Angela Luce – actress

Film star and singer was born in Spaccanapoli

The actress Angela Luce has worked with
some of Italy's leading directors

Neapolitan actress and singer Angela Luce was born Angela Savino on this day in 1937 in Naples.

She has worked for the theatre, cinema and television, is well-known for singing Neapolitan songs, and has written poetry and song lyrics.

At 14 years old, Angela took her first steps toward stardom when she took part in the annual music festival held at Piedigrotta in the Chiaia district of Naples, singing the Neapolitan song, Zi Carmeli.

Her cinema career began in 1956, when she was only 19, when she appeared in Ricordati di Napoli, directed by Pino Mercanti. Since then she has appeared in more than 80 films and has worked for directors including Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mario Amendola, Luigi Zampa and Pupi Avati.

Angela won a David Donatello award for L’amore molesto directed by Mario Martone and was also nominated for the Palma d’Oro at Cannes.

She has acted opposite such illustrious names as Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio de Sica and Totò.

Angela Luce (right) in a scene from Franco Rossi's
1960 film Morte di un amico

Her voice has been recorded in the historic archives of Neapolitan songs and she has won prizes for her singing. She wrote the lyric for the song Voglia, which, set to the music of Angelo Fiore, was awarded the Premio Unicef in 1984.

Angela has been quoted as saying she was ‘discovered’ by the Neapolitan dramatist Eduardo De Filippo. She has interpreted many significant roles from his plays in the theatre and appeared with him on Italian television in his play, Il contratto.

During a newspaper interview given last year on her 80th birthday, Angela said the occasion was a good opportunity to ‘thank God for giving her strength and health and a loud, clear voice’, so that she was able to sing without a microphone and, in church, without an orchestra.

The colourful street known as Spaccanapoli is close
to where Angela Luce was born

Travel tip:

Angela was born in Via Mezzocannone in the part of Naples known as Spaccanapoli, a lively area, rich with churches, historic buildings and bars. Close to her home is the main building of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, known as Gesu Vecchio, which was built in the 16th century as a Jesuit College and became home to the University in the 18th century.

The church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta
is in the fashionable Chiaia district of Naples

Travel tip:

Angela made her first appearance as a singer at the annual song-writing competition the Festival of Piedigrotta, held near the Church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta in the Chiaia neighbourhood on the seafront of Naples. The competition was held to judge songs written in Neapolitan dialect and over the years inspired such classics as O sole mio, Funiculi, Funicula, Torna a Surriento and Santa Lucia.


More reading:

What made Vittorio de Sica a maestro of Italian cinema

How Vittorio Gassman was once called 'the Olivier of Italian actors'

Eduardo De Filippo and the 'essence' of Naples

Also on this day:

1596: The birth of violin maker Nicolò Amati

1911: The birth of film music composer Nino Rota

1947: The birth of controversial Lega Nord politician Mario Borghezio


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Stelvio Cipriani – composer

Musician wrote some of Italy’s most famous film soundtracks

One of Stelvio Cipriani's first jobs was as
piano accompanist for the singer Rita Pavone

Stelvio Cipriani, an award-winning composer of film scores, was born on this day in 1937 in Rome.

One of his most famous soundtracks was for the 1973 film, La polizia sta a guardare (also released as The Great Kidnapping). The main theme was used again by Cipriani in 1977 for the film, Tentacoli, and also featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof in 2007.

Although Cipriani did not come from a musical background, he was fascinated with the organ at his church when he was a child.

His priest gave him music lessons and then Cipriani went to study piano and harmony at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome at the age of 14.



His first job was playing in a band on a cruise ship and then he became the accompanist for the popular Italian singer, Rita Pavone.

Cipriani with actress Antonella Lualdi
at the Giffoni film festival in 1975

Stelvio wrote his first movie soundtrack for the 1966 spaghetti western, The Bounty Killer. This was followed by a score for The Stranger Returns in 1967, starring Tony Anthony. He wrote for other films starring Anthony, as well as for many poliziotteschi - Italian crime films - a type of film popular in the 1970s.

Stelvio was awarded a Nastro d’Argento for Best Score for the 1970 film The Anonymous Venetian.  This is still considered one of the best and most famous Italian film soundtracks.

In an interview in 2007 Cipriani revealed that he had composed music for Pope John Paul II and was working at the time with Pope Benedict XVI.

Cipriani wrote Il Tema di Karol, a piano solo dedicated to Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II, which was released on CD in 2013.

The composer will celebrate his 81st birthday today.

The Via della Conciliazione, looking towards the basilica
of St Peter, was conceived by Mussolini

Travel tip:

The Rome Cipriani was born into in 1937 had been radically changed by the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after he became Prime Minister in 1922. The classical city had been built between the first century BC and the fourth century AD, the Christian city between the fourth and the 18th centuries and Mussolini wanted to build la Terza Roma, the third Rome, which would be an Empire for modern times. One of the major changes ordered by him was the building of the Via della Conciliazione, the wide avenue along which today’s visitors approach Saint Peter’s Basilica from Castel Sant’Angelo. It was commissioned by Mussolini to be a symbol of reconciliation between the Holy See and the Italian state after the Lateran Treaty was signed. Roughly 500 metres long, the vast colonnaded street designed by the architect Marcello Piacentini was intended to link the Vatican to the heart of Rome. At the time it had the opposite effect as local people were upset by the many buildings and houses that had to be demolished causing residents to be displaced.

The new headquarters of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia
were designed by the architect Renzo Piano

Travel tip:

The St Cecilia Academy, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where Cipriani studied music in the 1950s, is one of the oldest musical academies in the world. It was founded in Rome by Pope Sixtus V in 1585 at the Church of Santa Maria ad Martires, better known as the Pantheon. Over the centuries, many famous composers and musicians have been members of the Academy, which lists opera singers Beniamino Gigli and Cecilia Bartoli among its alumni. Since 2005 the Academy’s headquarters have been at the Parco della Musica in Rome, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano.

More reading:

The composer who created the sounds of The Godfather

The brilliant film music of Ennio Morricone 

Rita Pavone - the precocious star who conquered America

Also on this day:

1561: The birth of Jacopo Peri, composer of the first opera

1799: The poet and revolutionary Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel is hanged

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Renzo Piano – architect

Designer of innovative buildings is now an Italian senator

Renzo Piano was born into a family of builders

Award-winning architect Renzo Piano was born on this day in 1937 in Genoa.

Piano is well-known for his high-tech designs for public spaces and is particularly famous for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which he worked on in collaboration with the British architect, Richard Rogers.

Among the many awards and prizes Piano has received for his work are the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture in 1995, the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998 and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2008.

Piano was born into a family of builders and graduated from the Polytechnic in Milan in 1964. He completed his first building, the IPE factory in Genoa, in 1968 with a roof of steel and reinforced polyester.

He worked with a variety of architects, including his father, Carlo Piano, until he established a partnership with Rogers, which lasted from 1971-1977.

The Shard in London is one of
Piano's landmark buildings

They made the Centre Georges Pompidou look like an urban machine with their innovative design and it immediately gained the attention of the international architectural community.

In Italy, Piano designed a new look for the old port of Genoa to transform it from a rundown industrial area into a cultural centre and tourist attraction. Other important commissions in Italy were the San Nicola Stadium in Bari, started in 1987 and completed in time for the 1990 football World Cup, and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, built between 1994 and 2002 in Rome.

One of his most celebrated 21st century projects, notable for its green architecture, was a new building for the California Academy of Science in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which was completed in 2008.

Piano converted a massive Fiat factory in Turin into a convention centre and venue for the city’s trade fair. His design for the Shard in London made it the tallest building in western Europe when it was completed in 2012 and it now towers above the historical skyline of London.

In 2013 Piano was appointed Senator for Life in the Italian Senate by President Giorgio Napolitano.

Piano currently lives in Paris with his wife, Milly. They have four children.

Piano's harbour development in his native Genoa

Travel tip:

The old harbour in Genoa, porto antico, is the ancient part of the port which served the city when the main access to it was from the sea. Renzo Piano redeveloped the area for public access, restoring the historic buildings and creating new landmarks such as the Aquarium and the Bolla (Sphere).

The 'armadillo shells' of the Auditorium Parco della Musica

Travel tip:

The Parco della Musica in Rome is a complex of music venues located in the part of Rome that hosted the 1960 summer Olympics. Piano designed it to have three theatres, covered with what New York Times critic Sam Lubell described as 'weathered, armadillo-like steel shells', and an outdoor theatre set in a park. During construction, excavations uncovered the foundations of a villa and an oil press dating from the sixth century BC. Piano adjusted his design to accommodate the archaeological remains and included a small museum to house the artefacts that were discovered.

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Daniela Rocca – actress

Tragic beauty shunned after breakdown

Daniela Rocca broke into films after winning a beauty
contest in her native Sicily at the age of 15

The actress Daniela Rocca, who starred in the hit big-screen comedy Divorce, Italian Style, was born on this day in 1937 in Sicily.

The movie, in which she starred opposite Marcello Mastroianni, won an Academy Award for its writers and acclaim for former beauty queen Rocca, who revealed a notable acting talent.

Yet this zenith in her short career would in some ways also prove to be its nadir after she fell in love with the director, Pietro Germi.

The relationship she hoped for did not materialise and she subsequently suffered a mental breakdown, which had damaging consequences for her career and her life.

Born in Acireale, a coastal city in eastern Sicily in the shadow of the Mount Etna volcano, Rocca came from poor, working class roots but her looks became a passport to a new life. She entered and won the Miss Catania beauty contest before she was 16.

Divorce, Italian Style broke new ground
in Italian cinema

She subsequently entered Miss Italia, and although she did not win her looks made an impression on the movie talent scouts who took a close interest in such events, on the lookout for potential starlets.

Rocca’s acting debut came in 1957 in the French director Maurice Cloche’s film Marchand de Filles and after a series of roles as the glamorous love interest in various melodramas she began to acquire box office appeal.

Germi saw her in 1961 in Rome 1585, which was also known as I Masnadieri – the Mercenaries – the last film to be made by the veteran Italian director Mario Bonnard, by which time Rocca was popular enough with audiences to share top billing with Antonio Cifariello, an established star of romantic comedies and adventure movies.

The part Germi offered her in Divorce, Italian Style was a little different, however.

Although from a middle-class background in Liguria, Germi’s films were often realistic social dramas, usually with a Sicilian setting. He tackled serious subjects and though Divorzia all’Italiana was to be a comedy, his aim was to denounce what he saw as the absurdity of a society that would not allow a man to divorce his wife but would look leniently on him if he killed her in a so-called crime of passion, to protect his ‘honour’.

He chose Rocca to play Rosalia, the wife of Mastroianni’s character, an impoverished Sicilian nobleman called Ferdinando Cefalù, who wants to be free of the devoted but rather dowdy Rosalia so that he can marry his much younger and prettier cousin, Angela.

Rocca had enjoyed some success taking glamorous roles in
adventure movies before Germi's film showcased her acting 

The plot sees Cefalù concoct a scheme to push Rosalia into having an affair, so that he could discover her infidelity and kill her in a fit of impassioned rage at the stain on his honour.  Of course, his plan goes comically wrong.

Given her history of playing glamorous female leads, Rocca seemed an unusual choice to play a frumpy, oppressive housewife yet she gave a impressive performance, dressing in unflattering clothes and allowing make-up to give her a moustachioed top lip, allowing Angela (Stefania Sandrelli) to outshine her at every turn.

Divorce, Italian Style was ground-breaking in that it used comedy as a genre that allowed film directors to tackle controversial topics that would otherwise have been taboo in Italy. Other directors followed suit, producing movies that allowed Italians to laugh at themselves and which in some ways broke the ice surrounding difficult social problems that needed debate and resolution.

The movie won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. Mastroianni was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role and many critics considered Rocca to be worthy of similar acclaim.  

It should have been the springboard to her recognition as a serious actress. Instead, it virtually ended her career.

Pietro Germi, pictured with Claudia Cardinale, had been
a successful actor before turning to directing

During the making of the film, despite their age difference – at 48, he was twice her age – she developed an infatuation with Germi. When it became clear to Rocca that his feelings about her did not match hers for him she tried to kill herself.

As a result, other directors quickly became reluctant to cast her, fearful that her mental state was too fragile. Offers of parts became few and far between and soon ceased altogether.  She fell into a state of severe depression and, after cutting her wrists in what was seen as another suicide attempt, was admitted to a mental institution in Palermo.

She remained there for several years, finally allowed to go home in 1975.  Later she said she felt abandoned by former colleagues and misunderstood by doctors, claiming they mistook a simple nervous breakdown for insanity.

The experience aged Rocca prematurely and she died from heart failure at the age of just 57, having moved into a retirement home in Milo, near Catania - although she did leave something of a creative legacy.

Remarkably, while living in the home, she wrote and had published three novels, a book on psychoanalysis and a volume of poetry.

Acireale's Piazza del Duomo is illuminated at night

Travel tip:

Daniela Rocca came from a working class neighbourhood but Acireale is a city with a wealth of culture and many beautiful buildings, some with clear Muslim influences dating back to the Arabic conquest of Sicily in the ninth century, after which the Muslim forces remained in charge until the Normans took control in the 11^th century. At the centre of the city is the beautiful Piazza del Duomo, where can be found not only the cathedral, dedicated to Maria Santissima Annunziata, but also the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul and the Town Hall.  The Zalantea art gallery showcases many local painters from the 17^th to the 20^th centuries.

The mighty Mount Etna, smoke emerging from its snow-
capped peak, dominates eastern Sicily

Travel tip:

Looming over Acireale and all the other communities, large and small, in the eastern part of Sicily, Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world and by far the tallest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, at 3,329 metres (10,922 feet) some two and a half times the height of Vesuvius.  Across the whole of Europe and North Africa, only Mount Teide in Tenerife is taller.  Eruptions occur regularly and often last for long periods. One, starting on July 6, 2009, lasted 417 days, the longest since the 473-day affair between 1991 and 1993, and events lasting anything from three weeks to six months happen with relative frequency.  Despite its volatility, tourists can still take excursions to the summit. It is advisable to wear warm clothing, however. Visitors who board the cable cars in 25-30 degree summer temperatures are often surprised to it decidedly chilly at the top. 

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Death of Marconi

State funeral for engineer who was at first shunned

Guglielmo Marconi, photographed in 1908

Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian electrical engineer who is credited with the invention of radio, died on this day in Rome in 1937.

Aged 63, he passed away following a series of heart attacks.  He was granted a state funeral in recognition of the prestige he brought to Italy through his pioneering work.

In Great Britain, where he had spent a significant part of his professional life, all BBC and Post Office radio transmitters observed a two-minute silence to coincide with the start of the funeral service in Rome.

Marconi was born in Bologna on April 25, 1874. His father, Giuseppe Marconi, was an Italian country gentleman who was married to Annie Jameson, a member of the Jameson whiskey family from County Wexford in Ireland.  A student of physics and electrical science from an early age, Guglielmo conducted experiments at his father's country estate at Pontecchio, near Bologna, where he succeeded in sending wireless signals between two transmitters a mile and a half apart.

Disappointingly, the initial response to his discovery was sceptical and Marconi's request to the Italian government to help fund further research did not even receive a reply.  As a result, in 1896, he moved to London.

With the backing of William Preece, chief electrical engineer of the British Post Office, he was able to complete successful transmissions over increasing distances using Morse code signals, even over open sea.  The Italian government now did begin to take an interest, but it was in Britain and the United States that he continued to break new ground.

Marconi photographed during the first transatlantic
wireless transmission on 1901

He sent messages across the English channel for the first time in 1899. Later in the same year, after being invited by the American shipping company, American Line, to install equipment on the liner SS Saint Paul, he was responsible for the first ship-to-shore message as the Saint Paul heralded her imminent return to England by generating a signal from 66 nautical miles off the English coast.

The Marconi Telegraph Company was established in London in 1899 and in December 1901 Marconi sent and received the first transatlantic wireless message, between antennae set up in Cornwall in England and Nova Scotia in Canada.

Marconi might have perished in the Titanic disaster in 1912.  He had enjoyed more success, including the establishment of a commercial news service for shipping and a fixed transatlantic radio link, and was invited to travel on the Titanic's fateful maiden voyage.  As it was, Marconi decided to travel three days' earlier on the Lusitania. Later, he was acclaimed for the role played by his radio equipment in the rescue of 705 of the Titanic's 2,224 passengers.

In 1909, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with the German inventor Karl Ferdinand Braun.

Returning to Italy in 1913 and settling in Rome, Marconi was made a Senator in the Italian Senate and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the UK.

During World War I, Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian military's radio service. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the Italian Army and of commander in the Italian Navy. In 1929, he was made a marquess by King Victor Emmanuel III.

Controversially, Marconi joined the Italian Fascist party in 1923, becoming a member of the Fascist Grand Council in 1930 when the dictator Benito Mussolini appointed him President of the Royal Academy of Italy.

Married twice, he left his entire fortune to his second wife, the daughter of an Italian count, and their daughter, named Maria Elettra Elena Anna.

The Villa Marconi in Pontecchio, near Bologna

Travel tip:

A monument to Marconi can be seen in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence but his remains are in the Mausoleum of Guglielmo Marconi in Pontecchio Marconi, near Bologna. His former villa, adjacent to the mausoleum, is now the Marconi Museum. holding much of his equipment.

Travel tip:

The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence is the burial place of some of the most illustrious Italians, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Foscolo, Gentile and Rossini.

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Antonio Gramsci - left-wing intellectual

Communist leader Mussolini could not gag

Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci, one of the more remarkable intellectuals of left-wing Italian politics in the early 20th century, died on this day in 1937 in Rome, aged only 46.

A founding member and ultimately leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), he was arrested by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in November 1926 and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment.   In failing health, he was granted his release after a campaign by friends and supporters but died without leaving the clinic in which he spent his final two years.

The conditions he encountered in jail led him to develop high blood pressure, angina, tuberculosis and acute gastric disorders.  Yet he found sufficient energy while imprisoned  to study the social and political history of Italy in extensive detail and to record his thoughts and theories in notebooks and around 500 letters to friends and supporters.

Many of his propositions heavily influenced the political strategy of communist parties in the West after the Second World War following the publication of his Prison Notebooks.

Gramsci was born in January 1891 in the small town of Ales, in a mountainous inland part of Sardinia about 70 kilometres north of Cagliari. His father, originally from Gaeta in Lazio, was a local government official who was himself imprisoned after being found guilty of embezzlement in 1898.

Despite his family falling into poverty without his father's income, Gramsci excelled at school, eventually winning a scholarship to the University of Turin, where he studied linguistics.  Turin was becoming industrialised at the time, with the Fiat and Lancia factories recruiting workers from poorer regions.  As trade unions became established, Gramsci became politically active, joining the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in late 1913.

His health was already a concern.  His growth was stunted, apparently the result of being dropped as a child, and living on a poor diet in damp, unheated lodgings in Turin left him with respiratory problems.  Yet on leaving university he moved into journalism and pursued his career with vigour, becoming one of the most influential left-wing writers, hugely admired by those on his side of the political divide but regarded as a dangerous figure by those with leanings to the right.

Antonio Gramsci is buried in the
Protestant Cemetery in Rome

In 1921 he left the PSI to join the Communists and spent a year and a half living in Moscow, where he had travelled as a representative of his new party.  It was in Moscow that he met and married Julka Schucht, a violinist and member of the Russian Communist Party. They had two sons, Delio, who died in 1981, and Giuliano, who was born in 1926 and still lives in Moscow.

Meanwhile, the Fascist advance in Italy was gathering strength and Gramsci, outspoken in his opposition to Mussolini, returned to Italy with the intention of rallying the forces of the left in a united front.  In 1924, by then recognised as head of the PCI, he was elected to parliament as a deputy for the Veneto.

Mussolini's strategy with political opponents was to intimidate them and many members of the PCI were arrested.  Gramsci escaped at first through political immunity but after the Fascists introduced new laws in 1926 he also was arrested.

At his trial, the Fascist prosecutor's attitude to Gramsci was clear. "For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning," he said.  It was somewhat ironic, then, that while Gramsci's mental faculties never faltered, it was his body that failed him.

He was moved from prison in Turi, near Bari, to a clinic in Rome in 1935. When the campaign for his freedom succeeded, his intention was to return to his native Sardinia.  He was due to be released on 21 April, 1937, but was too ill to make the journey and died a few days later from cerebral hemorrhage.

The striking Campus Luigi Einaudi was designed for the
University of Turin by Foster + Partners

Travel tip:

Although the University of Bologna predates it by more than 300 years, the University of Turin, founded in 1404, is one of the oldest universities in Europe.  Situated within walking distance of the centre of the city, the university's older buildings off Via Po date back to the 18th century. They contrast with the ultra-modern faculty of Law and Political Science at the Campus Luigi Einaudi on Lungo Dora Siena, designed by Foster + Partners, the firm headed by Lord Norman Foster.

Travel tip:

Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, was Italy's Capital of Culture for 2015. The city contains fragments of a history spanning Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine and Spanish eras.  The most popular sights include the Basilica of Our Lady of Bonaria and the Cathedral of Santa Maria.

(Picture of Gramsci's grave by Piero Montesacro CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Antonio Carluccio - chef and restaurateur

TV personality and author began his career as a wine merchant

The chef, restaurateur and author Antonio Carluccio was born on this day in 1937 in Vietri-sul-Mare in Campania. 

An instantly recognisable figure due to his many television appearances, Carluccio moved to London in 1975 and built up a successful chain of restaurants bearing his name.  He wrote 21 books about Italian food, as well as his autobiography, A Recipe for Life, which was published in 2012.

Although born in Vietri, a seaside town between Amalfi and Salerno famous for ceramics, Carluccio spent most of his childhood in the north, in Borgofranco d'Ivrea in Piedmont.  His father was a station master and his earliest memories are of running home from the station where his father worked to warn his mother that the last train of the day had left and that it was time to begin cooking the evening meal.

Antonio Carluccio
(Photo: Andrew Hendo)

Carluccio would join his father in foraging for mushrooms and wild rocket in the mountainous countryside near their home and it was from those outings that his interest in food began to develop, yet his career would at first revolve around wine.  Having moved to Austria to study languages, he settled in Germany and between 1962 and 1975 was a wine merchant based in Hamburg.

The wine business then took him to London, where he specialised in importing Italian wines.  He was already acknowledged among friends as a talented cook and he was persuaded by his partner and future wife, Priscilla Conran, to enter a cookery competition promoted by a national newspaper, in which he finished second.

Carluccio and Priscilla married in 1980, after which his new brother-in-law, the designer and entrepreneur Terence Conran, made him manager of his Neal Street Restaurant in Covent Garden, which launched him on his new career.

He bought Neal Street in 1989 and, two years later, opened a deli next door, called simply Carluccio's. The shop expanded into a mail order business and, in 1998, with Priscilla providing the business brains, he opened the first Carluccio's Caffè.  It was the first step in building a nationwide chain of restaurants, which they eventually sold for around £90 million in 2010.  He now works for the company, which has more than 80 branches in the United Kingdom alone, as a consultant.

Carluccio's television career began in 1983, when he made his first appearance in the BBC2 show Food and Drink, talking about Mediterranean food.  At the same time he was asked to write his first book, An Invitation to Italian Cooking, and soon became a familiar face as the number of cooking programmes on TV soared.  He hosted several of his own series and shared the spotlight with his former assistant at Neal Street, Gennaro Contaldo, in the hugely popular Two Greedy Italians. By coincidence, Contaldo was born in Minori, less than 20 kilometres along the Amalfi Coast from Carluccio's home town of Vietri-sul-Mare.

Carluccio was generally seen as a jolly figure with a zest for life, yet endured difficult times. Although his parents did their best to shield him, he admitted that some of his experiences growing up in wartime Italy were not pleasant. He suffered a family tragedy aged 23 when his younger brother, Enrico, 10 years' his junior, drowned while swimming in a lake. Carluccio was divorced from Priscilla Conran in 2008 and revealed in his autobiography that he had waged a long battle against depression.

In 1988, Carluccio was honoured in Italy by being made Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, the equivalent to a knighthood in Britain, where in 2007 he was made an OBE.

Carluccio died in November 2017 at the age of 80 following a fall at home.

The majolica-clad dome of the Church of St John
the Baptist in Vietri-sul-Mare, Carluccio's birthplace

Travel tip:

Vietri-sul-Mare, which is situated just 12 kilometres from Salerno in Campania, is the first or last town on the Amalfi Coast, depending on the starting point.  It is sometimes described as the first of the 13 pearls of the Amalfi Coast. A port and resort town of Etruscan origins, it has been famous for the production of ceramics since the 15th century. The Church of St. John the Baptist, built in the 17th century in late Neapolitan Renaissance style, has an eyecatching dome covered with majolica tiles.

Travel tip:

Borgofranca d'Ivrea is a village of 3,700 inhabitants situated just north of Ivrea in Piedmont, a town with a population of 23,000 people notable for its 14th century castle, a square structure that originally had a round tower in each corner, one of which was destroyed by an explosion in 1676 after lightning struck an ammunition store.  There is also a cathedral, parts of which date back to the fourth century, that now has an elegant neo-classical faҫade added in the 19th century.

More reading:

Gennaro Contaldo's passion for the cooking of Amalfi

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