20 July

Guglielmo Marconi - electrical engineer

State funeral for radio pioneer who was at first shunned

Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian electrical engineer who is credited with the invention of radio, died on this day in Rome in 1937.  Aged 63, he passed away following a series of heart attacks.  He was granted a state funeral in recognition of the prestige he brought to Italy through his work. In Great Britain, where he had spent a significant part of his professional life, all BBC and Post Office radio transmitters observed a two-minute silence to coincide with the start of the funeral service in Rome.  Marconi was born in Bologna on April 25, 1874. His father, Giuseppe Marconi, was an Italian country gentleman who was married to Annie Jameson, a member of the Jameson whiskey family from County Wexford in Ireland.  A student of physics and electrical science from an early age, Guglielmo conducted experiments at his father's country estate near Bologna. Read more…

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Pope Leo XIII

Why the papal name Leo has been inspirational

Pope Leo XIII, who was the fourth longest serving pope in history, died on this day in 1903 in Rome at the age of 93. His reputation for supporting the rights of industrial workers inspired the current pope, Leo XIV, to choose Leo as his papal name after he was elected in May 2025.  Leo XIII served as pope for 25 years, despite fears after his election in 1878 that he was in delicate health. Only three popes have served for longer. They were the first pope, Saint Peter the Apostle, Pope Pius IX, and Pope John Paul II. Leo XIII was born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci in Carpineto Romano in Lazio in 1810. His family were noble and religious and he was educated at the Jesuit College of Viterbo. He enjoyed Latin and was writing poems in Latin by the age of 11.  After his mother died, his father wanted his children to be near him, so he moved to Rome. Read more…

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Giorgio Morandi – painter

The greatest master of still life in the 20th century

The artist Giorgio Morandi, who became famous for his atmospheric representations of still life, was born on the day in 1890 in Bologna.  Morandi’s paintings were appreciated for their tonal subtlety in depicting simple subjects, such as vases, bottles, bowls and flowers.  He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna and taught himself to etch by studying books on Rembrandt. Even though he lived his whole life in Bologna, he was deeply influenced by the work of Cézanne, Derain and Picasso.  In 1910 Morandi visited Florence, where the work of Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello also impressed him.  Morandi was appointed as instructor of drawing for elementary schools in Bologna, a position he held from 1914 until 1929. He joined the army in 1915 but suffered a breakdown and had to be discharged.  Read more…

Giovanna Amati - racing driver

Kidnap survivor who drove in Formula One

Racing driver Giovanna Amati, the last female to have been entered for a Formula One Grand Prix, was born on this day in 1959 in Rome.  The story of Amati’s signing for the Brabham F1 team in 1992 was all the more remarkable for the fact that 14 years earlier, as an 18-year-old girl, she had been kidnapped by a ransom gang and held for 75 days in a wooden cage.  Kidnaps happened with alarming frequency in Italy in the 1970s, a period marked by social unrest and acts of violence committed by political extremists, often referred to as the Years of Lead. Young people with rich parents were often the targets. Amati, whose father Giovanni was a wealthy industrialist who owned a chain of cinemas, fitted the bill.  She was snatched outside the family’s villa in Rome in February 1978 and held first in a house a short distance away and then at a secret location. Read more… 

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Book of the Day:  Signor Marconi’s Magic Box, by Gavin Weightman

Signor Marconi’s Magic Box is the intriguing story of how wireless was invented by Guglielmo Marconi – and how it amused Queen Victoria, saved the lives of the Titanic survivors, tracked down criminals and began the radio revolution.  Wireless was the most fabulous invention of the 19th century: the public thought it was magic, the popular newspapers regarded it as miraculous, and the leading scientists of the day (in Europe and America) could not understand how it worked. In 1897, when the first wireless station was established by Marconi in a few rooms of the Royal Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight, nobody knew how far these invisible waves could travel through the ‘ether’, carrying Morse Coded messages decipherable at a receiving station. (The definitive answer was not discovered till the 1920s, by which time radio had become a sophisticated industry filling the airwaves with a cacophony of sounds - most of it American). Marconi himself was the son of an Italian father and an Irish mother (from the Jameson whiskey family); he grew up in Italy and was fluent in Italian and English, but it was in England that his invention first caught on. Marconi was in his early twenties at the time (he died in 1937). With the ‘new telegraphy’ came the real prospect of replacing the network of telegraphic cables that criss-crossed land and sea at colossal expense. Initially it was the great ships that benefited from the new invention - including the Titanic, whose survivors owed their lives to the wireless.

Gavin Weightman is a television documentary-maker, journalist and author of books such as The Making of Modern London: 1815–1914, The Making of Modern London: 1914–1939, London River, Picture Post Britain and Rescue: A History of the British Emergency Services.

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19 July

The Great Fire of Rome

City devastated by nine-day blaze

Almost two thirds of the ancient city of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, which took hold on this day in 64 AD.  Accounts vary as to whether the blaze began on July 19 or on the evening of July 18. What seems not to be in doubt is that the fire spread uncontrollably for six days, seemed to burn itself out, then reignited and continued for another three days.  Of Rome’s 14 districts at the time, only four were unaffected. In three, nothing remained but ashes and the other seven fared only marginally better, with just a few scorched ruins still standing.  Among the more important buildings in the city, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the House of the Vestals, and the emperor Nero's palace, the Domus Transitoria were damaged or destroyed, along with the part of the Forum where senators lived and worked.  Read more…

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Cesare Cremonini - philosopher

Great thinker famous for Galileo ‘denial’

The philosopher Cesare Cremonini, the contemporary and friend of Galileo Galilei who famously refused to look at the Moon through Galileo’s telescope, died on this day in 1631 in Padua.  Cremonini was considered one of the great thinkers of his time, a passionate advocate of the doctrines of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He was paid a handsome salary by his patron, Alfonso II d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, and kings and princes regularly sought his counsel.  He struck up a friendship with the poet, Torquato Tasso, while he was studying in Ferrara, and met Galileo in 1550 after he was appointed by the Venetian Republic to the chair of the University of Padua.  The two built a relationship of respect and friendship that endured for many years, despite many differences of opinion, yet in 1610 a divergence of views on one subject created an impasse. Read more…

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Petrarch – Renaissance poet

Writer whose work inspired the modern Italian language

Renaissance scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca died on this day in 1374 at Arquà near Padua, now renamed Arquà Petrarca. Known in English as Petrarch, he is considered to be an important figure in the history of Italian literature.  He is often credited with initiating the 14th century Renaissance, after his rediscovery of Cicero’s letters, and also with being the founder of Humanism.  In the 16th century, the Italian poet Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch’s works.  Petrarch was born in Arezzo in Tuscany in 1304. His father was a friend of the poet Dante Alighieri, but he insisted that Petrarch studied law.  The poet was far more interested in writing and in reading Latin literature. Petrarch’s first major work, Africa, about the Roman general, Scipio Africanus, turned him into a celebrity.  Read more…

Jacopo Tiepolo - Doge of Venice

Ruler laid down the law and granted land for beautiful churches

Jacopo Tiepolo, the Doge who granted the land for the building of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, died on this day in 1249 in Venice.  His election as Doge in 1229 had sparked a feud between the Tiepolo and Dandolo families, which led to the rules being changed for future elections. He also produced five books of statutes setting out Venetian law which was to change life in Venice significantly, bringing a raft of civil and economic regulations to which Venetians were obliged to adhere.  Tiepolo, who was also known as Giacomo Tiepolo, had previously served as the first Venetian Duke of Crete and had two terms as podestà – chief administrator - in Constantinople.  He acted as the de facto ruler of the Latin Empire, negotiating treaties with the Egyptians and the Turks. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Rome: The Biography of a City, by Christopher Hibbert

This beautifully written, informative study is a portrait, a history and a superb guide book, capturing fully the seductive beauty and the many layered past of the Eternal City. It covers 3,000 years of history from the city’s quasi-mythical origins, through the Etruscan kings, the opulent glory of classical Rome, the decadence and decay of the Middle Ages and the beauty and corruption of the Renaissance, to its time at the heart of Mussolini’s fascist Italy. Exploring the city’s streets and buildings, peopled with popes, gladiators, emperors, noblemen and peasants, Rome: The Biography of a City details the turbulent and dramatic history of Rome in all its depravity and grandeur.

Christopher Hibbert served as an infantry officer during the war, was twice wounded and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945. In his subsequent career as a writer and academic, he was described by the New Statesman as 'a pearl among biographers', and in The Times Educational Supplement as 'perhaps the most gifted popular historian we have'.

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18 July

NEW - Dante Alighieri Society established by Royal Decree

King gives legal status to society promoting Italian language and culture

Italian King Umberto I issued a Royal Decree on this day in 1893 from his estate near Pisa in Tuscany, establishing the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust.  Umberto I had been king since 1878 after succeeding his father Victor Emmanuel I and he traditionally spent the summer at his country estate, Tenuta di San Rossore, situated on the Tuscan coast, within the Migliarino, San Rossore and Massaciuccoli Regional Park, having made it his primary administrative base during the month of July.  He recognised the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust (ente morale) via Royal Decree No 347 to provide the organisation with official legal status to pursue its mission, which was to protect and spread the Italian language and culture globally.  The Dante Alighieri Society had been founded in 1889 by a group of intellectuals led by the poet Giosuè Carducci. Read more… 

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Mysterious death of Caravaggio

Experts divided over how brilliant artist met his end

The death of the brilliant Renaissance artist Caravaggio is said to have occurred on this day in 1610 but the circumstances and even the location are still disputed.  Official records at the time concluded that the artist died in the Tuscan coastal town of Porto Ercole, having probably contracted malaria.  However, there is no record of a funeral having taken place, nor of a burial, and several alternative theories have been put forward as to what happened to him.  One, which came to light in 2010 on the 400th anniversary of the painter's death, is that Caravaggio's death was caused by lead poisoning, the supposition being that lead contained in the paint he used entered his body either through being accidentally ingested or by coming into contact with an open wound.  This was supported by research led by Silvano Vincenti, a prominent art historian and broadcaster. Read more… 

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Giacomo Balla - painter

Work captured light, movement and speed

The painter Giacomo Balla, who was a key proponent of Futurism and was much admired for his depictions of light, movement and speed in his most famous works, was born on this day in 1871 in Turin.  An art teacher who influenced a number of Italy’s most important 20th century painters, Balla became interested in the Futurist movement after becoming a follower of the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is regarded as the ideological founder of Futurism.  Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement. Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.  Balla was one of the signatories of Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters - in 1910.  He differed from some of the other artists who signed the Manifesto, painters such as Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni. Read more… 

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Alberto di Jorio – Cardinal

Priest spent 60 years accumulating money for the Vatican

Cardinal Alberto di Jorio, who increased the wealth of the Vatican by buying shares in big corporations, was born on this day in 1884 in Rome.  Di Jorio was considered to be the power behind the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, popularly known as the Vatican Bank, which he served for 60 years.  As a young man he had been sent to the prestigious Pontifical Roman Seminary and he became a Catholic priest in 1908.  Di Jorio worked in an administrative role for the Vatican to begin with, but in 1918, when he was still in his early 30s, he took up the position of president of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione - The Institute of Religious Works.  He was directed by Pope Pius XI to form a close working relationship with Bernardino Nogara, a layman working as a financial adviser to the Vatican. Nogara helped di Jorio build up the Vatican’s financial strength.  Read more…

William Salice - businessman and chocolatier

Former salesman known as inventor of Kinder Eggs

William Salice, the man credited with being the inventor of the enormously popular children’s confectionery known as Kinder Eggs, was born on this day in 1933 in Casei Gerola, a small town in Lombardy, southwest of Milan. Salice worked for the chocolate and confectionery company headed by Michele Ferrero, which had already enjoyed considerable success thanks to the Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread launched in the 1960s.  Keen to better himself after joining Ferrero as a salesman in 1960 at the age of 27, Salice studied marketing in his spare time.  His willingness to embrace new ideas impressed Michele Ferrero, who commissioned him to come up with a way of turning the popularity in Italy of children’s chocolate Easter eggs into a product that could be sold all year round. Read more...

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Gino Bartali - cycling star and secret war hero

Tour de France champion was clandestine courier

Gino Bartali, one of three Italian cyclists to have won the Tour de France twice and a three-times winner of the Giro d’Italia, was born on this day in 1914 in the town of Ponte a Ema, just outside Florence.  Bartali’s career straddled the Second World War, his two Tour successes coming in 1938 and 1948, but it is as much for what he did during the years of conflict that he is remembered today.  With the knowledge of only a few people, Bartali repeatedly risked his life smuggling false documents around Italy to help Italian Jews escape being deported to Nazi concentration camps.  He hid the rolled up documents inside the hollow handlebars and frame of his bicycle and explained his frequent long-distance excursions as part of the training schedule he needed to maintain in order to keep himself in peak physical fitness.  Read more…

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Angelo Morbelli - painter

Artist known for socially conscious themes

Angelo Morbelli, a painter who won acclaim for his socially conscious genre scenes, was born on this day in 1853 in the Piedmont city of Alessandria.  Initially a painter of landscapes and historical scenes, he switched quite early in his career to contemporary subjects, many of which reflected his own social concerns. He had a particular interest in the lives of the elderly and the fate of the women who laboured in the region’s rice fields.  He was a proponent of the Divisionist style of painting that was founded in the 1880s by the French post-Impressionist Georges Seurat. In Divisionism, rather than physically blending paints to produce variations in colour, the painter constructed a picture from separate dots of paint that by their proximity would produce an optical interaction. Divisionists believed this technique achieved greater luminosity of colour.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Dante, by Alessandro Barbero. Translated by Allan Cameron

Since Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy it has defined how people imagine and depict not only heaven and hell, but romantic love and the human condition. However, while Dante's works are widely celebrated outside Italy, the circumstances of his extraordinary life are less well known.  Born in 1265, Dante's adolescence was characterised by literary genius, but his political activism in one of the medieval world's wealthiest cities led to his death in exile. Animating the political intrigue, violence, civil war, exile and cities that shaped Dante's poetic and political life, Barbero’s Dante is a remarkable portrait of one of the creators of European literature and a towering medieval figure, written to mark the 700th anniversary of his death.

Alessandro Barbero is an Italian historian, writer and essayist. Born in Turin, he attended the University of Turin, where he studied literature and medieval history. He is a previous winner of the Strega Prize, Italy's most distinguished literary award. Allan Cameron (born 1952) is a Scottish author and translator who has translated more than 25 books from Italian to English.

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Dante Alighieri Society established by Royal Decree

King gives legal status to society promoting Italian language and culture

The Dante Alighieri Society was founded
by a group of intellectuals in 1889

Italian King Umberto I issued a Royal Decree on this day in 1893 from his estate near Pisa in Tuscany, establishing the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust.

Umberto I had been king since 1878 after succeeding his father Victor Emmanuel I and he traditionally spent the summer at his country estate, Tenuta di San Rossore, situated on the Tuscan coast, within the Migliarino, San Rossore, Massaciuccoli Regional Park, having made it his primary administrative base during the month of July.

He recognised the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust (ente morale) via Royal Decree No 347 to provide the organisation with official legal status to pursue its mission, which was to protect and spread the Italian language and culture globally.

The Dante Alighieri Society had been founded in 1889 by a group of intellectuals led by the poet Giosuè Carducci. It was during a period of mass Italian emigration and the Society aimed to maintain spiritual and cultural ties between Italian expatriates and their homeland. They also wanted to protect and spread the Italian language and culture across the world and nurture love and admiration for the Italian civilisation among foreigners.

By early in the 20th century there were Dante Alighieri Societies in Tunis, Zurich, Constantinople, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Belgrade and Barcelona, and libraries were established to allow Italians abroad to continue reading in Italian.

In the early 1920s there were 200 Dante Committees running societies in Italy and Italian colonies and another 93 abroad.

After World War II a new statute was enshrined stating ‘Societa Dante Alighieri, founded in 1889, aims to protect and spread Italian language and culture in the world, regardless of any particular politics, race, nationality, confession or ideology. It is the free association of those in the world who are united by the love for the Italian language, which is linked to cultural humanism and the universal language of music, morally inspired by the high model of Dantean character.’

The poet Giosuè Carducci was a 
driving force in the society's formation 

Dante Alighieri, after whom the Society is named, is Italy’s most important and celebrated poet. He was born in Florence in about 1265, but was forced to go into exile by the ruling faction in the city in 1302.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is considered to be the greatest literary work written in Italian and has been acclaimed all over the world.

In the 13th century most poetry was written in Latin, but Dante wrote in the Tuscan dialect, which made his work more accessible to ordinary people.

Writers who came later, such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, followed this trend. Therefore, Dante can be said to have played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy and is considered the father of Italian literature.

His depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the Divine Comedy later influenced the works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lord Alfred Tennyson, among many others.

By 1315 Florence had been forced to grant an amnesty to those in exile in exchange for public penance and the payment of a heavy fine, but Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile.

He accepted an invitation from Prince Guido Novello da Polenta to go to Ravenna in 1318. He finished Paradiso - Heaven - and died there, possibly of malaria, in 1321 at about the age of 56.

Dante was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore, now known as the Basilica di San Francesco. A tomb was erected for him in Ravenna in 1483.

Florence made repeated requests for the return of Dante’s remains, but Ravenna has always refused. A tomb was built for him in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence but it has remained empty.

Today the Dante Alighieri Society have many groups in 74 different countries connecting about 142,000 people throughout the world who love the Italian lifestyle and culture.

Dante's tomb remains in
his city of exile, Ravenna

Travel tip:

Dante’s house in Via Santa Margherita in Florence is now a museum, il Museo Casa di Dante, spread over three floors with exhibits illustrating the life and works of the great poet. Ravenna, where Dante lived in exile until his death in 1321, has a wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica di San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics. The city of Ravenna is mentioned by Dante in Canto V of his Inferno. Dante’s tomb is in Via Dante Alighieri next to the Basilica di San Francesco.

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The San Rossore estate in Tuscany was used by
King Umberto I as a summer retreat

Travel tip: 

Tenuta di San Rossore is a vast, protected estate of forests, wetlands, and coastal dunes stretching between Pisa, the Arno and Serchio rivers, and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Once a Medici and later Savoy royal reserve, the estate evolved over centuries through reforestation, hydraulic engineering, and careful land management, eventually becoming part of the Migliarino, San Rossore and Massaciuccoli Natural Park. Its 4,800 hectares encompass ancient pinewoods, forests of oak, ash, and alder, and the cotoni - historic coastal dunes shaped by wind and colonised by sub‑Mediterranean vegetation. Seasonal marshes known as lame create biodiverse wet depressions that attract abundant wildlife. Visitors frequently encounter fallow deer, wild boar, and an exceptional array of migratory and wintering birdlife, especially around the Lame di Fuori wetlands.  Umberto I continued the expansion and improvement of San Rossore begun under his father, Vittorio Emanuele II. Umberto I invested in its infrastructure, forestry, and animal husbandry. One of his most distinctive interventions was a renewed breeding programme for the estate’s historic dromedary herd, a population that had existed since Medici times.  

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More reading:

Dante Alighieri, the famous son of Florence who remains in exile

The beautiful banker’s daughter who was Dante’s inspiration

Giosuè Carducci, the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature

Also on this day:

1610: The death of Renaissance genius Caravaggio

1853: The birth of painter Angelo Morbelli

1871: The birth of Futurist painter Giacomo Balla

1884: The birth of Cardinal Alberto di Jorio

1914: The birth of cyclist and war hero Gino Bartoli

1933: The birth of William Salice, inventor of the Kinder Egg

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