16 June

Mario Rigoni Stern – author

Brave soldier became a bestselling novelist

The novelist Mario Rigoni Stern, who was a veteran of World War II, died on this day in 2008 in Asiago in the Veneto region.  His first novel, Il sergente della neve - The Sergeant in the Snow - was published in 1953. It drew upon his experiences as a sergeant major in the Alpine corps during the disastrous retreat from Russia in the Second World War. It became a best seller and was translated into English and Spanish.  Rigoni Stern had been a sergeant commanding a platoon in Mussolini’s army in the Soviet Union during the retreat of the Italians in the winter of 1942.  His book was inspired by how he succeeded in leading 70 survivors on foot from Ukraine into what was then White Russia - now part of Belarus - and back to Italy.  It won the Viareggio Prize for best debut novel and went on to sell more than a million copies.  At the time the author said it was not written to claim a role for him as a hero, but as a tribute to his fellow soldiers and the ordinary Russians who gave them shelter.  Rigoni Stern was born in Asiago in the Veneto and became a cadet at the military academy at Aosta in 1938.  Read more…

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Pietro Bracci - sculptor

Artist best known for Oceanus statue at Trevi Fountain

The sculptor Pietro Bracci, who left his mark on the architectural landscape of Rome with the colossal six-metre high statue Oceanus that towers over the Trevi Fountain, was born on this day in 1700 in Rome.  The monumental figure is shown standing on a chariot, in the form of a shell, pulled by two winged horses flanked by two tritons. Bracci worked from sketches by Giovanni Battista Maini, who died before he could execute the project.  He also completed work on the fountain itself, built in front of Luigi Vanvitelli’s Palazzo Poli. This was started by Bracci’s close friend Nicola Salvi, who had been commissioned by Pope Clement XII to realize plans drawn up by Gian Lorenzo Bernini that had been shelved in the previous century. Salvi died in 1751, before he could complete the work. Giuseppe Pannini was also involved for a while before Bracci took over in 1761.  The work confirmed Bracci as a major talent of his time in the field of sculpture, one of the greatest of the late Baroque period, continuing in the tradition established by Bernini in the previous century that gave the city of Rome so many wonderful monuments.  Read more…

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Giacomo Agostini - world motorcycle champion

Brescia-born rider enjoyed record-breaking career 

Giacomo Agostini, 15 times Grand Prix world motorcycling champion, was born on this day in 1942 in Brescia. Agostini moved with his family to the lakeside town of Lovere, which overlooks the picturesque Lago d'Iseo, when he was 13.   Riding for the Italian MV Agusta team, Agostini won the 500cc class seven times in a row from 1966 to 1972 and the 350cc class seven times in succession from 1968 to 1974, adding a further 500cc title on a Yamaha in 1975.  His total of 122 Grand Prix wins from 1965 to 1976 is the highest by any rider in the history of the sport. Agostini, considered perhaps the greatest motorcycle racer of all time, was at the peak of his powers between 1967 and 1970.  In 1967, he won an epic duel with his former MV Agusta teammate, Britain's Mike Hailwood, who was riding for Honda.  They were tied on five race wins each going into the final GP of the season in Canada, where Hailwood won, with his rival second.  That meant they were tied on points and wins, but Agostini had a greater number of second place finishes and so he was crowned champion.  For the next three seasons, after Hailwood left motorcycle racing to race cars,  Agostini dominated.  Read more…

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Achille Lauro - shipping magnate and politician

Businessman once dubbed the ‘Neapolitan Onassis’

The businessman and politician Achille Lauro, who at his peak controlled the largest private shipping fleet in the Mediterranean and whose achievements as Mayor of Naples included building the San Paolo football stadium and the city’s main railway station, was born on this day in 1887 in Piano di Sorrento in Campania.  Lauro inherited a small number of ships from his father, Gioacchino, but lost them at the start of the First World War, when they were requisitioned by the government. When the conflict ended he had no money but managed to launch another fleet by creating a company that was essentially owned by its employees, who invested their savings in return for a share of the profits and a guarantee of employment.  Within little more than a decade, Flotta Lauro consisted of 21 vessels. Lauro's business plan avoided the union problems that were prevalent in the 1920s as his staff concentrated on making the business profitable, knowing that they would benefit too.  The company became renowned both for reliable service and punctuality and grew rapidly. By the 1930s Lauro owned the largest private fleet in the Mediterranean basin.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Sergeant in the Snow, by Mario Rigoni Stern. Translated by Archibald Colquhoun 

Mario Rigoni Stern was barely 21 and already a battle veteran at the time of the World War II disaster he describes in The Sergeant in the Snow. In July 1942 three divisions of Italian Alpini troops, specially trained for winter warfare, began retreating - entirely on foot, with no supplies, at temperatures of 30-40 degrees below zero. By the end of the march, 90,000 men were missing or dead and 45,000 frostbitten and wounded. Today this famous account of a simple Alpine non-commissioned officer who finds himself fighting in the central sector of the Russian front, just when the army of the Soviet Union launches its powerful demolition attack, acquires special significance. As the narrated facts move further away in time, the sergeant's diary becomes more intense and takes on the characteristics of a perennial experience. The written testimony, with respect to the historical-geographical events from which it arose, maintains the same relationship that we might suppose between the coin and its minting.

Archibald Colquhoun was a leading translator of modern Italian literature into English. He studied at Oxford University, and the Royal College of Art and worked in British intelligence during wartime. He scored his biggest success with Lampedusa's The Leopard, a translation that is still in print. He was also one of the first translators to introduce Italo Calvino to English language readers and was himself the author of a biography of Alessandro Manzoni.

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15 June

Lisa del Giocondo – the Mona Lisa

Florentine wife and mother who became a global icon

Merchant’s wife Lisa del Giocondo, who has been identified as the model for the Mona Lisa, was born on this day in 1479 in Florence.  Her enigmatic beauty was immortalised by Leonardo da Vinci in the early part of the 16th century when he painted her portrait, a major work of art known as the Mona Lisa, which is now in the Louvre in Paris.  The painting, sometimes known as La Gioconda, has become a global icon that has been used in other works of art, illustrations and advertising.  The face of the Mona Lisa belongs to a woman who was born as Lisa Gherardini into a well-off Tuscan family. When she was still in her teens she was married to Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo, a successful cloth and silk merchant who was much older than her. They had five children together.   In 1503, when the couple were living in the Via della Stufa, it is thought Leonardo da Vinci started work on her portrait.  Francesco later became an official in Florence and is believed to have had connections with the Medici family.  In June 1537 he made provision for Lisa in his will, referring to the ‘affection and love of the testator towards Mona Lisa, his beloved wife.’  Read more…

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Carlo Cattaneo - philosopher and writer

Intellectual who became a key figure in Milan uprising

Carlo Cattaneo, the philosopher and political writer who emerged as a leader in the so-called Five Days of Milan, the 1848 rebellion against the harsh rule of Austria, was born on this day in 1801 in Milan.  An influential figure in academic and intellectual circles in Milan, whose ideas helped shape the Risorgimento, Cattaneo was fundamentally against violence as a means to achieve change.  Yet when large-scale rioting broke out in the city in March 1848 he joined other intellectuals bringing organisation to the insurrection and succeeded in driving out Austria's occupying army, at least temporarily.  The uprising happened against a backcloth of social reform in other parts of the peninsula, in Rome and further south in Salerno, Naples and Sicily.  By contrast, the Austrians, who ruled most of northern Italy, sought to strengthen their grip by imposing harsh tax increases on the citizens and sent out tax collectors, supported by the army, to ensure that everybody paid.  Cattaneo, who published his philosophical and political ideas in a journal entitled Il Politecnico, considered negotiation was the best way to represent the grievances of Milanese citizens.  Read more…

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Hugo Pratt – comic book creator

Talented writer and artist travelled widely

The creator of the comic book character, Corto Maltese, was born Hugo Eugenio Pratt on this day in 1927 in Rimini.  Pratt became a famous comic book writer and artist and was renowned for combining strong storytelling with extensive historical research.  His most famous character, Corto Maltese, came into being when he started a magazine with Florenzo Ivaldi.  Pratt spent most of his childhood in Venice with his parents, Rolando Pratt and Evelina Genero. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Pratt, was English and Hugo Pratt was related to the actor, Boris Karloff, who was born William Henry Pratt.  Hugo Pratt moved to Ethiopia with his mother in the late 1930s to join his father, who was working there following the conquest of the country by Benito Mussolini.  Pratt’s father was later captured by British troops and died from disease while he was a prisoner of war.  Pratt and his mother were interned in a prison camp where he would regularly buy comics from the guards.  After the war, Pratt returned to Venice where he organised entertainment for the Allied troops. He later joined what became known as ‘the Venice group’ with other Italian cartoonists, including Alberto Ongaro and Mario Faustinelli.  Read more…

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Carlo Scorza - politician and journalist

Blackshirt who was last party secretary of Mussolini’s Fascists 

Carlo Scorza, who rose to prominence with the Fascist paramilitary group known as the Blackshirts and was the last party secretary of Benito Mussolini’s regime, was born on this day in 1897 in Paolo, a seaside town in Calabria.  Scorza fought with the Italian Army’s Bersaglieri corps during World War One. After the war he became a member of Mussolini’s fasci italiani di combattimento, the organisation that was the forerunner of the National Fascist Party.  Such was his loyalty to Mussolini even as the course of the Second World War turned against Italy that the dictator appointed him secretary of the party in April 1943, although the position ceased to exist when the party was dissolved in July of that year after Mussolini was deposed as leader and arrested.  After growing up on his father’s small farm in Calabria, Scorza moved with his family to Lucca in Tuscany, where ultimately he studied to be an accountant. He supported Italy’s involvement in the First World War and after joining the Bersaglieri, a highly mobile infantry corps, he rose to the rank of tenente (Lieutenant).  When the conflict ended, Scorza returned to the Lucca area. He joined Mussolini’s party and became involved in acts of violence against communists and socialists.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Leonardo Da Vinci: The Complete Works, edited by Simona Cremante

Leonardo Da Vinci is considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived, responsible for the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Madonna of the Carnation and Vitruvian Man.  Leonardo was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. Simona Cremamte’s The Complete Works provides the reader with a unique insight into the life and work of one of history's most intriguing figures.  All of Leonardo Da Vinci's work is presented in this compact volume - from his paintings and frescoes, to detailed reproductions of his remarkable encrypted notebooks. As well as featuring each individual artwork, sections of each are shown in isolation to reveal incredible details - for example, the different levels of perspective between the background sections of the Mona Lisa, and the disembodied hand in The Last Supper. The book comprises 640 pages of colour artworks and photographs of Da Vinci's original notebooks, accompanied by fascinating biographical and historical details.

Simona Cremante was born in Florence in 1970. She graduated in History of Science at the University of Florence before obtaining the Diploma of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She is a scholar of Leonardo Da Vinci, on whom she has published numerous articles and volumes.

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14 June

NEW - Gianna Nannini – singer and songwriter

Performer’s interests inspired her ideas for songs

One of Italy’s best-known pop singers and composers, Gianna Nannini, was born on this day in 1954 in Siena in Tuscany. She has composed and recorded many hit songs and has sung duets with well-known artists, ranging from Andrea Bocelli to Sting.  Her composition, Fotoromanzo, peaked at number one for four consecutive weeks in the Italian singles chart. It won musical awards and has since been covered by many other artists and has featured in the soundtrack of a film. Another of her songs, Bello e impossibile, was a hit both in Italy and across Europe.  The daughter of a confectionery manufacturer, Nannini studied the piano in Lucca and then went to the University of Milan to read composition and philosophy. She made her first album, Gianna Nannini, which achieved wide success, in 1976, and she has since produced 30 albums of songs.  Her intellectual interests have led to her becoming involved in some unusual artistic projects, such as when she composed the music for the film A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Gabriele Salvatores, in which she also played the part of Titania.  Read more…

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Salvatore Quasimodo - Nobel Prize winner

Civil engineer wrote poetry in his spare time

Salvatore Quasimodo, who was one of six Italians to have won a Nobel Prize in Literature, died on this day in 1968 in Naples.  The former civil engineer, who was working for the Italian government in Reggio Calabria when he published his first collection of poems and won the coveted and historic Nobel Prize in 1959, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage in Amalfi, in Campania, where he had gone to preside over a poetry prize.  He was taken by car to Naples but died in hospital a few hours later, at the age of 66.  He had suffered a heart attack previously during a visit to the Soviet Union.  The committee of the Swedish Academy, who meet to decide each year’s Nobel laureates, cited Quasimodo’s “lyrical poetics, which with ardent classicism expresses the tragic experiences of the life of our times". The formative experiences that shaped his literary life began when he was a child when his father, a station master in Modica, the small city in the province of Ragusa in Sicily, where Salvatore was born in 1901, was transferred in 1909 to Messina, to supervise the reorganisation of train services in the wake of the devastating earthquake of December 1908.  Read more…

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Antonio Sacchini - composer

Masterpiece widely acknowledged only after tragic death

The composer Antonio Sacchini, whose operas brought him fame in England and France in the second half of the 18th century and found favour with the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, among others, was born on this day in 1730 in Florence.  His 1785 work Oedipe à Colone, which fell into the opera seria genre as opposed to the more light-hearted opera buffa, in which he also specialised, has best stood the test of time among his works, although it did not achieve popularity until after his death after initially falling victim to the political climate in the French court.  Sacchini came from humble stock. His father, Gaetano, was thought to be a cook, and it was through his work that the family moved to Naples when he was four, Gaetano having been employed by the future Bourbon King of Naples, Don Carlos, then the Duke of Parma and Piacenza.  This provided the opportunity for Sacchini to receive tuition at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, under the supervision of the composer Francesco Durante, where he learned the basics of composition, harmony and counterpoint, also developing impressive skills as a violinist and studying singing.  Read more…

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Giacomo Leopardi – poet and philosopher

The tragic life of a brilliant Italian writer

One of Italy’s greatest 19th century writers, Giacomo Leopardi, died on this day in 1837 in Naples.  A brilliant scholar and philosopher, Leopardi led an unhappy life in Recanati in the Papal States, blighted by poor health, but he left as a legacy his superb lyric poetry.  By the age of 16, Leopardi had independently mastered Greek, Latin and several modern languages and had translated many classical works. He had also written some poems, tragedies and scholarly commentaries.  He had been born deformed and excessive study made his health worse. He became blind in one eye and developed a cerebrospinal condition that was to cause him problems for the rest of his life.  He was forced to suspend his studies and, saddened by an apparent lack of concern from his parents, he poured out his feelings in poems such as the visionary work, Appressamento della morte - Approach of Death - written in 1816 in terza rima, in imitation of Petrarch and Dante.  His frustrated love for his married cousin, and the death from consumption of the young daughter of his father’s coachman, only deepened his despair. The death of the young girl inspired perhaps his greatest lyric poem, A Silvia.  Read more…

Francesco Morlacchi - composer

Umbrian popularised Italian opera in Dresden

The composer Francesco Morlacchi, who spent much of his career working for the Saxon court in Dresden and helped popularise Italian opera not only in Germany but further afield, was born on this day in 1784 in Perugia.  Morlacchi composed more than 20 operas, the most successful of which is Tebaldo e Isolina, a romantic melodrama around a love affair between members of rival families, which had its premiere in Venice in 1822.  A contemporary of Gioachino Rossini, Morlacchi had the opportunity in the same year to succeed Rossini as maestro di cappella of the royal theatres in Naples. However, he chose to remain in Dresden.  Morlacchi was born into a family of musicians. His father, Alessandro, was a violinist at Perugia’s Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, where his maternal great-uncle, Giovanni Mazzetti, was the organist.  He began composing at a young age, studying first under Mazzetti and later with the cathedral’s maestro di cappella, the Neapolitan Luigi Caruso. He furthered his education in Loreto in Marche with Niccolò Zingarelli, another Neapolitan. Eventually, he secured a place at the school of Stanislao Mattei in Bologna, where he met Rossini.  Read more…

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Giovanni Borgia - murdered son of Pope

Killing still unsolved after 500 years despite plenty of suspects

Giovanni Borgia, the brother of Cesare and Lucrezia and son of Pope Alexander VI, was murdered on this day in 1497 in Rome.  There was no shortage of possible suspects but the murder was never solved. The grief-stricken Pope launched an immediate murder inquiry, but mysteriously closed down the investigation after just one week, leading to speculation that the perpetrator could have been a member of Giovanni’s own family.  The case has fascinated historians and writers for the last 500 years and been the subject of many books, including Mario Puzo’s historical novel, The Family, and it has featured in many films and televisions programmes. Giovanni was born in Rome in either 1474 or 1476 to the then Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his mistress, Vanozza dei Cattanei. He is thought to have been  the eldest of the children fathered by Pope Alexander VI with his mistress, but this is disputed.  He was married to Maria Enriquez de Luna, who had been betrothed to his older half-brother, Pedro Luis, who died before the marriage could take place.  Read more…

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Battle of Marengo

Napoleon works up an appetite driving out the Austrians

Napoleon was victorious in battle against the Austrians on this day in 1800 in an area near the village of Marengo, about five kilometres south of Alessandria in Piedmont.  A chicken dish named after the battle, Pollo alla Marengo, keeps the event alive by continuing to appear on restaurant menus and in cookery books.  It was an important victory for Napoleon, who effectively drove the Austrians out of Italy by forcing them to retreat.  Initially French forces had been overpowered by the Austrians and had been pushed back a few miles. The Austrians thought they had won and retired to Alessandria.  But the French received reinforcements and launched a surprise counter-attack, forcing the Austrians to retreat and subsequently to have to sign an armistice.  This sealed a political victory for Napoleon and helped him secure his grip on power.  There are various stories about the origin of the chicken dish named after the battle. Some say Napoleon ate it after his victory, while others say a restaurant chef in Paris invented it and named it after the battle in Napoleon’s honour.  There is also a story that Napoleon refused to eat before the battle but eventually came off the field with a ferocious hunger.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Salvatore Quasimodo: Complete Poems, translated by Jack Bevan

Salvatore Quasimodo (1901–1968) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1959. The citation declares, 'his lyrical poetry with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our time'. Jack Bevan's authoritative translation of Quasimodo’s life work fills a great gap in our knowledge of 20th-century European poetry. 'The poetry is textured like shot silk, yet the elegance and syntactical lucidity with which Jack Bevan has worked to bring these poems to English readers enables them to stand as poems in their own right,' wrote Peter Scupham of Bevan's translation of Quasimodo's last poems, Debit and Credit.  Quasimodo's strong and passionate writing continues to testify to the human – and inhuman – realities which have created our modern world. The Italian critic Giuliano Dego wrote, 'To bear witness to man's history in all the urgency of a particular time and place, and to teach the lesson of courage, this has been Quasimodo’s poetic task.'

Jack Bevan was a poet and translator. Born in Blackpool, he read English at Cambridge before serving as a commissioned officer with the British Army in Iceland and Italy, where he fought in the Italian campaign during World War Two. 

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Gianna Nannini – singer and songwriter

Performer’s interests inspired her ideas for songs

Gianna Nannini on stage at the Kia Metropol
Arena in Nuremburg as part of a 2024 tour

One of Italy’s best-known pop singers and composers, Gianna Nannini, was born on this day in 1954 in Siena in Tuscany. She has composed and recorded many hit songs and has sung duets with well-known artists, ranging from Andrea Bocelli to Sting.

Her composition, Fotoromanzo, peaked at number one for four consecutive weeks in the Italian singles chart. It won musical awards and has since been covered by many other artists and has featured in the soundtrack of a film. Another of her songs, Bello e impossibile, was a hit both in Italy and across Europe.

The daughter of a confectionery manufacturer, Nannini studied the piano in Lucca and then went to the University of Milan to read composition and philosophy. She made her first album, Gianna Nannini, which achieved wide success, in 1976, and she has since produced 30 albums of songs.

Her intellectual interests have led to her becoming involved in some unusual artistic projects, such as when she composed the music for the film A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Gabriele Salvatores, in which she also played the part of Titania.

In the 1990s, Nannini composed the music for two short operas, and she worked with the director Michelangelo Antonioni on a video clip that was filmed to go with Fotoromanzo.

Nannini performing in 1981, as she was beginning
to find fame across Europe as well as in Italy

She has been awarded a doctorate by the University of Siena for her thesis on traditional Tuscan music.

Nannini’s first domestic hit was with the single, America, in 1979, and her album, California, subsequently became a success throughout Europe. Her international breakthrough came when her sixth album, Puzzle, peaked in the Italian, German, Austrian and Swiss pop charts. Her 1987 album, Maschi e altri, sold over a million copies. 

In 2004, she released her greatest hits compilation album, Perle, where some of her most famous songs were rearranged to music played by a pianist and a string quartet. Her album, Grazie, released in February 2006, reached number one of the Italian album chart, featuring the single, Sei nell'anima.

In April 2007, Nannini released Pia come la canto io, a collection of songs produced by Wil Malone, which was originally intended for a rock opera based on the medieval Tuscan character Pia de’ Tolomei, who is briefly mentioned in Dante’s Purgatorio. 

An acoustic version of her rendition of the song Meravigliosa creatura, from Perle, was used in a 2008 commercial for the Fiat Bravo. The Fiat Company later used another Gianni Nannini song, Aria, in a subsequent Fiat Bravo advertisement.

Nannini performed with Sting and other singers in The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil in 1987 in Hamburg. With Edoardo Bennato, she sang the official song of the 1990 World Cup, which was staged in Italy, entitled Un’estate Italiana but also known as Notte magiche.

Nannini's brother, Alessandro,
is a former racing driver

In 2006, she recorded a single with Andrea Bocelli, in 2008 she took part in a duet with the Italian rapper Fabri Fibra, and she has also performed with the Macedonian singer Tose Proeski.

Nannini has a younger brother, Alessandro, who is a former Formula One racing driver. He won the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix, driving for Benetton.

In 1995, Gianna Nannini took part in a protest organised by Greenpeace at the French embassy in Rome against the decision by the French government to pursue nuclear experiments at Mururoa, an atoll in the southern Pacific Ocean.

At the age of 56, Nannini announced that she was pregnant and she later gave birth to a daughter in Milan in 2010. In 2017, she decided to move to live in London, revealing the reasons for her decision in her autobiography, Cazzi miei, which was published later the same year. 

Siena's shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, thronged
with people during a staging of the Palio di Siena

Travel tip:

The ancient city of Siena in Tuscany, where Gianna Nannini was born, is famous for being the venue for the historic horse race, the Palio di Siena. The race starts from Siena’s Piazza del Campo, a shell-shaped open area, which is regarded as one of Europe’s finest medieval squares. The Piazza was established in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form the city of Siena.  Siena was one of the major cities of Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries and was almost as large as Paris.  The city is said to have taken its name from Senius, having been founded by Senius and his brother Aschius, in Roman mythology the sons of Remus and nephews of Romulus, the legendary founders of Rome. Therefore, Siena's emblem is the she-wolf who suckled Remus and Romulus. A product named after Siena is the Christmas treat Panforte di Siena, a rich flat cake containing fruit and nuts. Siena also produces the almond flavour biscuits, ricciarelli, and the pastries with walnuts and candied fruits, named cavalucci that are traditionally eaten by Italians at Christmas. They also make the traditional biscuits, pane co’ i Santi e I Morti, to commemorate All Saints Day on November 1.

Lucca is famous for its Renaissance walls, which
offer a 4.2km unbroken circuit of the city

Travel tip:

Lucca, where Gianna Nannini studied music, is famous for its Renaissance walls, which have remained intact over the centuries. A promenade now runs along the top of the walls, providing a popular place to walk round the city enjoying the views, and they offer visitors the chance to make a complete 4.2km (2.6 miles) circuit of the city. Lucca has lots of narrow cobbled streets, which lead into beautiful squares, with cafes and restaurants and a wealth of churches, museums, and galleries to visit. The main square, Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, is a public square in the northeast quadrant of the walled centre. The ring of buildings surrounding the square follows the shape of the former second century Roman amphitheatre that was built there. Lucca was the birthplace of the opera composer Giacomo Puccini and opera lovers can visit the house in which he was born, and where he spent his early years studying music, in Corte San Lorenzo. It is now a museum and has the original piano the composer used to play.

Also on this day:

1497: The murder of Giovanni Borgia, brother of Cesare and Lucrezia

1730: The birth of composer Antonio Sacchini

1784: The birth of composer Francesco Morlacchi

1800: The Battle of Marengo

1837: The death of poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi

1968: The death of poet Salvatore Quasimodo

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13 June

Giovanni Antonio Magini - astronomer and cartographer

Scientist laboured to produce a comprehensive atlas of Italy

Giovanni Antonio Magini, who dedicated his life to producing a detailed atlas of Italy, was born on this day in 1555 in Padua.  He also devised his own planetary theory consisting of 11 rotating spheres and invented calculating devices to help him work on the geometry of the sphere.  Magini was born in Padua and went to study philosophy in Bologna, receiving his doctorate in 1579. He then dedicated himself to astronomy and in 1582 wrote his Ephemerides coelestium motuum, a major treatise on the subject, which was translated into Italian the following year.  In 1588 Magini joined in the competition for the chair of mathematics at Bologna University and was chosen over Galileo because he was older and had more moderate views. He held the position for the rest of his life.  But his greatest achievement was the preparation of Italia, or the Atlante geografico d’Italia - the Geographical Atlas of Italy - which was printed posthumously by Magini’s son in 1620.  Although Italy as a state has existed only since 1861, the name Italia, referring to the southern part of the peninsula, may go back to the ancient Greeks. It appeared on coins thought to have been produced in the 1st century BC.  Read more…

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Pope's would-be killer pardoned

Turkish gunman 'freed' but immediately detained

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italy’s president, signed the order granting an official pardon to Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, on this day in 2000.  The Turkish gunman had spent 19 years in jail after wounding the pontiff in St Peter’s Square in Rome in May 1981 but John Paul II, who had forgiven Agca from his hospital bed and visited him in prison in 1983, had been pressing the Italian government to show clemency and allow him to return to Turkey.  However, at the same time as granting him his freedom under the Italian judicial system, Ciampi also signed Agca’s extradition papers at the request of the Turkish authorities, who required him to serve the outstanding nine years of a 10-year jail sentence after being convicted in his absence of the murder of a Turkish journalist in 1978.  He was handed over to Turkish police, who escorted him on to a military flight to Istanbul airport on Tuesday night.  At the time, a Vatican statement described the Pope as "very happy" about the pardon and said that John Paul II’s satisfaction was all the greater for the pardon being carried out during the Roman Catholic Church's Holy Year.  Read more…

Saint Anthony of Padua

Pilgrims honour the saint famous for his miracles

The feast of Saint Anthony of Padua (Sant’Antonio da Padova) is celebrated today, with thousands of people visiting the northern Italian city. Special services are held in the Basilica di Sant’Antonio before a statue of the saint is carried through the streets of Padua.  Pilgrims from all over the world visit the Basilica, to see the saint’s tomb and relics.  Anthony was born in Portugal where he became a Catholic priest and a friar of the Franciscan order. He died on 13 June, 1231 in Padova and was declared a saint by the Vatican a year after his death, which is considered a remarkably short space of time.  Anthony is one of the most loved of all the saints and his name is regularly invoked by Italians to help them recover lost items.  It is estimated that about five million pilgrims visit the Basilica every year in order to file past and touch the tomb of the Franciscan monk,who became famous for his miracles, particularly relating to lost people or things.  The magnificent basilica in Piazza del Santo is an architectural masterpiece created between the 13th and 14th centuries, later enriched with works of art by masters such as Titian, Tiepolo and the sculptor Donatello.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: A History of the World in Twelve Maps, by Jerry Brotton

Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely scientific objects, maps of the world are unavoidably ideological and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power and authority of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age. In this scintillating book, Jerry Brotton examines the significance of 12 maps - from the almost mystical representations of ancient history to the satellite-derived imagery of today. He vividly recreates the environments and circumstances in which each of the maps was made, showing how each conveys a highly individual view of the world. Brotton shows how each of his maps both influenced and reflected contemporary events and how, by reading it, we can better understand the worlds that produced it.  Although the way we map our surroundings is changing, Brotton argues that maps today are no more definitive or objective than they have ever been, but that they continue to define, shape and recreate the world. Readers of A History of the World in Twelve Maps will never look at a map in quite the same way again.

Jerry Brotton is a British historian. He is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London, a television and radio presenter and a curator. He writes about literature, history, material culture, trade, and east-west relations, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries.

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12 June

Nick Gentile - mafioso

Sicilian mobster defied code of silence by publishing memoirs

The mafioso Nicola Gentile, known in the United States as Nick, who became notorious for publishing a book of memoirs that revealed the inner workings of the American Mafia as well as secrets of the Sicilian underworld, was born on this day in 1885 in Siculiana, a small town on the south coast of the Sicily, in the province of Agrigento.  Gentile’s book, Vita di Capomafia, which he wrote in conjunction with a journalist, was published in 1963 and provided much assistance to the American authorities in their fight against organised crime.   As a result Gentile was sentenced to death by the mafia council in Sicily for having broken the code of omertà, a vow of silence to which all mafiosi are expected to adhere to protect their criminal activities.  Siculiana, in fact, was a mafia stronghold, where the code was usually enforced with particular rigour.  Yet the mobsters from the city of Catania who were tasked with carrying out the sentence declined to do so, for reasons that have not been explained. In the event, Gentile died in Siculiana in 1966 of natural causes, having spent his last years as an old, sick man who appeared to have very little money and was kept alive by the kindness of neighbours.  Read more…

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Edda “Edy” Campagnoli - model, TV star and businesswoman

Glamorous blonde who married top footballer

The model, television star and later businesswoman Edda “Edy” Campagnoli was born on this day in 1934 in Milan.  Campagnoli was a famous face in Italy in the 1950s. She became a celebrity as the glamorous assistant of popular presenter Mike Bongiorno on a prime time quiz show, and then married the AC Milan and Italy goalkeeper Lorenzo Buffon.  For a while, she and Buffon - a cousin of the grandfather of another famous Italian goalkeeper, World Cup-winner Gianluigi Buffon - were one of Italy’s most high-profile couples.  Campagnoli, blonde with blue eyes and a curvaceous figure, first attracted attention as a catwalk model in the city of her birth and it would be her looks that provided a passport to stardom. In 1954, the director Luchino Visconti decided she would be the perfect Venus in his interpretation of Gaspare Spontini’s opera La vestale, giving her the rare distinction of appearing on stage at Milan's great opera house, Teatro alla Scala, alongside the superstar soprano Maria Callas. A year later, she made her television debut in an afternoon show on the fledgling Rai network, where she was quickly spotted by the producers of Lascia o raddoppia?, a new quiz show.  Read more…

Margherita Hack – astrophysicist

TV personality made science more popular

Writer and astrophysicist Margherita Hack was born on this day in 1922 in Florence.  She studied stars by analysing the different kinds of radiation they emitted and frequently appeared on television to explain new findings in astronomy and physics.  Hack, whose father, Roberto Hack, was of Swiss origin, graduated in physics from the University of Florence in 1945. She worked at the Brera Astronomical Observatory just outside Milan and then became a professor at the University of Trieste.  She spent more than 20 years as director of the observatory in Trieste, the first woman in Italy to hold such a position. Under her leadership, the observatory became one of the foremost research centres in Italy.  Hack wrote many scientific papers and books, winning awards for her research. Her television appearances helped make science more popular with ordinary people.  Hack was also known for her strong political views and for her criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, which she believed had an unscientific outlook.  Hack was awarded the honour of Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2012 and the asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named after her.  Read more…

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Charles Emmanuel II - Duke of Savoy

Ruler who was notorious for massacre of Protestant minority

Charles Emmanuel II, who was Duke of Savoy for almost his whole life, died on this day in 1675 in Turin.  His rule was notorious for his persecution of the Valdesi – a Christian Protestant movement widely known as the Waldenses that originated in 12th century France, whose base was on the Franco-Italian border.  In 1655, he launched an attack on the Valdesi that turned into a massacre so brutal that it sent shockwaves around Europe and prompted the English poet, John Milton, to write the sonnet On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.  The British political leader Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, proposed to send the British Navy if the massacre and subsequent attacks were not halted, and raised funds for helping the Waldensians.  More positively, Charles Emmanuel II was responsible for improving commerce and creating wealth in the Duchy. He was a driver in developing the port of Nice and building a road through the Alps towards France.  He also reformed the army so that it did not rely on mercenaries, forming five Piedmontese regiments and reviving the cavalry, as well as introducing a standardised uniform.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Cosa Nostra: The Definitive History of the Sicilian Mafia, by John Dickie

Recognised as the 'first truly definitive English-language study of this myth-laden subject' (Sunday Times), Cosa Nostra is the compelling story of the Sicilian Mafia, the world's most famous, most secretive and most misunderstood criminal fraternity.  The Mafia has been given many names since it was founded 140 years ago: the Sect, the Brotherhood, the Honoured Society, and now Cosa Nostra. Yet as times have changed, the Mafia's subtle and bloody methods have remained the same. Now, for the first time, Cosa Nostra reconstructs the complete history of the Sicilian mafia from its origins to the present day, from the lemon groves and sulphur mines of Sicily, to the streets of Manhattan.  Described by journalist and presenter Andrew Marr as 'Monumental and gripping', Cosa Nostra is a history rich in atmosphere with the narrative pace of the best detective fiction, and hailed by critics in Italy as one of the best books to be written about the Mafia.

John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies at University College London (UCL). He is an internationally-recognised specialist on many aspects of Italian history and culture and his books have been translated into more than 20 languages. His history of Italian food, Delizia!, was turned into a six-part series for Italian television.

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11 June

Giovanni Antonio Giay – composer

Opera composer also wrote religious music for the Savoy family

Opera and music composer Giovanni Antonio Giay was born on this day in 1690 in Turin.  A protégée of Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, Giay - sometimes spelt Giai or Giaj -  wrote 15 operas, five symphonies and a large quantity of sacred music for the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral.  Giay’s father, Stefano Giuseppe Giay, who was a chemist, died when Giovanni Antonio was just five years old.  At the age of ten, Giovanni Antonio became the first member of his family to study music when he entered the Collegio degli Innocenti at Turin Cathedral to study under Francesco Fasoli.  Giay’s first opera, Il trionfo d’amore ossia La Fillide, was premiered at the original Teatro Carignano during the Carnival of 1715.  At the invitation of Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, Giay became maestro di cappella at the royal chapel in Turin in 1732, succeeding Andrea Stefano Fiore.  Charles Emmanuel III liked art and music and reintroduced feasting and celebrations in Turin that had previously been abolished by his predecessors.  The composer produced a great deal of religious music for the chapel but continued to write opera as well.  Read more…

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Corrado Alvaro - writer and journalist

Novelist from Calabria won Italy's most prestigious literary prize

The award-winning writer and journalist Corrado Alvaro died on this day in 1956 at the age of 61.  Alvaro won the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, in 1951 with his novel Quasi una vita (Almost a Life).  The Premio Strega – the Strega Prize – has been awarded to such illustrious names as Alberto Moravia, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Elsa Morante, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco and Dacia Maraini since its inception in 1947.  Alvaro made his debut as a novelist in 1926 but for much of his life his literary career ran parallel with his work as a journalist.  He was born in San Luca, a small village in Calabria at the foot of the Aspromonte massif in the southern Apennines. His father Antonio was a primary school teacher who also set up classes for illiterate shepherds.  Corrado was sent away to Jesuit boarding schools in Rome and Umbria before graduating with a degree in literature in 1919 at the University of Milan.  He began his newspaper career writing for Il Resto di Carlino of Bologna and Milan’s Corriere della Sera, both daily newspapers, for whom he combined reporting with literary criticism.  Read more…

Antonio Cifrondi – painter

Artist who preserved images of everyday life 

Baroque artist Antonio Cifrondi was born on this day in 1655 in Clusone, just north of Bergamo, in Lombardy.  He is known for his religious works and his genre paintings of old men and women and of people at work, in which he depicts their clothing in great detail.  Some of his work is on display in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. A self-portrait can be seen in the church of Sant' Alessandro della Croce in Via Pignolo in Bergamo.  Cifrondi was born into a poor family in Clusone, the main town in Val Seriana to the northeast of Bergamo.  After training as a painter locally he moved to Bologna, and then to Turin and to Rome, where he stayed for about five years. He also worked briefly at the Palace of Versailles near Paris.  He came back to live in the Bergamo area in the 1680s, after which he painted many of his major works. He lived for the last years of his life in a convent near Brescia, the city where he died in 1730.  Bergamo in Lombardy is a beautiful city with an upper and lower town that are separated by impressive fortifications. The magical upper town has gems of medieval and Renaissance architecture.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Music in the Baroque, by Wendy Heller 

A study of Baroque music in its cultural, social, and intellectual contexts,  Wendy Heller's Music in the Baroque traces the production and consumption of music in the 17th and early 18th century. Going beyond a history of styles, the text explores patronage, education, religious and civic ritual, theatre, and visual culture. Heller focuses not only on the nature of music in the Baroque period, but also on the different ways in which men and women experienced music in their daily lives. Treating music as an expression of political and national identity, she examines it in the context of the era's art and literature, political and religious conflicts, and contentious issues of class and gender. The book is part of the series Western Music in Context: A Norton History, which comprises six volumes of moderate length, each written in an engaging style by a recognised expert. Authoritative and current, the series examines music in the broadest sense - as sounds notated, performed, and heard - focusing not only on composers and works, but also on broader social and intellectual currents.

Wendy Heller is Professor of Music and Director of the Program in Italian Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women's Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice and articles published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Early Music, and Music & Letters.

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10 June

NEW - Bruno Bartoletti – operatic conductor

Florentine maestro conquered hearts in Chicago

Internationally acclaimed operatic conductor Bruno Bartoletti, who conducted and served as an artistic director at Lyric Opera Chicago for more than 50 years, was born on this day in 1926 in Sesto Fiorentino in Tuscany.  Bartoletti is recognised as having shaped the excellent reputation of Lyric Opera Chicago for staging great productions of Italian opera masterpieces, as well as modern works. He also directed Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and was principal conductor at the Danish Royal Opera.  His father, Umberto, was a blacksmith who played the clarinet in a band, and as a young boy Bruno Bartoletti played the piccolo. One of his teachers recognised his musical talent, and her husband, who was the sculptor Antonio Berti, recommended him to the Cherubini conservatory, where he studied the flute and the piano.  Bartoletti went on to play in the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and then became a pianist on the staff of Teatro Comunale in Florence.  He assisted conductors such as Artur Rodzinski, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Vittorio Gui and Tullio Serafin, who was the one who encouraged Bartoletti to study conducting.  Read more…

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Arrigo Boito – writer and composer

Death of a patriot who fought for Venice

Arrigo Boito, who wrote both the music and libretto for his opera, Mefistofele, died on this day in 1918 in Milan.  Of all the operas based on Goethe’s Faust, Boito’s Mefistofele is considered the most faithful to the play and his libretto is regarded as being of particularly high quality.  Boito was born in Padua in 1842, the son of an Italian painter of miniatures, and a Polish countess. He attended the Milan Conservatory and travelled to Paris on a scholarship.  It was there he met Giuseppe Verdi, for whom he wrote the text of the Hymn of the Nations in 1862.  He fought under the direction of Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1866 in the seven weeks of the Third Italian War of Independence, against Austria, after which Venice was ceded to Italy.  While working on Mefistofele, Boito published articles, influenced by the composer Richard Wagner, in which he vigorously attacked Italian music and musicians.  Verdi was deeply offended by his words and by 1868, when Mefistofele was produced in Milan, Boito’s opinions had provoked so much hostility there was nearly a riot.  The opera was withdrawn after two performances, but a revised version, produced in 1875, still survives.  Read more…

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Italy enters the Second World War

Mussolini sides with Germany against Britain and France

One of the darkest periods of Italian history began on this day in 1940 when the country's Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, declared war on Great Britain and France, ending the possibility that Italy would avoid being drawn into the Second World War.  Mussolini made the declaration from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, where he had his office. The balcony enabled him to address a large crowd in the Piazza Venezia and he ordered his Blackshirts to ensure that the square was full of enthusiastic supporters.  Italy had already signed a Pact of Steel with Germany but had been reluctant to enter the conflict. Mussolini had a strong navy but a relatively weak army and a lack of resources across the board.  By June 1940, however, Germany was on the point of conquering France and it was thought that Britain would soon follow. Historians believe Mussolini's decision to enter the conflict was an opportunistic attempt to win a share of French territory.  He told the Italian people that going to war was a matter of honour after his efforts to preserve peace had been rebuffed by 'treacherous' Western democracies, but many believe his motives were simply to pursue his expansionist ambitions.  Read more...

Mercurino Arborio di Gattinara – politician and cardinal

Lawyer and strategist dreamt of a united Europe ruled by the Emperor

Influential statesman and political adviser Mercurino Arborio di Gattinara was born on this day in 1465 in Gattinara in Piedmont.  Gattinara became Grand Chancellor to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and, despite being a layman who had never been ordained as a priest, he was created a cardinal. He was one of the most important men active in politics of his time and he set out to centralise power in Germany and make the Holy Roman Empire a moral and political arbiter for all the kingdoms and principalities in Europe.  Born in his family’s home in Gattinara, he was the eldest son of Paolo Arborio di Gattinara and Felicità Ranzo, who was from an important family in Vercelli.  After his father’s death, Gattinara had to interrupt his studies for financial reasons and went to Vercelli to practise with his father’s cousin, who was a notary.  He was able to resume his law studies at the University of Turin after marrying Andreetta Avogadro and using her dowry to pay for his studies. After obtaining his doctorate, he practised law in Turin.  In 1501, he became adviser to Duchess Margherita of Habsburg, the daughter of Emperor Maximilian 1 of Hapsburg. Read more…

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Carlo Ancelotti - football manager

Five-times winner of the Champions League

Carlo Ancelotti, a former top-level player who has become one of football’s most accomplished managers, was born on this day in 1959 in Reggiolo, a small town in Emilia-Romagna.  With Real Madrid's defeat of Liverpool in the 2022 final, he became the only manager to have won the UEFA Champions League four times - twice with AC Milan and twice with Real Madrid. He has since won the trophy for a fifth time thanks to Madrid’s victory over Borussia Dortmund in the 2024 final. Ancelotti, who has managed title-winning teams in four countries, is also one of only seven to have won the European Cup or Champions League as a player and gone on to do so as a manager too.  As a boy, Ancelotti often helped his father, Giuseppe, who made and sold cheese for a living, in the fields on the family farm, which is where he claims he acquired his appreciation of hard work.  But despite the cheeses of Emilia-Romagna having international renown, especially the famous Parmigiana-Reggiano, he saw how his father struggled to make enough money to feed his family and vowed to make more of his own life.  His talent for football, allied to that work ethic, enabled him to fulfil that promise.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, by Philip Gossett

Divas and Scholars is a dazzling and beguiling account of how opera comes to the stage, filled with Philip Gossett’s personal experiences of triumphant—and even failed—performances and suffused with his towering and tonic passion for music. Writing as a fan, a musician, and a scholar, Gossett, the world's leading authority on the performance of Italian opera, brings colourfully to life the problems, and occasionally the scandals, that attend the production of some of our favourite operas. Gossett begins by tracing the social history of 19th-century Italian theatres in order to explain the nature of the musical scores from which performers have long worked. He then illuminates the often hidden but crucial negotiations made between opera scholars, opera conductors and performers: What does it mean to talk about performing from a critical edition? How does one determine what music to perform when multiple versions of an opera exist? What are the implications of omitting passages from an opera in a performance? In addition to vexing questions such as these, Gossett also tackles issues of ornamentation and transposition in vocal style, the matters of translation and adaptation, and even aspects of stage direction and set design.  Gossett enlivens the text with reports from his own experiences with major opera companies at venues ranging from the Metropolitan and Santa Fe operas to the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro.  Divas and Scholars was the winner of the 2007 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the 2007 Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

Professor in Music and the College at the University of Chicago, Philip Gossett is the general editor of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, published by the University of Chicago Press and Casa Ricordi, and The Works of Gioachino Rossini. In 2004 he received one of four lifetime achievement awards given by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and in 1998 the Cavaliere di Gran Croce, the highest civilian award given by the Italian government.

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