12 November 2018

Giulio Lega – First World War hero

Flying ace survived war to look after health of Italy’s politicians



Giulio Lega with the Hanriot HD1 in which he scored his five aerial successes
Giulio Lega with the Hanriot HD.1 in which
he scored his five aerial successes
Credited with five aerial victories during the First World War, the pilot Giulio Lega was born on this day in 1892 in Florence.

After the war he completed his medical studies and embarked on a long career as physician to Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.

Lega had been a medical student when he was accepted by the Italian army for officer training in 1915.

Because he was unusually tall, he became an ‘extended infantryman’ in the Grenadiers. He made his mark with them at the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo, for which he was awarded the War Merit Cross for valour. The following year he won a Bronze Medal for Military Valour in close-quarters combat, which was awarded to him on the battlefield.

Lega volunteered to train as a pilot in 1916 and was sent to Malpensa near Milan. After gaining his licence he was sent on reconnaissance duty during which he earned a Silver Medal for Military Valour. After completing fighter pilot training he joined 76a Squadriglia and went on to fly 46 combat sorties with them.

Silvio Scaroni was a colleague of Lega in the 76a Squadriglia of the Italian air force
Silvio Scaroni was a colleague of Lega in the
76a Squadriglia of the Italian air force
His first two victories in the air, near Col d’Asiago and over Montello, were shared with two other Italian pilots. During the last Austro-Hungarian offensive he downed a Hansa-Brandenburg C1 over Passagno single-handedly. His last two triumphs were downing an unidentified enemy over Mareno di Piave and an Albatros D111, both with pilots Silvio Scaroni and Romolo Ticconi.

His final three victories earned him another Silver Medal for valour. He continued to serve as a pilot until the end of the war when he was presented with the War Cross.

He then finished his medical studies, graduating from the University of Bologna in 1920 but remained in the Air Force Reserves, rising to the rank of tenente colonello.

In 1931 he was appointed head of the medical service for Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, a post he held until his retirement in 1957.

During World War II he was assigned to the headquarters of the Servizi Aerei Speciali.

Lega was still serving as a medical consultant to the Italian parliament when he died in 1973.

The Ponte Vecchio is one of the most famous of many famous landmarks in Florence
The Ponte Vecchio is one of the most famous of
many famous landmarks in Florence
Travel tip:

Giulio Lega is only one of many famous people born in Florence, a city so rich in history and artistic and architectural treasures that for visitors it feels like walking around an outdoor museum. In Piazza della Signoria, an L-shaped square in the centre of the city, the 14th century Palazzo Vecchio was the seat of government. Citizens gathered in the square for public meetings and the religious leader, Girolamo Savonarola, was burned at the stake there in 1498. The piazza is filled with statues, some of them copies, commemorating major events in the city’s history. Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia has become famous as the home of Michelangelo’s statue of David and is the second most visited museum in Italy, after the Uffizi, which is the main art gallery in Florence.

Milan's Malpensa airport is the second busiest in Italy in terms of passenger numbers
Milan's Malpensa airport is the second busiest in Italy
in terms of passenger numbers
Travel tip:

Malpensa airport started up in 1909 at Cascina Malpensa, an old farm to the northwest of Milan, where the land was used to test aircraft prototypes. During World War I it was established as a flying school for training pilots such as Giulio Lega. As an airfield used by the Germans in World War II, Malpensa was heavily bombed by the Allies, but in the 1940s the runway was repaired and flights to Brussels began. Today, Malpensa is the second busiest airport in Italy in terms of passengers, after Rome Fiumicino.

More reading:

Silvio Scaroni - the World War One pilot who shot down 26 enemy aircraft

How Italy's most famous World War One flying ace was killed in action

The aerial duellist who claimed 19 victories

Also on this day:

1920: Italy signs treaty with Balkan States

1948: The death of composer Umberto Giordano

2011: Silvio Berlusconi resigns as prime minister


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11 November 2018

Andrea Zani – violinist and composer

Musician who ushered in the new classical era


Much of Andrea Zani's music has survived and there are many recordings available
Much of Andrea Zani's music has survived and there
are many recordings available
Andrea Teodora Zani, one of the earliest Italian composers to move away from the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1696 in Casalmaggiore in the province of Cremona in Lombardy.

Casalmaggiore, nicknamed ‘the little Venice on the Po’, was a breeding ground for musical talent at this time and Zani was an exact contemporary of Giuseppe Guarneri, the most famous member of the Guarneri family of violin makers in Cremona. He was just a bit younger than the violinist composers, Francesco Maria Veracini, Giuseppe Tartini and Pietro Locatelli.

Zani’s father, an amateur violinist, gave him his first violin lessons and he later received instruction from Giacomo Civeri, a local musician, and Carlo Ricci, who was at the time court musician to the Gonzaga family at their palace in Guastalla.

After Zani played in front of Antonio Caldara, who was Capellmeister for the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles in nearby Mantua, he was invited to go to Vienna to be a violinist in the service of the Habsburgs.

Antonio Caldara sponsored Zani's work for many years
Antonio Caldara sponsored
Zani's work for many years
A lot of Zani’s work has survived in both published and manuscript form, some of it having been recovered from European libraries. His early works show the influence of Antonio Vivaldi, but his Opus 2, published in 1729, is considered of historical importance because it shows no ambiguity of genre and has cast off Baroque elements in favour of a more classical style.

After his sponsor, Caldara, died in 1736, Zani returned to Casalmaggiore, where he remained for the rest of his life, leaving the town occasionally to make concert appearances.

Zani died at the age of 60 in 1757 after being injured when the carriage in which he was travelling to Mantua accidentally overturned.


The church of Santa Maria Assunta in Castelmaggiore, near Bologna
The church of Santa Maria
Assunta in Castelmaggiore 
Travel tip:

Casalmaggiore, where Andrea Zani was born, is a town in the province of Cremona in Lombardy. It is believed the town was founded by the Romans as a military camp. Around the year 1000 the town had a fortified castle owned by the Este family. Casalmaggiore was also the birthplace of the composer, Ignazio Donati.

Exhibits at Cremona's Museo del Violino
Exhibits at Cremona's Museo del Violino
Travel tip:

Cremona, the nearest city to Andrea Zani’s home town, is well known as a centre of violin production. The Museo Stradivariano in Via Ugolani Dati in Cremona has a collection of musical items housed in the elegant rooms of a former palace. Visitors can see how the contralto viola was constructed in accordance with the classical traditions of Cremona, view instruments commemorating Italian violin makers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and look at more than 700 relics from the workshop of Antonio Stradivari, who produced violins that are nowadays worth millions. Another museum dedicated to the city's luthiers is the Museo del Violino in Piazza Marconi.

More reading:

Why Antonio Stradivari is considered history's finest violin-maker

Nicolò Amati, the greatest of a dynasty of Cremona luthiers

Success and sadness in the life of Antonio Vivaldi

Also on this day:

1869: The birth of Victor Emmanuel III, Italy's wartime monarch

1932: The birth of controversial broadcaster Germano Mosconi

1961: The birth of Montalbano actor Luca Zigaretti


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10 November 2018

Vanessa Ferrari - gymnast

First Italian woman to win a World Championship gold


Vanessa Ferrari is Italy's most successful female gymnast
Vanessa Ferrari is Italy's most
successful female gymnast
The gymnast Vanessa Ferrari, who in 2006 became the first Italian female competitor to win a gold medal at the World Championships of artistic gymnastics, was born on November 10, 1990, in the town of Orzinuovi in Lombardy.

Ferrari won the all-around gold - consisting of uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise - at the World Championships in Aarhus in Denmark when she was only 15 years old. It remains the only artistic gymnastics world title to be won by an Italian woman.

Earlier in 2006, Ferrari had picked up her first gold medal of the European Championships at Volos in Greece as Italy won the all-around team event.

Naturally small in stature, Ferrari was inspired to take up gymnastics by watching the sport on television as a child, when the sport was dominated by Russian and Romanian athletes.

With the help of her Bulgarian-born mother, Galya, who made many sacrifices to help her daughter fulfil her ambitions, Ferrari joined the Brixia gym in the city of Brescia, a 30km (19 miles) drive from the family home.

Brixia was co-founded by Enrico Casella, a former rugby player who was technical director of the Italian women’s gymnastics team at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Casella recognised Ferrari’s potential and took it upon himself to become her personal coach.

Vanessa Ferrari became a World champion when she was only 15 years old
Vanessa Ferrari became a World champion
when she was only 15 years old
Ferrari’s first major success came at the 2004 European junior championships, when as a 13-year-old she won the silver medal. She dominated the Mediterranean Games and European Junior Olympic festival the following year. She was all-around champion at both events, as well as winning four more golds at the former.

After her success in the European and World senior events in 2006, she won two gold medals at the 2007 European championships in Amsterdam, finishing first in both the all-around event and the floor exercises.

She could finish only ninth in the all-round when the European championships were held on home ground in Milan in 2009 but collected another medal by finishing runner-up to Great Britain’s Beth Tweddle in the floor exercises.

In Brussels in 2012 she picked up her sixth medal overall with bronze in the team event before bouncing back to win her fourth gold on the floor in Sofia in 2014.

Although she is the most successful of all female Italian gymnasts, an Olympic medal has eluded Ferrari so far, although she has twice narrowly missed out.

At the London Games of 2012 she finished level on points with close rival Aliya Mustafina in the floor exercises only for the Russian to be given the bronze medal on the tie-break system, despite Ferrari finishing with a better mark for difficulty than her rival.

Vanessa Ferrari was injured at the   2017 World Championships
Vanessa Ferrari was injured at the
 2017 World Championships
And at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Ferrari again had to settle for fourth place. This time bronze medallist Amy Tinkler of Great Britain scored higher for difficulty and execution but missing out was again a disappointment for Ferrari because she was in the bronze medal position at the end of qualifying, although it later emerged that she was struggling with an Achilles tendon injury for which she had surgery later in 2016.

Rio was Ferrari’s third Olympics - the most at which any female Italian gymnast has competed - and although she once said she would retire after the 2012 Games she has ambitions to compete at a fourth in Tokyo in 2020 in the hope of clinching that elusive medal.

Since Rio, however, she has another Achilles tendon injury.  She has begun a coaching career alongside competing and hopes to be in Tokyo at least as a coach if not actually on the floor herself.

The Sforzesca Castle at Soncino, one of the neighbouring towns of Ferrari's home town of Orzonuovi
The Sforzesca Castle at Soncino, one of the neighbouring
towns of Ferrari's home town of Orzonuovi
Travel tip:

Orzinuovi is a town in Lombardy of just over 12,500 inhabitants about 30km (19 miles) southwest of Brescia and about 36km (22 miles) northeast of Cremona in an area of historical interest that includes the neighbouring town of Soncino, where there is well-preserved castle - the Rocca Sforzesca - built in 1473 for Galeazzo Maria Sforza and often used nowadays as a location for films and TV series, and the Casa degli Stampatori - Printers' House - where, in 1488, the first complete Jewish Bible in the world was printed.

Il Torrazzo in Cremona is the tallest bell tower in the whole of Italy
Il Torrazzo in Cremona is the tallest bell
tower in the whole of Italy
Travel tip:

Cremona is famous for having the tallest bell tower in Italy, il Torrazzo, which measures more than 112m (367ft) in height. The city is famous for violins, being the home of Antonio Stradivari and the Amati family, and there is a fascinating museum, the Museo Stradivariano in Via Ugolani Dati, which is dedicated to the city’s violin-making tradition of the 16th and 17th centuries. As well as violins, Cremona is also famous for producing confectionery. Negozio Sperlari in Via Solferino specialises in the city’s famous torrone (nougat), a concoction of almonds, honey and egg whites created to mark the marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza in 1441, when the city was given to the bride as part of her dowry.

More reading:

How Valentina Vezzali became Italy's most successful female athlete

World records and Moscow gold for high jumper Sara Simeoni

Horrific accident that drove Francesca Porcellato to Paralympic glory

Also on this day:

1816: Lord Byron arrives in Venice

1869: The birth of assassin Gaetano Bresci

1928: The birth of film music maestro Ennio Morricone


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9 November 2018

Giuseppe Panini - entrepreneur

News vendor who started football sticker craze


The Mexico 1970 World Cup album can sell for thousands of pounds at auction
The Mexico 1970 World Cup album can sell for
thousands of pounds at auction
Giuseppe Panini, the entrepreneur and businessman who created an international craze for collecting football stickers, was born on this day in 1921 in the village of Pozza in Emilia-Romagna, not far from Modena.

Since the stickers’ first appearance in Italy in the 1960s and the first World Cup sticker album in 1970 took the concept into an international marketplace, Panini has grown into a publishing company that in 2017 generated sales in excess of €536 million ($643 million US) in more than 120 countries, employing more than 1000 people worldwide.

Panini, who died in 1996, grew immensely wealthy as a result, selling the business in 1989 for a sum said to be around £96 million, the equivalent of £232 million (€266 million; $303 million US) today, after which he spent the remaining years of his life building on an already established reputation for philanthropy.

He came from humble working-class origins and left school at the age of 11. His father, Antonio, worked at the military academy in the city of Modena, about 16km (10 miles) away from their village. Life changed for the family, however, when in 1945 they acquired the license to operate the popular newsstand near the cathedral in the centre of the city.

Giuseppe Panini anticipated what a success  football stickers would become
Giuseppe Panini anticipated what a success
football stickers would become
Despite his lack of formal education, Panini had sound business sense. He and his brother Benito ran the newsstand and did well, investing some of the profits in a newspaper distribution agency.

While working at the newsstand, they noticed that the picture cards that some publishers gave away with their papers and magazines were always popular.  When they came across a large number of cards depicting flowers and plants that had been left over from a series given away with a popular magazine, they bought them all and hit upon the idea of selling them as a stand-alone product, in packets of two at 10 lire per packet.

Incredibly, they sold three million packets and in 1961 Giuseppe decided there was a demand it would be foolish not to try to meet. He rented a small workshop in Via Castelmaraldo in Modena and the Panini brothers began printing their own cards, not of plants and flowers but of footballers. They were the same size as the miniature pictures of saints that were popular at the time.

The first ones were just plain cards - self-adhesive stickers would follow later - but they were hugely popular, nonetheless. In the first year alone, the number of packets sold reached a staggering 15 million, almost doubling the following year and in 1964 Panini acquired the publishing plant in Viale Emilio Po, which is still the company’s headquarters today.

Giuseppe Panini turned the family business into a worldwide success
Giuseppe Panini turned the family
business into a worldwide success
The first Panini football album was published the same year and in the late 1960s came the development that was to turn the business into an international concern, when the brothers formed a partnership with FIFA to produce stickers and an album for the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.

It was a successful venture but because of the European trading laws, the market that turned out to be among the biggest of them all - in the United Kingdom - was not cracked until 1978, when the sticker album for the World Cup in Argentina hit the newsstands.

In typical Italian fashion, Giuseppe Panini made sure he looked after his family, employing not only Benito but his other brothers, Franco and Umberto, and his sisters Veronica, Maria and Norma. His mother, Olga, and his wife, also called Maria, were also involved.

He was also determined to put money into the local community in Modena.

In 1966, he bought the local volleyball team Modena Volley, which for a while was one of the biggest volleyball clubs in the world. In 1973 he founded the Italian Volleyball League - won 12 times by his own club - of which he was president for eight years.

Modena's Palazzo dello Sport is also known as PalaPanini
Modena's Palazzo dello Sport is also known as PalaPanini
He sponsored cultural projects and from 1985 to 1992 was president of the Modena Chamber of Commerce. He founded a school for business managers and a linguistic high school. He even opened a restaurant in Modena to showcase local products such as tortelloni and Lambrusco wine.

Shortly before his death he donated his photographic collections to the city. The local authority subsequently dedicated the city’s Palazzo dello Sport athletic facility to him as well as two museums to show off his collection - the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini and the Museo della Figurina.

Ironically, the sale of the company in 1989 - to the British-based publisher Robert Maxwell - almost brought about its demise. A period of poor management saw Panini miss out to rivals Merlin on the lucrative contract to publish sticker albums on behalf of the new English Premier League and after Maxwell died in 1991, leaving behind a mountain of debt, the company survived only after an investment consortium bought it out of administration.

The company was returned to profitability and the albums for recent World Cups have been among the most successful.  Past albums, meanwhile, remain highly collectible - none more so than the first one.

Indeed, such is the rarity of completed 1970 World Cup albums today that one sold at auction in 2017 for £10,450 (€12,012; $13,653 US).

The Ferrari headquarters at Maranello
The Ferrari headquarters at Maranello
Travel tip:

The village of Pozzo is a short distance from Maranello, famous as the headquarters of Ferrari, which has an extraordinary museum in which visitors can explore the history of the world’s most famous sports cars. Pozzo itself, which has a population of a little under 2,500, is home to the Villa Rangoni-Machiavelli - also known as the Villa Bice - which houses sculptures belonging to the Severi contemporary art collection.

Modena's 11th century cathedral
Modena's 11th century cathedral
Travel tip:

The historic city of Modena has a magnificent main square, Piazza Grande, where visitors can find the 11th century Duomo (cathedral) dedicated to San Geminiano, which is now a Unesco world heritage site. The city’s opera house was renamed Teatro Communale Luciano Pavarotti in 2007 after the great tenor, who was born in the city, as was the soprano Mirella Freni. Modena is also famous for its balsamic vinegar, Aceto Balsamico di Modena.

More reading:

How Giacinto Facchetti led Italy to the 1970 World Cup final

Vittorio Pozzo - Italy's double World Cup winner

Enzo Ferrari - the man behind the legend

Also on this day:

1383: The birth of professional soldier Niccolò III d'Este

1877: The birth of Enrico De Nicolo, Italy's first president

1974: The birth of footballer Alessandro del Piero


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8 November 2018

Paolo Taviani - film director

Half of a successful partnership with brother Vittorio


Paolo Taviani has been active in Italian cinema for more than 60 years
Paolo Taviani has been active in Italian
cinema for more than 60 years 
The film director Paolo Taviani, the younger of the two Taviani brothers, whose work together won great acclaim and brought them considerable success in the 1970s and 80s in particular, was born on this day in 1931 in San Miniato, Tuscany.

With his brother Vittorio, who was two years his senior and died in April of this year, he wrote and directed more than 20 films.

Among their triumphs were Padre Padrone (1977), which won the Palme d’Or and the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) prize at the Cannes Film Festival, La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars, 1982), which won the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes, and Caesar Must Die (2012), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

The brothers famously would work in partnership, directing alternate scenes, one seldom criticising the other, if ever. The actor Marcello Mastroianni, who starred in their 1974 drama Allonsanfàn, is said to have addressed the brothers as “Paolovittorio.”

They were both born and raised in San Miniato by liberal, anti-Fascist parents who introduced them to art and culture. Their father Ermanno, a lawyer, would take them to watch opera as a reward for getting good grades at school.

Paolo Taviani (right) with his brother Vittorio. They  worked as a partnership until the latter's death in 2018
Paolo Taviani (right) with his brother Vittorio. They
worked as a partnership until the latter's death in 2018
After the Second World War, in which San Miniato suffered badly at the hands of the occupying Germans, they both attended university in Pisa, where Paolo studied liberal arts and Vittorio read law.

While there, they saw Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist picture Paisan, about the Allied liberation of Italy. Its portrayal of what they described as their “own tragedy” had such a profound effect on them that they vowed to be making their own films within a decade.

Indeed, their first work, a short documentary film made in 1954 entitled San Miniato, July 1944, produced with the help of one of neorealism’s most famous scriptwriters, Cesare Zavattini, was the true story of a massacre carried out by the Nazis inside the town’s cathedral in revenge for the death of a German soldier.

They worked with the Dutch director Joris Ivens on another documentary, L'Italia non è un paese povero (Italy is Not a Poor Country), before teaming up with Valentino Orsini on two feature films, Un uomo da bruciare (A Man for Burning, 1962) and I fuorilegge del matrimonio (Outlaws of Love, 1963).

Padre Padrone (1977) was one of the brothers' most successful films
Padre Padrone (1977) was one of the
brothers' most successful films
Their first film in their own right was I sovversivi (The Subversives, 1967), a story of four members of the Italian Communist Party which anticipated the unrest of 1968. They hired Gian Maria Volontè, who had starred in Un uomo da bruciare, for the lead role in Sotto il segno dello scorpione (Under the Sign of Scorpio, 1969), which had the critics comparing their work with Bertolt Brecht, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Jean-Luc Godard.

They won praise for their literary adaptations, including in San Michele aveva un gallo (St Michael Had a Rooster, 1972), adapted from Tolstoy’s Divine and Human, and also Kaos (1984) and Tu ridi (You Laugh, 1998), both based on stories by Luigi Pirandello. 

After Padre Padrone, their career reached another big moment with La notte di San Lorenzo, a wartime drama based in part on their own early lives and drawing on their own documentary, set in 1944 in a Tuscan village poised to be snatched away from the Germans by approaching US troops.

Some of their later work was less well received by they scored another major success with Caesar Must Die, an unorthodox adaptation of Julius Caesar shot inside Rebibbia prison in Rome and performed by hardened lifers, many of them former mafia and Camorra hitmen. The film won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2012 and was selected as the Italian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Academy Awards, although it did not make the final.

Their last work as a partnership, Una questione privata (Rainbow: A Private Affair, 2017), won an Italian Golden Globes as Best Actor for Luca Marinelli.

Still active in Italian cinema, Paolo Taviani presented a lifetime achievement award to his fellow director Martin Scorsese - at 75 some 11 years his junior - at the Rome Film Festival last month.

Crowds at San Miniato's white truffle  festival, guarded by the Tower of Federico
Crowds at San Miniato's white truffle
festival, guarded by the Tower of Federico 
Travel tip:

San Miniato, where Taviani was born, is a charming town perched on a hill halfway between Florence and Pisa. Both cities fought to control it for two centuries. With a picturesque medieval centre built around the Fortress of Federico II and views over the Arno valley, it attracts visitors all year round but one of its busiest times is November, when the annual white truffle festival fills the streets with parades, concerts and artisan vendors. The Diocesan Museum, next to the cathedral, contains works by Filippo Lippi, Jacopo Chimenti, Neri di Bicci, Fra Bartolomeo, Frederico Cardi (known as Cigoli) and Verrocchio.  The church of San Domenico has terracotta works by Luca della Robbia, a fresco attributed to Masolino da Panicale and a burial monument sculpted by Donatello.

The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa
The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa
Travel tip:

Pisa, once a major maritime power, is now a university city renowned for its art and architectural treasures and with a 10.5km (7 miles) circuit of 12th century walls. The Campo dei Miracoli, formerly known as Piazza del Duomo, located at the northwestern end of the city, contains the cathedral (Duomo), baptistery and famously the tilting campanile known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, all built in black and white marble between the 11th and 14th centuries. The Scuola Normale Superiore is one of three universities in Pisa, the others being the University of Pisa and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.

More reading:

Roberto Rossellini - the father of neorealism

Marcello Mastroianni - the star who immortalised the Trevi Fountain

How actress Laura Betti became Pier Paolo Pasolini's muse

Also on this day:

1830: The death of Francis I of the Two Sicilies

1936: The birth of acress Virna Lisi

1982: The birth of golfer Francesco Molinari


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7 November 2018

Gaspare Tagliacozzi - surgeon

Professor invented rhinoplasty procedure


Gaspare Tagliacozzi perfected a way of forming a new nose using skin from the arm
Gaspare Tagliacozzi perfected a way of
forming a new nose using skin from the arm
Pioneering plastic surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi died on this day in 1599 in Bologna.

During his career, Tagliacozzi had developed what became known as ‘the Italian method’ for nasal reconstruction.

He improved on the procedure that had been carried out by the 15th century Sicilian surgeons, Gustavo Branca, and his son, Antonio.

Tagliacozzi wrote a book, De Curtorum Chirugia per Insitionem - On the Surgery of Mutilation by Grafting - which described in great detail the procedures carried out in the past to repair noses amputated during battle.

Surgeons who came after him credit him with single-handedly revolutionising the procedure and inventing what is today referred to as a rhinoplasty procedure.

Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna in 1545. He studied medicine, natural sciences and anatomy at the University of Bologna, gaining a degree in philosophy and medicine by the age of 24.

After he was appointed professor of surgery and professor of anatomy at the University he taught at the Archiginnasio, famous for its anatomical theatre, where he procured the bodies of executed prisoners to use in dissections.

An illustration of a patient with arm strapped in place across the nose
An illustration of a patient with arm
strapped in place across the nose
The operation for nasal reconstruction had been developed in Italy as early as the 15th century because of injuries sustained in battle, or when duelling using rapiers.

Tagliacozzi improved the reconstructive surgery method by taking skin from the arm using specially designed instruments to make the correct shape.

The flap of skin from the arm was attached to the nose and the patient’s arm was bandaged in the raised position for about 20 days, or until the skin of the arm had attached itself to the nose. The pedicle was then severed from the arm and after 14 days the attached skin was shaped so that it resembled a nose.

In his book explaining the procedure he writes: ‘We restore, rebuild and make whole those parts which nature hath given, but which fortune has taken away. Not so much that it may delight the eye, but that it might buoy up the spirit, and help the mind of the afflicted.’

Tagliacozzi died in Bologna on 7 November 1599 and was buried in the church of San Giovanni Battista de’ Celestini, as he had stipulated in his will. A solemn mass attended by doctors and colleagues was held in his honour later that month in the same church.

However, his body was later exhumed on the orders of the Catholic Church and reburied on unconsecrated ground, the church hierarchy having deemed that his surgery interfered with the handiwork of God.

After Tagliacozzi’s death, ‘the Italian method’ was not used again until the 19th century when a German plastic surgeon performed the procedure again.

Tagliacozzi also wrote a book about reconstructive surgery procedures for lips and ears.

The statue of Tagliacozzi in the anatomical theatre of the Archiginnasio
The statue of Tagliacozzi in the
anatomical theatre of the Archiginnasio
Travel tip:

The world’s first university was established in Bologna in 1088 and attracted popes and kings as well as students of the calibre of Dante, Copernicus and Boccaccio. You can visit the university’s former anatomy theatre, where Tagliacozzi worked, in the oldest university building, the Archiginnasio, which is open to the public Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 1 pm, admission free. There is a wooden statue of Tagliacozzi holding a nose in his right hand, set in a niche in the wall of the anatomy theatre.

The church of San Giovanni Battista de' Celestina in the centre of Bologna
The church of San Giovanni Battista de'
Celestina in the centre of Bologna


Travel tip:

The church of San Giovanni Battista de’ Celestini in Bologna is a Renaissance-style Roman Catholic church located on Via D'Azeglio, where the Celestine order had built a monastery and church in the 14th century. In 1482, the church had become the home of the parish.It was rebuilt in 1535 on the site of a 13th century building in Piazza de’ Celestini.

More reading:

The 17th century anatomist whose work still benefits astronauts today

How Gabriele Falloppio made key discoveries about human reproduction

Italy's 18th century cataract surgeon

Also on this day:

The feast day of Ercolano, patron saint of Perugia

1512: Niccolò Machiavelli dismissed from office

1944: The birth of football legend Luigi Riva


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6 November 2018

Giovanni Buitoni - entrepreneur

Turned family business into multinational company


Giovanni Buitoni took over the running of the family business when he was just 18
Giovanni Buitoni took over the running of
the family business when he was just 18 
Giovanni Buitoni, the entrepreneur who turned Buitoni pasta and Perugina chocolates into the international brands they are today, was born on this day in 1891 in Perugia.

The Buitoni family had been making pasta since 1827, when Giovanni’s great grandmother, Giulia, opened a small shop in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, in order to support the family after her husband, Giovan Battista Buitoni, had become ill.  She had her own recipe for pasta that used only high quality durum wheat.

Giulia had pawned her wedding jewellery in order to set up the shop but the business did so well that in 1856 two of the couple’s nine children, Giuseppe and Giovanni, opened a factory in Città di Castello, just over the border in northern Umbria, to manufacture pasta using a hard durum wheat they sourced in Puglia.

Giovanni’s sons, Antonio and Francesco, continued the company’s expansion, founding manufacturing plants in other towns, including Perugia.

It was in Perugia in 1907 that Francesco, noting the increasing popularity of chocolate, joined with several partners in launching the Perugina confectionary company.

Baci chocolates have been one of the most famous lines made by the Perugina chocolate company
Baci chocolates have been one of the most famous
lines made by the Perugina chocolate company
Giovanni junior’s destiny was probably always to have a role in the family business, although it came rather sooner than he expected.  After studying law he had gone to Germany in 1909 to learn the language and to observe the way German industries operated, their practises being somewhat advanced compared with Italy’s.

He curtailed his trip on receiving news that his father’s Perugina chocolate company was on the brink of bankruptcy. Already bursting with ideas for improving business, he persuaded his father to let him take over general management of the company at just 18 years old and succeeded in turning it into a profit-making concern.

Within only a short time, Perugina had expanded from a small basement operation to large factory with hundreds of workers. He installed modern machinery in the plant and introducing new products, among them the famous Baci -‘kisses' - chocolates still produced today, each containing a love note, which were the idea of Luisa Spagnoli, one of his father’s partners - and Giovanni's clandestine lover at the time - who went on to become famous in the fashion industry.

The Buitoni name has been visible in Italian shops since 1827, when the first Buitoni store opened in Sansepolcro
The Buitoni name has been visible in Italian shops since
1827, when the first Buitoni store opened in Sansepolcro
Giovanni even managed to combine running the company with a brief stint in the Italian Army in the First World War and later completing his doctor of law degree at the University of Perugia.

Always an innovator, he increased sales of Buitoni pasta products even in the Great Depression of 1930s by putting picture cards inside each packet for customers to collect. Customers who collected complete sets of the cards were eligible to take part in a radio contest and win prizes, including a FIAT automobile.

Giovanni Buitoni was by now an individual of some stature in Perugia, whose citizens he served as Podesta - mayor - from 1930 to 1935. In 1936, he married the opera singer, Letizia Cairone.

Letizia Cairone married Buitoni in 1936
Letizia Cairone married
Buitoni in 1936
Buitoni’s expansion into production outside Italy came almost through a twist of fate.

In 1939, Giovanni and his wife were invited by the Hershey Chocolate Company, who were holding a 30th anniversary celebration at their headquarters in Pennsylvania, to visit the United States.

They also attended the 1939 World’s Fair to New York City to promote their own products. With his typical entrepreneurial vision, having noted how much visitors were being asked to pay for food, Giovanni opened a pop-up spaghetti café on the site, selling plates of pasta dressed in simple sauces at 25 cents each.  He and Letizia cooked about 15,000 portions over the course of the event.

They found the American lifestyle to their liking and stayed on for a while afterwards. Unfortunately, before they could return to Italy the Second World War broke out, and once Italy had declared war on the side of the Germans, Giovanni and Letizia were unable to travel or access their money.

With no option but to stay and fend for themselves, Letizia followed the lead of Giovanni’s great grandmother and pawned her jewellery, enabling Giovanni to find a small premises in which to open a pasta factory in New Jersey.

Thanks in part to his vision in promoting the Buitoni name at the World’s Fair, the brand began to sell.  Within 15 years, the Buitoni Foods Corporation had a much bigger factory in South Hackensack, New Jersey and later another one in Brooklyn. A spaghetti restaurant in Times Square, New York City, followed, along with a Perugina shop on Fifth Avenue.

Carlo De Benedetti sold the Buitoni business to
Nestlé for $1.4 billion in 1987
Giovanni returned to Italy in 1953 to found the International Buitoni Organization to coordinate all the industrial activities of the family-controlled multinational, but he continued to spend long periods in the United States.

A gifted amateur basso profundo, he was able to realise one of his dreams during his stay in the United States, to sing opera at Carnegie Hall in New York. He invited family, friends and employees to make an audience and, with the help of professional singers Licia Albanese, a soprano, and the baritone Anselmo Colzani, sang arias from Don Giovanni, Rigoletto and Ernani.

Giovanni Buitoni retired from the operational management of the Buitoni group in 1966. He and Letizia had no children and his nephew, Marco Buitoni, succeeded him as president and chief operating officer. Giovanni died in Rome in January 1979.

The business was sold in 1985 to the industrialist Carlo De Benedetti, who owned Olivetti and the newspaper La Repubblica among other things. He in turn sold it for $1.4 billion to its current owner, Nestlé.

The Fontana Maggiore in Perugia's Piazza IV Novembre
The Fontana Maggiore in Perugia's Piazza IV Novembre
Travel tip:

Perugia, the capital of the Umbria region, is an ancient city that sits on a high hilltop midway between Rome and Florence. In Etruscan times it was one of the most powerful cities of the period.  It is also a university town with a long history, the University of Perugia having been founded in 1308.  The presence of the University for Foreigners and a number of smaller colleges gives Perugia a student population of more than 40,000.  The centre of the city, Piazza IV Novembre, has a medieval fountain, the Fontana Maggiore, which was sculpted by Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano.


A view across the rooftops of Sansepolcro
A view across the rooftops of Sansepolcro
Travel tip:

Sansepolcro is a town of 16,000 inhabitants situated about 38km (24 miles) northeast of Arezzo in the east of Tuscany, close to the borders with Umbria and Marche. The historic centre is entirely surrounded with fortified walls, built in the early part of the 16th century. The centre of the town is the Piazza Torre di Berta, named after the 13th-century tower of the same name, off which can be found the impressive Palazzi Pichi and Giovagnoli and the 14th-century cathedral, dedicated to St John the Evangelist.  The city is famous as the place in which the brilliant early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca was born and died.

More reading:

Michele Ferrero, the man who invented Nutella

Mario Pavesi, the biscuit-maker who gave Italy the Autogrill

Anselmo Colzani and his 16 seasons at The Met

Also on this day:

1835: The birth of pioneer criminologist Cesare Lombroso

2007: The death of author and journalist Enzo Biagi

Vino Novello - Italy's 'nouveau' - goes on sale


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