NEW - Execution of four Carbonari in Ravenna
The day the city was draped in black
Four members of the secret society known as I Carbonari (the charcoal burners) were executed by hanging in a public square in Ravenna on this day in 1828. The executions, thought to have taken place in one of the main squares in the centre of the city, possibly Piazza del Popolo, were carried out by the notorious papal executioner, Giovanni Battista Bugatti, who was nicknamed Mastro Titta, a slang version of maestro di giustizia, master of justice. The four victims were found guilty of plotting to kidnap and assassinate Cardinal Agostino Rivarola, who had been sent to Ravenna to defend papal authority and clamp down on revolutionaries. Bugatti was the official executioner for the Papal States from 1796 to 1865. While working for six different popes, he executed 516 people. On this occasion in Ravenna, acting on behalf of the Papal Legate, he conducted the executions of Luigi Zanoli, Ortolani Angiolo, Gaetano Montanari, and Gaetano Rambelli. Read more…
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Daniele Manin - Venetian leader
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Lawyer who led fight to drive out Austrians
The Venetian patriot Daniele Manin, a revolutionary who fought to free Venice from Austrian rule and thereby made a significant contribution to the unification of Italy, was born on this day in 1804 in the San Polo sestiere. Manin had Jewish roots. His grandfather, Samuele Medina, from Verona, had converted to Christianity in 1759 and took the name Manin because Lodovico Manin, the last Doge of Venice, had sponsored his conversion. He studied law at the University of Padua and then took up practice in Venice. As his practice developed, he gained a reputation as a brilliant and profound jurist. He harboured a deep hatred and resentment towards the Austrians, to whom control of the city passed after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. The city became part of the Austrian-held Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. Read more…
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Francesco Pistocchi – singer and composer
Child prodigy who wrote many operas and also taught
Francesco Pistocchi, a singer who became known to audiences as Pistocchino, died on this day in 1726 in Bologna. Pistocchi left the world many operas, oratorios and cantatas he had composed, which are now highly regarded for their melodic elegance and colourful harmony. Born Francesco Antonio Mamiliano Pistocchi in Palermo in 1659, Pistocchi became a child prodigy because of his beautiful soprano voice. He began performing as a singer in public at the age of three and the first music he composed, Capricci puerili, was published when he was just eight years old. Believed to have become a castrato, Pistocchi made regular appearances as a singer in Bologna’s cappella musicale at the Basilica of San Petronio, where his father was a violinist, from 1670 onwards. He later had a brilliant opera career as a contralto. Read more…
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Luciano Benetton - entrepreneur
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Co-founder of iconic clothing and accessories brand
The entrepreneur Luciano Benetton, co-founder of a family clothing company that became a worldwide success story in the 1980s and 1990s, was born in Treviso on this day in 1935. Along with his sister, Giuliana, and their brothers, Carlo and Gilberto, Luciano launched the Benetton Group in 1965, specialising at first in colourful knitwear. From its original store in Belluno, a town in the northern part of the Veneto region, opened in 1965, the group enjoyed a rapid expansion in the 1970s and 80s and at the peak of its success had as many as 6,000 outlets around the world. Although it has faced tougher trading conditions in more recent years, the group continues to preside over more than 3,500 stores. Since 1989, the Benetton empire has traded under the name United Colors of Benetton, a brand adopted as part of a long-running collaboration with photographer Oliviero Toscani. Read more…
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The first Giro d'Italia
Tour of Italy cycle race ran from Milan to Naples and back
A field of 127 riders left Milan on this day in 1909 as Italy's famous cycle race, the Giro d'Italia, was staged for the first time. Those who lasted the course returned to Milan 13 days later having covered a distance of 2,447.9 kilometres (1,521 miles) along a route around Italy that took them through Bologna, Chieti, Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa and Turin. The winner was Luigi Ganna, an Italian cyclist from Lombardy who had finished fifth in the Tour de France in 1908 and won the Milan-San Remo race earlier in 1909. Only 49 riders finished. Second and third places were also filled by Italian riders, with Carlo Galetti finishing ahead of Giovanni Rossignoli. The race was run in eight stages with two to three rest days between each stage. It was a challenge to the riders' stamina. The stages were almost twice as long as those that make up the Giro today. Read more…
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Giuliano Amato – politician
‘Doctor Subtle’ worked into his 80s
Giuliano Amato, who has twice served as prime minister of Italy and today sits in Italy’s Constitutional Court, was born on this day in 1938 in Turin. During his first period as prime minister, for 10 months between 1992 and 1993, a series of corruption scandals rocked Italy, sweeping away the careers of many leading politicians. Amato was never implicated, despite being close to Bettino Craxi, the leader of the Italian Socialist party, who was investigated by Milan judges in the probe into corruption that became known as Mani pulite, which literally means ‘clean hands’. Craxi was eventually convicted of corruption and the illicit financing of his party. Amato has earned the nickname ‘dottor sottile’ the sobriquet of the medieval Scottish philosopher John Duns Scotus, which is a reference to his perceived political subtlety. Read more…
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Book of the Day: The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy, by Derek Beales and Eugenio F Biagini
Derek Beales was a British historian. A former Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, his books include the definitive work on the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. Eugenio F Biagini is an Italian historian, specialising in democracy and liberalism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, Ireland and Italy.
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