13 November

Dacia Maraini – writer

Long career of a feminist novelist and playwright

Novelist and short story writer Dacia Maraini was born on this day in 1936 in Fiesole in Tuscany.  An Italian female writer who is widely recognised abroad, Dacia Maraini is also a respected critic, poet, journalist and playwright. She established la Maddalena, the first Italian theatrical group composed exclusively of women.  The themes of limitation and oppression in Maraini’s writing have their roots in her childhood years, which she spent in a concentration camp in Japan. She then went to live in Sicily, which she has also described as an oppressive setting.  Her writing expresses the concerns of the Italian feminist movement, focusing on issues such as abortion, sexual violence, prostitution and the mother/daughter relationship. Many of her works are autobiographical and are written in the form of diaries and letters.  Maraini lived with the writer Alberto Moravia from 1962 until 1983 and was a close friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas.  She was the daughter of Sicilian princess Topazia Aliata di Salaparuta, who was an artist, and Fosco Maraini, a Florentine ethnologist.  When she was still a young child, Maraini’s family moved to Japan to escape Fascism in 1938. They were interned in a Japanese concentration camp. Read more…

___________________________________________

Alberto Lattuada – film director

Versatility and eye for talent made him leading figure

A leading figure in Italian cinema, Alberto Lattuada was born on this day in 1914 in Vaprio d’Adda in Lombardy.  Lattuada was the son of the composer Felice Lattuada, who made him complete his studies as an architect before allowing him to enter the film business.  As a student, Lattuada was a member of the editorial staff of the antifascist publication Camminare and also of Corrente di Vita, an independent newspaper. Corrente di Vita was closed by the Fascist regime just before Italy entered the Second World War. Lattuada, who is said to have detested fascism, helped to organise a screening of a banned anti-war film at about this time, which got him into trouble with the police.  In 1940 Lattuada started his cinema career as a screenwriter and assistant director on Mario Soldati’s Piccolo mondo antico (Old-Fashioned World).  He directed his own first movie, Giacomo l’idealista (Giacomo the Idealist) in 1942.  In 1950 he co-directed Luci del varietà with Federico Fellini. This was the first film directed by Fellini.  Read more…

________________________________________

Gioachino Rossini - composer

Italian composer who found the fast route to wealth and popularity

One of Italy’s most prolific composers, Gioachino Rossini, died on this day in France in 1868.  He wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, songs and instrumental music. He is perhaps best remembered for The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia), and Cinderella (La Cenerentola).  Rossini was born into a musical family living in Pesaro on the Adriatic coast in 1792. During his early years his mother earned her living singing at theatres in the area and he quickly developed musical talent of his own.  He made his first and only appearance on stage as a singer in 1805 but then settled down to learn the cello.  His first opera, The Marriage Contract (La cambiale di matrimonio), was staged in Venice when he was just 18.  In 1813 his operas, Tancredi and L’italiana in Algeri, were big successes in Venice and he found himself famous at the age of 20.  The Barber of Seville was first produced in Rome in 1816 and was so successful that even Beethoven wrote to congratulate Rossini on it.  The composer became wealthy and in big demand and travelled to Austria, France and England.  Read more…

Roberto Boninsegna - footballer

Prolific striker who helped Italy reach 1970 World Cup final

The footballer Roberto Boninsegna, a prolific striker who scored 171 goals  in 14 years in Italy’s Serie A, was born on this day in 1943 in Mantua in Lombardy.  Boninsegna, whose relentlessly tenacious attacking style made him a fan favourite despite his relatively small physical stature, was at his peak during a seven-season spell with Inter Milan from 1969 to 1976, during which he scored 113 goals in 197 Serie A appearances.  He was also a prominent member of the Italy national team at the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, scoring the opening goal for the Azzurri in their epic 4-3 extra-time victory over West Germany in the semi-final.  Boninsegna was also responsible for Italy’s first-half equaliser against Brazil in the final, before the South Americans, universally acclaimed as one of the finest teams in football history, overwhelmed them in the second half, winning 4-1.  Read more…

____________________________________

Agostina Livia Pietrantoni - saint

Tragic sister’s simple virtue stopped the traffic in the capital

Nun Agostina Livia Pietrantoni died on this day in 1894 in Rome after being attacked by a patient at the hospital where she was working.  Her story touched Romans so deeply that her funeral brought the city to a standstill as thousands of residents lined the streets and knelt before her casket when it passed them.  The November 16 edition of the daily newspaper Il Messaggero reported that a more impressive spectacle had never before been seen in Rome.  ‘From one o’clock in the afternoon, the streets close to Santo Spirito, and all the roads it was believed that the funeral procession would pass, were crowded with people to the point of making the flow of traffic difficult.’  Sister Agostina was beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1972 and canonised by Pope John Paul II in 1999. Her feast day is celebrated each year on November 12.  Sant’Agostina was born Livia Pietrantoni in 1864 in Pozzaglia Sabina to the north east of Rome. She was the second of 11 children born to a poor farmer and his wife.  She started work at the age of seven doing manual labour, carrying heavy sacks of stones and sand for road construction.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Giovanna of Italy - Tsaritsa of Bulgaria

Daughter of King of Italy who married Tsar Boris III

The girl who would grow up to be Ioanna, Tsarista of Bulgaria, was born Princess Giovanna Elisabetta Antonia Romana Maria of Savoy on this day in 1907 in Rome.  Giovanna’s father was King Victor Emmanuel III, who was Italy’s monarch through two world wars from 1900 until he abdicated in 1946 just as Italy was about to become a republic.  Her mother was Queen Elena of Montenegro.  At the age of 22, Princess Giovanna became Tsarista Ioanna - the last Tsarista - after marrying the Tsar of Bulgaria, Boris III, in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.  It was the hope of the Italian royal family that the marriage would strengthen their relationship with the Balkan states.  The marriage lasted until Boris’s death in 1943 at the age of just 49. The Tsar had fallen ill during a trip to Germany to discuss Bulgaria’s role in the Second World War as a member of the Axis bloc and there were suspicions that he was poisoned on the orders of Hitler.  Bulgaria had agreed to join the Axis under the threat of invasion by the Germans, who wanted to use their territory to launch an attack on Greece, but the Tsar was said to be appalled at Hitler's massacres of Jews. On two occasions he refused orders to deport Bulgarian Jews.  Read more…

_________________________________________

Book of the Day: The Silent Duchess, by Dacia Maraini

The Silent Duchess, published in Italian as La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa, won the Premio Campiello, one of Italy’s most prestigious literary prizes. It is set in 18th-century Sicily, marked by a rigid feudal aristocracy, patriarchal control, and the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition. Its main protagonist is Marianna Ucrìa, the intelligent daughter of Duke Signoretto Ucrìa. At age seven, she witnesses a public hanging and suffers a childhood trauma - raped by her maternal uncle - that leaves her deaf and mute. At age 13, Marianna is forced into an arranged marriage with that same eccentric uncle, Duke Pietro, and endures a traditional life of confinement and childbearing. Because she cannot speak or hear, Marianna navigates the world through observation, reading, and writing notes. She educates herself deeply, reading French and English texts alongside the philosophical works of David Hume. After her uncle-husband dies, Marianna uncovers the suppressed truth about her childhood abuse. Rather than conforming to traditional mourning or re-confinement, she claims her autonomy, rejects old social hierarchies, and chooses an independent path of travel and self-discovery. Widely hailed by literary critics, The Silent Duchess has sold more than a quarter of a million copies.

One of Italy's foremost women writers, Dacia Maraini is the author of more than 50 books, including novels, plays, collections of poetry and critical essays.

Buy from Amazon

Home

12 November

Piero Terracina - death camp survivor

Roman lived to be 91 after being freed from Auschwitz

Piero Terracina, the man thought to be the longest survivor among the Jews rounded up for deportation in Rome after Nazi occupation during World War Two, was born on this day in 1928 in the Italian capital. Terracina was taken to the notorious Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where almost one million Jewish prisoners were killed, but was spared death and eventually liberated in 1945.  After a long and difficult recovery he returned to Rome and lived to be 91. For the last almost 30 years of his life, so long as his health allowed, he devoted himself to maintaining awareness of the Holocaust in the hope that such horrors would never be repeated.  Terracina enjoyed a relatively uneventful early childhood. Many of Rome’s Jews still lived in the area of Rione Sant’Angelo, to which they had been originally confined by papal decree in the 16th century.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Umberto Giordano - opera composer

Death of the musician remembered for Andrea Chenier

Composer Umberto Giordano died on this day in 1948 in Milan at the age of 81.  He is perhaps best remembered for his opera, Andrea Chenier, a dramatic work about liberty and love during the French Revolution, which was based on the real life story of the romantic French poet, André Chenier.  The premiere of the opera was held at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1896. At the time, its success propelled Giordano into the front rank of up-and-coming Italian composers alongside Pietro Mascagni, to whom he is often compared, and Giacomo Puccini.  Another of Giordano’s works widely acclaimed by both the public and the critics is the opera Fedora.  This had its premiere in 1898 at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. A rising young tenor, Enrico Caruso, played the role of Fedora’s lover, Loris. The opera was a big success and is still performed today.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Giulio Lega – First World War hero

Flying ace survived war to look after health of Italy’s politicians

Credited with five aerial victories during the First World War, the pilot Giulio Lega was born on this day in 1892 in Florence.  After the war he completed his medical studies and embarked on a long career as physician to Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.  Lega had been a medical student when he was accepted by the Italian army for officer training in 1915.  Because he was unusually tall, he became an ‘extended infantryman’ in the Grenadiers. He made his mark with them at the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo, for which he was awarded the War Merit Cross for valour. The following year he won a Bronze Medal for Military Valour in close-quarters combat, which was awarded to him on the battlefield.  Lega volunteered to train as a pilot in 1916. After gaining his licence he was sent on reconnaissance duty during which he earned a Silver Medal for Military Valour.  Read more…

Giro di Lombardia - historic cycle race

2021 edition was 115th since inception

The Giro di Lombardia cycle race - now known simply as Il Lombardia - was contested for the first time on this day in 1905.  The last of the cycling calendar’s five ‘Monuments’ - the races considered to be the oldest, hardest and most prestigious of the one-day events in the men's road cycling programme - the Giro di Lombardia is has also been called the Autumn Classic or la classica delle foglie morte - the classic of the dead (falling) leaves.  It is a particular favourite with cyclists who excel on hill climbs, its changing route normally featuring five or six notable ascents, of which the Madonna del Ghisallo, the site of a church that has become a sacred place in the cycling world, is a permanent fixture.  The race was the idea of journalist Tullio Morgagni, well known as the founder of the Giro d’Italia, although the Giro di Lombardia predated the former by three years.  Read more…

________________________________________

Treaty of Rapallo 1920

Agreement solves dispute over former Austrian territory

The Treaty of Rapallo between Italy and the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was signed on this day in 1920 in Rapallo near Genoa in Liguria.  It was drawn up to solve the dispute over territories formerly controlled by Austria in the upper Adriatic and Dalmatia, which were known as the Austrian Littoral.  There had been tension between Italy and the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes since the end of the First World War when the Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved.  Italy had claimed the territories assigned to it by the secret London Pact of 1915 between Italy and the Triple Entente.  The Pact, signed on 26 April 2015, stipulated that in the event of victory in the First World War, Italy was to gain territory formerly controlled by Austria in northern Dalmatia.  These territories had a mixed population but Slovenes and Croats accounted for more than half.  Read more…

________________________________________

Silvio Berlusconi resigns as PM

Financial crisis brings down 'untouchable' premier 

Silvio Berlusconi resigned as prime minister of Italy on this day in 2011. A controversial, polarising figure, he had dominated Italian politics for 17 years.  With Italy in the grip of the economic crisis that had brought severe consequences to other parts of the Eurozone, Berlusconi lost his parliamentary majority a few days earlier and promised to resign when austerity measures demanded by Brussels were passed by both houses of the Italian parliament.  The Senate had approved the measures the day before. When the lower house voted 380-26 in favour, Berlusconi was true to his word, meeting president Giorgio Napoletano within two hours to tender his resignation.  His last journey from the Palazzo Chigi to the Palazzo Quirinale, the respective official residences of the prime minister and the president, was not a dignified one.  Read more…

________________________________________

Book of the Day: If This Is a Man / The Truce, by Primo Levi. Translated by Stuart Woolf

Written by fellow Italian Jewish death camp survivor Primo Levi, who was liberated from Auschwitz alongside Piero Terracina in January 1945, If This Is a Man offers essential context on the specific conditions Italian deportees faced in the camp and the difficult journey home. With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a 20th-century Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contemptible. What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in The Periodic Table and The Wrench, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. This volume combines If This Is a Man, which was also published as Survival in Auschwitz, with its sequel, The Truce. The former, published in 1947, covers Levi’s capture in northern Italy, his deportation, and his eleven months inside Auschwitz until the camp was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945.  The Truce, published 16 years later in 1963, picks up immediately where the first ends. It chronicles his chaotic, nine-month odyssey across Eastern Europe - travelling through Poland, Russia, Romania, and Hungary - as he tried to get home to Turin after liberation.

Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919 and trained as a chemist. Arrested as a member of the anti-fascist resistance during the war, he was deported to Auschwitz. Stuart Woolf (1936–2021) was an English-Italian historian and prominent translator renowned for translating Primo Levi's classic works If This Is a Man and The Truce into English, earning the John Florio Prize in 1966.

Buy from Amazon

Home

11 November

NEW - Giuseppe Toaldo - priest and physicist

Meteorology pioneer who persuaded Italy to use lightning rods

Giuseppe Toaldo, a physicist whose work in using data as a tool for forecasting the weather established him one of the founding fathers of scientific meteorology, died on this day in 1797 in Padua, where he spent 33 years as chair of astronomy at the city’s historic university.  Toaldo was ordained a priest 1743 and remained a member of the clergy until his death, although while he was addressed as Abbot - abate - during his time at the university, this was purely a courtesy title and did not come with any ecclesiastical duties.  In the scientific field, Toaldo is also credited with persuading sceptical fellow clergy members that attaching a lightning rod to a church tower was not the act of heresy suggested by centuries-old superstition but a legitimate way to save lives.  He designed the University of Padua’s renowned astronomical observatory, La Specola. Read more…

________________________________________

Alessandro Mussolini - socialist activist

Father whose politics were Fascist leader’s early inspiration

Alessandro Mussolini, the father of Italian Fascist founder and leader Benito Mussolini, was born on this day in 1854, in Montemaggiore di Predappio, a hamlet in Emilia-Romagna, then still part of the Papal States in pre-unification Italy.  A blacksmith by profession, he was a revolutionary socialist activist who had a profound influence on his son’s early political leanings.  Although his embrace of nationalism was not as full as that of his son, Mussolini senior nonetheless greatly admired Italian nationalist figures such as Carlo Pisacane, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, whom he perceived as having socialist or humanist tendencies.  Regularly in trouble with the police for acts of criminal damage and sometimes violence against opponents, Alessandro was eventually held under house arrest and granted his release only when he announced he wished to marry his girlfriend, a local schoolteacher who was a devout Catholic.  Read more…

____________________________________________

Andrea Zani – violinist and composer

Musician who ushered in the new classical era

Andrea Teodora Zani, one of the earliest Italian composers to move away from the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1696 in Casalmaggiore in the province of Cremona.  Casalmaggiore was a breeding ground for musical talent at this time and Zani was an exact contemporary of Giuseppe Guarneri, the most famous member of the Guarneri family of violin makers in Cremona, and only slightly younger than the composers  Francesco Maria Veracini, Giuseppe Tartini and Pietro Locatelli.  Zani’s father gave him his first violin lessons and he later received instruction from Giacomo Civeri, a local musician, and Carlo Ricci, who was at the time court musician to the Gonzaga family at their palace in Guastalla.  After Zani played in front of Antonio Caldara, capellmeister for the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles in Mantua, he was invited to go to Vienna. Read more… 

________________________________________

Luca Zingaretti - actor

Found fame as TV detective Inspector Montalbano

The actor Luca Zingaretti, best known for his portrayal of Inspector Montalbano in the TV series based on Andrea Camilleri's crime novels, was born on this day in 1961 in Rome.  The Montalbano mysteries, now into a 10th series, began broadcasting on Italy's RAI network in 1999 and has become a hit in several countries outside Italy, including France, Spain, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.  Zingaretti has played the famously maverick Sicilian detective in all 28 feature-length episodes to date, each one based on a novel or short story collection by the Sicilian-born author Camilleri.  Although he had established himself as a stage actor and had appeared in a number of films, it was the part of Montalbano that established Zingaretti's fame.  Yet he had hoped to become a star on another kind of stage as a professional footballer. Read more…

Victor Emmanuel III

Birth of the King who ruled Italy through two world wars

Italy’s longest reigning monarch, Victor Emmanuel III (Vittorio Emanuele III di Savoia), was born on this day in Naples in 1869.  The only child of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy, he was given the title of Prince of Naples. He became King of Italy in 1900 after his father was assassinated in Monza.  During the reign of Victor Emmanuel III, Italy was involved in two world wars and experienced the rise and fall of Fascism.  At the height of his popularity he was nicknamed by the Italians Re soldato (soldier King) and Re vittorioso (victorious King) because of Italy’s success in battle during the First World War. He was also sometimes called sciaboletta (little sabre) as he was only five feet (1.53m) tall.  Italy had remained neutral at the start of the First World War but signed treaties to go into the war on the side of France, Britain and Russia in 1915. Read more…

________________________________________

Filippo Buonarroti – revolutionary conspirator

Writer paved the way for the 1848 revolutions in Europe

Filippo Buonarroti, whose political writing inspired many other famous socialists, including Karl Marx, was born on this day in 1761 in Pisa.  Sometimes referred to as Philippe Buonarroti because he spent many years living in France, working to further the cause of the revolution there, the writer was born into a noble family. His father was a direct descendant of the brother of the artist Michelangelo Buonarroti.  Filippo Buonarroti studied Law at the University of Pisa, where he founded what was seen at the time as a subversive newspaper, the Gazetta Universale. It is thought that he joined a Masonic Lodge at about the same time.  Although he was kept under surveillance by the authorities in Italy, Buonarroti expressed support for the French Revolution and travelled to Corsica to spread the revolutionary message through a newspaper, Giornale Patriottico di Corsica. Read more…

__________________________________________

Germano Mosconi – sports writer and presenter

Short-tempered journalist who became the news

Germano Mosconi, who became a well-known television personality, was born on this day in 1932 in San Bonifacio in the Veneto.  Mosconi became notorious for his short temper and swearing on air and was regarded as a bit of a character on local television. But he became known all over Italy and throughout the world after a video of him someone posted anonymously on the internet went viral.  In the 1980s Mosconi delivered sports reports on Telenuovo in Verona and in 1982 he received the Cesare d’Oro international award for journalistic merit.  But he later became known for his excessive swearing and blaspheming. The anonymous video showed his irate reactions to various problems he encountered while broadcasting, such as people unexpectedly entering the studio, background noises and illegible writing on the news sheets he received.  Read more…

________________________________________

Book of the Day: Science in the Enlightenment: An Encyclopedia, by William E Burns

The first introductory A–Z resource on the dynamic achievements in science from the late 1600s to 1820, including the great minds behind the developments and science's new cultural role.  Though the Enlightenment was a time of amazing scientific change, science is an often-neglected facet of that time. Now, Science in the Enlightenment redresses the balance by covering all the major scientific developments in the period between Newton's discoveries in the late 1600s to the early 1800s of Michael Faraday and Georges Cuvier.  More than 200 A-Z entries explore a range of disciplines, including astronomy and medicine, scientists such as Sir Humphry Davy and Benjamin Franklin, and instruments such as the telescope and calorimeter. Emphasis is placed on the role of women, and proper attention is given to the shifts in the worldview brought about by Newtonian physics, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's chemical revolution, and universal systems of botanical and zoological classification. The social impact of science is explored, as well as the ways in which the work of scientists influenced the thinking of philosophers such as Voltaire and Denis Diderot and the writers and artists of the romantic movement.

William Earl Burns is a professional historian living in Washington, DC.

Buy from Amazon

Home

Giuseppe Toaldo - priest and physicist

Meteorology pioneer who persuaded Italy to use lightning rods

Giuseppe Toaldo was one of the first to use
data to predict meteorological patterns

Giuseppe Toaldo, a physicist whose work in using data as a tool for forecasting the weather established him one of the founding fathers of scientific meteorology, died on this day in 1797 in Padua, where he spent 33 years as chair of astronomy at the city’s historic university.

Toaldo was ordained a priest 1743 and remained a member of the clergy until his death, although while he was addressed as Abbot - abate - during his time at the university, this was purely a courtesy title and did not come with any ecclesiastical duties.

In the scientific field, Toaldo is also credited with persuading sceptical fellow clergy members that attaching a lightning rod to a church tower was not the act of heresy suggested by centuries-old superstition but a legitimate way to save lives.

He designed the University of Padua’s renowned astronomical observatory, La Specola, which remained in use until the 1930s, and he created one of Europe’s first meteorological networks, recording data from more than 30 observers across the Venetian Republic. 

Toaldo was born in 1719 in Pianezze, a village about 30km (19 miles) north of Vicenza. He entered the episcopal seminary of Padua in 1733, graduated in theology in 1742 and was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Padua the following year. 

Soon after graduating, he was entrusted with editing the works of Galileo Galilei, the astronomer and physicist, which were being reprinted by the seminary's press. In doing so, he obtained the permission of the Catholic Church to include Galileo’s controversial Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, the first to do so since the text was banned and Galileo convicted of heresy just over 100 years earlier because it supported the view that the sun, rather than Earth, was the centre of the solar system.

After serving as the parish priest at Montegalda, a small town roughly equidistant between Vicenza and Padua, for eight years, Toaldo moved to the University of Padua, being appointed chair of astronomy in 1764.

As professor of astronomy and meteorology, he immediately began  recording painstaking daily meteorological and astronomical observations, a practice he would maintain until his death. 

Between 1767 and 1777 he oversaw the design and construction of La Specola, the astronomical observatory. It was housed inside a 14th century tower that was part of the Torlonga, a tower from a castle originally built in the 13th century at a point at which the Bacchiglione river splits into two forks just south of the centre of Padua. The tower contained a lower observatory, 16m (52ft) above ground level, and an upper observatory, at a height of 35m (115ft).

A French publication of Toaldo's
treatise on lightning conducters

A strong champion of the lightning rod invented by Benjamin Franklin two decades earlier, in 1772 Toaldo published his landmark treatise, Della maniera di difendere gli edificii dal fulmine (On the Manner of Defending Buildings from Lightning). 

Before the lightning rod’s invention, thunderbolts were interpreted as the direct expression of God's wrath and judgment. Preventing a strike was seen by many religious traditionalists as an attempt to interfere with divine plans and therefore regarded as heresy.

When a storm approached, churches would frantically ring their bells to disperse "evil spirits" in the air. Not only did it not work, it cost the lives of hundreds of bell-ringers, church bell towers being the very structures most likely to be struck by lightning in an electrical storm. 

Nonetheless, many still refused to install what they deemed the "heretical rod" and it took a major catastrophe before they even considered changing their minds. This came about in 1769, when lightning struck the Church of San Nazaro in Brescia, which was being used by the Republic of Venice to store 90 tons of gunpowder. The resulting explosion killed 3,000 people and flattened about a sixth of the city.

In the wake of this disaster, Toaldo used his unique position as a priest as well as a scientist to persuade church leaders that lightning rods were not the tools of the Devil but a gift from God to protect human life.

Toaldo also argued that the pointed tip that characterised Franklin’s lightning rod was more effective than the round, blunted tip of an alternative version designed in France and, as a result of his treatise, “Franklinian” rods were installed at many vulnerable historical structures in Italy, including St Mark's Campanile in Venice and the cathedral in Siena, as well as critical gunpowder stores and warships belonging to the Venetian navy. 

As work on the observatory progressed, Toaldo published work on barometric and tidal studies and launched the Giornale astro-meteorologico, an annual almanac compiling data from the network of meteorological observers he assembled across the Republic of Venice. 

By the 1780s, he had enough data to begin to see patterns in the weather. In his Climate Cycle Hypothesis, he formalised the theory that meteorological patterns returned roughly in nine and 18-year cycles and connected lunar cycles directly to terrestrial climate patterns.

Although Toaldo’s astro-meteorological theories were eventually discounted as modern physics proved that lunar atmospheric tides are too weak to influence weather patterns significantly, they were highly celebrated during the Enlightenment, when they were seen as a valuable tool in agricultural planning.

Giuseppe Toaldo died on November 11, 1797, after suffering a stroke. Records show that he was actively taking astronomical and meteorological measurements until just three days before his death.

After his death, Toaldo’s nephew and long-time assistant, Vincenzo Chiminello, was appointed in his place as director of the Astronomical Observatory of Padua and assumed Toaldo's chair of astronomy and meteorology at the university. His Giornale astro-meteorologico continued to be published for many decades.

Giotto's frescoes inside the Scrovegni Chapel are
one of Padua's many important attractions

Travel tip:

The city of Padua in Veneto is just 25 minutes west of Venice by train, yet despite being one of northern Italy's oldest and most captivating cultural attractions it remains free from the overwhelming crowds of its famous coastal neighbour. More than 25km (16 miles) of elegant medieval porticoes help visitors explore the city’s lively market piazzas, as well as a host of important historical sights. These include the Scrovegni Chapel, housing Giotto’s early 14th-century masterpiece fresco cycle of biblical scenes, and Palazzo Bo, the oldest part of the University of Padua, which still keeps the original wooden desk where Galileo Galilei taught physics, alongside the world's oldest surviving permanent anatomical theatre. Also not to be missed are Prato della Valle, a broad elliptical square featuring a central island encircled by a scenic water canal and a ring of 78 marble statues depicting historic figures, and the Basilica di Sant’Antonio, a multi-domed Byzantine-Gothic structure housing the tomb of Saint Anthony and bronze masterpieces by Donatello. In the centre, the Palazzo della Ragione is a 13th-century medieval courthouse known for its vast, upper great hall - Il Salone - the walls of which are covered by astrological frescoes.

Stay in Padua with Hotels.com

The Torlonga, the former castle tower in which Toaldo 
created his renowned astronomical observatory

Travel tip:

La Specola, the astronomical observatory that Giuseppe Toaldo built, remained in use until the 1930s, when the University of Padua decided to procure a modern facility, the Asiago Astrophysical Observatory, which was constructed on a plateau north of Padua.  The castle tower in which the original was housed was built in the 13th-century by Padua’s then-ruler, Ezzelino III da Romano. The tower, which served as a dungeon where prisoners were tortured at the orders of the tyrannical Ezzelino, was raised further in the 14th century during a reconstruction by Francesco I da Carrara. In the lower observatory, named the Sala Meridiana; noon was measured on the meridian line sunk in the floor. The upper observatory has  large windows almost six metres high. A plaque at the entrance carries an inscription by Toaldo that says: This tower, which once led to infernal shadows now, under the auspices of the Venetians, opens the way to the stars. Since 1994 the tower has been home to an astronomical museum. As well as displays outlining the history of astronomy in Padua and Europe from the 18th century, the museum offers the chance to see a superb collection of antique astronomical observation equipment, including English-made instruments from the 18th century, and telescopes from Germany and Austria.

Hotels in Padua from Expedia

Further reading:

Why Giovanni Battista Beccaria regularly corresponded with Benjamin Franklin 

How Galileo Galilei was convicted of heresy after trial by Inquisition 

Alessandro Volta, inventor of the first electric battery

Also on this day:

1696: The birth of composer and violinist Andrea Zani

1761: The birth of political revolutionary Filippo Buonarroti

1854: The birth of Alessandro Mussolini, socialist father of Fascist leader Benito

1869: The birth of King Victor Emmanuel III

1932: The birth of sports writer and presenter Germano Mosconi

1961: The birth of Montalbano actor Luca Zingaretti

Home