TV personality has devoted his life to writing
Veteran journalist and TV presenter Corrado Augias, who is also a best-selling author, was born on this day in Rome in 1935. He has become popular in Italy as the host of many TV programmes, including those featuring mysteries and crimes from the past, such as Telefono Giallo and Enigma.
Corrado Augias has enjoyed a long career
as a writer, journalist and TV presenter
Augias is a prolific writer, his works ranging from crime novels set in the early 20th century, to a series of books about the hidden secrets of Italian and European cities, as well as religious works, and plays.
He was brought up in Rome as part of a family originally from Toulon in France, although his father’s family were of Sardinian ancestry. After studying at Sapienza University in Rome he became a journalist working for L’Espresso, La Repubblica and Panorama. He also worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris and New York for several years.
In the 1960s, Augias became involved with the Roman avante garde movement and wrote plays for the theatre. More recently, he wrote a play, L’onesto Jago, for the Teatro Stabile di Genova.
His early crime novels for the Rizzoli publishing house, feature the protagonist Commissario Giovanni Sperelli, an imaginary brother of Andrea Sperelli, who was a character in Piacere, a novel by Gabriele D’Annunzio.
The first novel in a trilogy, Quel treno da Vienna - That Train from Vienna - published in 1981, was set in Rome in 1911, when the capital was about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kingdom of Italy.
It was the first of three novels featuring Sperelli, a Commissario of Public Security, and was followed by Il fazzoletto azzuro - The Blue Handkerchief - which was set in Rome in 1915, when Italy was about to enter World War I, and L’ultima primavera - The Last Spring - which begins just before the March on Rome by Mussolini’s Fascists in 1922.
Three films based on these novels were later made for television and shown on Rai, Italy’s national television network.
Augias is well known for his popular series of books, ‘I Segreti di….’, which covers many Italian and European cities, in which he unveils their peculiar features. His 2010 publication of I Segreti del Vaticano focused on issues of power in the Vatican state.
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| I segreti di Roma has been one of Augias's most popular books |
However, it provoked two other Italian authors to write another book in reply, Risposta a Inchiesta su Gesù, which claimed to offer informed and constructive defence, explanation, and justification for what was written in the Gospel about Jesus.
Augias is married to the journalist and writer Daniela Pasti and he collaborated with her to write Newspapers and Spies, a book about secret societies and corrupt journalists during the Great War.
In 2023, Augias left Rai to go to the commercial channel LA7 to host La Torre di Babele, an in-depth, cultural television programme.
Now in his 90s, he continues to write novels and non-fiction books and his recent autobiographical book, La vita s’impara, about his adventurous life and what he has learnt, was published in 2024.
Between 1994 and 1999 Augias served in the European Parliament as MEP for Southern Italy. He was awarded The Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2006.
A year later he was awarded the Knight (Chevalier) of the Legion of Honour by France, but he renounced the honour in 2020 when the same award was given to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Travel tip:
The Calling of St Matthew is the first work
in Caravaggio's Cappella Contarelli cycle
The book for which Corrado Augias is perhaps best known, I segreti di Roma (The Secrets of Rome), includes discourse about the great Renaissance painter, Caravaggio, who spent much of his working life in Rome and left a legacy of outstanding work, some of which is on public view in churches around the city. These include the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, a short distance from Piazza Navona, where the Cappella Contarelli includes a cycle of Caravaggio paintings on the theme of Saint Matthew - The Calling of Saint Matthew, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Augias believes the content of each, with many of the figures portrayed inspired by the ordinary Romans the painter would encounter in his daily life, perfectly illustrates the contradictions found in Rome, where piety co-exists with vice, poverty with power, light with shadow. The paintings, completed between 1599 and 1602, were Caravaggio's first major public commission and one that cemented his reputation as a master artist. The church of San Luigi dei Francesi, which was designed by Giacomo della Porta and built by Domenico Fontana between 1518 and 1589, is dedicated to the patron saints of France: Virgin Mary, Denis of Paris, and King Louis IX of France. The chapel commemorates the French cardinal, Matthieu Cointerel.
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Travel tip:
The present day campus of Sapienza University,
designed in the 1930s by Marcello Piacentini
The University of Rome, where Corrado Augias studied, is often referred to as the Sapienza University of Rome or simply La Sapienza, meaning 'knowledge'. It was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, as a place for ecclesiastical studies over which he could exert greater control than the already established universities of Bologna and Padua. The first pontifical university, it expanded in the 15th century to include schools of Law, Medicine, Philosophy and Theology. Money raised from a new tax on wine enabled the University to buy a palace, which later housed the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza church. The University was closed during the sack of Rome in 1527 but reopened by Pope Paul III in 1534. In 1870, La Sapienza ceased to be the papal university and as the university of the capital of Italy became recognised as the country's most prestigious seat of learning. A new modern campus was built in 1935 under the guidance of the architect Marcello Piacentini.
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Gabriele D’Annunzio and his place in Italian history
The left-leaning aristocrat who founded L’Espresso and La Repubblica
The rags-to-riches story of publisher Angelo Rizzoli
Also on this day:
1482: The first printed edition of the Hebrew Bible
1582: The birth of painter Giovanni Lanfranco
1919: The birth of footballer Valentino Mazzola
1976: The death of Franciscan friar Gabriele Allegra
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