29 September

NEW - Guido I da Montefeltro - Lord of Urbino

Brilliant military strategist who suffered poetic damnation

Guido I da Montefeltro, the brilliant military strategist who consolidated the power of medieval Urbino but was famously consigned to Hell in Dante’s Inferno, died on this day in 1298.  A leading figure in the power struggle between the pro-imperial Ghibellines and the pro-papal Guelphs in northern and central Italy, Guido achieved many notable battlefield victories, yet towards the end of his life became a Franciscan monk. He is thought to have died and been buried at a monastery in Ancona, the coastal city some 75km (45 miles) southwest of Urbino, although this is disputed in some accounts. He was around 75 years old.  Guido had taken Holy orders by way of seeking redemption for the brutal military deeds by which he had inflicted so much suffering and death, and it was this that led the poet Dante Alighieri to place him in Hell in the Inferno section of his Divine Comedy.  Read more…

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Silvio Piola - footballer

Modest star who remains Italy’s greatest goalscorer

Silvio Piola, a forward whose career tally of 364 goals between 1930 and 1954 remains the most scored by any professional player in the history of football in Italy, was born on this day in 1913 in Robbio Lomellina, a small town about 50km (31 miles) southwest of Milan.  Of those goals, 274 were scored in Serie A and 30 for the Italian national team, with whom he was a World Cup winner in 1938, scoring twice in the final against Hungary.  No other player has scored so many goals in the top flight of Italian football and only two others - Gigi Riva and Giuseppe Meazza - have scored more while wearing the azzurri shirt.  Other records still held by Piola include all-time highest Serie A goalscorer for three different clubs - his hometown club Pro Vercelli, Lazio, and Novara - and one of only two players to have scored six goals in a single match. Read more…

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Enrico Fermi – nuclear physicist

Scientist from Rome who created world’s first nuclear reactor

Enrico Fermi, who has been called the architect of the nuclear age and even the father of the atomic bomb, was born on this day in 1901 in Rome.  Fermi, who won a Nobel Prize in 1938, created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the so-called Chicago Pile-1, after he had settled in the United States, and also worked on the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the secret US research project aimed at developing nuclear weapons in the Second World War.  The third child of Alberto Fermi, an official in Italy’s Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, a school teacher, Fermi took an interest in science from an early age, inspired by a book about physics he had discovered in the local market in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, written in Latin by a Jesuit priest in about 1840.  He read avidly as he was growing up, conducting many experiments. Read more…

Silvio Berlusconi - entrepreneur and politician

Businessman who was four times PM

Silvio Berlusconi, who has served as prime minister of Italy in four Governments, was born on this day in 1936 in Milan.  Head of a large media empire and owner of the football club AC Milan, Berlusconi was prime minister for a total of nine years, making him the longest-serving post-war prime minister and the third longest-serving since Italian unification.  Berlusconi was the eldest of three children born to a bank employee and his wife. He studied Law at the Università Statale in Milan, graduating with honours in 1961.  While at University he played the double bass in a group and occasionally performed as a cruise ship crooner. In later life he was to co-write both AC Milan’s and Forza Italia’s anthems and, in collaboration with Mariano Apicella, a Neapolitan singer and musician, he wrote the lyrics for two albums of Neapolitan-style songs. Read more…

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Giorgio Frassineti - politician

Mayor who proposed museum of Fascism

Giorgio Frassineti, the politician famous for proposing a museum dedicated to Fascism in Predappio, the birthplace of Benito Mussolini, was born on this day in 1964 in Forlì in Emilia-Romagna.  A member of the centre-left Partito Democratico, Frassineti was mayor of Predappio from 2009 to 2019.  Predappio, around 18km (11 miles) south of Forlì, has a population of less than 6,500.  Apart from by private car, it is accessible only by bus from Forlì, which is a pleasant small city but one that tourists mainly pass through on the way to Rimini and the Adriatic coast.  Yet 50,000 visitors a year descend on Predappio, mainly to visit the house where Mussolini was born in 1883, or the family mausoleum where his body was laid to rest following his execution by Italian partisans in 1945. Despite his alliance with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Mussolini is still admired by some Italians. Read more… 

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Book of the Day: The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso,  by Dante Alighieri. Translated by Robin Kirkpatrick

Robin Kirkpatrick's masterful verse translation of The Divine Comedy, published in a single volume, is the ideal edition for students as well as the general reader coming to this great masterpiece of Italian literature for the first time.  The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption.  This volume includes a new introduction, notes, maps and diagrams. Individual editions of Robin Kirkpatrick's translation - Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso - are also available in Penguin Classics, and include Dante's Italian printed alongside the English text.

The poet Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence. At about the age of 20 he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had three children, but for much of his life maintained an unrequited love for Beatrice Portinari, the daughter of a Florentine banker. His Divine Comedy is still considered to be the greatest literary work written in Italian. Robin Kirkpatrick is Professor of Italian and English Literature at the University of Cambridge and has written a number of books on Dante and on the Renaissance.

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