Estense in Ferrara in 1475, but spent her early years growing up in her mother’s home city of Naples. When she was 15, her family sent her to marry the 38-year-old Ludovico Sforza, nicknamed Il Moro - The Moor - because of his dark complexion, who was acting as regent of Milan on behalf of his nephew, Gian Galeazzo Sforza.

Ludovico and Beatrice’s wedding celebrations were directed by Leonardo da Vinci, who worked at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan for 17 years, designing elaborate festivals for the Sforza family as well as painting and sculpting.

Ludovico became Duke of Milan after Gian Galeazzo died in 1494, seemingly of natural causes. However, it was rumoured at the time he had been poisoned by his uncle.

Ludovico Sforza, to whom
Beatrice was betrothed at 15

Beatrice found herself at the centre of court life in Milan, where she was much admired for her beauty, charm, and diplomatic skills.

As well as associating with Da Vinci and the architect, Donato Bramante, she spent time with poets such as Baldassare Castiglione and Niccolò da Correggio. Her husband seemed to have been genuinely fond of her, despite having a string of mistresses, and once described her as ‘happy by nature and very pleasing.’

Beatrice was trusted to represent her husband as an ambassador to Venice and she also attended a peace conference, along with many powerful political figures of the day, including Charles VIII, King of France.

She gave birth to two sons, Massimiliano, who was born in 1493, and Francesco, who was born in 1495. They each, in turn, went on to become the Duke of Milan.

Beatrice was on course to make Milan one of the greatest Renaissance capitals of Europe when her life ended abruptly.

Pregnant for the third time, she seemed to be in good health when she was seen out in her carriage on January 2, 1497.

Ludovico Sforza mourns his wife's death by her
tomb in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie

She waved to the crowds on her way to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, where Da Vinci was in the process of painting his famous masterpiece, The Last Supper, known in Italian as Il Cenacolo, on the wall of the refectory.

After saying her prayers in the church, Beatrice returned to the Castello Sforzesco, where she was said to have taken part in dancing during the evening. Afterwards, she started to suffer stomach pains and she gave birth to a stillborn son. She never recovered from the birth and died half an hour after midnight, on January 3.

Later that day, her heartbroken husband wrote about the sad news to his brother-in-law, Francesco II Gonzaga, who was married to Beatrice’s sister, Isabella. He asked for no visits of condolence, saying he wanted to be left alone to grieve. He remained locked in his apartment for two weeks and when he reappeared, he had shaved his head and was dressed in black, wearing an old, torn cloak.

The beautiful Beatrice has been immortalised in sculptures and paintings and has gone down in history as ‘a virago who showed the courage of a man’, during a time when Milan was at war.  

The Castello Sforzesco in Milan, almost 600 years
old, is one of the largest castles in Europe

Travel tip:

One of the main sights in Milan is the impressive Sforza castle, Castello Sforzesco, built by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, in 1450. After Ludovico Sforza became Duke in 1494, he commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to fresco several of the rooms. The castle was built on the site of the Castello di Porta Giovia, which had been the main residence in the city of the Visconti family, from which Francesco Sforza was descended. The Viscontis ruled Milan for 170 years. Renovated and enlarged a number of times in subsequent centuries, it became one of the largest citadels in Europe and now houses several museums and art collections.  The Cairo metro station is opposite the main entrance to Castello Sforzesco, which is about a 20 minute walk from Milan’s Duomo.

Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, which he
painted on the wall of the refectory

Travel tip:

Santa Maria delle Grazie, a church and Dominican convent in Milan, is home to Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper - Il Cenacolo, which is on the wall of the refectory where the monks used to eat their meals. Entrance to the refectory is now limited to 25 people at a time for a maximum stay of 15 minutes and it is necessary to book a visit in advance.  In addition to Il Cenacolo, the church also has a chapel decorated with the frescoes Stories of Life and The Passion of Christ, by Gaudenzio Ferrari and other works by Ferrari, Titian and Bramantino. Titian’s painting, The Coronation of Thorns, once hung in the same chapel as the Ferrari frescoes but is now in the Louvre, in Paris.

Also on this day:

106BC: The birth of Roman politician and philosopher Cicero

1698: The birth of opera librettist Pietro Metastasio

1785: The death of composer Baldassare Galuppi

1877: The birth of textile entrepreneur and publisher Giovanni Treccani

1920: The birth of singer-songwriter Renato Carosone

1929: The birth of film director Sergio Leone

1952: The birth of politician Gianfranco Fini

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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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Gian Galeazzo Sforza - Duke of Milan

Ruler who never truly held power

Gian Galeazzo Sforza was too
young to inherit his father's title

Gian Galeazzo Sforza, the third member of the Sforza family to have the title Duke of Milan, was born on this day in 1469 in Abbiategrasso, a town in the Po Valley about 22km (14 miles) north of Milan.

He was the sixth Duke of Milan in all, the title having previously been the property of the Visconti family.

However, Gian Galeazzo had only a short life and never truly held any power, having inherited the Duchy at the age of seven when his father, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, was assassinated in the porch of Basilica di Santo Stefano Maggiore in Milan, on December 26, 1476, where he was attending a celebration for the Festa di San Stefano.

Gian Galeazzo could not legally inherit the Duchy until he reached the age of majority, which in Renaissance times was 14. Until then, Milan would be ruled by his mother, Galeazzo Maria’s widow, Bona of Savoy.

But Gian Galeazzo’s uncle, Ludovico Sforza, also known as Ludovico il Moro, had designs on the Duchy as Galeazzo Maria’s brother and the next five years encompassed a bitter struggle for the regency.

With the help of her powerful counsellor, the ducal secretary Cicco Simonetta, Bona managed to repel Ludovico’s first bid to seize power, but not for long.

Ludovico Sforza had designs
on the Duchy of Milan

Ludovico was determined that Milan would be his and redoubled his efforts, this time using deception, persuading Bona that Simonetta was plotting against her.

Taken in by Ludovico’s false story, Bona had Simonetta arrested, tried for treason, imprisoned in Pavia and ultimately executed, at which point Ludovico turned on Bona, seized her son and ordered Bona to leave Milan.

By this time, Gian Galeazzo was 13, still not old enough to assume power, and in the meantime Ludovico, while ostensibly ruling as regent, strengthened his power base.

Gian Galeazzo grew up, marrying his cousin, Princess Isabella of Naples, at the age of 19.  He had no desire to challenge his uncle’s position as regent of Milan, even though he had every right to reclaim the Duchy, and the couple moved to the castle of Pavia, where they had four children.

The peace between them began to fragment, however, when Ludovico married Beatrice d'Este, daughter of Duke Ercole I d'Este of Ferrara and Modena in 1491.

Isabella and Beatrice became rivals on behalf of their children. Isabella feared that her son, Francesco, would be deprived of the Duchy to which she believed he was the rightful heir, while Beatrice insisted that Ludovico’s unchallenged rule meant that his son, Massimiliano, should inherit the title.

The argument came to a head when Gian Galeazzo died in 1494, at the age of 25, at the Palazzo Ducale (Ducal Palace), the summer home of the the Sforza family, in Vigevano, in the province of Pavia, about 40km (25 miles) southwest of Milan. 

Ludovico's wife, Beatrice, wanted
her son to inherit the Duchy

Bizarre stories circulated as to the cause of death, among them that it was due to sexual excesses. However, according to the 16th century Italian historian Francesco Guicciardini in his History of Italy, he was poisoned by Ludovico.

One version of events claims that Gian Galeazzo was taken prisoner by his uncle, kept in a caged pit in his dining room at the Palazzo Ducale, and given only enough food to keep him alive. The story has it that Ludovico let him out on the occasion of a visit by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, at which he demanded that he be cooked a dinner of pheasants. Ludovico is said to have agreed to his request but contaminated one of the birds with poison, which killed his nephew in front of the shocked cardinal.

Ludovico is said to have joked afterwards that Gian Galeazzo was “Duke for an hour” before being undone by his greed. 

Whatever the truth of Gian Galeazzo’s death, Ludovico immediately approached the State Council of Milan, demanding the Duchy should pass to him rather than four-year-old Francesco. The council, fearing the implications of another child as Duke, agreed to his demand.

Five years later, however, in the course of the Italian Wars, the army of Louis XII of France took Milan from Ludovico Sforza and it was not until 1512, four years after Ludovico’s death in captivity in France, when Imperial German troops drove out the French, that Massimiliano was able to become Duke.

The Visconti Castle in Abbiategrasso was built
in 1382 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti

Travel tip:

Abbiategrasso, today a town of 32,000 inhabitants in the Milan metropolitan area, is home to the Visconti Castle, built in 1382 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti and enlarged and decorated by Filippo Maria Visconti after 1438. The nearby Basilica church of Santa Maria Nuova was built in 1388 to celebrate the birth of Gian Galeazzo Visconti's son. The castle passed into the ownership of the Sforza family in common with much of the Visconti family’s property when the male line died out in 1450.  Abbiategrasso is also the home town of Giuseppina Tuissa, one of the partisans who captured Mussolini as he tried to flee to Switzerland in 1945, and of the fashion designer, Franco Moschino.

The beautiful Piazza Ducale in Vigevano,
seen from the Castello Sforzesco

Travel tip:

Historic Vigevano is renowned for shoemaking and is a centre for rice growing but its main claim to fame is as the home of the Castello Sforzesco, a Lombard fortress developed by the Visconti family and rebuilt between 1492–94 for Ludovico Sforza, born in the town, who transformed the fortification into a rich noble residence. Leonardo da Vinci was his guest at Vigevano, as was the architect Donato Bramante, who designed the tower that watches over the beautiful rectangular Piazza Ducale, which was completed in 1493 as the forecourt to the castle.  The Peroni Brewery was founded by Giovanni Peroni in Vigevano in 1846.

Also on this day:

1891: The birth of soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi

1935: The birth of footballer Armando Picchi

1952: The birth of novelist Valerio Evangelisti

1967: The birth of Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris

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Ippolito II d’Este – Cardinal

Borgia prince enjoyed the good things in life

Ippolito II d'Este plundered
the treasures of Hadrian's Villa

Ippolito II d’Este, who became infamous for plundering Hadrian’s Villa to decorate his own home, was born on this day in 1509 in Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna.

He was the second son of Lucrezia Borgia and her husband, Duke Alfonso I d’Este and therefore also a grandson of Pope Alexander VI. He was named after his uncle, Ippolito d’Este.

At the age of ten, Ippolito II inherited the archbishopric of Milan from his uncle, the first of a long list of ecclesiastical appointments he was to be given, which provided him with a good income. He was later given benefices in many parts of France from which he was also able to draw revenue and he was created a Cardinal by Pope Paul III before he had reached the age of 30.

A lover of luxuries and the finer things in life, Ippolito II had Palazzo San Francesco in Ferrara refurbished for himself. He also had a palace renovated to provide him with a sumptuous residence in Rome.

He became Governor of Tivoli in 1550 and had the Villa d’Este built there to a design by Mannerist architect Pirro Ligorio.

He became interested in the ruins of the Roman villas in Tivoli and carried out archaeological excavations.

Ippolito gave support to the
composer Palestrina and others

To decorate his own villa, Ippolito II had marble and statues removed from Hadrian’s Villa, which at the time would have been about 1400 years old. As a result, the Emperor Hadrian’s villa lost most of its original features.

Ippolito II was ambassador on behalf of Ferrara to the French court and became Cardinal Protector of France during the reign of King Henry II of France.

He also helped to sponsor the work of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, one of the most important composers of sacred music of the Renaissance, and gave support to the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini and the poet Torquato Tasso.

Ippolito II died in Rome after a short illness in 1572. He was aged 63. He was buried in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Tivoli near his villa.

More than 2000 of his letters and 200 of his account books have survived and are now kept in an archive in Modena.

The book, The Cardinal’s Hat: Money, Ambition and Everyday Life in the Court of a Borgia Prince, by Mary Holllingworth, was based on his letters and account books.

A section of the ruins of 
Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli

Travel tip:

Hadrian’s Villa (Villa Adriano) is a large Roman archaeological complex at Tivoli, about 32km (19 miles) east of Rome, which is a designated UNESCO World heritage site. It is owned by the Italian Republic and is run by the Polo Museale del Lazio. It was built at Tivoli - then known as Tibur - as a retreat from Rome for the Emperor Hadrian in the second century AD.  Hadrian is said to have disliked the palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome and the villa at Tivoli was somewhere he felt more able to relax from the demands of everyday life.  During the later years of his reign, Hadrian actually governed the empire from the villa, which he adopted as his official residence.

The Villa d'Este is notable for its complex of
more than 50 fountains and waterfalls

Travel tip:

The Villa d'Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance gardens, often referred to simply as the Tivoli Gardens, and for its profusion of fountains, more than 50 in total. The nearby river Aniene was diverted to provide water for the complex system of pools, water jets, channels, fountains, cascades and water games. Canals were dug and 200 metres of underground pipes were laid. A Benedictine convent before Ippolito II d’Este confiscated it to develop as his residence, it is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

Also on this day:

79: The eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum

665: The death of Saint Patricia of Naples

1609: Galileo demonstrates potential of the telescope

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Maria Salviati - noblewoman

Florentine whose line included kings of France and England

Jacopo da Pontormo's portrait of
Maria Salviati (1537-43)

The noblewoman Maria Salviati, whose descendants include two kings of France and two kings of England, was born on this day in 1499 in Florence.

Salviati was the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and a powerful figure in the mid-16th century.  Her descendants included Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France, and Charles II and James II of England.

Married for nine years to Lodovico de’ Medici, who was more widely known as the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, Salviati herself had Medici blood. One of a family of 10 children, her mother was Lucrezia de Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had married the politician Iacopo Salviati, who was from another major banking family in Florence.  Maria’s maternal grandfather was Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Renaissance ruler who famously sponsored Michelangelo and Botticelli.

She was married to Giovanni dalle Bande Nere when she was 18, having known him since she was 10, when he was placed in the care of her parents following the death of his mother Caterina Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan.

As a professional soldier, her husband spent much less time with her than she would have liked and Cosimo was their only child. He died in 1526 after being wounded in battle while fighting on behalf of a Medici pope, Clement VII, against the army of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

Maria remained a woman of influence, having successfully managed her husband’s business interests while he was away at war, enhancing the family’s wealth as she did so.  After Giovanni was killed, she could easily have sought out a new husband and formed another powerful partnership. Instead, dressing in the sombre clothes of a novice, she withdrew to the Castello del Trebbio, the grand Medici residence in San Piero a Sieve, in the Mugello valley, north of Florence.

Salviati groomed her son, Cosimo,
for power in Florence

Her focus was on grooming her son, Cosimo, for power. She ensured he had an education worthy of a Renaissance prince but was determined to shelter him from the intrigues of Florence until an opportunity arose to push his credentials as a leader.

It was when her cousin, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, was assassinated in 1537 by Lorenzino de’ Medici, who had become friends with Cosimo at Trebbio.  Cosimo had held a temporary position in Alessandro’s court and was familiar with the mechanisms of government yet was not tainted by any associations in the city and Maria was able to convince the Florentine elders that he was ready to lead, even at the age of just 17.

Given that he was so young and from a rural background, those elders perhaps thought Cosimo would be easily manipulated but this proved far from the case.  One by one, he removed each obstacle to his total control of Florence and by 1539, he was Duke of Tuscany as well as Florence and had reinforced his power by marrying Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo, the daughter of a powerful Spanish nobleman then living in Florence.

Maria contented herself with being a dutiful and attentive grandmother, settling at the Villa di Castello, Cosimo’s country residence just outside Florence, where she concentrated on creating a nursery for their children, who would eventually number 11.  She also looked after his illegitimate daughter, Bia, and Giulia de’ Medici, an illegitimate daughter of Alessandro, who was of a similar age.

Sadly, Bia died of a virulent infection in 1542 at five years old and a heartbroken Maria herself passed away a year later, aged just 44.

Cosimo, who would rule Florence until 1569 and Tuscany until his death in 1574, was the father of Francesco I de' Medici, who married Johanna of Austria.

Francesco and Johanna were the parents of Marie de' Medici, who married Henry IV of France and was the mother of Louis XIII of France and Henrietta Maria of France. Louis was the father of Louis XIV of France, Henrietta Maria was the mother of Charles II of England and James II of England.

Cosimo I de' Medici used the Villa di Castello
outside Florence as his country house

Travel tip:

Cosimo I de’ Medici is thought to have commissioned Sandro Botticelli to provide some paintings to decorate the walls of his country house, the Villa di Castello, in the hills northwest of Florence, near the town of Sesto Fiorentino and not far from the modern-day city's airport. Cosimo also commissioned an engineer, Piero di San Casciano, to build a system of aqueducts to carry water to the villa and gardens, a sculptor, Niccolo Tribolo, to create fountains and statues in the gardens and the architect Giorgio Vasari to restore and enlarge the main building.

The Castello di Trebbio, the villa that was turned
into a castle by architect Michelozzo Michelozzi

Travel tip:

The Castello di Trebbio was in fact not a castle but a fortified villa, another property acquired by the Medici family and handed down through generations. It was effectively turned into a castle in 1364 by the Florentine architect Michelozzo Michelozzi, on behalf of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici. It was given Pierfrancesco de’ Medici and inherited by Giovanni delle Bande Nere.  Situated close to the village of Scarperia and San Piero in Mugello, it was expanded by Cosimo I, who loved to go hunting on his estate, and by his son Ferdinando I. It was sold in 1644 by Ferdinando II to a wealthy Florentine, Giuliano Serragli.

Also on this day:

1823: Marguerite, Lady Blessington, an aristocratic Irish-born writer, arrived in Naples

1975: The birth of celebrity chef and restaurateur Michele Casadei Massari

1976: The birth of chef and author Gino d’Acampo

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Clara Gonzaga – noblewoman

Countess from Mantua founded European dynasties

Clara Gonzaga's marriage began a dynasty
of European royalty

Clara (Chiara) Gonzaga, the eldest daughter of Federico I Gonzaga and Margaret of Bavaria, was born on this day in 1464 in Mantua.

One of her six children became Charles III, Duke of Bourbon and led the imperial army sent by Emperor Charles V against Pope Clement VII in what was to become the Sack of Rome in 1527.

Clara was also to feature as one of the characters in The Heptameron, a collection of 72 short stories written in French by the sister of King Francis I of France, Marguerite of Angouleme, who had been inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron.

Clara had five siblings, including Francesco II Gonzaga, who married Isabella d’Este.

She was married at the age of 17 to Gilbert of Bourbon Montpensier. Four years later he succeeded his father as Count of Montpensier and Dauphin of Auvergne.

Clara and Gilbert had six children, but when she was just 32, Gilbert, who had also become Viceroy of Naples and the Duke of Sessa, died of a fever while in Pozzuoli near Naples, leaving her a widow.

Cesare Borgia was a
threat to Mantua

Three years later, Clara acted as a mediator on behalf of her brother Francesco, who was trying to form an alliance with King Louis XII of France in order to protect Mantua, which was being threatened by both Cesare Borgia and the Doge of Venice.

Clara died in 1503, just before her 39th birthday and was buried at the Chapelle Saint Louis in the Church of Aigueperse in Auvergne.

Among her many descendants are King Louis XIV of France, Queen Marie Antoinette of France and Franz Josef I of Austria, the longest reigning Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Through the Houses of Hanover, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Windsor, Clara is also an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II of England.

Mantua is an atmospheric city with a lakeside setting

Travel tip:

Mantua is an atmospheric old city in Lombardy, 155km (96 miles) to the southeast of Milan, famous for its Renaissance Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the Gonzaga family between 1328 and 1707. The Camera degli Sposi is decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna, depicting the life of Ludovico III Gonzaga, Clara’s grandfather, and members of his family. The beautiful backgrounds of imaginary cities and ruins reflect Mantegna’s love of classical architecture.

Sulphuric smoke rises from
the ground at Solfatara

Travel tip:

Pozzuoli, where Clara’s husband Gilbert died in 1496, a year after becoming Viceroy of Naples, is a municipality in the Metropolitan City of Naples in the region of Campania, lying in the centre of an area of volcanic activity known as the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields). Plumes of pungent sulphuric smoke can be seen emerging from the ground at nearby Solfatara. In the 1980s the city experienced hundreds of tremors and the sea bottom was raised by almost two metres, making the Bay of Pozzuoli too shallow for small craft. The volcanic sand found in the area provided the basis for the first example of concrete in construction.

More reading:

Isabella d'Este, 'first lady of the world'

Cesare Borgia: From Cardinal to military leader

Why the election of Pope Clement VII caused a split in the Catholic Church

Also on this day:

1586: The birth of composer Claudio Saracini

1878: The birth of romanticised career burglar Gino Meneghetti

1888: The birth of abstract painter Alberto Magnelli


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