10 January

NEW - Victor Emmanuel I - King of Sardinia

The first Victor Emmanuel ruled only part of Italy

King Victor Emmanuel, who was Duke of Savoy and ruler of the Savoy states in northern Italy, and King of the island of Sardinia, died on this day in 1824 in Turin.  His namesake in Italian history, who was to become Victor Emmanuel II, the first King of Italy, was the son of one of his distant cousins.  When Victor Emmanuel I died, he left no heir. His surviving daughters were unable to inherit because of a law excluding women and their descendants from the line of succession. He was succeeded as King of Sardinia by his brother, Charles Felix in 1821. His brother also left no successors and he was in turn succeeded to the titles by his cousin, Charles Albert in 1831.  After Charles Albert died in 1849, his son, Victor Emmanuel, became King of Sardinia and took the title of King Victor Emmanuel II.  Read more…

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Pina Menichelli – silent movie star

Screen diva who enjoyed worldwide fame

The actress Pina Menichelli, who became one of the most celebrated female stars of the silent movie era, was born on this day in 1890 in Castroreale, a village in northeast Sicily.  Menichelli’s career was brief – she retired at the age of just 34 – but in her last eight or nine years on screen she enjoyed such popularity that her films played to packed houses and she commanded a salary that was the equivalent of millions of euros in today’s money.  Without words, actors had to use facial expressions and body movements to create character in the parts they were playing and Menichelli, a naturally beautiful woman, exploited her elegance and sensuality to the full, at times pushing the limits of what was acceptable on screen.  In fact, one of her films, La Moglie di Claudio (Claudio’s Wife) was banned by the censors for fear it would offend sensitivities, particularly those of the Catholic Church.  Read more…

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Flaminio Bertoni - sculptor and car designer

Visionary ideas turned Citroën into style icon

The sculptor and automobile designer Flaminio Bertoni, the creative genius behind the groundbreaking Citroën cars of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, was born on this day in 1903 in what is now the Masnago district of Varese.  Bertoni, who lived in or near Paris from 1931 until his death in 1964, designed bodies for the stylish Traction Avant luxury executive car and the enduring workhorse 'Deux Chevaux' - the 2CV - which became almost a symbol of France.  Yes both of these were eclipsed, some would say, by the brilliance of Bertoni's aerodynamic, futuristic Citroën DS - also known as 'the Goddess' - which was named the most beautiful car of all time by the magazine Classic and Sports Car and was described by the Chicago Institute of Design soon after its launch as among the '100 most beautiful things in the world'.  Read more…

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San Pietro Orseolo – Doge of Venice and monk

Rich and powerful Doge made a life-changing decision

Pietro Orseolo, a former Venetian Doge who joined the Benedictine order, died on this day in 987.  He was canonised by Pope Clement XII in 1731 and his feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death on 10 January each year.  Pietro Orseolo became Doge of Venice in 976 but after just two years in office he left his palace in the middle of the night to go to France to become a monk.  Orseolo was originally from a powerful family in Udine and at the age of 20 became commander of the Venetian fleet waging successful campaigns against pirate ships.  He was elected Doge after the previous ruler of Venice had been killed in a revolt. Orseolo restored order to the city, built much needed hospitals and cared for widows and orphans.  He started to rebuild the Doge’s palace and St Mark’s Basilica using his own money.  Read more…

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Giorgio Mondadori - publisher

Helped launch La Repubblica after family split

The publisher Giorgio Mondadori, who was president of the famous publishing house set up by his father, Arnoldo Mondadori, until an acrimonious split in 1976, died on his 92nd birthday on this day in 2009 in a clinic in Tuscany.  Mondadori commissioned the Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, to build the company’s eye-catching headquarters in Segrate, near Milan, in 1975, which remains his legacy to the family business.  At around the same time that he left the company, for whom he had worked for 38 years, he set up a joint venture with another publishing group, L’Espresso, that resulted in the launch of La Repubblica, a new, centre-left national newspaper that was to grow into one of the most popular daily newspapers in Italy, with a circulation topped only by the long-established Corriere della Sera.  Read more…

Maurizio Sarri - football manager

Former coach of Juventus and Chelsea

The football coach Maurizio Sarri, former manager of Chelsea in the English Premier League, was born on this day in 1959 in Naples.  Sarri, who has an unusual background for a professional football coach in that he spent more than 20 years in banking before devoting himself to the game full-time, took over as Chelsea manager in the summer of 2017, succeeding another Italian, Antonio Conte.  Previously, he had spent three seasons as head coach at SSC Napoli, twice finishing second and once third in Serie A.  He never played professionally, yet he has now held coaching positions at 20 different clubs.  Sarri was born in the Bagnoli district of Naples, where his father, Amerigo, a former professional cyclist, worked in the sprawling but now derelict Italsider steel plant.  It was not long, however, before the family moved away.  Read more…

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John Dalberg-Acton – historian, politician and writer

Gladstone’s friend and adviser became an Italian Marquess

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, better known as Lord Acton, was born on this day in 1834 in Naples, which was then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  He was brought up as a Roman Catholic and was later denied entry to the University of Cambridge because of his religion. He is best remembered for the quote, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, which he once wrote in a letter to an Anglican bishop.  Dalberg-Acton’s grandfather was Sir John Francis Edward Acton, who had been appointed by Queen Maria Carolina of Naples to reorganise the Neapolitan navy. His ability impressed her so much that she made him commander-in-chief of both the army and the navy of the Kingdom of Naples and he became Minister of Finance and eventually Prime Minister.  His father was Sir Ferdinand Richard Acton, who had the Villa Pignatelli built on the Riviera di Chiaia in Naples. Read more…

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Aldo Ballarin - footballer

Brilliant defender who died in Superga tragedy

Aldo Ballarin, one of the 18 Torino players who were killed in the 1949 Superga plane crash, was born on this day in 1922 in the fishing port of Chioggia, at the southern tip of the Laguna di Venezia.  Ballarin, whose brother, Dino, also died in the accident, played at right-back in the Torino team, making more than 150 appearances and winning the scudetto - the Serie A championship title - four seasons in a row between 1945 and 1949.  A defender who was renowned for his tackling and heading ability but who also used the skills he had learned as a winger in his youth to be an effective attacker, Ballarin won nine international caps in the azzurri of Italy.  He remains the only player born in Chioggia to play for the Italian national team.  One of six children in his family, Aldo would play football for hours in the street near his home as he was growing up. Read more…

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Caesar crosses the Rubicon

Act of defiance that started a civil war and coined a phrase

The Roman general Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon river in northern Italy in an act of military defiance that would plunge the Roman Republic into civil war on this day in 49BC.  The course of the Rubicon, which can still be found on maps of Italy today, entering the Adriatic between Ravenna and Rimini in northeast Italy, represented the border between the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul, over which Caesar had command, and what was by then known as Italia - the area of the peninsula south of the Alps directly governed by Rome.  One of the most powerful politicians in the Roman Republic after forming an alliance with Pompey and Crassus known as the First Triumvirate, Caesar had spent much of the previous decade expanding his territory through the Gallic Wars, taking control of much of modern-day France and northern Italy.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, by David Gilmour

The Pursuit of Italy traces the whole history of the Italian peninsula in a wonderfully readable style, full of well-chosen stories and observations from personal experience, and peopled by many of the great figures of the Italian past, from Cicero and Virgil to Dante and the Medici, from Cavour and Verdi to the controversial political figures of the 20th century. The book gives a clear-eyed view of the Risorgimento, the pivotal event in modern Italian history, debunking the influential myths which have grown up around it. Gilmour shows that the glory of Italy has always lain in its regions, with their distinctive art, civic cultures, identities and cuisine and whose inhabitants identified themselves not as Italians, but as Tuscans and Venetians, Sicilians and Lombards, Neapolitans and Genoese. This is where the strength and culture of Italy still comes from, rather than from misconceived and mishandled concepts of nationalism and unity. This wise and enormously engaging book explains the course of Italian history in a manner and with a coherence which no one with an interest in the country could fail to enjoy.

David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. His previous books include The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (winner of the Marsh Biography Award); Curzon (Duff Cooper Prize); and Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography).

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