6 August

Battle of Meloria

Naval loss that sparked decline of Pisa as trading power

The decline of the Republic of Pisa as one of Italy’s major naval and commercial powers began with a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Meloria on this day in 1284.  A fleet of 72 galleys was routed by the forces of the rival Ligurian Sea port of Genoa in a confrontation fought close to the islet of Meloria, about 10km (6 miles) off the coast, near what is now Livorno.  More than 5,000 Pisan crew were killed with 10 galleys sunk and at least 25 captured before other vessels fled the scene and the Genovese claimed victory.  Pisa and Genoa had once been allies, joining forces to drive the Saracens out of Sardinia in the 11th century, but subsequently became fierce rivals for trade, particularly from the eastern Mediterranean and the Byzantine Empire.  The city’s participation in the Crusades secured valuable commercial positions for Pisan traders in Syria, and thereafter Pisa grew in strength to rival Genoa and Venice.  Read more…

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Marisa Merlini - actress

Fifties star who turned down Oscar-winning role

The actress Marisa Merlini, whose 60-year movie career was at its peak in the 1950s and early 1960s, was born in Rome on this day in 1923.  Although she had built a solid reputation in a string of movies as the foil to the comedic genius of Totó, the role with which Merlini is most often associated is the midwife Annarella in Luigi Comencini’s 1953 romantic comedy Pane, amore e fantasia - Bread, Love and Dreams - which presented an idyllic view of Italian rural life.  The movie won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and Merlini’s performance was hailed by both audiences and critics, bringing many offers to play similar characters.  Co-star Vittorio De Sica was impressed with Merlini’s acting skills and when he turned to directing he had her earmarked for the part of Cesira, the widowed shopkeeper in La Ciociara, the 1960 wartime drama based on Alberto Moravia’s novel Two Women.  Read more…

Barbara Strozzi – composer

One of few 17th century women to have her own music published

The talented singer and composer Barbara Strozzi was baptised on this day in 1619 in the Cannaregio district of Venice.  Strozzi had been recognised by the poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi as his adopted daughter. It was thought at the time she was likely to have been an illegitimate daughter he had fathered with his servant, Isabella Garzoni.  Giulio Strozzi encouraged his adopted daughter’s musical talent, even creating an academy where she could perform to an audience. She became one of only a few women in the 17th century to publish her own compositions.  The Academy of the Unknown - Accademia degli Incogniti - was a circle of intellectuals in Venice that met to discuss literature, ethics, aesthetics, religion and the arts. They were supporters of Venetian opera in the late 1630s and 1640s. Giulio Strozzi formed a musical sub-group. Read more…

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Domenico Modugno – singer and songwriter

Artist who gave us a song that conjures up Italy

Domenico Modugno, who was one of the writers of the iconic Italian song, Volare, died on this day in 1994 in Lampedusa, Sicily.  Modugno wrote Volare with Franco Migliacci and performed it in the San Remo music festival in 1958 with Johnny Dorelli.  Sometimes referred to as Nel blu dipinto di blu, the song won San Remo and became a hit all over the world. It was the Italian entry in the 1958 Eurovision song contest. It came only third, yet received two Grammy Awards and sold more than 22 million copies.  Modugno was born in 1928 at Polignano a Mare near Bari in Apulia. After completing his military service he enrolled in drama school and had a number of parts in films while still studying.  The success of Volare proved to be the turning point in his career. He won the San Remo music festival again in 1959 and came second in 1960.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Shortest History of Italy, by Ross King

From Michelangelo to Mussolini, Nero to Meloni, Galileo to Garibaldi, here is the sparkling story of the world’s most influential peninsula.  The calendar, the university, the piano; the Vespa, the pistol and the pizzeria… It’s easy to assume that inventions like these could only come from somewhere sure of its place in the world. Yet these pages reveal a land rife with uncertainty even as its influence spread.  From the rise of the Roman Republic to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, from the glories of Renaissance Florence to the long struggle for unification, from Europe’s first operas to the world’s first ghettos, Ross King nimbly charts the checkered course of Italian history. In the last hundred years, film, fashion and Fiat – once bigger than Volkswagen – emerge from the horrors of fascism and world war. The Shortest History of Italy is a majestic sweep across three millennia of history that not only shaped Europe but the wider world.

Ross King is the author of many bestselling and acclaimed books about Italian history and culture, including The Bookseller of Florence, Brunelleschi’s Dome and Leonardo and the Last Supper. He lives just outside Oxford.

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5 August

NEW - Ettore Majorana - theoretical physicist 

‘Genius’ who disappeared in mysterious circumstances

The theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana, whose work in the 1930s is still reaping benefits in nuclear, medical and computer science but ended with his sudden disappearance in 1938, was born on this day in 1906 in Catania in Sicily.  Majorana, who became part of a team of scientists working with the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in Rome, was regarded as a genius by his contemporaries, capable of solving in his head problems that others might take years to unravel. While much of Majorana’s work in such areas as particles, their exchange interaction, matter and anti-matter, might seem beyond the comprehension of non-scientists, it has consequences still seen today.  More reliable nuclear reactors, advancements in cancer scans and treatments, more precise radiation dosages in radiotherapy, plus developments in quantum computing, can all be traced back to theories put forward by Majorana. Read more…

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Leonardo Leo - composer

Baroque musician known for his sense of humour

A prolific composer of comic operas, Leonardo Leo was born on this day in 1694 in San Vito degli Schiavoni (now known as San Vito dei Normanni) in Puglia.  His most famous comic opera was Amor vuol sofferenza - Love requires suffering - which he produced in 1739. It later became better known as La finta frascatana, and received a lot of praise, but Leo was equally admired for his serious operas and sacred music. He has been credited with forming the Neapolitan style of opera composition.  He was enrolled as a young boy as a student at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini in Naples and was a pupil first of Francesco Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. It has been speculated that he may have been taught by Alessandro Scarlatti, but it has since been proved by music historians that he could not possibly have studied with the composer.  Read more…

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Felice Casson - politician and magistrate

His investigations revealed existence of Operation Gladio

Felice Casson, the magistrate whose investigations exposed the existence of the NATO-backed secret army codenamed Gladio, was born on this day in 1953 in Chioggia, near Venice.  A former mayor of Venice and a Democratic Party senator, Casson devoted much of his career in the judiciary to fighting corruption and rooting out terrorists.  In 1984, his interest in terrorism led him to examine the unsolved mystery of the Peteano bombing in 1972, in which three Carabinieri officers were killed by a car bomb placed under an abandoned Fiat 500 in a tiny hamlet close to the border with Yugoslavia. Casson discovered flaws in the original investigation into the bombing, which at the time was blamed on the left-wing extremist group the Red Brigades, who would later be responsible for the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro, a former prime minister.  Read more…

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Antonio Cesti – opera composer

Singer and organist wrote operas and church music

Composer Pietro Marc’Antonio Cesti was baptised on this day in 1623 in Arezzo in Tuscany. It was also probably the date of his birth.  One of the leading composers of the 17th century, Cesti is said to have written about 100 operas, although only 15 are known today.  He joined the order of Friars Minor, or Franciscans, a Catholic religious group founded by St Francis of Assisi in 1637.  Cesti studied first in Rome and then moved to Venice, where his first known opera, Orontea, was produced in 1649.  In 1652 he became chapel master to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at Innsbruck and from 1669 he was vice chapel master to the imperial court in Vienna.  Throughout the 17th century his operas were widely performed in Italy. His most famous operas, Il pomo d’oro, Dori and Orontea, have survived to this day.  Read more…

Franco Lucentini – author

Writer was one half of a famous thriller-writing partnership

The novelist Franco Lucentini, who achieved success with Carlo Fruttero in a remarkable literary association, died on this day in 2002 in Turin.  A news correspondent and editor, Lucentini met Fruttero in 1953 in Paris and they started working together as journalists and translators.  But they were best known for the mystery thrillers they produced together.  After choosing a subject they would take it in turns to write and then edit the material until a novel was complete.  Their most popular books were La donna della domenica (The Sunday Woman), which was later made into a film and La verità sul caso D (The D Case), which was based on an unfinished work by Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Lucentini fell foul of the Fascist regime while studying at the University of Rome because of distributing anti-war messages among his fellow students. Read more…

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Antonio Barberini – Cardinal

Pope’s nephew amassed fortune and became patron of the arts

Catholic cardinal, military leader and patron of the arts, Antonio Barberini was born on this day in 1607 in Rome.  As one of the cardinal-nephews of Pope Urban VIII he helped to shape the politics, religion, art and music of 17th century Italy and took part in many papal conclaves.  He is sometimes referred to as Antonio the Younger, or Antonio Barberini Iuniore, to distinguish him from his uncle, Antonio Marcello Barberini.  Antonio was the youngest of six children born to Carlo Barberini and Costanza Magalotti. Like his brothers, he was educated at the Collegio Romano.  His brother, Francesco Barberini, became Grand Inquisitor of the Roman Inquisition.  His uncle, Maffeo Barberini, who was elected as Pope the day after Antonio’s 16th birthday and became Pope Urban VIII, was notorious for nepotism and appointed Antonio as a cardinal. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age, by Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin

Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions.  This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics. Fleeing fascism and anti-semitism, Fermi became a leading figure in America's most secret project: building the atomic bomb. The last physicist who mastered all branches of the discipline, Fermi was a rare mixture of theorist and experimentalist. His rich legacy encompasses key advances in fields as diverse as comic rays, nuclear technology, and early computers.  In The Pope of Physics, Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin bring this scientific visionary to life. An examination of the human dramas that touched Fermi’s life as well as a thrilling history of scientific innovation in the 20th century, this is the comprehensive biography that Fermi deserves.

Gino Segrè - nephew of Nobel laureate physicist Emilio Segrè - is an Italian-American physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books on the history of science, particularly on atomic physics.  Bettina Hoerlin taught healthcare disparities at the University of Pennsylvania and is a former Health Commissioner of Philadelphia. She was brought up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which gained notoriety as the base for the highly secretive Manhattan Project, set up during World War Two to produce the first nuclear weapons.

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Ettore Majorana - theoretical physicist

‘Genius’ who disappeared in mysterious circumstances

Ettore Majorana was seen by colleagues
as both a genius and an enigma

The theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana, whose work in the 1930s is still reaping profound benefits in nuclear, medical and computer science but ended with his sudden disappearance in 1938, was born on this day in 1906 in Catania in Sicily.

Majorana, who became part of a team of scientists working with the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in Rome, was regarded as a genius by his contemporaries, capable of solving in his head problems that others might take years to unravel.

While much of Majorana’s work in such areas as particles, their exchange interaction, matter and anti-matter, might seem dry and beyond the comprehension of non-scientists, it has consequences still seen today.

More reliable designs for nuclear reactors, advancements in medical isotopes used in cancer scans and treatments, more precise radiation dosages in radiotherapy, plus technological developments in quantum computing, can all be traced back to theories put forward by Majorana.

Yet his mysterious disappearance when seemingly on the cusp of achieving immortal status in the scientific world has given rise to as much discussion as the legacy of his work.

Majorana hailed from a scientific family. His father, Fabio, was an engineer in the telegraph and telephone industries, while an uncle, Quirino Majorana, was an experimental physicist at the University of Bologna.

Ettore Majorana enrolled at the Sapienza University of Rome to study engineering in 1923, but switched to physics in 1928 with the encouragement of Emilio Segrè, a fellow student who would go on to become a leading nuclear physicist and radiochemist and, like Fermi, a winner of the Nobel Prize.

A brilliant student, Majorana was still in his early 20s when he joined the group of scientists assembled by Fermi, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome, who became known as the "Via Panisperna boys", named after the street address of their laboratory.

Majorana's disappearance, as reported by the
Milan newspaper Domenica del Corriere

Yet, for all his brilliance, Majorana as a person was an enigma. Unlike some of his colleagues, he never craved fame or recognition. He was rarely satisfied with a piece of work and would seldom publish his findings. Colleagues would describe him as distant and withdrawn.

He joined Mussolini’s National Fascist Party in 1933 and spent time in Leipzig, working with Werner Heisenberg, a theoretical physicist who would in time become a scientist on Germany’s nuclear programme in World War Two. The Nazis came to power while Majorana was there and he expressed solidarity with many of Hitler’s views and policies.

Shortly before his disappearance, he had been appointed a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Naples. 

He vanished during or after a trip to Palermo in March, 1938. It was thought he might have been planning to visit his friend, Emilio Segrè, who was a professor at the university there.

But a letter sent by Majorana while he was in the Sicilian capital suggested a different reason for his journey. It was to Professor Antonio Carrelli, the director of the Physics Institute at the University of Naples, seemingly signalling his resignation. It spoke of making “a decision that has become unavoidable”.

Confusingly - before the original letter arrived - Carrelli received a telegram from Majorana apparently withdrawing his resignation and saying that he was returning to Naples.

Majorana bought a ticket for a boat back to Naples but while porters found luggage in his cabin after the passengers had disembarked, there was no sign of Majorana, nor any proof that he had ever been on board. 

Majorana's name is among those on a plaque marking
the Rome base of the "Via Panisperna boys"

Multiple theories have been put forward to explain his disappearance, including suicide, murder, a desire to start a new life in another country, or even that he had decided to seek the anonymity of life in a monastery.

Proponents of the suicide theory suggested that Majorana realised that the research in which he had been involved would eventually lead to the creation of highly destructive weapons and suffered intolerable remorse as a consequence.

Others theorised that, during his time in Germany, he had learned too much about Nazi ambitions to develop a nuclear bomb and was murdered by Nazi agents.

But with no body ever found, and no witnesses to any suicide or murder, neither could be proved.

Leonardo Sciascia, the Sicilian writer, supported the idea that Majorana was appalled at the thought of his works being used to create nuclear explosives but suggested that, as a devout Catholic, he would have more likely sought to live an anonymous life in a monastery or other religious retreat than to take his own life.

The official explanation - reached 77 years after he vanished - is that he emigrated to South America.

A postage stamp issued on the
centenary of Majorana's birth

This gained credence in 2011 when a supposed witness made a statement about meeting Majorana in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, in the years after World War Two. A photo also came to light, taken in Argentina 1955 of a man bearing several facial similarities to Majorana.

The case looking into his disappearance was reopened in Italy as a result. Four years later, the Rome Attorney’s Office was sufficiently satisfied that Majorana had been alive and living in Venezuela in the 1950s to declare the case closed, with no crime to investigate.

In 2025, the civil section of the Court of Rome issued a decree declaring Majorana’s presumed death.

Today, academics in the field of theoretical physics encounter his name recalled in such things as the Majorana equation, Majorana fermions, and Microsoft’s Majorana 1, a device used in the development of quantum computers. 

A Majorana Prize is awarded annually for outstanding contributions to theoretical and mathematical physics. A postage stamp commemorating his life was issued in 2006 on the centenary of his birth.

Catania's Cattedrale di Sant'Agata is a beautiful
example of Sicilian Baroque architecture

Travel tip:

The city of Catania, which is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, is one of the ten biggest cities in Italy, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. A little like Naples, which sits in the shadow of Vesuvius, Catania lives with the constant threat of a natural catastrophe, more so given that its neighbour, Mount Etna, is active and regularly erupts, if not with explosive force. Catania has also been virtually destroyed by earthquakes twice, in 1169 as well as 1693. As such it has a reputation for living life to the full. In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks, and many restaurants. Catania’s historic centre is a showcase of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake using the city’s signature black lava stone. A notable example is the Duomo of Sant’Agata, a monumental cathedral, home to the relics of St Agatha and framed by a grand piazza, at the centre of which is the Fontana dell’Elefante, the symbol of the city - a Roman basalt elephant supporting an obelisk. 

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The University of Naples Federico II has its
headquarters building in Corso Umberto I

Travel tip:

The University of Naples Federico II, where Ettore Majorana was appointed a professor shortly before he disappeared, was founded in 1224 by the Emperor Frederick II. It is one of Europe’s most historically significant universities: the oldest public, secular university in the world.  One of its most famous students was the theologian and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, who went on to lecture there in the 13th century. Other alumni include Enrico De Nicola, the first President of the Italian Republic, and two other presidents, Giovanni Leone and Giorgio Napolitano. The university’s main locations include the central headquarters in Corso Umberto I, with additional sites in Portici, Torre del Greco, Anacapri, Avellino, and Bellizzi. A former college built in the 16th century in Via Paladino, in the area of Spaccanapoli, has been one of the university’s main buildings since 1777. With more than 70,000 students, 180 degree programmes across 26 departments, and strong research output, especially in engineering, medicine, and agricultural sciences, it ranks second among Italy’s major universities and is the leading university in Southern Italy.

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More reading:

Enrico Fermi, dubbed the architect of the nuclear age

The Italian nuclear physicist who defected to the Soviet Union

Leonardo Sciascia, the writer who denounced complicity between government and the Mafia

Also on this day: 

1607: The birth of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, patron of the arts 

1623: The birth of composer Antonio Cesti

1694: The birth of comic opera composer Leonardo Leo

1953: The birth of Felice Casson, magistrate who exposed NATO’s secret army 

2002: The death of novelist Franco Lucentini

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4 August

Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici - banker

Art enthusiast who was Botticelli’s major patron

The Florentine banker and politician Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, who was a significant figure in Renaissance art as the main sponsor and patron of the painter Sandro Botticelli, was born on this day in 1463.  The great-grandson of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, the founder of the Medici bank, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco belonged to the junior, sometimes known as ‘Popolani’ branch of the House of Medici.  In 1476, when he and his brother, Giovanni, were still boys, their father, Pierfrancesco de’ Medici the Elder, died. They became wards, effectively, of their cousin, Lorenzo il Magnifico - Lorenzo the Magnificent - a member of the senior branch of the family and the effective ruler of Florence.  Relations between the two branches were tense and not helped when Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco discovered, on becoming an adult, that Lorenzo il Magnifico had plundered a considerable sum from he and his brother’s joint inheritance. Read more…

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Giovanni Spadolini - politician

The first non-Christian Democrat to lead Italian Republic

Giovanni Spadolini, who was the Italian Republic’s first prime minister not to be drawn from the Christian Democrats and was one of Italy's most respected politicians, died on this day in 1994.  In a country where leading politicians and businessmen rarely survive a whole career without becoming embroiled in one corruption scandal or another, he went to the grave with his reputation for honesty intact.  Although he was an expert on Italian unification and became a professor of contemporary history at the University of Florence when he was only 25, a background that gave him a deep knowledge of Italian politics, he first built a career as a journalist.  He became a political columnist for several magazines and newspapers, including Il Borghese, Il Mondo and Il Messaggero, and was appointed editor of the Bologna daily II Resto del Carlino in 1955, at the age of 30.  Read more…

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Anita Garibaldi – national heroine of Italy

Brave wife of Giuseppe Garibaldi was a freedom fighter

Anita Garibaldi, the Brazilian wife of Italy’s revolutionary hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, died in the arms of her husband on this day in 1849 in Mandriole, near Ravenna, in Emilia-Romagna.  She was pregnant and also ill with malaria, but she was having to retreat from Austrian and French troops with the Garibaldian Legion. After her death, her body had to be hurriedly buried, and it was said to have been later dug up by a dog.  A Brazilian revolutionary, Anita had fought alongside Garibaldi in his campaigns, after meeting him in her home country in 1839.  She was born Ana Maria di Jesus Ribeiro in 1821 in Laguna in Brazil. She was the third of ten children born to a poor family.  Anita met Garibaldi, who was a sailor of Ligurian descent, after he had left Europe in 1836 and was fighting on behalf of the separatist Riograndense republic in southern Brazil. Read more…

Pope Urban VII

Pope for just 12 days but introduced world's first smoking ban

Pope Urban VII was born Giovanni Battista Castagna on this day in 1521 in Rome.  Although his 12-day papacy in 1590 was the shortest in history, he is remembered as being the first person in the world to declare a ban on smoking.  He was against the use of tobacco generally, threatening to excommunicate anyone who ‘took tobacco in the porchway of, or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe, or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose’.  The ban is thought to have been upheld for the most part until 1724, when Pope Benedict XIII, himself a smoker, repealed it.  Castagna was the son of a nobleman of Genovese origin and studied in universities all over Italy. He obtained a doctorate in civil law and canon law from the University of Bologna.  He served as a constitutional lawyer to Pope Julius III and was then ordained a priest.  Read more…

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Lucrezia Maria Romola de’ Medici – noblewoman

Daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent supported popes and poets

Lucrezia Maria Romola de’ Medici, who as a newborn baby inspired Sandro Botticelli’s depiction of baby Jesus in one of his paintings, was born on this day in 1470 in the Republic of Florence.  After her brother became Pope Leo X, Lucrezia helped him fund papal building projects in Florence and Rome. She also raised money to pay a ransom and secure the release of her husband when he was taken prisoner by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  She had 11 children, many of whom were to play an important part in the history of Renaissance Europe.  Lucrezia was the eldest daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini. After her birth, Botticelli painted Our Lady of the Magnificat, which is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and used her image as a baby as the model for the figure of the newborn Christ in his masterpiece.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Botticelli, by Frank Zöllner

This celebration of the life and art of the Renaissance genius presents Sandro Botticelli s complete paintings and offers a comprehensive and thoroughly up-to-date study of his work.  Botticelli is one of the most admired artists of the Renaissance period and his seductive Venus and graceful Primavera are among the world s most recognisable works of art. This catalogue raisonné of Botticelli’s paintings offers more than two hundred full-colour illustrations and meticulous scholarship by the distinguished Renaissance art historian Frank Zöllner. Botticelli has luscious reproductions and exquisite detail. Presented in chronological order, the facts of Botticelli’s life and career are insightfully discussed against the background of the artistic upheaval that marked the Renaissance period. The artist's reinterpretations of ancient myths as well as his religious paintings are thoughtfully explored in a volume that will please scholars and delight lovers of fine art books everywhere.

Frank Zöllner is a German art historian. He has been a professor of art history at Leipzig University since 1996. He is among the leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci, about whom he has written numerous publications. 

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