31 December

NEW - Francesco Alberoni – sociologist

Academic explained the mystery of falling in love

Francesco Alberoni, who became a well-known sociologist because of his regular columns in Il Corriere della Sera, was born on this day in 1929 in Borgonovo Val Tidone in the province of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.  Alberoni was successful with the short books he wrote on the themes of love, good and evil, and ethics, and his work explored the dynamics of social relations. In 1979 he produced a bestseller, Innamoramento e amore (Falling in Love).  He was the descendant of a famous Cardinal from Piacenza, Giulio Alberoni, who was active in European diplomatic circles in the 17th century.  But his own upbringing was during the Fascist era in Italy and while he studied at the Liceo Scientifico in Piacenza, he claims he was subjected to military-style discipline.  Alberoni moved to Pavia to study medicine, where he met the Capuchin friar, Agostino Gemelli, who encouraged him to pursue his interest in the study of social behaviour. His first book, L’Elite senza potere - Elite without Power - was published in 1963. Alberoni then published a further three books before he completed the work that was to set out the foundations for his own sociological ideas, Movimento e istituzione - Movement and Institution - which was published in 1977.  Read more…

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Giovanni Michelucci - architect

Designer made mark with railway station and motorway church

The architect Giovanni Michelucci, whose major legacies include the Santa Maria Novella railway station in Florence, died on this day in 1990 in his studio just outside the Tuscan city at Fiesole.  Considered by many to be the 'father' of modern Italian architecture, he was only two days away from his 100th birthday.  He was still working and is said to have been inspecting progress on his latest project when he slipped and fell, later suffering a cardiac arrest.  Michelucci, who was born in Pistoia on January 2, 1891, is also remembered for the brilliantly unconventional church of San Giovanni Battista, with its tent-like curved roof, which forms part of a rest area on the Autostrada del Sole as it passes Florence.  The Santa Maria Novella station project for which he first won acclaim came after a collective of young architects known as the Tuscan Group, co-ordinated by Michelucci, beat more than 100 other entries in a national competition in the early 1930s to build a new station behind the church of the same name.  The linear design was loathed by conservatives but loved by modernists, although it could not be said to conform to the style identifiable as Fascist architecture in Italy at the time.  Read more…

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Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino

Image of wise ruler has been preserved in paintings

Eleonora Gonzaga, a noblewoman who was painted four times by Titian, was born on this day in 1493 in Mantua.  When she was 15 she married Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, the 16-year-old nephew of Pope Julius II and the marriage was celebrated at the Vatican in Rome.  Eleonora, along with the dowager duchess, Elisabetta Montefeltro, became largely responsible for the internal government of the duchy because Francesco was a captain in the papal army and often absent from Urbino. She also became an important patron of the arts.  Eleonora was the eldest of the seven children of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua and Isabella d’Este. Although her father was a notorious libertine, her mother was also famous for being a patron of the arts. As a result, Eleonora was well educated in reading, writing, Latin, music and needlework, which had made her cultured and very suitable for marriage with another member of the nobility.  But, within six years of their marriage, the fortunes of Eleonora and her husband, Francesco, changed suddenly. The new pope, Leo X, ordered Francesco to lead an army in the pope’s planned invasion of France.  Read more…

Giovanni Boldini – artist and portraitist

Sought-after painter who captured elegance of Belle Époque

Giovanni Boldini, whose sumptuous images of the rich and famous made him the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris during the Belle Époque era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was born in Ferrara on this day in 1842.  His subjects included some famous names, including the opera composer Giuseppe Verdi and the actress Sarah Bernhardt, and he had countless commissions from prominent individuals in Parisian society.  Boldini's skill was to capture his subject in soft-focus, elongating their features to accentuate beauty and creating a sense of motion in the figures so that they appeared to be both sophisticated and full of life.  He dressed his subjects in sumptuous gowns that would grace any fashion catwalk and society women in particular felt the need to confirm their status by having a Boldini portrait to show off to their friends and demanded that their wealthy husbands arrange a sitting.  Boldini came from an artistic background.  His father, Antonio, painted religious figures and scenes and had a house in Via Voltapaletto, which links Ferrara’s cathedral with the Basilica of San Francesco.  Read more…

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Giovanni Pascoli – poet

Painful childhood inspired great verse

Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli, who was regarded as the greatest Italian poet writing at the beginning of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1855 in San Mauro di Romagna, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia.  Pascoli’s poems in Latin won prizes and he was regarded by the writer Gabriele D’Annunzio as the finest Latin poet since the Augustan age, which lasted from approximately 43 BC to AD 18 and was thought to be the golden age of Latin literature.  Although Pascoli was the fourth of ten children, his family were comfortable financially and his father, Ruggero Pascoli, was administrator of an estate of farmland on which they lived.  But when Giovanni Pascoli was just 12 years old, his father, returning from Cesena in a carriage drawn by a black and white mare, was shot and killed by an assassin hiding in a ditch at the side of the road. The mare carried on slowly and brought home the body of her master, Ruggero, but the murderer was never brought to justice.  Giovanni Pascoli’s mother died the following year and five other children in the family had also died before he became an adult.  Read more…

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Festa di San Silvestro – Feast of Saint Sylvester

Celebrating with a meal of pork and lentils for a prosperous New Year

New Year’s Eve in Italy is known as the Festa di San Silvestro in memory of Pope Sylvester I who died on this day in 335 in Rome.  It is not a public holiday in Italy but in normal times it is a festive time everywhere, with firework displays, concerts and parties.  One custom still followed in some parts of Italy is throwing your old things out of the window at midnight to symbolise your readiness to accept the New Year.  Throughout Italy, bars and restaurants are busy with residents and visitors enjoying drinks and meals before seeing in the New Year in the main square when the bells ring at midnight.  Popular menu items include cotechino (Italian sausage), zampone (stuffed pig’s trotter) and lenticchie (lentils).  Pork is said to represent the fullness or richness of life, while lentils are supposed to symbolise wealth or money. Many Italians believe the coming year could bring prosperity if these foods are eaten on New Year’s Eve.  The President of the Republic delivers an end of year message from the Quirinale in Rome, which is shown on most Italian television channels during the evening. There are live concerts in the open air in many squares throughout Italy, some of which are televised.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Innamoramento e amore (Italian Edition),  by Francesco Alberoni

First published in 1979, Innamoramento e amore was like a flash that suddenly reveals a hidden reality, and had an immediate worldwide success with translations into 25 languages. Criticising the dominant philosophical and psychological currents that reduced falling in love to a sexual repression or infantile regression, the book places it in the field of collective processes in which two individuals rebel against their previous bonds and give rise, through the enthusiasm of the nascent state, to a new community: the couple in love, projected into the future. Innamoramento e amore is universally recognised as the most complete and in-depth analysis of this extraordinary human experience.

Francesco Alberoni was an academic sociologist and author. At various times he was Professor of Sociology at Milan, Catania and Lausanne universities and Dean of the University of Trento.

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Francesco Alberoni – sociologist

Academic explained the mystery of falling in love

Francesco Alberoni wrote more than 25 books,
some published in 20 languages

Francesco Alberoni, who became a well-known sociologist because of his regular columns in Il Corriere della Sera, was born on this day in 1929 in Borgonovo Val Tidone in the province of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.

Alberoni was successful with the short books he wrote on the themes of love, good and evil, and ethics, and his work explored the dynamics of social relations. In 1979 he produced a bestseller, Innamoramento e amore (Falling in Love).

He was the descendant of a famous Cardinal from Piacenza, Giulio Alberoni, who was active in European diplomatic circles in the 17th century.

But his own upbringing was during the Fascist era in Italy and while he studied at the Liceo Scientifico in Piacenza, he claims he was subjected to military-style discipline.

Alberoni moved to Pavia to study medicine, where he met the Capuchin friar, Agostino Gemelli, who encouraged him to pursue his interest in the study of social behaviour.

His first book, L’Elite senza potere - Elite without Power - was published in 1963. Alberoni then published a further three books before he completed the work that was to set out the foundations for his own sociological ideas, Movimento e istituzione - Movement and Institution - which was published in 1977.

This was one of the first books on the sociological analysis of movements and it explored how leadership, ideas and communication all come together to fuel the birth of different movements.

Innamoramento e amore became
a bestseller in Italy

His most famous book, Falling in Love, maintains that the experience of falling in love is in essence the nascent state, or "ignition state", of a collective movement which is made up exclusively of two people.

In exploring the subject, Alberoni used the language of love stories rather than psychological or sociological jargon, which may explain the book’s popularity. Falling in Love has since been translated into 20 languages and, after ten editions, is still in print in Italy.

The sociologist was one of just a few regular front page writers for Corriere della Sera, who published his columns from 1973 to 2011.

Meanwhile, Alberoni had a distinguished academic career, holding professorships at a number of universities in Italy and Europe.

He wrote more than 25 books about sociology and has also had collections of his essays published, despite not having enjoyed his own early education during the Fascist era. He has also said he did not have much access to books when he was young and therefore started to enjoy the pleasure of reading himself, only when he was a teenager.

Alberoni was at one time a board member of  RAI, the Italian state television network, and a president of the Centro Sperimentale Cinematografia, the Italian national film school based in Rome.

He had three children with his first wife, Vincenza Pugliese. He later had a fourth child with his partner, Laura Bonin. He named this child Giulio after his famous ancestor. In 1988, he was married for the second time, to another sociologist, Rosa Giannetta.

Alberoni died of kidney disease in Milan in 2023, aged 93.

Borgonovo Val Tidone's 's town hall is house 
in a repurposed Sforza castle 

Travel tip:

Borgonovo Val Tidone, where Alberoni was born, is a town of just under 8,000 residents in Emilia-Romagna, located about 160km (99 miles) northwest of Bologna and about 20km (12 miles) west of Piacenza. Nestling at the feet of the Apennines, the town is situated not far from the river Tidone, which supposedly owes its name to the Carthagian leader, Hannibal. Legend says that the Carthaginian leader, as a gesture of gratitude for crossing the river, threw a ring in the water with the words ti dono - I give you. Once controlled by the Sforza family of Milan, Borgonovo Val Tidone is the home of Chisöla, a type of focaccia bread made with pork rind, which is the highlight of the town’s annual gastronomic fair each September. 

Piacenza's Piazza Cavalli is notable for its two
equestrian statues by Francesco Mochi

Travel tip

Piacenza is the first major city along the route of the Via Emilia, the Roman road that connected Piacenza with the Adriatic resort of Rimini. Parma, some 66km (41 miles) along the route, is the next, followed by Reggio Emilia, Modena and Bologna. The main square in Piacenza is named Piazza Cavalli because of its two bronze equestrian monuments featuring Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma and his son Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma, who succeeded him. The statues are masterpieces by the sculptor Francesco Mochi.  The city is situated between the River Po and the Apennines, with Milan just over 72km (45 miles) to the northwest. Piacenza Cathedral, built in 1122, is a good example of northern Italian Romanesque architecture.  Among many notable people, Piacenza is the birthplace of Giorgio Armani, founder of the eponymous fashion house.

Also on this day:

1493: The birth of Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino

1842: The birth of painter Giovanni Boldini

1855: The birth of poet Giovanni Pascoli

1990: The death of architect Giovanni Michelucci

New Year’s Eve - Festa di San Silvestro

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30 December

Titus – Roman emperor

'Good' ruler who helped victims of Vesuvius eruption

The Roman emperor Titus was born Titus Flavius Vespasianus on this day in AD 39.  He was emperor from 79 to 81 and is remembered for capturing Jerusalem and for completing the Colosseum in Rome.  Two months after his accession, on August 24, 79, Mount Vesuvius in Campania began erupting, eventually killing thousands of people around Pompeii and Herculaneum.  Titus appointed officials to coordinate the relief effort, while donating large amounts of money from the imperial treasury to aid the victims. He visited Pompeii twice.  Titus was a member of the Flavian dynasty and succeeded his father Vespasian after his death, becoming the first Roman emperor to come to the throne after his biological father.  Titus was believed to have been born in Rome on December 30, 39, the eldest son of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, who was commonly known as Vespasian.  His father had earned prestige as a military commander, taking part in the invasion of Britain in 43 under the emperor Claudius.  Titus served under his father in Judea during the first Jewish-Roman war.  Read more…

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For a Few Dollars More released in Italy

Second in Spaghetti Western trilogy

The movie For a Few Dollars More, the second in what became known as the Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, was released for public viewing in Italy on this day in 1965.  Directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name, the film followed the unexpected success of the low-budget feature A Fistful of Dollars, released 15 months earlier, which overcame poor initial reviews to become, for a time, the biggest-grossing movie in Italian cinema history.  Released for Italian audiences as Per Qualche Dollaro in Più, the follow-up proved even more commercially successful than its predecessor. By 1967, it had displaced A Fistful of Dollars as the highest-grossing Italian production, generating 3.1 billion lire ($5 million) in ticket sales from more than 14 and a half million admissions.  Eastwood, who had been little known outside America before A Fistful of Dollars catapulted him to international fame, had been paid a reputed sum of just $15,000 for his role in the original film, from a production budget of only $200,000.  This time Leone had more money at his disposal after teaming up with Italian producer Alberto Grimaldi.  Read more…

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Galeazzo Alessi – architect

Brilliant designer left legacy of beautiful palaces and churches

Italian architect Galeazzo Alessi, who designed some of the most impressive buildings in Genoa and Assisi, died on this day in 1572.  Born in Perugia in 1512, Alessi studied drawing for both civil and military architecture and developed great enthusiasm for ancient architecture, although he was also later influenced by Michelangelo.  He became known throughout Europe for his distinctive style and towards the end of his career was commissioned to design churches and palaces in France, Germany, Belgium and Spain.  A lot of his work can still be seen in Perugia and Assisi, where, in collaboration with another architect, Alessi designed the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in 1568.  In Genoa he designed some of the beautiful palaces with ornate decoration that have now been listed as Unesco world heritage sites and he was involved in planning the lay-out of the streets and the restoration of the city walls.  Alessi died at the age of 60 in Perugia before the designs that he had drawn up for El Escorial, the residence of the King of Spain, could be carried out.  Perugia, Alessi’s home town, is the capital city of the region of Umbria and one of the main Etruscan cities of Italy.  Read more…

Camila Giorgi - tennis player

Former Italian No 1 who specialised in beating big names

The former tennis player Camila Giorgi, who at her peak climbed to 26 in the world rankings and was Italy's No 1 female player, was born on this day in 1991 in Macerata, a city in the Marche region.  At the time, there was no other Italian woman in the top 100 Women's Tennis Association world rankings.  The breakthrough year for Giorgi came in 2018, when she reached the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam event for the only time, at the Wimbledon Championships in London.  Giorgi was not seeded but after defeating 21st seed Anastasija Sevastova in the first round, she advanced through her section of the draw with three more victories, culminating in a straight-sets win over former world No 8 Ekaterina Makarova in the fourth round.  That earned Giorgi a last-eight meeting with seven-times Wimbledon champion and world record grand slam winner Serena Williams.  Giorgi won the first set but Williams fought back to win the match. Earlier in the 2018 summer, Giorgi had delivered her best performance at the French Open by reaching the third round. Later in the year, she won her second career WTA tournament, the Linz Open in Austria.  Read more…

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Alessandra Mussolini – politician

Controversial granddaughter of Fascist dictator

The MEP Alessandra Mussolini, niece of actress Sophia Loren and granddaughter of Italy’s former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, was born on this day in 1962 in Rome.  Formerly an actress and model, Mussolini entered politics in the early 1990s as a member of the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, which had its roots in the Italian Social Republic, the German puppet state led by her grandfather from September 1943 until his death in April 1945.  Her views have changed in more recent years and she has become known for embracing modern issues including abortion, artificial insemination, gay rights and civil unions from a progressive standpoint that has more in common with left-wing feminism.  She has left behind her association with the far right and serves in the European Parliament as representative for Central Italy under a centre-right Forza Italia ticket.  However, she is not without some admiration for the policies of her grandfather.  Only recently she caused consternation when asked her opinion on what to do about an escalating Mafia war in the Roman seaside resort of Ostia by claiming that “granddad would have sorted this out in two or three months.”  Read more…

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Book of the Day:  Roman Emperors: A Guide to the Men Who Ruled the Empire, by Mario Bartolini

Roman Emperors is a concise chronological guide to the emperors who ruled the Roman Empire. It covers the period from the establishment of the Empire by Augustus in 27 BCE to the abdication of Romulus Augustus in 476 CE, an event that marks the official end of the existence of the Roman Empire as a political entity in Western Europe. After a useful introduction to the late Republic and its transformation into the Empire, each of the eighty-five emperors customarily recognized as legitimate are presented in the order in which they reigned. This includes both Eastern and Western emperors for those periods where the empire was divided, and each one is illustrated. A useful glossary of technical terms is also provided.

Mario Bartolini is a retired political analyst and officer in the Canadian army reserve, with a long-held interest in Roman military history.

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29 December

The Battle of San Mauro

Defeat that ended Sicily’s separatist ambitions  

Soldiers from the Italian army, bolstered by Carabinieri officers, decisively defeated the paramilitaries of the clandestine Volunteer Army for the Independence of Sicily at what became known as the Battle of San Mauro on this day in 1945.  The confrontation, which took place in the hills above the city of Caltagirone in southeast Sicily, concluded with the arrest of Concetto Gallo, commander of the paramilitary group, and the effective end of the movement for Sicilian independence that grew during the Allied military occupation of the island in World War Two.  The Volunteer Army (EVIS) had formed in February 1945 as a secret paramilitary wing of the Movimento per l'Indipendenza della Sicilia (MIS), a political party launched in 1943 with the aim of achieving independence for the island.  The party brought together individuals from across the political spectrum in Sicily under the leadership of Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile, including the revolutionary socialist Antonio Canepa, the social-democrat Giovanni Guarino Amella, local aristocratic landowners and even Mafia figures, such as the powerful Calogero Vizzini.  Read more…

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The opening of Venice’s historic Caffè Florian

Meeting place on St Mark’s Square became an institution

Venice’s famous Caffè Florian opened its doors for the first time on this day in 1720.  Florian’s nowadays occupies a long stretch of the arcades on the southern side of Piazza San Marco, its seats stretching out across the square with a permanent orchestra in residence to entertain clients. Yet the original consisted of just two rooms.  It was officially given the grand title of Alla Venezia Trionfante (“To Triumphant Venice”), but soon became known as Florian’s after the owner, Floriano Francesconi.  The cafè’s 301-year history makes it the oldest still-active coffee house in Italy and the second oldest in Europe behind the Café Procope in Paris, which was founded in 1686.  Florian’s soon became a fashionable meeting place for Venetian society, especially its writers. Among its 18th century clientele were the Venetian playwright and librettist Carlo Goldoni and the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, while the writer and adventurer Giacomo Casanova is said to have been regularly seen there, possibly drawn by the cafè’s then-unusual policy of opening its doors to women.  When the critic and dramatist Gasparo Gozzi launched his literary magazine Gazzetta Veneta in 1760, Florian’s agreed to help him publicise his venture and sell copies.  Read more…

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Gaetano Russo - sculptor

Creator of New York’s Christopher Columbus Monument

The sculptor Gaetano Russo, famous for having created the monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus at Columbus Circle in New York, was born on this day in 1847 in the Sicilian city of Messina.  Russo’s 13ft (3.96m) statue of the 15th century Genoese explorer, carved from a block of Carrara marble, stands on top of a 70ft (21.3m) granite column, decorated with bronze reliefs depicting the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, Columbus’s three caravel sailing ships.  At the foot of the column there is an angel holding the globe.  Unveiled on October 12, 1892 on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the Americas, the statue was a gift to the city from New York’s Italian-American community, funded by a campaign by an Italian-language newspaper, Il Progresso.  For the laying of the statue’s cornerstone, a procession took place from Little Italy to what is now called Columbus Circle, at the southern end of Central Park, a distance of 6.5km (4.2 miles). Close to 10,000 people are said to have attended the dedication ceremony.  Additional ornamentation around the base of the column depicts Columbus’s journey, American patriotic symbols, and allegorical figures.  Read more…

Luigi Olivari – flying ace

First World War pilot claimed 19 victories

Lieutenant Luigi Olivari, a pilot in the military aviation corps of the Royal Italian Army who was decorated with a string of awards for valour in action, was born on this day in 1891 in La Spezia, the maritime city on the coast of what is now Liguria.  Olivari became a proficient aerial duellist, claiming to have downed 19 enemy aircraft as Italian planes took on Austro-Hungarian opponents after Italy had joined the war on the side of the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia.  Only eight of these were confirmed, yet Olivari was awarded four silver and two bronze medals for valour by the Italian government, as well as the French Croix de guerre and the Serbian Order of the Star of Karadorde.  The last of his silver medals was awarded posthumously after he was killed on October 13, 1917 when his Spad VII aircraft stalled and crashed during take-off at the Santa Caterina airfield just outside Udine in northwest Italy.  Born to middle-class parents in La Spezia, as a boy he moved with his family to Turin.  A good all-round sportsman and an accomplished motorcyclist, Olivari entered the school for civil pilots at Mirafiori, just outside Turin.  Read more…

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Tullio Levi-Civita – mathematician

Professor from Padua who was admired by Einstein

Tullio Levi-Civita, the mathematician renowned for his work in differential calculus and relativity theory, died on this day in 1941 in Rome.  With the collaboration of Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, his professor at the University of Padua, Levi-Civita wrote a pioneering work on the calculus of tensors. Albert Einstein is said to have used this work as a resource in the development of the theory of general relativity.  Levi-Civita corresponded with Einstein about his theory of relativity between 1915 and 1917 and the letters he received from Einstein, carefully kept by Levi-Civita, show how much the two men respected each other.  Years later, when asked what he liked best about Italy, Einstein is reputed to have said ‘spaghetti and Levi-Civita.’  The mathematician, who was born into an Italian Jewish family in Padua in 1873, became an instructor at the University of Padua in 1898 after completing his own studies.  He became a professor of rational mechanics there in 1902 and married one of his own students, Libera Trevisani, in 1914.  In 1917, having been inspired by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Levi-Civita made his most important contribution to this branch of mathematics.  Read more…

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Stefano Eranio – footballer

Fast forward made his mark in England’s Premier League

Italy international footballer Stefano Eranio was born on this day in 1966 in Genoa, the main city of Liguria.  He represented his country 20 times between 1990 and 1997 but is most remembered for his playing career with AC Milan and Genoa.  A midfield player or wing-back, Eranio had brilliant technique, good pace and the ability to make attacking runs.  Towards the end of his career he played in the English Premier League for Derby County and was made an official ‘Derby Legend’ in 2006.  Eranio began his career with Genoa in 1984.  He played for them for eight seasons before moving to A C Milan in 1992.  At Milan he won three league titles, three Italian Super Cups and played in two Champions League finals.  Eranio’s first international goal was against the Netherlands in 1992 when Italy won the match 3-2. In 1997 he played his last game for Italy, helping them beat Moldova 3–0.  When he moved to Derby County in the Midlands of England, Eranio quickly became a favourite with the fans as part of an exciting team that included another Italian player, Francesco Baiano.  Eranio is credited with scoring the first goal in a competitive match at Derby's Pride Park Stadium.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Sicily '43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe

Sicily '43 is the story of the biggest seaborne landing in history.  Codenamed Operation Husky, the assault on Sicily on 10 July 1943 remains the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted. That day, over 160,000 Allied troops were dropped from the sky or came ashore to begin the fight for Europe.  The subsequent 38-day Battle for Sicily was one of the most dramatic of the entire war, involving daring raids by special forces, deals with the Mafia, attacks across mosquito-infested plains and perilous assaults up almost sheer faces of rock and scree.  Made worse by virulent disease and extreme heat, the Allies also had to fight their way across an island of unforgiving landscape and limited infrastructure against a German foe who would not give up.  Victory would signal the beginning of the end of the War in the West. From here on, the noose began to tighten around the neck of Nazi Germany. The coalition between the United States and Britain finally came of age. And it was a crucial dry run for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy on D-Day a year later.

James Holland is an award-winning historian, writer, and broadcaster. The author of a number of best-selling histories including Brothers In Arms and Normandy '44, he is also the author of nine works of fiction and a dozen Ladybird Experts.  

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28 December

Italy's worst earthquake

Catastrophic tremor of 1908 may have killed up to 200,000

The most destructive earthquake ever to strike Europe brought devastation to the cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria on this day in 1908.  With its epicentre beneath the Strait of Messina, which separates Sicily from the Italian mainland, the quake had a magnitude of 7.1 and caused the ground to shake for between 30 and 40 seconds.  It was enough to cause such catastrophic damage that Messina, on the Sicilian side, and Reggio Calabria, on the mainland side, were almost completely destroyed.  The loss of life was huge because the earthquake happened at 5.21am, when most residents were still in bed.  An unknown number were swept away by the tsunami that struck both cities 10 minutes after the major tremor had stopped, when the sea on both sides of the Strait receded up to 70 metres and then rushed back towards the land, generating three massive waves, each taller than the one that preceded it, up to a height of 12 metres (39 feet).  At least 75,000 people were killed in Messina alone, where 91 percent of buildings were either destroyed or damaged beyond repair.  The Norman cathedral, which had withstood a series of five quakes in 1783, was reduced this time to a partial shell.  Read more…

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Piero the Unfortunate – Medici ruler

Ill-fated son of Lorenzo the Magnificent

Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici, later dubbed Piero the Unfortunate or The Fatuous, died on this day in 1503, drowning in the Garigliano river, south of Rome, as he attempted to flee following a military defeat.  The eldest son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Piero was handed power in Florence at the age of 21 following the death of his father.  He was a physically handsome young man who had been educated specifically so that he would be ready to succeed his father as head of the Medici family and de facto ruler of Florence.  Yet he turned out to be a feeble, ill-disciplined character who was not suited to leadership and who earned his unflattering soubriquet on account of his poor judgment in military and political matters, which ultimately led to the Medici family being exiled from Florence.  Piero took over as leader of Florence in 1492. Initially there was calm but the peace between the Italian states for which his father had worked tirelessly to achieve collapsed in 1494 when King Charles VIII of France led an army across the Alps with the intention to march on the Kingdom of Naples, claiming hereditary rights.  Read more…

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The Cervi brothers - partisans

Anti-Fascists murdered by Nazi firing squad

Seven brothers belonging to a single family from the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia were shot dead by a firing squad on this day in 1943 in a massacre that has since become a symbol of Italian resistance to authoritarian rule and the overthrow of Fascism.  The Fratelli Cervi - Cervi brothers - the seven sons of a militant communist tenant farmer called Alcide Cervi, had been in prison for more than a month on suspicion of anti-Fascist activity following a raid on the family farm at Praticello di Gattatico, a village about 15km (nine miles) northwest of Reggio Emilia.  They were taken at dawn on 28 December to the city’s shooting range, where soldiers loyal to Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic lined them up against a wall and shot them dead, it is thought in reprisal for the murder of two Fascist officials.  Their father, who had been held in a different part of the St Thomas prison in Reggio Emilia, did not learn of the fate of his sons until January of the following year, after damage to the prison in an air raid allowed him to escape.  Alcide - who came to be known to Italians as Papa Cervi - was a successful tenant farmer who had helped introduce modern farming techniques, such as crop rotation, to the Po Valley.  Read more…

Francesco Tamagno - operatic tenor

19th century star was first to sing Verdi’s Otello

The operatic tenor Francesco Tamagno, most famous for singing the title role at the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1887, was born on this day in 1850 in Turin.  Tamagno, whose powerful voice and range put him in a category of singers known as heroic tenors by being naturally suited to heroic roles, developed a reputation that enabled him to command high fees around the world and amass a considerable fortune.  During a career that spanned 32 years from his debut in 1873 to his premature death at the age of 54, Tamagno sang in some 55 operas and sacred works in 26 countries.  In addition to his association with Otello, he also was the first Gabriele Adorno in Verdi's 1881 revision of Simon Boccanegra, and appeared in the premiere of Verdi's Italian-language version of Don Carlos when it was staged at La Scala in 1884.  Five other operas in which Tamagno is acknowledged as the creator of leading roles include Carlos Gomes's Maria Tudor, Amilcare Ponchielli's Il figliol prodigo and Marion Delorme, Ruggero Leoncavallo's I Medici and Isidore de Lara's Messaline.  Read more…

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Death of Victor Emmanuel III

King loses his life after just 18 months in exile 

Victor Emmanuel III, Italy’s longest reigning King, died on this day in 1947.  The previous year he had abdicated his throne in favour of his son, King Umberto II.  Victor Emmanuel III had been hoping this would strengthen support for the monarchy in advance of the referendum asking the country if they wanted to abolish it.  Earlier in his reign he had been popular with the people and respected for his military success, but opinion changed after the Second World War.  Vittorio Emanuele III di Savoia was born in Naples in 1869. The only child of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy, he was given the title of Prince of Naples.  He became King of Italy in 1900 after his father was assassinated in Monza.  At the height of his popularity he was nicknamed by the Italians Re soldato (soldier King) and Re vittorioso (victorious King) because of Italy’s success in battle during the First World War. He was also called sciaboletta (little sabre) as he was only five feet (1.53m) tall.  Italy had remained neutral at the start of the First World War but signed treaties to go into the war on the side of France, Britain and Russia in 1915.  Read more…

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Battle of Ortona 

Adriatic port liberated by Canadians at huge cost

Canadian troops fighting with the Allies liberated the Adriatic port of Ortona from the Germans on this day in 1943 after one of the bloodiest battles of the Italian Campaign.  The Battle of Ortona and other confrontations close to the nearby Moro river, which encompassed the whole Christmas period, claimed almost 2,400 lives.  It was characterised by brutal close-quarters fighting and is sometimes known as “the Italian Stalingrad”, partly because of the high number of casualties but also because of the backcloth of destroyed buildings and rubble.  Although the battalions of German paratroopers holding the strategic port were defeated, casualties on the Canadian side were greater, with 1,375 soldiers from the Canadian 1st Infantry Division killed and 964 wounded, against 867 Germans killed.  In addition, more than 1,300 civilians died.  The Canadian deaths amounted to more than a quarter of their entire losses in the whole of the Italian Campaign, which spanned 22 months as Allied forces fought their way up the peninsula.  Ortona, in the Abruzzo region, had some strategic importance as one of the few usable deep water ports on the Adriatic coast. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Fault Lines: Earthquakes and Urbanism in Modern Italy, by Giacomo Parrinello

Earth's fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, Fault Lines explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between "rural" and "urban," "backwardness" and "development," and "before" and "after," shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats.  In his review, Professor John Foot, of the University of Bristol, described Fault Lines as ‘an extremely interesting and well-written book, which takes two major Italian disasters in detail and uses them to tell a series of stories about urban change, the state, national identity, and other issues.’ 

Giacomo Parrinello is a Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University and the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna. He has published in the fields of environmental history, history of urban planning, and modern Italian history.

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27 December

NEW - Giovanni Battista Pirelli - industrial entrepreneur

Founder of the giant Pirelli tyre company

Giovanni Battista Pirelli, who in 1872 founded a business making products in rubber that would in time became the sixth largest tyre producer in the world, was born on this day in 1848 in Varenna, a village on the shore of Lake Como about 85km (53 miles) north of Milan.  Launched in January 1872 as GB Pirelli & Co, the firm initially produced a range of goods involving rubber, which included drive belts and hoses, underwater electrical and telegraph cables, waterproof clothing and footwear.  It began to manufacture tyres, first for bicycles, in around 1890, followed by motor vehicles in 1901. Pirelli & Co SpA was listed on the Borsa Italiana, the Milan-based Italian stock exchange, in 1922. It was the first Italian company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1929.  A fervent supporter of the Risorgimento movement, Giovanni Battista Pirelli fought in The Third War of Italian Independence, signing up with the third regiment of Garibaldi's volunteers while still a student, helping the Kingdom of Italy’s forces defeat the Austrians at the Battle of Monte Suello near Brescia in July 1866.  Read more…

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Tito Schipa – operatic tenor

Star on two continents whose voice divided opinions

Tito Schipa, one of the most popular opera singers in the first half of the 20th century who sang to packed houses in the United States and South America as well as in Italy, was born on this day in 1888 in Lecce.  The tenor, whose repertoire included Verdi and Puccini roles in the early part of his career and later encompassed works by Donizetti, Cilea and Massanet, rose from modest beginnings to find fame with the Chicago and New York Metropolitan opera companies in America.  He also appeared regularly in Buenos Aires in Argentina and later in his career starred regularly at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Rome Opera.  Some critics said his voice lacked power and had too narrow a range for him to be considered a genuinely great tenor, yet he overcame his perceived limitations to become extremely popular with the public wherever he performed.  Schipa was born Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa in the Le Scalze district of Lecce, a fairly working class neighbourhood in the Puglian city.  His family were of Albanian heritage. His father was a customs officer.  His talent was first noted by a primary school teacher in Lecce.  Read more…

Terrorist attack at Fiumicino

Horrifying end to Christmas celebrations

The peace of Italy's festive celebrations was shattered by a devastating terrorist attack on this day in 1985 when Arab gunmen opened fire in the main departure hall at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport.  The attack, which claimed the lives of 16 people, took place shortly after 9.05am, when the four perpetrators approached the check-in desks of Israel's El Al Airline and the United States carrier Trans World Airlines.  Israeli secret services were aware that an attempt either to hijack a plane or stage an attack on the ground was being planned between December 25 and 31 in Rome and an Israeli security officer became suspicious of the quartet as he watched their movements in the departure hall.  However, when he stepped forward to challenge them, they produced assault rifles and began firing, at the same time throwing grenades.  The Israeli officer was killed and in the ensuing gunfight, involving more Israeli security staff and Italian police, some 12 passengers were fatally wounded.  They included Americans, Mexicans, Greeks, Italians and at least one Algerian.  Three of the gunmen were shot dead and a fourth, 18-year-old Ibrahim Khaled, was captured by police.  Read more…

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Pope John Paul II’s prison visit

Pope came face to face with his would-be killer

Pope John Paul II visited Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome on this day in 1983 to forgive formally the man who had tried to assassinate him.  Two years previously the Pope had been shot and critically wounded in St Peter’s Square by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish member of a fascist group known as Grey Wolves.  John Paul II had been rushed unconscious to hospital with bullet wounds to the abdomen, colon and small intestine and had to have five hours of surgery to repair the damage.  Agca was caught and restrained by bystanders until the police arrived. He was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.  John Paul II visited Agca on 27 December 1983 in prison in Rebibbia, a suburb on the northeastern edge of Rome.  They spoke privately for about 20 minutes and afterwards the Pope said he had pardoned his would-be killer.  Agca had previously escaped from a Turkish prison where he had been serving a sentence for murdering a journalist. He was deported to Turkey at the end of his jail sentence in Italy and went on to serve another ten years in prison.  On 27 December 2014, 33 years after the shooting, Agca came to the Vatican in Rome to lay white roses on Pope John Paul II’s tomb.  Read more…

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Saint Veronica Giuliani

Life of compassionate nun is still inspiring others

Nun and mystic Veronica Giuliani was born on this day in 1660 in Mercatello sul Metauro in the Duchy of Urbino.  After she had spent her whole life devoted to Christ, the marks of the crown of thorns appeared on her forehead and the signs of his five wounds on her body. She was subjected to a rigorous testing of her experience by her bishop but, after he decided the phenomena were authentic, he allowed her to return to normal convent life.  The nun was made a saint by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839, more than 100 years after her death.  Veronica was born Orsola Giuliani, the youngest of seven sisters. By the time she was three years old she was demonstrating compassion for the poor, often giving away her own food and clothes.  When her father decided she was old enough to marry, she pleaded with him to be allowed to choose a different way of life and, at the age of 17, in 1677 she was received into the monastery of the Capuchin Poor Clares in Città di Castello in Umbria.  She took the name of Veronica and lived as a sister in the convent for the next 50 years.  Sister Veronica was made a novice mistress at the age of 34.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Italy in the Modern World: Society, Culture and Identity, by Linda Reeder

Providing a comprehensive history of Italy from around 1800 to the present, Italy in the Modern World traces the social and cultural transformations that defined the lives of Italians during the 19th and 20th century. The book focuses on how social relations (class, gender and race), science and the arts shaped the political processes of unification, state building, fascism and the postwar world. Split up into four parts covering the making of Italy, the liberal state, war and fascism, and the republic, the text draws on secondary literature and primary sources in order to synthesize current historiographical debates and provide primary documents for classroom use. There are individual chapters on key topics, such as unification, Italians in the world, Italy in the world, science and the arts, fascism, the World Wars, the Cold War, and Italy in the 21st century, as well as a wealth of useful features for students, including comprehensive bibliographic essays covering each of the four parts, plus 23 images and 12 maps. Italy in the Modern World also firmly places both the nation and its people in a wider global context through a distinctly transnational approach. It is essential reading for all students of modern Italian history.

Linda Reeder is Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri, USA. She is the author of Widows in White: Migration and the Transformation of Rural Italian Women (2002).

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Giovanni Battista Pirelli - industrial entrepreneur

Founder of the giant Pirelli tyre company

Giovanni Battista Pirelli began
his company with 45 employees

Giovanni Battista Pirelli, who in 1872 founded a business making products in rubber that would in time became the sixth largest tyre producer in the world, was born on this day in 1848 in Varenna, a village on the shore of Lake Como about 85km (53 miles) north of Milan.

Launched in January 1872 as GB Pirelli & Co, the firm initially produced a range of goods involving rubber, which included drive belts and hoses, underwater electrical and telegraph cables, waterproof clothing and footwear.

It began to manufacture tyres, first for bicycles, in around 1890, followed by motor vehicles in 1901. Pirelli & Co SpA was listed on the Borsa Italiana, the Milan-based Italian stock exchange, in 1922. It was the first Italian company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1929.

A fervent supporter of the Risorgimento movement, Giovanni Battista Pirelli fought in The Third War of Italian Independence, signing up with the third regiment of Garibaldi's volunteers while still a student, helping the Kingdom of Italy’s forces defeat the Austrians at the Battle of Monte Suello near Brescia in July 1866.

The eighth of 10 children born to baker Santino Pirelli and housewife Rosa Riva, Giovanni attended schools in Varenna - then itself part of the Austrian Habsburg empire - and Como and he was able to pursue higher education in Milan despite his father dying when he was only eight years old.

The elongated 'P' of the Pirelli logo has been a feature
of the tyre company's advertising since 1906

After studying physics and mathematics at the University of Pavia, he entered the Higher Technical Institute in Milan (later Milan Polytechnic) in 1867. At first he studied civil engineering before opting for industrial engineering in his second year. His marks in acquiring a diploma of industrial engineering were so impressive he was granted one of the two 3,000-lire scholarships established by the Milanese noblewoman Teresa Berra Kramer.

This allowed him to embark on a tour of Europe with the aim of identifying and studying a new industry. His travel plans were often disrupted by the political turmoil in parts of Europe at the time but the tour was a success nonetheless; Pirelli came into contact with some of the foremost protagonists of European industrial development.  His first inclination was to become involved with textiles but after taking advice from his professor, the engineer Giuseppe Colombo, he identified the nascent elastic rubber industry as the one he wanted to pursue.

When he returned to Italy, after Colombo had helped him raise the capital to set up his company, Pirelli appointed Antoine Aimé Goulard, a contact he had made in France who understood the rubber industry, as his technical director, responsible for instructing Pirelli in the technical processes used for manufacturing items in elastic rubber and for training employees.

The first Pirelli factory in Milan opened for the
production of rubber products in June, 1873

The company’s first factory, near Porta Nuova in the northeastern quarter of Milan, began operations in June, 1873, with five office staff and 40 workers in a 1,000sqm plant. The first articles produced were pipes, belts, valves, and gaskets.  It was the first factory in Italy to produce rubber goods and one of the first in Europe.

Built alongside the Sevesetto stream, on more or less the site where the Pirelli Tower skyscraper stands today, the factory grew to employ more than 250 people in less than ten years.

Committed to the future prosperity of Milan, Pirelli became involved with local politics, joining the city council, where he remained from 1877 until 1889. He was concerned with the problems of the neighbourhood where he lived and where the factory was located. As a member of the city's Chamber of Commerce, he gained enough experience to become a driving force in a successful campaign to reform the tariff laws that were holding back the development of the company.  In 1909, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appointed Pirelli as a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy.

The company expanded rapidly from the 1880s after Pirelli began the industrial production of electrical conductors and underwater electric cables. Pirelli laid the first submarine telegraph cables in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean on behalf of the Italian government, and was engaged by the Spanish government to lay submarine cables between Spain, the Balearic Islands and Morocco. 

But it was Pirelli’s identifying the potential of tyre manufacturing that was to turn Pirelli & Co into an industrial giant. In 1891 it began the production of bicycle tyres and in 1901 tyres for cars and motorcycles. 

The Pirelli Family tomb in the
Monumental Cemetery in Milan

The company’s foreign expansion began with a subsidiary factory opened in Spain in 1902, shortly before Pirelli’s two sons, Piero and Alberto, joined the business. Factories were built in countries across Europe, in Great Britain, Turkey and the Americas. Eventually the Pirelli businesses at home and abroad employed more than 55,000 people. 

Pirelli adopted the famous elongated ‘P’ in the company logo in 1906, and began his company’s long and successful association with motor sport. The motor car race from Peking to Paris in 1906 was won on Pirelli tyres. Today, Pirelli is the exclusive tyre partner for the FIA Formula One World Championship and for the FIM World Superbike Championship.

More recently, the company was the primary sponsor of Inter-Milan football club between 1995 and 2021 and has sponsored other football teams in Europe and South America. 

Although it is 92 years since Giovanni Battista Pirelli died - he was laid to rest in the Monumental Cemetery of Milan - the company name lives on, albeit since 2015 under Chinese ownership. It employed 31,000 people at 19 facilities in 12 countries with a market capitalisation of $6.69 billion as of May, 2024. 

The Pirelli family tomb at the Monumental Cemetery is marked by a monument, the Edicola Pirelli, designed by the Milan architect Luca Beltrami.

The beautiful waterfront at the Lake Como
village of Varenna, Pirelli's birthplace

Travel tip:

Established by local fishermen in the eighth century, Varenna, where Pirelli was born, is an enchanting village nestled on the eastern shore of Lago di Como in northern Italy, located about 23km (14 miles) along the shore from the town of Lecco just opposite the peninsula of land where the lake divides into its Lago di Como and Lago di Lecco forks. Varenna offers stunning views of the lake and surrounding mountains, while the village is known for the vibrant, pastel-coloured houses that line the waterfront, and the narrow, steep streets leading away from the water. Historic sites include the 11th-century Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista and the beautiful Villa Monastero, which features well tended gardens and a museum. The Passeggiata degli Innamorati (Lovers' Walk) is a romantic lakeside promenade perfect for leisurely strolls.  Varenna hosts cultural events and festivals throughout the year, celebrating Italian traditions and arts.

The Pirelli Tower used to be
the tallest building in Italy

Travel tip:

In 1950, Alberto Pirelli, who had succeeded his father, Giovanni Battista Pirelli as president and owner of the Pirelli tyre company, commissioned the architect Gio Ponti to build a skyscraper in the area where the corporation's first factory was located in the 19th century. Ponti was assisted in the project by Pier Luigi Nervi and Arturo Danusso. Built between 1956 and 1958, it became a symbol not only of Milan, but also of the economic recovery of Italy after the devastation of World War II. At 127m (417 feet) and with 32 floors, it was initially the tallest building in Italy until the pinnacle of the Mole Antonelliana in Turin was restored in 1961. Characterized by curtain wall façades and tapered sides, it was among the first skyscrapers to abandon the customary block form and was hailed as one of the most elegant tall buildings in the world. In a career that spanned six decades, Ponti completed more than 100 architectural projects around the world, including 46 in Milan, his home city, but the Pirelli Tower is still his most famous. Pirelli sold the building to the Lombardy regional government in 1978. 

Also on this day:

1660: The birth of Saint Veronica Giuliani

1888: The birth of tenor Tito Schipa

1983: Pope John Paul II visits prison to forgive would-be assassin

1985: Terror attack at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport 

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