Teresa Casati – revolutionary

Brave and beautiful noblewoman who fought for a free Italy

Teresa Casati was inspired by her
husband to fight for a united Italy

Teresa Casati, who has gone down in history as a heroine of the Risorgimento, was born into a noble family in Milan on this day in 1787. 

She was the older sister of Gabrio Casati, who was a Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia and twice served as President of the Italian Senate.

She married the revolutionary Federico Confalonieri, who became one of the leaders of the Italian National Party. Eventually she had to plead with Empress Carolina Augusta of Bavaria to spare her husband’s life, after he had been sentenced to death for his part in the Risorgimento, the 19th century political and social movement formed with the goal of creating a united, independent Italy.

Teresa was the eldest daughter of Count Gaspare Casati and his wife Maria Orrigoni of Ello. Her mother died when she was six, and her father married again. Although she was described as ‘withdrawn’ as a child, Teresa grew up to be very beautiful.

Her looks were praised by the poet Ugo Foscolo who wrote that she was a ‘young, holy and beautiful girl.’ The politician Giovanni Arravabene described her as ‘a woman in whom beauty, grace and gentle manners harmonised wonderfully together.’

Teresa received a proposal from the Duke of Pasquier, a French statesman, but her father talked her out of marrying him. However, after she met Confalonieri at a ball, and fell in love with him, her father agreed to let them marry. The couple had one child, who died when he was six years old.

Teresa often acted as Confalonieri’s go-between with other revolutionaries when her husband was away from Milan, passing on information to them from the letters he sent to her. She also became part of the Carbonari, a secret society associated with the Risorgimento.  

Anonymous informants told the Austrians that she had offered to kill one of their high-ranking officers with her own stiletto, but this was never proved against her.

When Confalonieri was eventually arrested and imprisoned by the Austrians, Teresa was not allowed to see him for a year and she would often be seen wearing mourning dress.

Federico Confalonieri spent many
years in a remote prison in Moravia

Eventually, she was granted permission to have short visits to see her husband, but the couple were always kept under guard. In 1823, Teresa travelled to Vienna accompanied by her brother, Gabrio, as well as her husband’s father and brother, to ask for Federico to be pardoned. But the Emperor, Francis I, told them that he had already ordered the death sentence and could not overturn it.

Teresa did not give up. She went to the Empress Carolina and convinced her to help them. The Empress tried to change her husband’s mind and eventually he agreed to have the sentence suspended.

Confalonieri was imprisoned in Spilberk Castle in Southern Moravia and before he was sent away he was allowed to embrace his wife for one last time. 

Teresa asked Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma if she could intercede with Emperor Francis I, who was the Duchess’s father, to give her permission to live in Brunn near the prison, but her request was turned down. 

Occasionally, plans were made by revolutionaries for Confalonieri’s escape from the prison, but none of them succeeded and so he remained behind bars.

Teresa Casati Confalonieri died of consumption - now known as tuberculosis - in September 1830, while in Erba near Lake Como in Lombardy.  Unaware of her death, Confalonieri continued to send her letters for another four and a half months.

Teresa was buried in the Casati family tomb and Alessandro Manzoni, the Milanese author of the classic novel, I Promessi Sposi, who was a supporter of Teresa and her husband, wrote the epitaph inscribed on it.

In 2011, there was an exhibition at the Spazio Oberdan in Milan called Rose d'Italia: "Il Risorgimento invisibile" lombardo (Roses of Italy: The invisible Risorgimento in Lombardy), which celebrated the contribution of Teresa Casati Confalonieri. 

The City of Muggio Theatre Competition created an award named after Teresa Casati Confalonieri in 2024. 

A film, Loyalty of Love, was made about Teresa’s life in 1934. Another, Il conte Aquila, a title Federico Confalonieri was also known by, was made about her husband’s life in 1955. 

Palazzo Confalonieri, where Teresa
and Federico lived in Milan

Travel tip:

Teresa Casati and Federico Confalonieri lived at Palazzo Confalonieri, in Via Monte di Pietà 14 in Milan. There is a plaque on the facade of the palazzo recording their patriotic activity in the cause of the independence of Lombardy-Veneto from the Austrian Empire. Federico was arrested at the house in 1821 and was at first condemned to death, but was later sentenced to life imprisonment in Spilberk Castle in Southern Moravia, which was used as a prison by the Austrian Empire. Via Monte di Pietà is located on the edge of Milan’s fashionable Brera district and just minutes away from some of the city’s most iconic cultural and historical landmarks. Within a short walk are the Pinacoteca di Brera art gallery, the Brera Botanical Garden, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum and the Teatro alla Scala opera house.  One of Italy's premier art galleries, housed in a grand palace, the Pinacoteca di Brera has masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raphael, and Mantegna among others.

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The 11th century bell tower
at the church of Sant'Eufemia

Travel tip: 

Erba, where Teresa Casati Confalonieri died, is a comune - municipality - in the province of Como located about 40 kilometres, 25 miles, north of Milan and to the southeast of Lake Como. It has a Romanesque church, Sant’Eufemia, which has an 11th century bell tower. There are also  remains of a medieval castle there. Things to see around Erba include the Eremo San Salvatore, an historic hillside hermitage offering panoramic views of the surrounding Brianza landscape, Borgo di Villincino, a well-preserved medieval hamlet featuring ancient stone walls and narrow cobblestone alleys, and Teatro Licinium, an outdoor open-air stone theatre built into a natural green amphitheatre, hosting performances in the summer months. 

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More reading:

How the poet Lord Byron helped the Carbonari in Ravenna

The revolutionary who became an English knight

The story of Gabriele Rossetti, poet and revolutionary

Also on this day:

1630: The birth of Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma

1688: The birth of Maria Luisa of Savoy

1944: The birth of mountaineer Reinhold Messner

1961: The birth of mountaineer Nives Meroi

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Giuseppe Terragni - architect

Major pioneer of Italian Rationalism

Terragni's Casa del Fascio in Como, completed in
1936, is considered a modernist masterpiece

The influential architect Giuseppe Terragni, who was a pioneer of the modern movement in Italy and a leading Italian Rationalist, was born in Meda, a town in Lombardy between Milan and Como, on this day in 1904.

Terragni's work tends to be associated with the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, although some students of his work have questioned whether he should be considered a Fascist architect.

He was a founding member of the Gruppo 7, a collective of seven Italian architects whose aim was to move Italian architecture away from neo-classical and neo-baroque revivalism towards Rationalism. The group produced a manifesto spelling out their aims. 

Terragni’s most renowned work is the Casa del Fascio in Como, also known as the Palazzo Terragni, which was constructed between 1932 and 1936 and is considered a masterpiece. 

Other notable works include his war memorials at Como and Erba, the Posta Hotel in Como, a number of apartment buildings in Como and Milan, a Casa del Fascio in Brianza and another in Lissone, and the Antonio Sant'Elia nursery school in Como.

Terragni's career and life were
cut short by World War Two

With fellow architect Pietro Lingeri, he designed the Danteum, a proposed monument in Rome to the Italian poet Dante Alighieri structured to reflect his greatest work, the Divine Comedy. The monument, in the event, was never built.

Terragni’s father, Michele, was a builder and owner of a construction company. His mother, Emilia, arranged for him to live with members of her family in Como so that he could attend lessons at the Technical Institute of Como, where he enrolled on a mathematical physics course.

He graduated in 1921 and enrolled at the Royal Higher Technical Institute (later Polytechnic of Milan), where he graduated in 1926 before he and six fellow students - Luigi Figini, Adalberto Libera, Gino Pollini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco Silva and Carlo Enrico Rava - signed the document that united them as the Gruppo 7, which the following year expanded into the Italian Rational Architecture Movement (MIAR).

In the same year, 1927, the magazine Rassegna Italiana published the four articles considered to be the manifesto of Italian Rationalism. Terragni was one of the seven signatories.

With his brother, Attilio, Terragni opened an office in Como in 1927. His first original building, a collaboration with Luigi Zuccoli, was the Novocomum apartment building in Como (1927-29), designed in European avant-garde style with elements of German expressionism and Soviet constructivism. 

Between 1928 and 1932 he created the War Memorial in Erba, a town east of Como, the first modern war memorial in Italy. He moved from there to start work on the Casa del Fascio in Como, which fronts on to Piazza del Popolo on Via Alessandro Manzoni, opposite Como’s majestic duomo, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, with its 15th century Gothic facade and a 18th century cupola by Filippo Juvarra.

Terragni's Monumento ai Caduti in Erba was the
first modern war memorial built in Italy

The Casa del Fascio, which enthusiasts see as a milestone of modern European architecture, forms a perfect prism, its height corresponding to half the base. It owes it expanse of glass to Terragni himself, who followed the Fascist regime’s instruction to create a building that was accessible and without secrets, declaring that "the concept of visibility, of the instinctive control established between the public and Federation workers predominates in the study of this Casa del Fascio". 

In 1933, Terragni joined Lingeri in opening a studio in Milan, where they designed a series of apartment houses, including the Casa Rustici in Corso Sempione, the broad boulevard that links Piazza Firenze with the Arco della Pace, and the Casa Toninello in Via Perasto and Casa Ghiringhelli in Piazzale Lagosta, both in the Isola district, north of Porta Garibaldi railway station.

Back in Como, in 1936 he built the Antonio Sant'Elia nursery school, for which his design was characterised by large bright spaces that he hoped would create a sense of happy freedom. It formed part of a social programme aimed at helping working-class women escape from domestic drudgery and giving children a healthy, hygienic environment, open to greenery, play and education. 

He and Attilio retained their office in Como until Giuseppe's premature death at the age of just 39, the result of the physical and psychological consequences of being called up to serve with the Italian Army on the Eastern Front. 

Terragni was ahead of his time in giving children
a large, airy play area in his Sant'Elia nursery

Attilio was the Fascist Podestà (mayor) of Como when the Casa del Fascio, built as the local party headquarters, was commissioned,

Until 1940 Terragni was fully active and had many works in progress, including the Danteum, the project for the development of the Cortesella district of Como, the Casa del Fascio and the complex Casa Giuliani Frigerio, which some consider to be his final masterpiece.

Everything changed, though, when Italy entered World War Two. Terragni received his call-up papers and was assigned to an Italian army unit destined for the Eastern Front. 

After the Italian advance disintegrated near Stalingrad, Terragni suffered a nervous breakdown.  He returned to Como but in July 1943 he collapsed and died at his girlfriend's house, having suffered a cerebral thrombosis.

His body was buried in the family tomb in Lentate sul Seveso, a neighbouring town to Meda. 

Terragni's architectural legacy, though brief, left a significant impact on modernist architecture in Italy, and his works continue to be studied and admired for their innovative approach and design excellence. 

Meda's Church of San Vittore is an important
example of Lombard Renaissance architecture

Travel tip:

Meda, where Terragni was born, is a town in the province of Monza and Brianza in Lombardy, around 26km (15 miles) north of Milan and a similar distance south of Como. Nowadays a centre for furniture production, it was originally established around a convent built on a mound (meta in Latin) from which it gets its name. The territory was held by the Visconti and Sforza families until coming under the control of Spain, France and the Habsburg empire before becoming part of the Kingdom of Italy. The town’s 16th century Church of San Vittore  has a series of frescoes by Bernardino Luini. 

The Casa Ghiringhelli in Isola
is one of Terragni's buildings

Travel tip:

Isola, the district of Milan where Terragini and Pietro Lingeri collaborated on a number of apartment buildings, is regarded as a somewhat trendy, up-and-coming neighbourhood, a former working-class area that has taken on a vibrant hipster feel. Easy to reach via Milan’s metro system, it is perfect for travellers who want to experience an alternative Milan. It has a lively art scene with plentiful street art, especially along the underground tunnel connecting the Isola and Garibaldi metro stations. As well as such public art installations, Isola has many art galleries that remain largely undiscovered by the tourist crowds who flood to Milan for its most famous art galleries. Isola is home to Ratanà, considered by some to be one of the best restaurants in all of Milan, where Milan-born head chef Cesare Battisti brings a signature twist to typical Milanese dishes. 

Also on this day:

1446: The birth of noblewoman Ippolita Maria Sforza

1480: The birth of notorious beauty Lucrezia Borgia

1902: The birth of politician Giuseppe Pella

1911: The birth of racing car maker Ilario Bandini

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