18 July

NEW - Dante Alighieri Society established by Royal Decree

King gives legal status to society promoting Italian language and culture

Italian King Umberto I issued a Royal Decree on this day in 1893 from his estate near Pisa in Tuscany, establishing the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust.  Umberto I had been king since 1878 after succeeding his father Victor Emmanuel I and he traditionally spent the summer at his country estate, Tenuta di San Rossore, situated on the Tuscan coast, within the Migliarino, San Rossore and Massaciuccoli Regional Park, having made it his primary administrative base during the month of July.  He recognised the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust (ente morale) via Royal Decree No 347 to provide the organisation with official legal status to pursue its mission, which was to protect and spread the Italian language and culture globally.  The Dante Alighieri Society had been founded in 1889 by a group of intellectuals led by the poet Giosuè Carducci. Read more… 

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Mysterious death of Caravaggio

Experts divided over how brilliant artist met his end

The death of the brilliant Renaissance artist Caravaggio is said to have occurred on this day in 1610 but the circumstances and even the location are still disputed.  Official records at the time concluded that the artist died in the Tuscan coastal town of Porto Ercole, having probably contracted malaria.  However, there is no record of a funeral having taken place, nor of a burial, and several alternative theories have been put forward as to what happened to him.  One, which came to light in 2010 on the 400th anniversary of the painter's death, is that Caravaggio's death was caused by lead poisoning, the supposition being that lead contained in the paint he used entered his body either through being accidentally ingested or by coming into contact with an open wound.  This was supported by research led by Silvano Vincenti, a prominent art historian and broadcaster. Read more… 

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Giacomo Balla - painter

Work captured light, movement and speed

The painter Giacomo Balla, who was a key proponent of Futurism and was much admired for his depictions of light, movement and speed in his most famous works, was born on this day in 1871 in Turin.  An art teacher who influenced a number of Italy’s most important 20th century painters, Balla became interested in the Futurist movement after becoming a follower of the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is regarded as the ideological founder of Futurism.  Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement. Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.  Balla was one of the signatories of Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters - in 1910.  He differed from some of the other artists who signed the Manifesto, painters such as Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni. Read more… 

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Alberto di Jorio – Cardinal

Priest spent 60 years accumulating money for the Vatican

Cardinal Alberto di Jorio, who increased the wealth of the Vatican by buying shares in big corporations, was born on this day in 1884 in Rome.  Di Jorio was considered to be the power behind the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, popularly known as the Vatican Bank, which he served for 60 years.  As a young man he had been sent to the prestigious Pontifical Roman Seminary and he became a Catholic priest in 1908.  Di Jorio worked in an administrative role for the Vatican to begin with, but in 1918, when he was still in his early 30s, he took up the position of president of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione - The Institute of Religious Works.  He was directed by Pope Pius XI to form a close working relationship with Bernardino Nogara, a layman working as a financial adviser to the Vatican. Nogara helped di Jorio build up the Vatican’s financial strength.  Read more…

William Salice - businessman and chocolatier

Former salesman known as inventor of Kinder Eggs

William Salice, the man credited with being the inventor of the enormously popular children’s confectionery known as Kinder Eggs, was born on this day in 1933 in Casei Gerola, a small town in Lombardy, southwest of Milan. Salice worked for the chocolate and confectionery company headed by Michele Ferrero, which had already enjoyed considerable success thanks to the Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread launched in the 1960s.  Keen to better himself after joining Ferrero as a salesman in 1960 at the age of 27, Salice studied marketing in his spare time.  His willingness to embrace new ideas impressed Michele Ferrero, who commissioned him to come up with a way of turning the popularity in Italy of children’s chocolate Easter eggs into a product that could be sold all year round. Read more...

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Gino Bartali - cycling star and secret war hero

Tour de France champion was clandestine courier

Gino Bartali, one of three Italian cyclists to have won the Tour de France twice and a three-times winner of the Giro d’Italia, was born on this day in 1914 in the town of Ponte a Ema, just outside Florence.  Bartali’s career straddled the Second World War, his two Tour successes coming in 1938 and 1948, but it is as much for what he did during the years of conflict that he is remembered today.  With the knowledge of only a few people, Bartali repeatedly risked his life smuggling false documents around Italy to help Italian Jews escape being deported to Nazi concentration camps.  He hid the rolled up documents inside the hollow handlebars and frame of his bicycle and explained his frequent long-distance excursions as part of the training schedule he needed to maintain in order to keep himself in peak physical fitness.  Read more…

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Angelo Morbelli - painter

Artist known for socially conscious themes

Angelo Morbelli, a painter who won acclaim for his socially conscious genre scenes, was born on this day in 1853 in the Piedmont city of Alessandria.  Initially a painter of landscapes and historical scenes, he switched quite early in his career to contemporary subjects, many of which reflected his own social concerns. He had a particular interest in the lives of the elderly and the fate of the women who laboured in the region’s rice fields.  He was a proponent of the Divisionist style of painting that was founded in the 1880s by the French post-Impressionist Georges Seurat. In Divisionism, rather than physically blending paints to produce variations in colour, the painter constructed a picture from separate dots of paint that by their proximity would produce an optical interaction. Divisionists believed this technique achieved greater luminosity of colour.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Dante, by Alessandro Barbero. Translated by Allan Cameron

Since Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy it has defined how people imagine and depict not only heaven and hell, but romantic love and the human condition. However, while Dante's works are widely celebrated outside Italy, the circumstances of his extraordinary life are less well known.  Born in 1265, Dante's adolescence was characterised by literary genius, but his political activism in one of the medieval world's wealthiest cities led to his death in exile. Animating the political intrigue, violence, civil war, exile and cities that shaped Dante's poetic and political life, Barbero’s Dante is a remarkable portrait of one of the creators of European literature and a towering medieval figure, written to mark the 700th anniversary of his death.

Alessandro Barbero is an Italian historian, writer and essayist. Born in Turin, he attended the University of Turin, where he studied literature and medieval history. He is a previous winner of the Strega Prize, Italy's most distinguished literary award. Allan Cameron (born 1952) is a Scottish author and translator who has translated more than 25 books from Italian to English.

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Dante Alighieri Society established by Royal Decree

King gives legal status to society promoting Italian language and culture

The Dante Alighieri Society was founded
by a group of intellectuals in 1889

Italian King Umberto I issued a Royal Decree on this day in 1893 from his estate near Pisa in Tuscany, establishing the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust.

Umberto I had been king since 1878 after succeeding his father Victor Emmanuel I and he traditionally spent the summer at his country estate, Tenuta di San Rossore, situated on the Tuscan coast, within the Migliarino, San Rossore, Massaciuccoli Regional Park, having made it his primary administrative base during the month of July.

He recognised the Dante Alighieri Society as a charitable trust (ente morale) via Royal Decree No 347 to provide the organisation with official legal status to pursue its mission, which was to protect and spread the Italian language and culture globally.

The Dante Alighieri Society had been founded in 1889 by a group of intellectuals led by the poet Giosuè Carducci. It was during a period of mass Italian emigration and the Society aimed to maintain spiritual and cultural ties between Italian expatriates and their homeland. They also wanted to protect and spread the Italian language and culture across the world and nurture love and admiration for the Italian civilisation among foreigners.

By early in the 20th century there were Dante Alighieri Societies in Tunis, Zurich, Constantinople, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Belgrade and Barcelona, and libraries were established to allow Italians abroad to continue reading in Italian.

In the early 1920s there were 200 Dante Committees running societies in Italy and Italian colonies and another 93 abroad.

After World War II a new statute was enshrined stating ‘Societa Dante Alighieri, founded in 1889, aims to protect and spread Italian language and culture in the world, regardless of any particular politics, race, nationality, confession or ideology. It is the free association of those in the world who are united by the love for the Italian language, which is linked to cultural humanism and the universal language of music, morally inspired by the high model of Dantean character.’

The poet Giosuè Carducci was a 
driving force in the society's formation 

Dante Alighieri, after whom the Society is named, is Italy’s most important and celebrated poet. He was born in Florence in about 1265, but was forced to go into exile by the ruling faction in the city in 1302.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is considered to be the greatest literary work written in Italian and has been acclaimed all over the world.

In the 13th century most poetry was written in Latin, but Dante wrote in the Tuscan dialect, which made his work more accessible to ordinary people.

Writers who came later, such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, followed this trend. Therefore, Dante can be said to have played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy and is considered the father of Italian literature.

His depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the Divine Comedy later influenced the works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lord Alfred Tennyson, among many others.

By 1315 Florence had been forced to grant an amnesty to those in exile in exchange for public penance and the payment of a heavy fine, but Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile.

He accepted an invitation from Prince Guido Novello da Polenta to go to Ravenna in 1318. He finished Paradiso - Heaven - and died there, possibly of malaria, in 1321 at about the age of 56.

Dante was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore, now known as the Basilica di San Francesco. A tomb was erected for him in Ravenna in 1483.

Florence made repeated requests for the return of Dante’s remains, but Ravenna has always refused. A tomb was built for him in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence but it has remained empty.

Today the Dante Alighieri Society have many groups in 74 different countries connecting about 142,000 people throughout the world who love the Italian lifestyle and culture.

Dante's tomb remains in
his city of exile, Ravenna

Travel tip:

Dante’s house in Via Santa Margherita in Florence is now a museum, il Museo Casa di Dante, spread over three floors with exhibits illustrating the life and works of the great poet. Ravenna, where Dante lived in exile until his death in 1321, has a wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica di San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics. The city of Ravenna is mentioned by Dante in Canto V of his Inferno. Dante’s tomb is in Via Dante Alighieri next to the Basilica di San Francesco.

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The San Rossore estate in Tuscany was used by
King Umberto I as a summer retreat

Travel tip: 

Tenuta di San Rossore is a vast, protected estate of forests, wetlands, and coastal dunes stretching between Pisa, the Arno and Serchio rivers, and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Once a Medici and later Savoy royal reserve, the estate evolved over centuries through reforestation, hydraulic engineering, and careful land management, eventually becoming part of the Migliarino, San Rossore and Massaciuccoli Natural Park. Its 4,800 hectares encompass ancient pinewoods, forests of oak, ash, and alder, and the cotoni - historic coastal dunes shaped by wind and colonised by sub‑Mediterranean vegetation. Seasonal marshes known as lame create biodiverse wet depressions that attract abundant wildlife. Visitors frequently encounter fallow deer, wild boar, and an exceptional array of migratory and wintering birdlife, especially around the Lame di Fuori wetlands.  Umberto I continued the expansion and improvement of San Rossore begun under his father, Vittorio Emanuele II. Umberto I invested in its infrastructure, forestry, and animal husbandry. One of his most distinctive interventions was a renewed breeding programme for the estate’s historic dromedary herd, a population that had existed since Medici times.  

Hotels near San Rossore from Hotels.com

More reading:

Dante Alighieri, the famous son of Florence who remains in exile

The beautiful banker’s daughter who was Dante’s inspiration

Giosuè Carducci, the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature

Also on this day:

1610: The death of Renaissance genius Caravaggio

1853: The birth of painter Angelo Morbelli

1871: The birth of Futurist painter Giacomo Balla

1884: The birth of Cardinal Alberto di Jorio

1914: The birth of cyclist and war hero Gino Bartoli

1933: The birth of William Salice, inventor of the Kinder Egg

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17 July

Gino D'Acampo - celebrity chef

Neapolitan inherited talent from grandfather

The celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo was born on this day in 1976 in Torre del Greco, a conurbation of around 90,000 inhabitants within the Metropolitan City of Naples.  Based in England since 1995, D’Acampo is scarcely known in his native country yet his social media pages have more than two and a half million followers.  The author of more than a dozen books on cooking, his numerous television appearances include several series of his own show, Gino’s Italian Escapes.  He owns a number of restaurants and pasta bars and is the co-owner of a company selling Italian ingredients.  His success is all the more remarkable given that he had to rebuild his life after being convicted in 1998 of burglary, an episode that took place while he was working as a waiter. He described the incident as a mistake he vowed never to repeat. Born Gennaro D’Acampo, he grew up around food. Read more… 

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Lady Blessington’s Neapolitan Journals

Irish aristocrat fell in love with Naples

Marguerite, Lady Blessington, an Irish-born writer who married into the British aristocracy, arrived in Naples on this day in 1823 and began writing her Neapolitan Journals.  She was to stay in the city for nearly three years and her detailed account of what she saw and who she met has left a unique insight into life in Naples more than 200 years ago.  Lady Blessington made herself at home in Naples and thoroughly embraced the culture, attending local events, making what at the time were adventurous excursions, and entertaining Neapolitan aristocrats and intellectuals at the former royal palace that became her home.  Those who know Naples today will recognise in her vivid descriptions many places that have remained unchanged for the last two centuries.  She also provides a valuable insight into what life was like at the time for ordinary people as well as for the rich and privileged.  Read more… 

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Michele Casadei Massari - chef and restaurateur

American dream from small beginnings

The chef and businessman Michele Casadei Massari, owner and founder of the Piccolo Cafe and the Lucciola restaurant in New York City, was born on this day in 1975 in Riccione, on the Adriatic coast of Emilia-Romagna.  Massari had planned to become a doctor but abandoned his studies in order to pursue his dream of cooking in his own restaurant.  After working as general manager and executive chef of a restaurant at a holiday resort in Sardinia, Massari and an old school friend decided to go it alone and chose to start a business in New York.  They began by selling coffee from a kiosk on Union Square in Manhattan before graduating to a cafe selling traditional Italian food as well as salads, panini and egg dishes.  Massari and his partner opened their first Piccolo Cafe in Third Avenue, a couple of blocks from Union Square in 2010.  Read more… 

Maria Salviati - noblewoman

Florentine whose line included kings of France and England

The noblewoman Maria Salviati, whose descendants include two kings of France and two kings of England, was born on this day in 1499 in Florence.  Salviati was the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and a powerful figure in the mid-16th century.  Her descendants included Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France, and Charles II and James II of England.  Married for nine years to Lodovico de’ Medici, who was more widely known as the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, Salviati herself had Medici blood. One of a family of 10 children, her mother was Lucrezia de Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had married the politician Iacopo Salviati, who was from another major banking family in Florence.  Maria’s maternal grandfather was Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Renaissance ruler who famously sponsored Michelangelo and Botticelli.  Read more…

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Book of the Day:  Gino's Italian Escape (Book 1), by Gino D’Acampo

Discover the secrets of real Italian food with Gino D'Acampo as he captures the flavours, smells and tastes of his homeland in over 100 deliciously simple recipes.  From much-loved pizza, pasta and antipasti dishes, to Gino's classics with a twist such as Honey & Rosemary Lamb Cutlets and Limoncello Mousse, this book is packed with mouth-watering favourites that will soon have you cooking and eating like a true Italian.  Accompanying a major ITV series, Gino's Italian Escape is a celebration of the very best Italian food from one of the country's favourite cooks.

Gennaro "Gino" D'Acampo is an Italian celebrity chef, television personality and writer based in the United Kingdom. He first came to wider attention as the winner of the ninth series of the ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2009. He has since been a regular chef on ITV's This Morning and the presenter of several food and travel series, including There's No Taste Like Home and Gino's Italian Escape.

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16 July

The first Coppa Italia football tournament

Tiny club from Liguria emerged the winners

The first final of the Coppa Italia, which was to become Italian football’s equivalent of England’s celebrated FA Cup knock-out competition, took place on this day in 1922.  It was won by Vado Foot-Ball Club, from Vado Ligure, a commercial and industrial port in the province of Savona in Liguria.  Vado, who defeated Udinese in the final to lift the trophy, have not won any major honours in 101 years since their famous triumph and currently play in Serie D, the fourth tier in the Italian football pyramid.  The circumstances of their victory would look quite bizarre in the context of modern-day football.  The competition itself existed only because of a major schism in the Italian championship that had taken place the year before, when 24 of the country’s major clubs broke away from the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) to form their own championship. Read more…

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Andrea del Sarto – painter

The brief career of an artist ‘senza errori’

Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto was born Andrea d’Agnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore on this day in 1486 in Florence.  He had a brilliant career but died at the age of 43 during an outbreak of plague and afterwards his achievements were eclipsed by the talents of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.  Andrea’s father, Agnolo, was a tailor and therefore the child became known as del Sarto, meaning son of the tailor.  As a young boy del Sarto was apprenticed to a goldsmith and then a woodcarver before being sent to learn to be an artist.  He decided to open a joint studio with an older friend, Franciabigio, and from 1509 onwards they were employed to paint a series of frescoes at Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Del Sarto also painted a Procession of the Magi, in which he included a self-portrait, and a Nativity of the Virgin for the entrance to the church.  Read more…

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Vincenzo Gemito - sculptor

Neapolitan who preserved figures from local street life

Vincenzo Gemito, one of the sculptors responsible for eight statues of former kings that adorn the western façade of the Royal Palace in Naples, was born on this day in 1852.  The statues are in niches along the side of the palace that fronts on to the Piazza del Plebiscito, displayed in chronological order beginning with Roger the Norman, also known as Roger II of Sicily, who ruled in the 12th century, and ends with Vittorio Emanuele II, who was on the throne when his kingdom became part of the united Italy in 1861.  Gemito sculpted the fifth statue in the sequence, that of Charles V, who was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556 and, by virtue of being king of Spain from 1516 to 1556, also the king of Naples. Gemito was known for the outstanding realism in his work, as can be seen in his sculpture Il giocatore di carte – The Card Player - which he created when he was only 16. Read more…

St Clare of Assisi

Birth of the founder of the Poor Clares

St Clare was born on this day in 1194 in Assisi as Chiara Offreduccio, the beautiful daughter of a Count.  As a young girl Clare was extremely devout and at the age of 18 she was inspired by hearing Francis of Assisi preach and went to see him to ask for help to live her life according to the Gospel.  In 1212, Clare left her father’s home and went to the chapel of Porziuncola to meet Francis. Her hair was cut off and she was given a plain robe and veil in exchange for her rich gown.  Clare joined a convent of Benedictine nuns and when her father tracked her down refused to leave it to return home.  Francis sent her to another monastery, where she was later joined by her sister. Over the years other women came to be with them who also wanted to serve Jesus and live with no money. They became known as the Poor Ladies of San Damiano because of the austere lifestyle they lived. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Calcio: A History of Italian Football, by John Foot

The first history of Italian football to be written in English, Calcio: A History of Italian Football is a mix of serious analysis and comic storytelling, with vivid descriptions of games, goals, dives, missed penalties, riots and scandals in the sometimes richest and toughest league in the world.  Calcio tells the story of Italian football from its origins in the 1890’s to the present day. It takes us through a history of great players and teams, of style, passion and success, but also of violence, cynicism, catenaccio tactics and corruption.  We meet the personalities that have shaped this history – from the Italian heroes to the foreigners that failed, the model professionals to the mavericks. Calcio evokes the triumphs (the 1982 World Cup victory) and the tragedies (Meroni, the 'Italian George Best', killed by his number one fan), set against a backdrop of paranoia and intrigue, in a country where the referee is seen as corrupt until proven otherwise.

John Foot, whose father, Paul, was a noted investigative journalist, is an English academic and historian specialising in Italy. His other books include Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism, The Archipelago: Italy Since 1945, and Pedalare! Pedalare!: A History of Italian Cycling.

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