1960 Summer Olympics

Games of the XVII Olympiad take place in Rome

A scene from the opening ceremony for the 1960
Rome Olympics at the Stadio Olimpico

The Summer Olympic Games opened on this day in 1960 in the ancient city of Rome. It was the first time the Summer Olympics had been held in Italy since the revival of the Games in 1896.

Rome had been due to host the 1908 Summer Olympic Games, but following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Naples in 1906, the eternal city had to pass on the Olympic torch to London.

The 1960 Games - known officially as the Games of the XVII Olympiad -  were opened by the then-president of Italy, Giovanni Gronchi, in the Stadio Olimpico in the north west of the city. 

Building had begun on the multi-purpose sports venue in 1928 and it was expanded further in 1937, but then World War II halted any further development of the stadium.  Mussolini’s ruling Fascist party had at one time harboured ambitions of hosting the 1940 Games, which were awarded instead to Japan but then cancelled. The 1944 Games, which had been awarded to London, also did not take place.

After the Liberation of Rome in 1944, the Stadio Olimpico was used by the Allies for vehicle storage and then later as a venue for Anglo-American military competitions.

Following the end of the war, construction on the stadium was completed and the first event to take place there in 1953 was a football match between Italy and Hungary. 

The Italian President, Giovanni Gronchi, second left,
was at the stadium to open the Games officially 

The Stadio Olimpico would later be used as the principal venue for the 1990 Fifa World Cup. It has been the shared home ground for Rome’s two major football clubs - AS Roma and SS Lazio - since 1953.

Other famous locations in Rome used to host Olympic events in 1960, included the Baths of Caracalla, the Basilica of Maxentius, the Villa Borghese gardens and the Arch of Constantine. 

Elsewhere in Italy, Olympic rowing and canoeing events were held on Lake Albano at Castel Gandolfo, and yachting events took place in the Bay of Naples.

During the 1960 Summer Olympic games, South Africa appeared for the last time under its apartheid regime. The country was not allowed to take part in the Olympics again until 1992 when apartheid in sport was being abolished. 

The 18-year-old Cassius Clay, who later became known as Muhammad Ali, won the light heavyweight gold medal in boxing.

The future Constantine II, who was to be the last King of Greece, won his country a gold in sailing, and a young Greek woman, who would later become Queen Sofia of Spain, represented her country in sailing events.

The Ethiopian runner, Abebe Bikila, on his way
to an historic victory in the marathon event 

And history was made when Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila won the marathon, running the full 26 mile 385 yards (42.195km) barefoot. He became the first athlete from sub-Saharan Africa to win an Olympic gold. 

In terms of medals, the most successful country at the 1960 Games was the USSR, whose team topped the table both for gold medals, of which it won 43, and overall medal total of 103.

The United States were second in golds with 37, from an overall total of 71. 

The hosts won 13 golds, including five in cycling events, three in boxing and two in fencing. Italy’s only gold in athletics was won by Livio Berruti in the men’s 200m.

The first Paralympic Games  were held in Rome in conjunction with the 1960 Summer Olympics, the first time that the two events had coincided.

The ruins of the Roman Baths of Caracalla were
used for events in the gymnastics competition

Travel tip:

The Baths of Caracalla, which were used for gymnastics events during the 1960 Summer Olympics, are thermal baths built between AD 211/212 and 216/217, during the reigns of emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla. They were the second largest baths in Rome after the Baths of Diocletian. The magnificent main waiting room at the original Penn Station in New York City, built in 1910, is said to have been inspired by the design of the Baths, which remained in use until the 530s, after which they fell into disrepair.  A year-round tourist attraction, the ruins that remain have been the venue for a number of music concerts, notably including the historic Three Tenors concert, featuring Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras and Plácido Domingo, staged during the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy.

Find a place to stay in Rome

Lake Albano, to the south of Rome, was the
location used for rowing and canoeing

Travel tip:

Lake Albano near Castel Gandolfo in Lazio was the beautiful location for rowing and canoeing events during the 1960 Summer Olympics. Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope has his summer residence, overlooks Lake Albano from its wonderful position in the hills south of Rome, and the Pope spends every summer in the Apostolic Palace there. Although his villa lies within the town’s boundaries, it is one of the properties of the Holy See. The palace is not under Italian jurisdiction and is policed by the Swiss Guard. The whole area is part of the regional park of Castelli Romani, which has many places of historic and artistic interest to visit, and is the area where the popular white wine Trebbiano, is produced.

Search for accommodation in Castel Gandolfo

Also on this day:

79: Vesuvius eruption buries Pompeii and Ercolano

79: The death after the eruption of Pliny the Elder

665: The death of Saint Patricia of Naples

1509: The birth of cardinal Ippolito II d’Este

1609: Galileo demonstrates telescope

1691: The birth of architect Alessandro Galilei 

1829: The birth of composer Carlo Eduardo Acton

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Raimondo D’Inzeo – Olympic showjumper

First athlete to compete in eight consecutive Games

Raimondo D'Inzeo always competed in
his Carabinieri uniform

Raimondo D'Inzeo, who with his older brother Piero became the first athlete to compete in eight consecutive Olympic Games, was born on this day in 1925 in Poggio Mirteto, a small town in Lazio about 45km (28 miles) northeast of Rome.

They achieved the record when they saddled up for the show jumping events in Montreal in 1976, surpassing the previous record of seven consecutive summer Games held by the Danish fencer Ivan Osiier, whose run, which began in 1908 and was interrupted twice by World Wars, had stood since 1948.

The D’Inzeo brothers, whose Olympic journey began in London in 1948 just as Osiier’s was ending, had chalked off seven Olympics in a row at Munich in 1972, when each won the last of their six medals in the team event. Raimondo had carried the Italian flag at the opening ceremony.

Their finest moment came at the 1960 Olympics in their own country, when they were roared on by a patriotic crowd at the Villa Borghese Gardens in Rome to complete a one-two in the individual event, Raimondo taking the gold medal on his horse Posillipo, Piero the silver on The Rock.

Raimondo’s other medal successes had come in Stockholm in 1956, when he won the individual silver and the team silver on Merano. He collected a team bronze on Posillipo at Tokyo in 1964 and rode Fiorello II to another team bronze in Munich.

Piero (left) and Raimondo D'Inzeo with a
teammate at the Rome Olympics in 1960

The brothers were 51 and 53 years old respectively when they competed in Munich but would probably have extended their record to nine consecutive Games but for the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980.

As it was, their record stood until 1996, when the Austrian sailor Hubert Raudaschi completed his ninth consecutive Games. The record for the most appearances at the summer Olympics now stands at 10, which another showjumper, Canada’s Ian Millar, achieved at London 2012, although his were not consecutive.

It could be argued that Raimondo D’Inzeo was born to ride. His father, Carlo, was chief instructor in the Royal Piedmontese Dragoons, an elite mounted regiment in the Italian army, and later dean of the equestrian faculty of the Italian sports university La Farnesina in Rome.

Raimondo did not take to riding at first, finding the whole experience frightening. When he was placed on a horse at the age of 10, he was so scared of being hurt he felt unable to move. But, listening to his father talking to his brother about horses at home every evening, he began to feel left out and decided to persevere. Eventually, he felt as comfortable in the saddle as Piero.

Nonetheless, he decided he wanted a career as an engineer and persuaded his father to let him enrol at the University of Milan.  But he had already grown to love horses and after a while would spend increasingly less time attending lectures and increasingly more time at the San Siro horse racing track, even competing in races from time to time.

Raimondo D'Inzeo with wife Giuliana pictured soon after
the medal ceremony at the 1960 Olympics

He abandoned the idea of becoming an engineer and in 1950 followed his brother into the mounted arm of the Carabinieri, Italy’s quasi-military police force.  It was at the Carabinieri stables in Rome that he first encountered Merano, who would give him his first Olympic medals. The bond between the two became so close that Merano came to recognise the sound of D’Inzeo’s car as he arrived in the yard and would put his head through the stable door in anticipation of a treat.

D’Inzeo would always compete in uniform, each year with more pips as he rose eventually to the rank of General.  The mounted arm of the Carabinieri were often engaged in ceremonial roles, although that was not always the case.

In July 1960, shortly before the Olympics, he had to endure a particularly harrowing episode when he was ordered to lead a charge on horseback to break up a demonstration in Rome against the government of prime minister Fernando Tambroni. A number of people were killed and injured during the violence.

In addition to his Olympic successes, D'Inzeo was the world individual jumping champion in both 1956 and 1960, and a silver medalist in that event in 1955 and bronze medalist in 1966. He won eight International Grand Prix events between 1956 and 1975, including the Rome Grand Prix four times. He was a founding member and former President of the International Jumping Riders Club (IJRC), which was created in June 1977.

He died in November 2013 at the age of 88, leaving a widow, Giuliana Mazzetti di Pietralata, a son and a daughter. Another daughter died in a skiing accident in childhood.  Piero passed away the following February, aged 90.

The Piazza Martiri della Libertà in Poggio Mirteto as it
would have appeared while D'Inzeo was growing up

Travel tip:

D’Inzeo’s birthplace, Poggio Mirteto, a town situated on a hill overlooking the Tiber river in the province of Rieti in northern Lazio, found itself on the map in 1849 when the unification army of Giuseppe Garibaldi stopped in the town with some 4,000 men during a strategic retreat from Rome. There is a commemorative plaque marking the house where Garibaldi’s wife, Anita, who was pregnant, spent two nights. The town’s main square was subsequently renamed Piazza Martiri della Libertà.

The showjumping competitions at the 1960 Olympics took
place at the Piazza di Siena in the Villa Borghese Gardens

Travel tip:

The individual jumping and dressage events at the Rome Olympics of 1960 took place in an arena constructed at the Piazza di Siena at the Villa Borghese Gardens, which are among the city’s largest public parks. The gardens date back to 1605, when Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, began converting a former vineyard. Team jumping took place on the final day of the Games at the Stadio Olimpico, while the eventing contest was staged at the Centro Equestre Federale, in Pratoni del Vivaro, situated in the town of Rocca di Papa, not far from the pope’s traditional summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, 25km (16 miles) southeast of the capital.

More reading: 

Emilio Lunghi - Italy's first Olympic medallist

How Dorando Pietro found fame from an Olympic disqualification

Ottavio Missoni - from Olympic hurdler to fashion designer

Also on this day:

1723: The death of anatomist Antonio Maria Valsalva

1891: The birth of former prime minister Antonio Segni

1925: The birth of Olympic showjumper Raimondo D'Inzeo

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