Salvatore Lima - politician

Christian Democrat MEP murdered by Mafia

Salvatore 'Salvo' Lima was the most
powerful Christian Democrat in Sicily

Salvatore Lima, a politician strongly suspected of being the Sicilian Mafia’s ‘man in Rome’ until he was shot dead near his seaside villa in 1992, was born on this day in 1928 in Palermo.

The Christian Democrat MEP, usually known as Salvo, had long been suspected of corruption, from his days as Mayor of Palermo in the 1950s and 60s to his time as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, between 1968 and 1979, when he formed a close association with Giulio Andreotti, the three-times Italian prime minister whose rise to power was helped considerably by the support Lima was able to garner for him in Sicily.

Lima's links with the Mafia were established by a magistrates’ enquiry into his death when it was concluded that he was killed on the orders of the then all-powerful Mafia boss Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina as an act of revenge following Lima’s failure through his connections in Rome to have sentences against 342 mafiosi accused in the so-called 'maxi-trial' of 1986-87 annulled or at least reduced.

He had allegedly promised his Cosa Nostra paymasters that he would see to it that a Supreme Court judge with a reputation for overturning sentences against suspected Mafia members was appointed prosecutor, but the position was handed instead to another judge.

Giulio Andreotti formed a close
alliance 

Riina ordered his murder, carried out by a gunman on a motorcycle outside Lima’s villa in Mondello, the seaside resort just outside Palermo, shortly after the verdicts were confirmed in 1992.  Later in the same year, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two most prominent magistrates in the investigations that led to the maxi-trial, were also killed on Riina’s orders.

Much of the information about Lima’s involvement with the Mafia was provided by pentiti - supergrasses - such as Tommaso Buscetta and Leonardo Messina, former mafiosi who turned state’s evidence after finding themselves disenfranchised by the ruthless purge of rival clans carried out by Riina’s Corleonesi family in the Second Mafia War of the early 1980s.

Buscetta and Messina both confirmed that Lima’s father, Vincenzo, had been a member of the Mafia.

Despite this, Salvo Lima was elected Mayor of Palermo in 1958 and again in 1965, occupying the office for a total of eight years. It was revealed later that during the construction boom in Palermo in the 50s and 60s, Lima and his fellow Christian Democrat Vito Ciancimino, who was the city’s assessor for public works, awarded hundreds of lucrative contracts to Francesco Vassallo, a builder with powerful Mafia connections.

One of them, a mafioso called Angelo La Barbera, had supported Lima’s campaign for election.

Lima's body lay covered by a sheet as
police looked for clues to his killing

It was also established that two Christian Democrat-supporting businessmen, Nino and Ignazio Salvo, to whom he awarded unusually generous terms to collect taxes on the island, were both cousins and Mafia members.  In return, they pledged their loyalty to Lima and Andreotti.

Lima’s election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1968 as a representative for Palermo came as a surprise, given that he was up against established politicians. It was of great benefit to Andreotti, who had much support in and around Rome but no national electoral base, that Lima was able through his influential contacts not only to place Andreotti-supporting candidates in the Sicily constituencies but also guarantee they would be elected, which gave Andreotti a much stronger powerbase in the Italian parliament than he had enjoyed previously.

When Andreotti became prime minister for the first time in 1972, it was not long before Lima had a position in government as Under-Secretary of the Budget.

He became the Member of the European Parliament for the Italian Islands in 1979 but the veneer of respectability that he took to the grave after he was murdered was seriously damaged in November 1992 when Buscetta testified before the Antimafia Commission about links between the Cosa Nostra, Lima and Andreotti.

Buscetta described Lima as “the politician to whom Cosa Nostra turned most often to resolve problems for the organisation whose solution lay in Rome."

Other witnesses, including another pentito, Gaspare Mutolo, confirmed that Lima had been ordered to "fix" the appeal of the maxi trial with Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation and had been killed because he was unable to do so.

According to Mutolo: "Lima was killed because he was the greatest symbol of that part of the political world which, after doing favours for Cosa Nostra in exchange for its votes, was no longer able to protect the interests of the organisation at the time of its most important trial."

Mondello's beautiful sandy beach is largely free to use and
attracts crowds of bathers in high season.

Travel tip:

Mondello, where Lima lived and was murdered, is a former fishing village about 10km (6 miles) north of Palermo that has become a popular beach resort. It has a sweeping bay enclosing turquoise water and a beach of fine sand in front of a promenade lined with beautiful villas, many built in Liberty style at the start of the 20th century as summer retreats for the wealthier residents of the city. The beach, which tends to be crowded during the summer with many stretches free of charge, also has many pastel-coloured changing cabins. The nature reserve of Capo Gallo, with its white rocks and clear water, is within walking distance of Mondello.

Palermo's magnificent cathedral has a classic Sicilian mix of
architectural influences from Europe and the Arab world.

Travel tip:

Although Palermo is widely seen by the rest of the world as a Mafia stronghold, visitors to the city would normally encounter nothing to suggest that the criminal underworld exerts any influence on daily life.  The Sicilian capital, on the northern coast of the island, is a vibrant city with a wealth of beautiful architecture bearing testament to a history of northern European and Arabian influences.  Typical is Palermo's majestic Cathedral of the Assumption of Virgin Mary, which includes Norman, Moorish, Gothic, Baroque and Neoclassical elements.

More reading:

Giulio Andreotti - Italy's great political survivor

The supergrass who put hundreds behind bars

Giovanni Falcone's crusade against the Mafia

Also on this day:

1752: The birth of 'father of the piano' Muzio Clementi

1881: The birth of socialite and muse Lusia Casati

1980: The death of car designer Giovanni Michelotti


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Eugenio Monti - bobsleigh champion

Olympic winner who was honoured for sportsmanship

Eugenio Monti won two Olympic medals at the age of 40
after previously being honoured for outstanding sportsmanship 

The double Olympic bobsleigh champion Eugenio Monti, who became the first athlete to be awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for sportsmanship, died on this day in 2003 in Belluno.

Monti was recognised with the award after the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, during which he twice made gestures of selfless generosity towards opponents, both of which arguably cost him the chance of a gold medal.

The preeminent bobsleigh driver in the world going into the 1964 Games and an eight-time world champion in two and four-man events, Monti was desperate to add Olympic golds to his medal collection.

He had won silver in both his specialisations when Italy hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956 and was denied the opportunity to improve on that four years later when the 1960 Games at Squaw Valley in California went ahead with no bobsleigh events, due to the organisers running out of time and money to build a track.

Eugenio Monti and his brakeman in the two-man bob
event at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo

In Innsbruck, Monti and his brakeman Sergio Siorpaes were favourites in the two-man event,  After two runs on the first day, Britain’s Tony Nash and Robin Dixon led the field. On day two, however, the rear axle bolt on their sled sheared off.

They had no spare and would have had to forgo their second and final run of the day - and their chance at Olympic gold - if it weren’t for Monti’s extraordinary sportsmanship in offering to lend them the bolt from his sled. The British pair went on to record the fastest time on that final run and won gold by just 0.12 seconds. Italians Sergio Zardini and Romaro Bonagura took silver with Monti and Siorpaes claiming the bronze.

Four days later in the four-man event, Monti’s selflessness towards his fellow competitors shone through for a second time when the rear axle on the Canadian team’s sled was damaged. Monti sent the Italian team’s mechanics to repair it, with the consequence that the Canadian team won gold, with Monti having to settle for another bronze.

Eugenio Monti led the Italian quartet to a gold
medal in the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble

Monti’s gestures were all the more remarkable given that he was 36 years old and had already suffered serious problems with his knees, arguably running out of time to achieve his Olympic dreams.

There was no more popular champion, then, in Grenoble four years later when a 40-year-old Monti won the gold medal in both the two-man and four-man events.

The two-man contest could not have been closer. At the start of the final run, West Germany I, piloted by Horst Floth, led by a tenth of a second from Monti’s Italy I sled. The Italians went first and broke the track record.

The German response was impressive – but they finished a tenth of a second slower. With both crews recording exactly the same cumulative time, gold went to Italy on the basis of producing the single fastest run.

With an Olympic gold at last in his pocket, Monti went into the four-man contest in buoyant mood and overcame difficult conditions to lead his team to more success. Again, the margin was tiny – less than 0.1secs over two runs – but Monti prevailed to win his second gold, and so became the first man to win both bobsleigh events at the same Winter Olympics.

Monti was made a Commendatore of the
Italian Republic in honour of his career

It turned out to be the final race of his illustrious career. Immediately, he announced his retirement, having won six Olympic medals, nine world titles and the lasting respect of the Olympic family.

In addition, he was awarded Italy's highest civilian honor – Commendatore of the Italian Republic.

Born in 1928 in Toblach (Dobbiaco in Italian), a largely German-speaking municipality in the province of Bolzano in the South Tyrol area of Trentino-Alto Adige, Monti, was the best young Italian skier of his generation. He became known as il rosso volante - the Flying Redhead - and won national titles in slalom and giant slalom, but in 1951 an accident resulted in torn ligaments in both knees, which put paid to his alpine skiing career.

It was then that he switched to bobsleigh. In 1954 he won his first Italian championship and by 1957 was a world champion, going on to dominate the sport in Italy and be a force internationally for more than a decade.

After retirement, he was for a time the manager of the Italian bobsleigh team, while at the same time looking after the skiing facility he ran in Cortina d’Ampezzo, about 32km (20 miles) from Toblach, one of Italy’s major ski resorts and the host of the 1956 Winter Olympics.

Monti died on December 1, 2003 in rather sad circumstances, taking his own life to escape the suffering of Parkinson’s Disease.

Following his death, Olympic track at Cortina was renamed the Pista Olimpica di Bob - Eugenio Monti in his honour. The track was awarded the 2011 world championships

His name was also given to Turn 19 at Cesana Pariol - the bobsleigh track used for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.

Cortina d'Ampezzo is a beautiful Alpine
town with a huge draw for tourists

Travel tip:

Cortina d'Ampezzo, often called simply Cortina, is a town in the southern Dolomites in the Veneto region. Situated in the valley of the Boite river,it is a winter sport resort known for its skiing trails, scenery, accommodation, shops and après-ski scene and remains popular with celebrities and European aristocracy. Austrian territory until 1918, it was traditionally a regional craft centre, making handmade products appreciated by early British and German holidaymakers as tourism emerged in the late 19th century. Today, the local economy thrives on tourism, particularly during the winter season, when the population of the town typically increases from about 7,000 to 40,000.  Although Cortina was unable to go ahead with the scheduled 1944 Winter Olympics because of World War II, it hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956 and subsequently a number of world winter-sports events. Several films have been shot in the town, mostly notably The Pink Panther (1963), For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Cliffhanger (1993).

Hotels in Cortina d'Ampezzo from TripAdvisor

The village of Toblach is in a beautiful valley in the
German-speaking South Tyrol area of northern Italy

Travel tip:

The small town of Toblach, or Dobbiaco in Italian, can be found about 100km (62 miles) northeast of Bolzano and a similar distance north of Belluno in the alpine valley of the Puster river, at an elevation of 1,241m (4,072 ft) above sea level.  The spectacular mountain peaks known as Tre Cime di Lavaredo/Drei Zinnen are located nearby.  The area’s main claim to fame is that the composer Gustav Mahler was living in a tiny wood cabin in the pine forests close to Toblach, in the summers of 1908–10, when he composed his ninth symphony, the last he completed, and began work on his tenth symphony.


More reading:

How Lamberto della Costa became Italy's first Olympic bobsleigh champion

Why Alberto Tomba is Italy's greatest skier

The ex-prisoner of war who became Italy's first Olympic alpine skiing champion

Also on this day:

1455: Death of Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti

1958: The birth of distance runner Alberto Cova

1964: The birth of World Cup hero 'Toto' Schillaci


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Alberto Sughi - painter

20th century artist who was unwitting victim of plagiarism

Alberto Sughi's work was copied by a Japanese artist
who had visited his studio in Cesena

The artist Alberto Sughi, an acclaimed  20th century painter whose style was defined as “existential realism”, was born on this day in 1928 in Cesena in Emilia-Romagna.

Sughi was regarded as one of the greatest artists of his generation but is often remembered mainly for his unwitting part in a famous case of plagiarism.

It happened in 2006 when a Japanese painter, Yoshihiko Wada, was awarded the prestigious Art Encouragement Prize, the Japanese equivalent of the Turner Prize, for a series of paintings depicted urban life in Italy - one of Sughi’s specialities.

A month after the award was announced in March of that year, the Japan Artists Association and Agency for Cultural Affairs received an anonymous tip-off questioning the authenticity of Wada's work, which then sparked an investigation into possible plagiarism.

The anonymous accuser had noted that several pieces of Wada’s art in an exhibition before the award was decided bore striking similarities to paintings by Sughi. Two examples were Wada’s Boshi-zo (Mother and Child), which looked almost exactly like Sughi’s Virgo Laurentana, even in tiny details, and Wada’s Muso (Reverie), which appeared to be a near-identical copy of Sughi’s Piano Bar Italia.

One of the paintings Wada passed off as his own was one of
Sughi's many works depicting women in bars

Wada initially denied plagiarism. He claimed he he had known Sughi since he studied in Italy in the 1970s, and had been influenced by him while studying with him.

Later, Wada changed his story, saying he had painted with Sughi "in collaboration" and therefore the paintings were not plagiarised. He described his own paintings as "an homage to Sughi".

However, when contacted by the Japanese embassy in Italy in early May, Sughi denied the pair had worked together and said he was unaware Wada was even an artist. According to Sughi, Wada had introduced himself merely as a fan and had visited him as many as five times, always asking if he could photograph his work.

Subsequently, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs took the decision to strip Wada of the award, the first time such a decision had been taken since the Art Encouragement Prize was inaugurated in 1950.  Sughi considered suing but later revealed he had received a visit from Wada shortly before the decision to disqualify him was announced, after which he had concluded that the shame he would suffer was punishment enough.

Sughi painted a number of works in which his theme was
the relationship between man and nature

Self-taught, Sughi began drawing before he could write, inspired by an uncle who painted as a hobby. He worked as an illustrator for the newspaper Gazzetta del Popolo in Turin in the 1940s and began to paint at the same time, choosing the realism of figurative art over the abstract styles that were fashionable. His paintings often depicted moments from daily life, with no attempt to moralise.

It was a visit to the Venice Biennale in 1948, where he was captivated by a still life by the French painter André Fougeron, that did most to influence the style he favoured. Later that year, Sughi moved to Rome where he remained until 1951. There he met several artists, including Marcello Muccini and Renzo Vespignani who were part of the Gruppo di Portonaccio, an affiliation of like-minded painters who would meet and work in Portonaccio, a poor, industrialised suburb.

He returned to Cesena, where he would be based until the early 1970s, when he left his studio in the city for a country house in the hills.

Sughi was still active as a painter well into
his eighth decade of life

Sughi’s work followed thematic cycles, beginning with his so-called 'green paintings', which examined the relationship between man and nature (1971–1973), followed by the Cena - Supper - cycle (1975–1976), in which his focus was on bourgeois society. This preceded Imagination and Memory of the Family, dating from the early 1980s, and Evening or Reflection, from 1985.  In 2000 he exhibited a series of large canvases entitled Nocturnal.

The director Ettore Scola chose as poster for his 1980 film La terrazza one of Sughi’s paintings from his Cena series.

Sughi’s standing in the art world was such that galleries and museums not only in Italy but in Russia and South America staged regular exhibitions of his work.

Between December 2005 and January 2006, a large retrospective exhibition of Sughi’s work was held at the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma, containing 642 of his works, including paintings, tempera, drawings, and lithographs, made between 1959 and 2004.

Sughi died in Bologna in March 2012 at the age of 83.  Today, his works are held in the collections of the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore in Bologna, among others.

The Piazza del Popolo is the main square of Cesena

Travel tip:

Cesena, where Alberto Sughi was born, is an historic city in Emilia-Romagna, about 38km (24 miles) south of Ravenna and a similar distance northwest of Rimini. The city found fame of an unwanted kind in 1377 when Pope Gregory’s legate ordered the murder of thousands of citizens for revolting against the papal troops, in the so-called ‘Cesena bloodbath’. The city recovered and prospered under the rule of the Malatesta family in the 14th and 15th centuries, who rebuilt the castle, Rocca Malatestiana, and founded a beautiful library, Biblioteca Malatestiana, which has been preserved in its 15th century condition and still holds valuable manuscripts.

A pair of giant hands reaching from the water to prop up the
Ca' Sagredo Hotel was an exhibit at the 2017 Venice Biennale

Travel tip:

The Venice Biennale is an international art exhibition featuring architecture, visual arts, cinema, dance, music, and theatre that is held at various venues in the Castello district of Venice every two years during the summer. It was founded in 1895 as the International Exhibition of Art of the City of Venice to promote “the most noble activities of the modern spirit without distinction of country.” The festival expanded in 1932 to include the Venice International Film Festival and again in 1934 with the addition of the International Theatre Festival. After World War II it became the leading showcase for contemporary and avant-garde art and in 1998 it expanded again to include architecture and dance. It typically attracts more than 300,000 visitors to the city.

More reading:

Giorgio Morandi - the 20th century master of still life

How Giorgio de Chirico founded the scuola metafisica

The man who invented Concrete Art

Also on this day:

1658: The birth of Mary of Modena

1712: The birth of the great Venetian artist Francesco Guardi



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Tommaso Buscetta - Mafia ‘pentito’

Sicilian gangster’s testimony put hundreds behind bars

Buscetta's testimony led to hundreds
of Mafia-related arrests

The Sicilian mobster Tommaso Buscetta, who was the first major Mafia figure to break the code of omertà and pass details of organised criminal activity to the authorities, was born on this day in 1928 in Palermo.

His evidence to the celebrated anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone paved the way for the so-called Maxi Trial, a process lasting six years that led to the conviction and jailing of 350 mafiosi.

Buscetta’s testimony in the Pizza Connection Trial in New York State at around the same time in the mid-1980s led to the conviction of several hundred more mobsters both in Italy and the United States, including the powerful Sicilian Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti.

Arguably the most shocking information he passed on to the authorities concerned Italy’s three-times former prime minister, the late Giulio Andreotti, whose links with the Cosa Nostra he exposed shortly after Falcone was murdered in May 1992, killed by a massive bomb placed under the motorway linking Palermo with the city’s international airport.

Buscetta arriving at the court in
Palermo during the Maxi Trial

Andreotti was found guilty of complicity in the Mafia assassination of a journalist and sentenced to 24 years in jail, although he never went to prison and was acquitted after a number of appeals. His links with the Mafia were considered proven, although by the time that verdict was reached too much time had elapsed under Italian law and the judgment was cancelled.

The route to Buscetta becoming the Mafia’s first ‘pentito’ began in Palermo, where he was the youngest of 17 children fathered by a poorly-paid worker in a glass factory.

He followed the usual route out of poverty by becoming involved with crime. He was only 17 when he joined the mob in 1945. In the years that followed he became a fully-fledged member of the Porta Nuova Family, mainly working in cigarette smuggling.

Buscetta was part of the
Mafia from a young age

In 1963 Buscetta fled to the United States, shortly after the Ciaculli Massacre, which was part of an internal Mafia conflict known as the First Mafia War. His connections enabled him to join the Gambino crime family in New York, who gave him a front of legitimacy in a pizza business. In 1968, he was convicted in his absence of double murder by an Italian court.

Two years later he was arrested by police in New York who were aware of his conviction but released after Italian authorities failed to request his extradition.  After his later arrest in Brazil, however, he was returned to Italy and began his life sentence.

Eight years later, on day release from prison, he escaped and went back to Brazil, desperate to escape the so-called Second Mafia War, fearing for his life after several of his allies and family members had been eliminated by the ruthless boss, Toto Riina, including his close associate and friend, Stefano Bontade. It was Riina who arranged the murder of Falcone, as well as that of his fellow magistrate, Paolo Borsellino.

When Buscetta was arrested and sent back to Italy again he was so fearful of Riina that he attempted to kill himself in prison before deciding he would seek revenge on Riina by other means. He asked to talk to Falcone, and began his life as an informant - a ‘pentito’.

The judge Giovanni Falcone, to whom
Buscetta disclosed his secrets

The irony was that Buscetta was never more than a footsoldier in the Mafia hierarchy, yet always seemed to have a glamorous girlfriend and dressed as if he was wealthy. He became well connected both in Sicily and the United States.

He was therefore able to provide information about the structure, the recruitment techniques and the functions of the Cosa Nostra, providing the authorities with an understanding of the Mafia phenomenon about which they could previously only speculate.

He was the first to reveal the existence and the inner workings of the Cupola - the Mafia commission that governed the organisation and ordered the elimination of its erring members.

Buscetta’s reward was to be given special police protection, a generous income and a new identity in the United States, where he died in 2000 at the age of 71.

There are now several hundred Mafia turncoats helping Italian justice to fight organised crime.

Palermo's imposing monumental
arch at Porta Nuova

Travel tip:

One might imagine that an area that lends its name to a Mafia family to be poor and down at heel but the Porta Nuova is anything but. A giant monumental arch built in the 15th century and rebuilt in the 16th century, it opens into what was the Cassaro, the city’s most ancient street, which runs from the Norman Palace next to the Villa Bonanno park in a straight course right down to the harbour. The street has been renamed Via Vittorio Emanuele but many local people still refer to it as Cassaro.

The magnificent Teatro Massimo is seen as a symbol of
Palermo's rebellion against the grip of the Mafia

Travel tip:

Palermo’s Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, opened in 1897, has become a symbol of the city’s fight back against the grip of the Mafia. The largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna, originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, it was closed for supposedly minor refurbishments in 1974. But at a time when local government was at its most corrupt and when the Mafia controlled almost everything in the city there was little money in the public purse and the theatre, which once attracted all the great stars from the opera world, would remain dark for 23 years. However, after the Falcone murder, the city turned against the mob as never before and the reopening in 1997, with a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the esteemed maestro Claudio Abbado, was seen as a motif for Palermo’s rebirth. 

More reading:

The anti-Mafia crusade of Giovanni Falcone

Stefano Bontade - Mafia boss with close ties to ex-PM Giulio Andreotti

How Carlo Gambino became one of the world's most powerful crime bosses

Also on this day:

1478: The birth of Giulio d'Este di Ferrara, nobleman who spent half his life in jail

1814: The founding of the Carabinieri military police force

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Giannino Marzotto - racing driver

Double Mille Miglia winner from a famous family

Giannino Marzotto was a flamboyant driver with an
edgy image he was happy to live up to

Giannino Marzotto, a racing driver who twice won the prestigious Mille Miglia and finished fifth at Le Mans, was born on this day in 1928 in Valdagno, a town situated in the mountains about 30km (19 miles) northwest of Vicenza.

He was the great, great grandson of Luigi Marzotto, who in 1836 opened a woollen factory that evolved into the Marzotto Group, one of Italy’s largest textile manufacturers.

Marzotto worked for the company after he retired from motor racing, at one point filling the position of managing director and later company president, before giving up those roles to develop other businesses.

He was one of five sons of Count Gaetano Marzotto, who was the major figure in the Marzotto company in the 20th century, transforming the family business into an international entity and building the Città Sociale, a town adjoining Valdagno characterised by wide, tree-lined boulevards which he built to provide a pleasant and well-appointed community for the workers at the Marzotto factory.

With this wealthy background, Giannino was able to indulge his passion for cars.  Soon after his 20th birthday he entered his father’s Lancia Aprilia in the Giro di Sicilia, finishing 16th overall but second in his class.

A Ferrari 195S Berlinetta similar to the one in which
Marzotto won his first Mille Miglia in 1950

Not long afterwards, he met Enzo Ferrari, who felt he had enough talent behind the wheel to have raced professionally.  Ferrari had ambitions to lead the world in performance racing cars and with his support Giannino and three of his brothers - Vittorio, Umberto and Paolo - entered the 1950 Mille Miglia, the historic endurance test over 1,000 Roman miles (about 1,500km) from Brescia to Rome and back, along a figure-of-eight route that passed through many of central and northern Italy’s major cities, including Verona, Bologna, Florence and Parma.

Giannino and his co-driver Marco Crosara, in the colours of the Ferrari works team, started at the back of the field in their Ferrari 195S Berlinetta yet worked their way through the field to finish five minutes in front and score an improbable victory.  The great Juan Manuel Fangio, who would be Formula One world champion five times in the 1950s, was third.

Marzotto scored a hit with the Italian public not just for his skill behind the wheel but for his insistence on competing in a double-breasted brown suit. 

Ferrari's 340MM Spider, similar to the one in which
Marzotto raced to his second Mille Miglia in 1953

It transpired later that the victory was all the more remarkable for having been prefaced by a row with Ferrari over the performance of the car in practice, after which Luigi Bazzi, the team’s chief technician, admitted to making adaptations to the car to slow it down, because he did not trust the headstrong Marzotto not to kill himself by taking outrageous risks.

Two years later, after relations with Ferrari had become strained, he was due to compete in the Mille Miglia in a new model Alfa Romeo only for it to be assigned to another driver while he was away on business.  He approached Lancia for a car but was told there was no vacant drive and reluctantly went back to Ferrari.

The best they could offer was driver Luigi Villoresi's 340MM Vignale Spider, in which he had won the Giro di Sicilia but had not been touched since and had suffered a loss of brakes towards the end of the event. He asked for it to be prepared for the race but took delivery of it only hours before the start and had no time for any pre-race testing.

Despite some extraordinary problems during the race, such as when mechanics were unable to open the bonnet and had to cut a hole in it to top up the oil, he again overhauled Fangio's Alfa to win his second Mille Miglia, accompanied by Crosara as before.

Giannino Marzotto in 2010, a couple of years
before his death. He smoked all his life.

With his brother, Paolo, as co-driver, Marzotto piloted another Ferrari 340MM, this time the Pininfarina Berlinetta version, to finish fifth at Le Mans the same year.

Marzotto, whose other victories included the Grand Prix de Rouens-les-Essarts in 1951 in a Ferrari 166F2/50, retired from racing in 1953 to take up a position in the Marzotto business.

Later he served two terms as president of the Mille Miglia Club. He died in 2012 at the age of 84.  A good part of his life was spent restoring the neglected Villa Trissino outside Vicenza, built in 1700 but allowed to fall into disrepair, especially during the Second World War.

Very well connected, his friends included the Italian political leader Giulio Andreotti and the ill-fated US president John F Kennedy.

Married with three daughters, he died in 2012 at the age of 84. Coincidentally, his lifelong friend and co-driver Marco Crosara had passed away just five days earlier.

A postcard from Valdagno showing the Viale Trento in 1950

Travel tip:

The Città Sociale, built on the left side of the Agno river, was designed by the Bassano architect Francesco Bonfanti. It was completed in just ten years, from 1927 to 1937 during the period of greatest expansion of the Marzotto company, and comprised 1000 lodgings, a stadium, a school building, a music school, a theatre, a swimming pool, a five-hectare park and other recreational facilities, all of which are still in use today with the exception of the theatre, which closed in 1981.

The entrance to the Villa Trissino Marzotto

Travel tip:

Villa Trissino Marzotto, originally an ancient stronghold about 20km (12 miles) from Vicenza and 11kn (7 miles) from Valdagno, was transformed into a villa in 1700 by a Venetian architect, passed by inheritance to the Conti Da Porto. In 1951 it was purchased by Giannino Marzotto, who brought it back to its original splendour.  Inside, the Villa preserves frescoes, statues, a collection of Gonzaga Pannemaker tapestries, the cartoons of Raffaello and Giulio Romano and a pinacoteca with the Macchiaoli collection. The historic gardens contain centuries-old trees, tree-lined avenues and a lake, all of which is open to guided tours, educational activities and exhibitions by pre-arrangement.

More reading:

How Enzo Ferrari created the world's most famous sports car marque

Champion Mario Andretti inspired by watching Mille Miglia

Why Elio de Angelis was known as 'the last of the gentlemen racers'

Also on this day:

1808: The birth of Antonio Meucci, claimed by some to be the true inventor of the telephone

1920: The birth of controversial banker Roberto Calvi


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Ennio Morricone - film music maestro

Composer who scored some of cinema's greatest soundtracks

Ennio Morricone, pictured in 2012

Ennio Morricone, who composed some of the most memorable soundtracks in the history of the cinema, was born on this day in 1928 in Rome.

Still working even as he enters his 89th year, Morricone has written more than 500 film and television scores, winning countless awards.

Best known for his associations with the Italian directors Sergio Leone, Giuseppe Tornatore and Giuliano Montaldo, he has also worked among others with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Brian de Palma, Roland Joffé, Franco Zeffirelli and Quentin Tarantino, whose 2015 Western The Hateful Eight finally won Morricone an Oscar that many considered long overdue.

Among his finest soundtracks are those he wrote for Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy in the 1960s, for the Leone gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America two decades later, for Joffé's The Mission and De Palma's The Untouchables.

He composed the score for Tornatore's hauntingly poignant Cinema Paradiso and for Maddalena, a somewhat obscure 1971 film by the Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz that included the acclaimed Come Maddalena and Chi Mai, which later reached number two in the British singles chart after being used for the 1981 TV series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George.

Much of Morricone's film music, as well as his more than 100 classical compositions and numerous jazz and pop songs from the 1960s and 70s, has been recorded and his commercial sales have topped 70 million records worldwide.

Listen to Morricone's beautiful Gabriel's Oboe from The Mission

Morricone, whose parents moved to Rome from Arpino, an ancient hill town near Frosinone in southern Lazio, was brought up in the Trastevere district of the capital, one of five children raised by his father, Mario, a professional musician who played the trumpet, and mother Libera, who ran a small textile business.

He learned the fundamentals of music from his father before entering the National Academy of St Cecilia, where he first met Sergio Leone.

Sergio Leone, the director  behind
 the 'Dollars' trilogy

On graduating, he had some success writing for the theatre as well as for radio. After marrying his girlfriend of six years, Maria Travia, in 1956, and becoming a father a year later, he began supporting his family by playing in a jazz band and arranging pop songs for the Italian public broadcaster, RAI.

Over the next few years he composed pop songs for Rita Pavone, Mario Lanza, Paul Anka and Francoise Hardy among many others.

He branched into film music for the first time in the early 1960s, taking the commission that was to change his life when Leone, his friend from St Cecilia's, asked him to write the score for his groundbreaking Western, A Fistful of Dollars.

Starring the 34-year-old American actor, Clint Eastwood, in his first major role, A Fistful of Dollars was a huge success, spawning two more in the genre that became known as 'Spaghetti Westerns'.  For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly each grossed more than $20 million.

A Fistful of Dollars made $14.5 million, which was incredible given that Leone made it on a budget of less than $250,000.  With only limited access to a full orchestra, Morricone had to improvise, incorporating gunshots, cracking whips, a whistle, a jew's harp, trumpets, and a Fender electric guitar into his score, as well as using human, mainly female voices as musical instruments. The result was a highly distinctive score that it became a classic in the history of cinema music, as instantly recognizable today as it was then, and several of Morricone's innovative measures became part of his repertoire.

Listen to Morricone's music for the opening scene of The Hateful Eight

The trilogy began a relationship with Sergio Leone that would last 20 years and opened many doors for Morricone, whose career prospered from then on.

His first nomination for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards came in 1979 for Days of Heaven, directed by the American Terence Malick.  There were two nominations in the 1980s, for Joffé's The Mission in 1986 and De Palma's The Untouchables in 1987, and probably would have been a third had the American distributors of Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984) submitted the paperwork on time.

Morricone was particularly disappointed not to win with The Mission, which features the wonderful melody Gabriel's Oboe as its main theme, complaining that jazz musician Herbie Hancock's score for Bertrand Tavernier's Round Midnight, while beautifully done, used existing music.

The Hateful Eight: Morricone's score for
Quentin Tarantino's film won an Oscar

Further nominations came for Barry Levison's Bugsy (1991) and Tornatore's Malena (2000), and by the second decade of the new millennium Morricone's 50-year movie career had brought him 44 major awards.

It appeared, though, that the award he craved above all would elude him, and an honorary Oscar in 2007 for his overall contribution to film music seemed a slightly hollow consolation prize.

But then, late in 2014, just past his 86th birthday, he was approached by Quentin Tarantino, with whom he had collaborated previously but had had a difficult relationship. Morricone had not scored a complete Western for 35 years and had not worked on a high-profile Hollywood production since 2000 but The Hateful Eight, set just after the American Civil War, appealed to him.

He produced a score that was magnificent, one that would sit comfortably alongside anything he had done previously, from the sweeping L'Ultima Diligenza per Red Rock that accompanies the chillingly atmospheric opening scenes, to Regan's Theme, a melody of gathering pace with echoes of what he did for Leone half a century previously.

It earned Morricone his third Golden Globe, to go with The Mission and the ragtime-jazz score he wrote for Tornatore's Legend of 1900 and then, at the 87th Academy Awards night of February 22, 2016, the one he thought would never come and which made him, at 87 years, the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.

Morricone, who has never left Italy despite being offered a villa in Hollywood by one of the studios he worked with, remains an active composer.  He and Maria had four children - Marco, Alessandra, Andrea, who himself became a film music composer, and Giovanni, who is a film director and producer in New York.

UPDATE: Morricone died in July 2020, aged 91, as a result of injuries sustained in a fall. Following a private funeral, he was entombed in Cimitero Laurentino in Rome.

The unspoilt hill town of Arpino

Travel tip:

Arpino, home of Morricone's parents, is a hill town situated about 120km south-east of Rome, 46km north-west of Frosinone in Lazio. Clinging to a ridge on top of a hill, it is relatively accessible from a nearby station on one of the Rome-Naples railway lines, yet attracts few tourists and therefore has the unspoilt feel of a traditional southern Italian community.

Travel tip:

The Trastevere district of Rome, which sits alongside the River Tiber, is regarded as one of the city's most charming neighbourhoods, full of winding, cobbled streets and well preserved medieval houses.  Increasingly fashionable with Rome's young professional class as a place to live, it has an abundance of restaurants and bars and a lively student music scene.

More reading:

How Shakespeare adaptations made Franco Zeffirelli a household name

Sergio Leone - distinctive style of 'Spaghetti Western' creator

How Nino Rota found fame for The Godfather theme

Also on this day: 

1816: Lord Byron, the English poet and aristocrat, sets foot in Venice for the first time.

(Picture credit: First photo of Morricone by Georges Biard via Wikimedia Commons)
(Videos from YouTube)

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Giuseppe Pinelli - anarchist

His 'accidental death' inspired classic Dario Fo play

Giuseppe Pinelli

Giuseppe 'Pino' Pinelli, the railway worker from Milan who inspired Dario Fo to write his classic play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was born on this day in 1928.

Pinelli fell to his death from a fourth floor window of the Milan Questura - the main police station - on December 15, 1969, three days after a bomb exploded at a bank in Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people and wounding 88.  A known anarchist during a period of growing political and social tension in Italy, Pinelli had been picked up for questioning, along with a number of other activists, over the Piazza Fontana bomb.

The story put out first by police was that Pinelli had jumped, willing to take his own life rather than face prosecution. Yet three police officers who had been interrogating Pinelli were put under investigation.

No action was taken against them and later a judge ruled that Pinelli's death had been accidental. This time the suggestion was that he had fainted, lost his balance and fallen through the open window, which seemed to many to be somewhat far-fetched.

It did not convince his supporters and when one of his interrogators, Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, was shot dead on his way to work in May 1972, two left-wing activists were convicted of his murder. Pinelli was posthumously cleared of playing any part in the bombing, which was blamed on far-right extremists.

Plaque commemorating the victims
 of the Piazza Fontana bomb

Born in the then working class area of Porta Ticinese, Pinelli left school early to supplement the family income, taking jobs as a waiter and a warehouseman. The opportunity to take a more secure job as a railwayman did not come along until his mid-20s. He was married soon after joining the railway and fathered two children.

Already politically active with anti-Fascist groups, Pinelli became increasingly interested in libertarianism, a philosophy that favours minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens, and in anarchism, whose proponents believe in the abolition of all government and the organisation of society by voluntary co-operation.

Pinelli was a member of a group that eventually evolved into the Ponte della Ghisolfa Anarchist Club, named after a railway viaduct visible from the Porta Garibaldi station, where Pinelli worked.  After the student unrest in France in 1968, such groups saw their memberships swell as young Italians also began to challenge authority and the state.

That period was also the beginning of the so-called Years of Lead in Italy, when social and political tension was frequently punctuated by acts of terrorism, of which the Piazza Fontana bombing, the target of which was the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura, was the first major incident involving civilian deaths.

Over the next decade or so, organisations at both extremes of the political spectrum, from the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) on the left to the far-right Ordine Nuovo (New Order), were responsible for bombings and assassinations, including the kidnap and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro and the bombing of Bologna railway station.

The plaque honouring Giuseppe
Pinelli placed by friends

The situation was complicated by the existence, admitted only later, of the CIA-sponsored Operation Gladio, a secret network that aimed to manipulate events in a way designed to diminish support for Italy's Communist Party.

The Piazza Fontana incident, which was later established as the work of Ordine Nuovo, was initially blamed on left-wing extremists and sparked a crackdown on such groups, although Pinelli was unaware of this when police turned up at his door within just a few hours of the explosion.

The similar plaque placed by
Milan Council

He was used to dealing with the police, although it was usually over matters such as licensing of premises and permission to stage public gatherings.  Luigi Calabresi, at it happened, was the officer he dealt with most, and there was no evidence of serious friction between them.  Pinelli did not need to be arrested, voluntarily following the patrol car to the police station on his motorbike.

What he did not expect was to find the station packed with other activists rounded up in a general sweep and to be detained for well over the 48 hours permitted, and subjected to intense questioning.  He certainly did not foresee that he would never return home.

Dario Fo, a playwright, actor and comic entertainer with a reputation for acidic satire, wrote Accidental Death of an Anarchist within a year of Pinelli's fatal fall.

Dario Fo

In the play, which he presents as a farce, Fo sends up the police as slow and dim-witted, tricked by a fast-talking fraudster known as The Maniac, who employs a series of impersonations to confuse the officers, into contradicting themselves and revealing that there has been a cover-up involving the death of an anarchist.

Still performed today, it is the best known of all Fo's 80-plus plays, certainly outside Italy.  It has been performed in more than 40 countries.  Fo, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997, died earlier this month, aged 90.

Milan's own 'Grand Canal' - part of the now fashionable
Navigli district, where Pinelli grew up

Travel tip:

The area of Milan called Porta Ticinese draws its name from one of the gates in the medieval walls of the city, from which a road led to the Ticino river, which loops around the city to the south and west.  It was rebuilt twice, by the Spanish in the 16th century, and in the 19th century along the current neo-classical lines, comprising massive pillars and columns topped with a triangular decorative tympanum.  The area is part of the Navigli district, once a poor neighbourhood but now very popular for the restaurants and bars that line what remains of Milan's canal system.

Travel tip:

Piazza Fontana is located a short distance from Milan's Duomo, accessible along Via Carlo Maria Martini, behind the cathedral to the right.  As well as a plaque on the wall of the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura, commemorating the 17 people killed when the bomb exploded inside their building, there are two simple memorials to Giuseppe Pinelli on an area of grass opposite the bank, one erected by the city council, which refers to Pinelli's 'tragic death', the other by friends of Pinelli, who use the word 'killed' in their inscription.

More reading:

Dario Fo - playwright and scourge of the corrupt

Antonio Gramsci - the Communist leader Mussolini could not gag

How the death of Aldo Moro changed history

(Photos of Pinelli memorials by Piero Montesacro CC BY-SA 4.0)
(Photo of Dario Fo by Garupdebesanez CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Navagli by Geobia CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Francesco Cossiga - Italy's 8th President

Political career overshadowed by Moro murder

Francesco Cossiga

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga was born on this day in 1928 in the Sardinian city of Sassari.

Cossiga, a Christian Democrat who had briefly served as Prime Minister under his predecessor, Sandro Pertini, held the office for seven years from 1985 to 1992. He was the eighth President of the Republic.

His presidency was unexceptional until the last two years, when he gained a reputation for controversial comments about the Italian political system and former colleagues.

It was during this time that another heavyweight of the Italian political scene, Giulio Andreotti, revealed the existence during the Cold War years of Gladio, a clandestine network sponsored by the American secret services and NATO that was set up amid fears that Italy would fall into the hands of Communists, either through military invasion from the East or, within Italy, via the ballot box.

Cossiga, said to have been obsessed with espionage, admitted to have been involved with the creation of Gladio in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War.

This led to renewed speculation surrounding the kidnap and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, an event that prevented a vote in the Italian parliament on the so-called 'historic compromise' whereby the Italian Communist Party, which was riding a peak of popularity at a time in which Italy seemed especially vulnerable to social unrest, would be given a direct role in government for the first time.

The event was a key moment in Cossiga's political career. As interior minister - effectively home secretary - in an Andreotti-led government, Cossiga was in charge of the operation to find and free Moro during the 55 days he was held captive.  He received a personal plea from Moro to negotiate with his captors, the ultra left-wing group Red Brigades, but the government's stance was not to talk with terrorists and Moro's pleas were ignored.

When Moro's body was discovered in the boot of a car parked almost exactly halfway between the Rome headquarters of the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communists, Cossiga rushed to the scene immediately and resigned the following day, declaring himself to be "politically dead".  Yet he returned within a year to be Prime Minister, his 14-month stint coinciding with another event that shook the Italian nation, when a bomb supposedly planted by terrorists from the extreme right killed 85 people at Bologna railway station.

Francesco Cossiga (right) pictured with Giulio Andreotti
shortly after the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro

The Gladio revelations re-opened debate over the Moro affair, particularly over the question of how the authorities never located the Rome apartment where he was held, despite numerous tip-offs. As President, Cossiga survived an attempt by the Democratic Party of the Left to have him impeached but resigned in 1992, two months before his term of office was due to end.

Italy had no government at the time following the collapse of a third coalition led by Andreotti but Cossiga said he was unwilling to approve any more coalitions if he did not think they could tackle the problems of debt and organised crime, or prepare Italy adequately for monetary and political union with Europe.

He did not disappear from politics. By the late 1990s, he had formed his own small centrist party, the Democratic Union of the Republic, which he hoped might pull together the various strands of Italy's centre-right. However, the party was dissolved in 1999.

Thus ended a political career that had begun with Cossiga's election to the Italian parliament as a deputy for Sassari in 1958.

Although his father was a director in a bank, politics was in the family. One of his cousins was Enrico Berlinguer, who would later become secretary-general of Italy's Communist Party, and he was related to another former Prime Minister born in Sassari, Antonio Segni.  He joined the Christian Democrats aged only 16.

After his election he quickly scaled the Christian Democrat ladder, serving as Under-Secretary for Defence from 1966 to 1970, and in 1974 taking the unlikely brief of a roving minister charged with reforming government bureaucracy.  He became Interior Minister in 1976.

In 1960, he married Giuseppa Sigurani, from whom he was divorced in 1998. They had two children, Anna Maria, a writer, and Giuseppe, who followed his father into politics, serving as junior minister for defence in Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia-led government between 2008 and 2011.

Cossiga senior suffered from depression in his later years.  He died in 2010 aged 82, following cardiovascular problems.

Sassari's elegant Piazza d'Italia lit up by night

Travel tip:

Sassari, the second largest city in Sardinia with a population of 275,000 in the metropolitan area, is rich in art, culture and history, notable for beautiful palaces and elegant neoclassical architecture, examples of which can be found around Piazza d'Italia.  Also worth seeing are the Teatro Civico and the Fountain of the Rosello.

Travel tip:

Sardinia's white, sandy beaches and blue seas make it one of the most popular summer holiday destinations for Italian families as well as visitors from overseas, and is particularly crowded in August, when the population of many mainland cities decamp almost en masse for the cool of the mountains or the lure of the sea.  The Costa Smeralda, to the north-east of the island, remains a celebrity haunt and is consequently expensive, but there are plenty of less developed areas where the beaches are just as good.

(Photo of Francesco Cossiga courtesy of the Presidency of the Italian Republic)
(Photo of Piazza d'Italia in Sassari by Enigmatico27 CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

How Enrico Berlinguer turned Italy's communists into a political force

The Red Brigades and the tragedy of Aldo Moro

Antonio Gramsci - Sardinian founder of the Italian Communist Party


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