3 May

Francesco Algarotti - writer and art collector

Philosopher and polymath with a playboy lifestyle

The multi-talented writer, philosopher and art connoisseur Francesco Algarotti, one of the most prominent and colourful individuals in 18th century intellectual society, died on this day in 1764 in Pisa.  Algarotti, who wrote many essays and a number of books, was something of a polymath in his breadth of knowledge on a wide number of subjects, including architecture and music as well as art. He was also a charismatic figure who became friends with most of the leading authors of his day, including Voltaire, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens and Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis.  His urbane manner and suave good looks, combined with his considerable intellect, led him to acquire admirers of both sexes. Indeed, at one time he is said to have found himself at the centre of a colourful bisexual love triangle involving John Hervey, the English peer and politician, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the aristocratic travel writer. Read more…

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Raffaele Riario – Cardinal

Patron of arts linked with murder conspiracies

Renaissance Cardinal Raffaele Riario was born Raffaele Sansoni Galeoti Riario on this day in 1461 in Savona.  A patron of the arts, he is remembered for inviting Michelangelo to Rome and commissioning Palazzo della Cancelleria to be built. He was also embroiled in murder conspiracies which nearly cost him his life.  Although Riario was born in poverty, his mother was a niece of Francesco della Rovere, who became Pope Sixtus IV in 1471.  As a relative of the Pope he was created a Cardinal in 1477 and was named administrator of several dioceses, which gave him a good income at the age of 16, while he was studying canon law at the University of Pisa.  On his way to Rome in 1478, Riario stopped off in Florence, where he became a witness to the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici. The Pazzi family wanted to replace the Medici as rulers of Florence. Read more…

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Niccolò Machiavelli – writer and diplomat

Political scientist fathered belief that ‘the ends justify the means’ 

Statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, whose name has become synonymous with the idea of political cunning, was born on this day in 1469 in Florence.  The ideas he put forward in his writing were to make the word ‘machiavellian’ a regularly used pejorative adjective and the phrase ‘Old Nick’ a term to denote the devil in English.  The son of an attorney, Machiavelli was educated in grammar, rhetoric and Latin. After Florence expelled the Medici family in 1494 he went to work for the new republic in the office that produced official Florentine documents.  Machiavelli also carried out diplomatic missions to Rome on behalf of the republic where he witnessed the brutality of Cesare Borgia and his father, Pope Alexander VI, as they tried to acquire large parts of central Italy.  He later became responsible for the Florentine militia.  Read more…

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Battle of Tolentino

Murat is defeated but ignites desire for Risorgimento

Neapolitan troops were defeated by Austrian forces on this day in 1815 near Tolentino in what is now the Marche region of Italy.  It was the decisive battle in the Neapolitan War fought by the Napoleonic King of Naples, Joachim Murat, in a bid to keep the throne after the Congress of Vienna had ruled that the Bourbon Ferdinand IV, King of Sicily, should be restored.  The conflict was similar to the Battle of Waterloo, in that it occurred during the 100 days following Napoleon’s return from exile.  Murat had declared war on Austria in March 1815 after learning about Napoleon’s return to France and he advanced north with about 50,000 troops, establishing his headquarters at Ancona.  By the end of March, Murat’s army had arrived in Rimini, where he incited all Italian nationalists to go to war with him against the Austrians.  Read more…

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Francesco Zucco – artist

Versatile painter decorated churches and produced acclaimed portraits

Francesco Zucco, who was a prolific painter in the Baroque style in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in northern Italy, died on this day in 1627 in Bergamo in Lombardy.  Zucco painted both secular and religious subjects after he had trained as an artist and learnt about technique from other Bergamo painters, such as Giovanni Paolo Cavagna and Enea Salmeggia. Art critics have compared the quality and style of his portrait painting with that of Veronese and Giovan Battista Moroni. The artist was born at some time between 1570 and 1575 in Bergamo. He is known to have studied art at the workshop of the Campi brothers in Cremona and afterwards returned to live in his native city, where he associated with other painters working in Bergamo at the time.  Even if he was never a pupil of the Bergamo portrait painter Giovan Battista Moroni, art experts believe Zucco must have studied the artist’s works closely. Read more…

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Gino Cervi - actor

Star best known for Don Camillo and Maigret

The actor Gino Cervi, a star of cinema and television screens in Italy for more than four decades as well as an accomplished stage performer, was born on this day in 1901 in Bologna.  Although his movie credits run to more than 120, he is probably best known for his portrayal of the Communist mayor Peppone in the Don Camillo films of the 1950s and ‘60s, and for playing Chief Inspector Maigret in the Italian TV series of the ‘60s and ‘70s based on the crime novels of Georges Simenon.  Cervi was the father of Italian film producer Tonino Cervi and the grandfather of actress Valentina Cervi.  Born Luigi Cervi in the historic Santo Stefano district of Bologna, Gino’s interest in acting had its roots in his journalist father Antonio’s appointment as theatre critic for Il Resto del Carlino, the city’s daily newspaper.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment, by Isobel Grundy

This book is the first to look at Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's achievement as a vital figure in the women's literary tradition. Robert Halsband's book on her life, the sixth this century and published in 1956, was the first to apply scholarly techniques to establishing the facts. The inaccurate accounts given before Halsband testify to Lady Mary's compelling interest as a woman who wrote, travelled, campaigned publicly for medical advance, gossiped, and was involved in high-profile literary quarrels. Knowledge of her life has made considerable gains since Halsband, as understanding of the issues involved in trying to move between the roles of proper lady and woman writer has increased enormously. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment fruitfully exploits the tension between literary history and feminist reading. Isobel Grundy highlights Montagu's adolescent longing for literary fame, her growing understanding of the implications of this for gender and class imperatives, the frustrations and concessions involved in her collaborations with male writers, the punitive responses of society, the gaps at every stage of her life between her ascertainable circumstances and her construction of herself in letters and other writings. 

Isobel Grundy is a British-Canadian literary scholar, feminist author and educator known for her work on early women's writing, notably co-editing The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (1990). As a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, she has contributed extensively to reclaiming neglected women's voices in 18th-century literature.

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2 May

Michele Busiri Vici - architect

Key designer in Costa Smeralda project

The architect Michele Busiri Vici, whose distinctive work featured heavily in the development of the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia as an exclusive holiday playground in the 1960s, was born on this day in 1894 in Rome.  Along with the French architect Jacques Couelle and his fellow Italian, Luigi Vietti, Vici was commissioned by the Aga Khan, Prince Shah Karim al-Husseini, to develop the area at the northeastern tip of the island and build a new resort, Porto Cervo.  The prince, himself said to be worth $13.3 billion as one of the world’s richest royals, assembled a consortium of investors to finance the project, which began in 1961 and remains a destination popular with celebrities, business and political leaders and other wealthy individuals.  Vici’s contributions included the highly distinctive church of Stella Maris in Porto Cervo, the Hotel Romazzino and Hotel Lucia della Muntagna and numerous villas.   Read more…

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Alessandro Scarlatti - composer

Prolific opera composer was ahead of his time

Baroque composer Alessandro Scarlatti was born on this day in 1660 in Palermo.  He is considered to be the founder of the Neapolitan School of opera, from which modern opera developed, and his two sons, Domenico and Pietro Filippo, also went on to become composers.  Scarlatti is believed to have been a pupil of Giacomo Carissimi in Rome. When his opera Gli equivoci nel sembiante was produced in the city he gained the support of Queen Christina of Sweden, an enthusiastic patron of the arts who had taken up residence there. He became her maestro di cappella and joined the Arcadian Academy she had founded.  Along with composers Bernardo Pasquini and Arcangelo Corelli, he regularly visited her home to perform music he had dedicated to her.  In 1684 Scarlatti became maestro di cappella to the royal family in Naples and produced a series of operas and music for state occasions for them.  Read more…

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Pietro Frua - car designer

Built business from a bombed-out factory

The car designer and coachbuilder Pietro Frua, who built some of Italy’s most beautiful cars without achieving the fame of the likes of Giovanni Bertone or Battista “Pinin” Farina, was born on this day in 1913 in Turin.  He is particularly remembered for his work with Maserati, for whom he designed the A6G and the Mistral among other models.  The son of a Fiat employee, Carlo Frua, Pietro was an apprentice draughtsman with Fiat and from the age of 17 worked alongside Battista Farina for his brother, Giovanni Farina, who had a coachbuilding business in Turin. He became director of styling for Stabilimenti Farina at the age of just 22.  After being obliged to diversify during the war, when he designed electric ovens and children’s model cars among other things, Frua bought a bombed-out factory building in 1944, restored it to serviceable order and hired 15 workers to help him launch his own business.   Read more…

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Giuseppe Morello - gangster

Sicilian established first New York crime ‘family’

The Mafia boss Giuseppe Morello, who is credited with building the first of the New York gangs to be known as a crime ‘family’, was born on this day in 1867 in the notorious Sicilian crime stronghold of Corleone, a small town in a mountainous area 50km (31 miles) inland from the island’s capital, Palermo.  Morello had a deformed right hand with a single finger that was always bent, on account of which he became known as Joe l’artiglio - Joe ‘the claw’.  Along with three half-brothers, Morello established the 107th Street Mob in the East Harlem district of Manhattan in the late 1890s. The gang is recognised as the organisation that would eventually evolve into the Genovese crime family, the oldest of the New York Mafia’s so-called Five Families.  Morello is thought to have been brought up among the criminal underworld in Sicily. Read more…

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Marco Pannella - campaigning politician

Radical voice who helped modernise Italian society

The Radical politician Marco Pannella, whose relentless campaigning on civil rights and other issues helped transform modern Italian society, was born on this day in 1930 in Teramo in Abruzzo.  Pannella’s party won only a 3.4 per cent share of vote in the most successful election he fought yet he forced referendums to be held on divorce, abortion, the abolition of nuclear power, the public funding of political parties and many other issues, many of which led to changes in the law.  He was so passionate about the causes for which he campaigned he regularly staged hunger strikes to demonstrate his commitment and to attract publicity.  In 1970, for example, he went 78 days without food, allowing himself to consume only vitamin pills and three cups of coffee per day, losing 27 kilos (60lb) in weight before parliament agreed to hold a debate over the divorce laws.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Rough Guides Sardinia, edited by Ros Belford and the Rough Guides team

Ideal for independent travellers, Rough Guide Sardinia, written by Italy experts, goes beyond the basics. It blends must-see sights with hidden gems and offers unmatched practical guidance for seamless planning and on-the-go exploration. Packed with in-depth advice often missing from other guides, it helps you navigate with ease. From using public transport to discovering the best dining, accommodations, and local experiences, this guide covers it all. Inside, you'll find in-depth coverage of key areas with curated experiences and honest reviews, itinerary samples, practical information and essential tips, expert recommendations on the best places to eat, drink, stay, enjoy nightlife or outdoor activities, plus advice on when to go to Sardinia and which sights not to miss. There are easy-to-use maps, cultural insights, and language essentials including Italian and Sardu phrases and vocabulary. Coverage includes: Cagliari, Campidano, La Marmilla, Sarrabus, Oristano, Alghero, Sassari, Gallura, Nuoro and Ogliastra. 

Writer and journalist Ros Belford spends her time between Italy and Cambridge and is the author of numerous guidebooks to Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean. She has written articles on travel and food for many magazines and newspapers.

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1 May

Giovanni Guareschi – writer

Satirical magazine editor first used Don Camillo to fill a gap

Author Giovanni Guareschi, the creator of the fictional character, Don Camillo, was born on this day in 1908 in Roccabianca in Emilia-Romagna.  The popular stories featuring his famous comic creations, the stalwart Italian priest, Don Camillo, and the Communist mayor, Peppone, have since been made into many radio and television programmes and films.  Guareschi, who was christened Giovannino, started his career writing for the Gazzetta di Parma and then became a magazine editor.  He was called up to serve in the army in 1943 but was quickly taken prisoner, along with other Italian soldiers, by the Germans. He wrote a secret diary while he was in the prison camp, Diario Clandestino.  After the war Guareschi founded a weekly satirical magazine, Candido, where his Don Camillo stories first appeared.  Read more…

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Ignazio Silone – politician and author

Socialist leader became famous for anti-Fascist novels

Writer and political leader Ignazio Silone was born Secondino Tranquilli on this day in 1900 in Pescina dei Marsi in the region of Abruzzo.  Tranquilli became famous under the pseudonym, Ignazio Silone, during World War II for his powerful anti-Fascist novels and he was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature ten times.  Silone’s father, Paolo Tranquilli, died when he was 11 and he lost his mother, Marianna, and other members of his family four years later in the Avezzano earthquake of 1915.  Two years afterwards he joined the Young Socialist group of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), eventually becoming their leader and editor of their newspaper Avanguardia.  He was a founding member of the breakaway Italian Communist Party (PCI) party in 1921 and became one of its covert leaders during the Fascist regime, editing their newspaper in Trieste, Il Lavoratore. Read more…

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The Portella della Ginestra Massacre

Conspiracy theories behind murder of peasants

Sicily and the whole of Italy was horrified on this day in 1947 when gunmen opened fire on defenceless peasants gathered for a Labour Day celebration in the hills above Palermo, killing 11 and wounding more than 30 in what became known as the Portella della Ginestra Massacre.  The victims included four children between the ages of seven and 15, who were cut down indiscriminately by a gang of men, some on horseback, who appeared suddenly and began firing machine guns as the peasants, numbering several hundred, congregated on a plain along a remote mountain pass between the towns of Piana degli Albanesi and San Giuseppe Jato, where a Labour Day rally had taken place every year since 1893.  Salvatore Giuliano, an outlaw wanted in connection with the killing of a police officer in 1943, was held responsible.  Read more…

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Laura Betti - actress and jazz singer

Long-time companion of director Pier Paolo Pasolini

The actress and singer Laura Betti, who appeared in a number of important Italian films in the 1960s and 1970s, including Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, was born on this day in 1927 in Casalecchio di Reno, in Emilia-Romagna.  In addition to Teorema, which won her the coveted Volpi Cup for best actress at the 1968 Venice Film Festival, Betti appeared in six other Pasolini films as the two developed a special and unlikely relationship.  Betti, a vivacious blonde with striking good looks, had no shortage of suitors among the authors, artists, singers and aspiring actors that made up her circle in Rome in the 1950s, but Pasolini was gay and had no interest in her in a romantic sense.  Yet he became a regular guest at her apartment near the Palazzo Farnese.  Read more…

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Uberto Pasolini - film producer and director

Roman count who found unexpected fame with The Full Monty

The film director and producer Uberto Pasolini, who gained international recognition when his British comedy The Full Monty became one of UK cinema’s biggest commercial success stories in 1997, was born on this day in 1957 in Rome.  A nephew of the great Italian director Luchino Visconti, Pasolini worked for 12 years as an investment banker in England before following his dream to work in the film industry, abandoning his career to work, initially without pay, on the set of the David Puttnam-Roland Joffé film, The Killing Fields, in Thailand.  Puttnam took him on, at first as a location scout, before Pasolini moved to America to become part of Puttnam’s production team in Los Angeles. He set up his own company in London in 1994 and went on to direct some of his own productions, including the critically acclaimed 2008 movie Machan. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Little World of Don Camillo, by Giovanni Guareschi

In Don Camillo's Little World, where the Cold War is fought on the very doorstep of life, the hot-headed Catholic priest and the equally pugnacious Communist mayor, Peppone, confront one another in riotous and often hilarious manner.  But when Don Camillo unburdens himself in the village church a voice from the cross above the high altar responds and his conversations with Il Cristo begin. We watch and listen, as with fascinating insights and gentle humour the prejudices of the stubborn priest are undermined, a resolution to conflict emerges, and the situation is transformed to the benefit of the community.  It is then that we see that the ideas and values of Don Camillo's Little World are true for all times, the world over… In this brand new, authorised edition of Giovanni Guareschi's enchanting classic, 19 stories never before translated into English are published for the first time. Set in an isolated village amidst the sultry beauty of Italy’s Po Valley, The Little World of Don Camillo has been enjoyed by countless folk from 10 to 100, not only in book form, but also on film, TV and radio.

Giovannino Guareschi, known as Giovanni to his millions of English language readers, was born at Fontanelle in the Valley of the Po on the 1st of May, 1908.  He wrote 347 stories featuring Don Camillo, a character who has done for Italy what Cervantes' Don Quixote did for Spain.

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30 April

Antonio Sant’Elia - architectural visionary

Futurist’s ideas were decades ahead of his time

The architect Antonio Sant’Elia, best known for producing hundreds of drawings based on his vision of an idealised modern industrial city, was born on this day in 1888 in Como in Lombardy.  Sant’Elia’s life was short - he died in battle barely a year after signing up for military service in the First World War - and his physical legacy comprised only one completed building, a modest villa in the hills above his home city.  Yet, thanks to the boldly imaginative designs he captured in dozens of sketches illustrating how he saw the cities of the future, Sant’Elia is still seen as one of modern architecture’s most influential figures, more than a century after his death.  A builder by trade, in 1912 Sant’Elia set up a design office in Milan with fellow architect Mario Chittone.  He was already a follower of Futurism, the avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that had been launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.  Read more…

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Andrea Dandolo - Doge of Venice

Reign tested by earthquake, plague and war

Andrea Dandolo, the fourth member of a patrician Venetian family to serve as Doge of the historic Republic, was born on this day in 1306.  A notably erudite scholar, Dandolo wrote two chronicles of the history of Venice in Latin and reformed the Venetian legal code by bringing together all of the diverse laws applicable to the Venetian Republic within one legal framework.  He achieved these things despite his reign being marked by a devastating earthquake, a catastrophic outbreak of the Black Death plague and two expensive wars, against Hungary and then Genoa.  Dandolo studied at the University of Padua, where he became a professor of law, a position he maintained until he was elected Doge. He quickly rose to a position of prominence in Venetian life, being appointed Procurator of St Mark’s Basilica, the second most prestigious position in the Venetian hierarchy after the Doge, at the age of just 25.  Read more…

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Francesco Primaticcio - painter, sculptor and architect

Italian who had major influence on French art 

The Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor Francesco Primaticcio, who played an important role in shaping the artistic landscape of France during the 16th century, was born on this day in 1504 in Bologna.  Primaticcio spent almost two thirds of his life in France, where he rose to be superintendent of works at the Château de Fontainebleau, the former medieval castle that was turned into an opulent Renaissance-style palace by Francis I of France.  Primaticcio trained as an artist in Bologna under Innocenzo da Imola before moving to Mantua to study with Giulio Romano, a former pupil of Raphael whose style helped define Mannerism.  He assisted Romano in his work on the decorations of the Palazzo del Te in Mantua, a project that refined his skills in fresco painting and architectural ornamentation.  Read more…

Luigi Russolo – painter and composer

Futurist artist who invented 'noise music'

Luigi Russolo, who is regarded as the first ‘noise music’ composer, was born on this day in 1885 in Portogruaro in the Veneto.  Russolo originally chose to become a painter and went to live in Milan where he met and was influenced by other artists in the Futurist movement.  Along with other leading figures in the movement, such as Carlo Carrà, he signed both the Manifesto of Futurist Painters and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting as the artists set out how they saw Futurism being represented on canvas, and afterwards participated in Futurist art exhibitions.  Russolo issued his own manifesto, L’arte dei rumori - The Art of Noises - in 1913, which he expanded into book form in 1916.  He stated that the industrial revolution had given modern man a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. Read more…

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Pope Pius V - Saint

Pontiff dismissed jester and clamped down on heretics

The feast day of Pope Saint Pius V is celebrated every year on this day, the day before the anniversary of his death in 1572 in Rome.  Pius V, who became Pope in 1566, is remembered chiefly for his role in the Counter Reformation, the period of Catholic resurgence following the Protestant Reformation.  He excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and for persecuting English Catholics and he formed the Holy League, an alliance of Catholic states against the Turks.  Pius V was born Antonio Ghislieri in Bosco, now Bosco Marengo, in Piedmont. At the age of 14 he entered the Dominican Order, taking the name of Michele. He was ordained at Genoa in 1528 and then sent to Pavia to lecture.  He became a bishop under Pope Pius IV but after opposing the pontiff was dismissed. After the death of Pius IV, Ghislieri was elected Pope Pius V in 1566. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Futurism: A Very Short Introduction, by Ara Merjian

From the motorcar to the radio, modern technology radically transformed urban life by the first decade of the 20th century. As one of Western Europe's least industrialized countries, Italy appeared impervious to such developments. It was this state of affairs at which the Futurist movement took aim. With its founding in 1909, the poet and impresario Filippo Tommaso Marinetti called for a revitalization of aesthetic expression by means of "movement and aggression."  A growing cadre of Futurist painters, poets, authors, and musicians exchanged Italy's cultural patrimony for new technologies, media, and metaphors, championing machine-propelled speed and its salutary hazards. Cubist painting, collage, and sculpture lent the Futurist campaign a revolutionary style to match its rhetorical fervor. Yet whereas Cubism remained a revolution of artistic form, Futurism sought to shatter the boundaries between art and life itself.  Indeed, the movement's challenge to 20th-century culture lay not in any specific set of images or objects, but a more comprehensive revolution of sensibility. Futurism: A Very Short Introduction explains how, from its base in Milan, Futurist activity spread throughout the entire peninsula. Prefiguring and then propagandizing Fascist imperialism, Futurism also galvanized a range of progressive modernist phenomena. More than a century later, the “activist model” of the Futurist avant-garde remains deeply fraught in its historical implications.

Ara H Merjian is Professor of Italian Studies at New York University, where he is an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History. He has written and edited several books.

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