Alberto Gilardino - World Cup winner

Prolific goalscorer now on coaching ladder

Alberto Gilardino helped Italy win
the World Cup in 2006

The footballer Alberto Gilardino, who was an important member of Italy’s 2006 World Cup-winning squad and is one of the all-time top 10 goalscorers in Serie A, was born on this day in 1982 in the province of Biella in Piedmont.

A striker, Gilardino, who enjoyed his peak years as a player with Parma, AC Milan and Fiorentina, totalled 188 goals in Serie A matches, putting him ninth on the all-time list.  He had scored 100 Serie A goals by the age of 26, one of the youngest to achieve that milestone.

As an Italy international, he played under coaches Marcello Lippi, Roberto Donadoni and Cesare Prandelli, scoring 19 goals in 57 appearances, having made his mark previously in the country’s Under-21 team, for whom he was all-time top scorer with 19 goals in 30 games and was captain of the side that won the 2004 European Under-21 championships.

Under Lippi, he was a key figure at the 2006 World Cup, starting all three group games and the first knock-out round alongside Luca Toni, scoring Italy’s goal against the United States in the group stages. He lost his place to Roma’s Francesco Totti in the later knock-out rounds but came on as a substitute in the historic semi-final win over hosts Germany, hitting a post and providing the assist for Alessandro del Piero’s goal in extra time.

Gilardino was part of the AC Milan side
coached by Carlo Ancelotti (above)

In club football, although he scored more goals during his spells with Parma and Fiorentina, it was his three seasons with AC Milan that brought him the most tangible success.

Signed for €25 million in July 2005 after scoring 51 goals in 97 Serie A games for Parma, he was part of the team coached by Carlo Ancelotti that won the Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup in 2007.

He retired as a player in 2018 and is currently coaching in Serie D with Siena, following the traditional pathway for coaches in Italy, who traditionally hone their skills in the lower divisions before taking on the top jobs.

Born in the town of Cossato, about 10km (six miles) from Biella and 80km (50 miles) northeast of Turin, Gilardino played for local youth teams before he was spotted by Piacenza, who signed him and gave him his Serie A debut at the age of just 17 in January 2000.

Although Piacenza were relegated, Gilardino made sufficient impact to earn a move to another Serie A club, Hellas Verona. 

Gilardino scored 48 Serie A goals
in his time with Fiorentina

He suffered a setback in April 2001 in the shape of a serious road accident, swerving his car off the road into a canal while driving his sisters, Silvia and Cosetta, to their home in Treviso. Despite sustaining an injury to his back, he managed to open the doors of the vehicle before it sank and was able to drag his sisters to safety.

But he returned to action the following season and it was not long before his move to Parma established him as a top-class striker, scoring 51 goals in not much more than two seasons and winning his first cap for the senior national team, for whom he made his debut in September 2004.

The big-money move to Milan followed, although despite winning major medals he never quite won the full trust of manager Carlo Ancelotti, who left him out of his starting line-up for the 2007 Champions League final in spite of his decisive goal in the semi-final against Manchester United.

Gilardino, who became famous for celebrating his goals by dropping to his knees and simulating the motion of playing a violin, left Milan in May 2008 for Fiorentina, where he scored 48 goals in 118 games. From Florence, his career took him to Genoa, Bologna, Guangzhou Evergrande in China, Palermo, Empoli, Pescara and Spezia before he turned to coaching at the age of 37. 

Siena is his third club as a coach. He has presided over only eight defeats in 20 matches with the Tuscan team, who recently confirmed him as their head coach for the 2021-22 season.

In 2009, he married his girlfriend, Alice Bregoli, at La Cervara Abbey in Santa Margherita Ligure, in the province of Genoa. They have three children. 

UPDATE: After leaving Siena in October 2021, he joined Genoa as under-19 coach in July 2022 before being appointed head coach of the senior team in December 2022 and winning promotion to Serie A.

The Castello di Castellengo is
in the province of Biella 

Travel tip:

Gilardino hails from the town of Cossato, a town in Piedmont in the province of Biella, an area notable for its medieval castles, such as the Castello di Castellengo, at the centre of a beautiful wine-producing estate. Biella itself is a well-established town of almost 45,000 inhabitants in the foothills of the Alps, about 85km (53 miles) northeast of Turin and slightly more than 100m (62 miles) west of Milan. Its attractions include a Roman baptistery from the early 1000s and the church and convent of San Sebastian. Wool and textiles have been associated with the town since the 13th century and brands such as Cerruti 1881, Ermenegildo Zegna, Vitale Barberis Canonico and Fila still have a presence.

Siena's Piazza del Campo is one of the
most beautiful medieval squares in Europe

Travel tip:

Siena is perhaps best known as the venue for the historic horse race, the Palio di Siena. The race takes place in the Piazza del Campo, a shell-shaped open area which is regarded as one of Europe’s finest medieval squares. It was established in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form the city of Siena.  The city's cathedral, with a pulpit designed by Nicola Pisani, is considered a masterpiece of Italian Romanesque-Gothic architecture.

Also on this day:

1466: The birth of military leader Giovanni Sforza

1966: The birth of footballer Gianfranco Zola

1974: The birth of motorcycle champion Roberto Locatelli

1982: Paolo Rossi scores a World Cup hat-trick for Italy against Brazil

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Aurelio De Laurentiis - entrepreneur

Film producer who owns SSC Napoli

Aurelio De Laurentiis followed his father
and uncle into the movie industry

The film producer and football club owner Aurelio De Laurentiis was born on this day in 1949 in Rome.

The nephew of Dino De Laurentiis, the producer credited with giving Italian cinema an international platform with his backing for Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning 1954 movie La Strada, Aurelio teamed up with his father, Luigi, to form the production company Filmauro in 1975.

The company has produced or distributed more than 400 films in Italy and around the world, working with directors such as Mario Monicelli, Ettore Scola, Pupi Avati, Damiano Damiani and Roberto Benigni among the big names of Italian cinema, as well as internationally-acclaimed names such as Blake Edwards, Peter Weir, Luc Besson, Eduardo Sanchez and Ridley Scott.

Aurelio has won numerous honours for his achievements in the film industry, including, in 2005, the Nastro d'Argento as Best Producer for What Will Become of Us - What Will Become of Us?- and all in that night (released in America as Adventures in Babysitting).  

Filmauro is also the company behind a sequence of Christmas comedies that have proved massively popular with Italian audiences since they were launched in the 1980s. 

Yet he is perhaps even better known for buying up a bankrupt SSC Napoli football club in 2004 and taking it from Serie C - the third tier of Italian football - to the Champions League in just five years.

The badge of the Serie A club
SSC Napoli, rescued by De Laurentiis

With roots in Torre Annunziata, the historic former Roman city on the Bay of Naples where his father and uncle were born, De Laurentiis always regarded Naples as his spiritual home, even though he was born in Rome.

When SSC Napoli went bust after 78 years of history, with debts of 70 million euros, it was De Laurentiis who stepped in with dreams of restoring the club to its glory years of the 1980s, when Diego Maradona was the fulcrum of a team that became Italian champions for the first time in 1987 and won a second title three years later, landing a first major European trophy via the UEFA Cup in between.

He had to start at a lowly level, launching a new club called Napoli Soccer after the Italian football federation banned the use of the historic SSC Napoli name and placing the new entity in Serie C1, the third tier in the Italian football pyramid.

But after hiring Edoardo Reja, a coach who had won promotion for Brescia, Vicenza and Cagliari, the new club gained promotion from Serie C at the second attempt and Serie B at the first, returning to Serie A at the start of the 2007-08 season.

Walter Mazzarri, the manager who took
Napoli back into Europe

By then, De Laurentiis had bought the rights to use the SSC Napoli name and proved himself a shrewd judge of coaches by appointing Walter Mazzarri in October 2009 and signing the attacking trio of Ezequiel Lavezzi, Edinson Cavani and Marek Hamšík. 

Under Mazzari’s guidance, Napoli finished third in Serie A in 2011 to qualify for the Champions League and won the Coppa Italia for the first time since the Maradona era the following season.

The Spaniard Rafael Benitez, famous for winning the UEFA Cup with Valencia and the Champions League with Liverpool, followed Mazzari and brought De Laurentiis a second Coppa Italia and a Supercoppa Italia as well as two more seasons in the Champions League.

Benitez’s successor Maurizio Sarri steered them to runners-up spot in Serie A twice in four seasons between 2015 and 2018, each time behind Juventus, and third in the other, before giving way to three-times Champions League winner Carlo Ancelotti, under whom they were second again in 2019 and won a third Coppa Italia in 2020.

With Gennaro Gattuso in charge, Napoli missed out on a Champions League place in 2020-21 and will have to be content with a Europa League spot again in 2021-22 after finishing fifth in the season just ended, after which De Laurentiis announced that Gattuso is to leave the club.

In 2018, De Laurentiis expanded his football empire by acquiring another bankrupt former Serie A club in Bari, once Napoli’s rivals for superiority in southern Italy.

Should Bari, currently in Serie C, find their way back to Serie A after an exile of more than 10 years, De Laurentiis may face a problem as the Italian federation (FIGC) does not permit the ownership of more than once top-flight club, although the club president is actually Luigi De Laurentiis junior, Aurelio’s eldest son by his Swiss-born second wife, Jacqueline Baudit.

In September 2020, De Laurentiis revealed that he had tested positive for Covid-19, raising fears for his health given his age. Happily, the illness was short-lived and he has since made a full recovery.

Visitors to Torre Annunziata can see the remains of
the Villa Oplontis, an ancient Roman complex

Travel tip:

Torre Annunziata, where De Laurentiis has family roots, is a city in the metropolitan area of Naples. Close to Mount Vesuvius, the original city was destroyed in the eruption of 79 AD and a new one built over the ruins. Its name derives from a watch tower - torre - built to warn people of imminent Saracen raids and a chapel consecrated to the Annunziata (Virgin Mary). It became a centre for pasta production - in which Dino De Laurentiis worked before entering the movie business - in the early 19th century. The Villa Poppaea, also known as Villa Oplontis, believed to be owned by Nero, was discovered about 10 metres below ground level just outside the town and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hotels in Torre Annunziata with Booking.com

A view of Piazza Ferrarese, which overlooks the
harbour in the older part of the city of Bari

Travel tip:

Bari is the second largest urban area after Naples in the south of the Italy. It has a busy port and some expansive industrial areas but plenty of history, too, especially in the old city - Bari Vecchia - which sits on a headland between two harbours.  Fanning out around two Romanesque churches, the Cattedrale di San Sebino and the Basilica of St Nicholas, the area is a maze of medieval streets with many historical buildings and plenty of bars and restaurants.  There is also a castle, the Castello Svevo.  The more modern part of the city is known as the Centro Murattiano, or the Murat quarter, in that it was built during the period in the early 19th century in which Joachim Murat, for a long time Napoleon's most trusted military strategist, ruled the Kingdom of Naples, of which Bari was a part.

Find a hotel in Bari with Booking.com

Also on this day:

1494: The birth of painter Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo

1671: The birth of Gian Gastone de’ Medici, the last of the dynasty to rule Florence

1751: The birth of Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia

1981: The birth of celebrity chef Simone Rugiati

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Giancarlo Antognoni - footballer

Midfield star recovered from horrific injury to win World Cup

Giancarlo Antognoni made more
than 400 appearances for Fiorentina

The footballer Giancarlo Antognoni, who won 73 international caps for his country and was a member of the Italy team that won the 1982 World Cup in Spain, was born on this day in 1954 in Marsciano, a medieval town in Umbria, some 25km (16 miles) south of the regional capital, Perugia.

Antognoni, who spent most of his club career with Fiorentina and still works for the club today, was regarded as one of the most talented midfield players of his generation, but had the misfortune to miss Italy’s triumph against West Germany in the 1982 final, having suffered a broken foot in the semi-final against Poland.

Nonetheless, he made a major contribution to the performances that carried the azzurri through to the final, including the victories over holders Argentina and tournament favourites Brazil in the second phase. As the team's main playmaker, he set up numerous goalscoring opportunities for his teammates. Throughout the 1982 tournament, only Brazil's Zico and West Germany's Pierre Littbarski made more passes that directly led to goals. 

Antognoni himself had a goal incorrectly ruled out for offside against Brazil, although Italy still came out on top thanks to Paolo Rossi’s stunning hat-trick in a famous 3–2 victory.  Antognoni’s pass set up one of Rossi’s goals. 

Yet nine months earlier, some feared Antogoni would not play again, let alone in the following summer’s World Cup, after he suffered an horrific and life-threatening injury playing for Fiorentina against Genoa in Serie A.

In trying to score a goal, Antognoni collided with Genoa goalkeeper Silvano Martina, taking the full force of Martina’s knee against his head. He was knocked out, swallowing his tongue in the process and suffering a cardiac arrest. 

A stricken Antognoni is attended by Genoa team
doctor Pierluigi Gatto and others after his accident

It was only the swift actions of Pierluigi Gatto - the Genoa team doctor - that saved his life, the medic instantly recognising what had happened, freeing Antognoni’s tongue and performing CPR on the pitch to restart his heart, which had stopped for at least 30 seconds. Antognoni remained in a coma for two days and it was found that he had also suffered a fractured skull in two places.

Fiorentina fans feared their player’s career was over and Martina was the subject of criminal proceedings after a review of the incident deemed that he had been needlessly reckless in his attempt to deny Antognoni a goalscoring opportunity. A court hearing found Martina guilty of common assault but Antognoni refused to put his name to an official complaint, which meant that Martina escaped punishment.

Amazingly, Antognoni recovered so well from both the fractured skull and his cardiac arrest that he was playing again by the following March and faced Martina again in the second match of his comeback. In an act of outstanding sportsmanship, Antognoni sought out the Genoa ‘keeper before the kick-off and the two shook hands.

Antognoni’s earliest memories of playing football were on dirt pitches in Prepo, a village on the outskirts of Perugia. His father owned a bar in the city that was the headquarters of the local branch of the AC Milan supporters club and Antognoni grew up idolising the Milan star Gianni Rivera.

Antognoni's skills helped Italy win the
World Cup in Spain in 1982

The first major club to take an interest in him was Torino, although after watching him in a friendly they decided he was not for them. He remained in Piedmont, however, beginning his career with Asti in Serie D at the age of 16. His performances soon attracted attention, however, and when another former AC Milan legend, the Swede Nils Liedholm, asked him to sign for Fiorentina, the young Antognoni jumped at the chance.

He made his debut in Italy's Serie A in October 1972 and went on to make 412 appearances for the viola, scoring 61 goals. He won the Coppa Italia in 1975 and narrowly missed out on the Serie A title in 1982 season, losing out to rivals Juventus by a single point. He holds the record for the most appearances in Serie A for Fiorentina, with 341 games between 1972 and 1987.

Antognoni’s international career, which began in 1974, gained momentum under World Cup-winning coach Enzo Bearzot, who took him to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina and picked him again for the 1980 European championships, the azzurri finishing fourth in both tournaments. By the 1982 World Cup, he was Italy’s first-choice No 10. He is said to have worn the No 10 shirt for Italy more times than any other player, more than Alessandro Del Piero, Roberto Baggio, Francesco Totti or even his idol, Rivera.

After his international career ended in 1983, Antognoni remained with Fiorentina until 1987, after which he had two seasons playing in Switzerland for Lausanne Sports before hanging up his boots in 1989 at the age of 35.

Within a year, he was back with Fiorentina, initially as a scout but later as general manager. He dramatically resigned in 2001 in protest at the sacking of the club’s Turkish first-team coach, Fatih Terim. After a spell working for the Italian national federation in youth football development, he returned to the viola in 2017 and since 2018 has had the title of club manager.

The Torri Bolli is one of three medieval towers
in Antognoni's home town of Marsciano

Travel tip:

The town of Marsciano, where Antognoni was born, has its origins in Etruscan and Roman times. In around 1000 it was a fief of the Lombard family of Bulgarelli.  It is notable for its three medieval towers: the Torre Bolli (1217), the Torre Boccali (1228) and the Torre di Porta Vecchia (1271), which have been renovated. In the heart of the old town - Marsciano vecchia - is the parish church dedicated to San Giovanni Battista. Nowadays, it is among the most important agricultural-industrial centres of Umbria and the largest Umbrian producer of tiles and bricks.

The Stadio Artemio Franchi is an atmospheric
venue when packed with Fiorentina supporters

Travel tip:

Antognoni’s club, Fiorentina, play at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, one of Italy’s most famous stadiums and one of the earliest projects undertaken by the architect Pier Luigi Nervi, who would go on to design landmark buildings all over the world. The stadium is built entirely of reinforced concrete - the medium that became Nervi’s hallmark - with a 70m (230 ft) tower that bears the stadium's flagstaff. The tower is called the Tower of Marathon. The record crowd for a football match at the stadium in 58,271 but the stadium has also hosted more than 42,000 people for pop concerts by David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen.

Also on this day:

April Fool’s Day, Italian style

1946: The birth of AC Milan and Italy football coach Arrigo Sacchi

1953: The birth of AC Milan football coach Alberto Zaccheroni

(Marsciano picture by Umbria ws via Wikimedia Commons)

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AC Milan agree world record fee for Ruud Gullit

Signing of Dutch star sparked new era of success

Ruud Gullit's arrival at AC Milan signalled 
the start of a new period of success

A new golden era in the history of the AC Milan football club effectively began on this day in 1987 when the club agreed a world record transfer fee of £6 million - the equivalent of about £14.5 million (€16.8 million) today - to sign the attacking midfielder Ruud Gullit from the Dutch champions PSV Eindhoven.

The captain of The Netherlands international team that would be crowned European champions the following year, Gullit was regarded as one of the world’s best players at the time and his arrival in Milan caused huge excitement.

Thousands of Milan supporters turned out to greet him on the day he arrived in the city, so many that the car taking him from the airport to the club’s headquarters needed a police escort with sirens blaring in order to forge a path through the crowds.

Those fans correctly sensed that Gullit’s signing would bring a change of fortunes for the rossoneri after a dark period in their history.

Traditionally one of Italian football’s most powerful clubs, Milan had won the scudetto - the Italian championship - for the 10th time in 1979 but the following year were embroiled in the match-fixing scandal known as Totonero and as a punishment were relegated to Serie B - the second division - for the first time in their history.

Arrigo Sacchi guided Milan
to two European Cups

A difficult few years followed, taking the club to the brink of bankruptcy until the entrepreneur and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi - later to be Italy’s prime minister four times - stepped in as their saviour.

Berlusconi hired the up-and-coming coach Arrigo Sacchi to look after the team and was prepared to back up his ambitions for the club by spending big in the transfer market.

Gullit, whose game combined physical power with deft footwork, pinpoint passing and a striker’s eye for goal, signed within a few weeks of his Netherlands team-mate Marco van Basten, who had been a prolific goalscorer for Ajax.  The fee for Gullit broke the world record set by rivals Napoli when they signed Diego Maradona from Barcelona for £5 million in 1984. 

The signing of the two high-profile Dutch stars, who would be joined by another in compatriot Frank Rijkaard the following year, represented a statement of intent by Berlusconi as Sacchi built a team that also boasted some exceptional home-grown talent in Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta, Carlo Ancelotti and Roberto Donadoni.

After finishing the 1987-87 season with PSV as their leading scorer with 22 goals and a second consecutive championship medal, Gullit made his Serie A debut for Milan in August 1987 in a 3-1 win away to Pisa, scoring Milan’s second goal with a header. Van Basten would add a third from the penalty spot.

With Gullit scoring nine goals from 29 appearances, Milan won the scudetto for the first time in nine years – finishing three points ahead of Maradona’s Napoli, who had won the title for the first time in their history in the previous year.

Gullit (centre) and Dutch team-mates Frank Rijkaard
(left) and Marco Van Basten transformed Milan

During his time with Milan - with Sacchi and then Fabio Capello in charge - Gullit won another two Serie titles, two Supercoppe Italiane and two European Cups. He scored 56 goals in 171 games along the way.

Sacchi’s team reached their peak in the 1988-89 season. Although they finished only third in Serie A, behind city rivals Inter-Milan and Napoli, they produced two of the best performances by any team to win the European Cup, thrashing Real Madrid 5-0 in the second leg of their semi-final before demolishing Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the final at Barcelona's Nou Camp, with Gullit and Van Basten each scoring twice in front of 98,000 fans.  

Under Sacchi's guidance, Milan won the European Cup again in 1989-90, defeating Benfica in the final, Van Basten scoring the only goal.

Gullit, who went on to play for Sampdoria and Chelsea after leaving San Siro, later said that the 1989 Milan team was the best he had played in. 

Although Sacchi left to take over as head coach of the Italian national team in 1991, guiding the azzurri to the World Cup final in 1994 (famously losing to Brazil on penalties after talisman Roberto Baggio’s miss), AC Milan’s success continued with four Serie A titles in five years and the 1993-94 Champions League title under Capello, which meant the club were champions of Italy six times and of Europe three times in just nine seasons.

AC Milan train at the Milanello Sports
Centre 40km northwest of the city

Travel tip:

Although AC Milan’s home ground is the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, often known as San Siro after the suburb of Milan in which it is situated, the club’s day-to-day base is Milanello Sports Centre, commonly referred to as simply Milanello, where the team trains. Built in 1963, the centre, which has six outdoor pitches, is spread over 160,000 square metres (1,700,000 sq ft), which includes a pinewood and a lake. It is situated close to the towns of Carnago, Cassano Magnago and Cairate, in the province of Varese, about 40km (25 miles) northwest of Milan. Milanello has in the past been used by the Italian national team in their preparations for major championships. 

Hotels in Carnago by Booking.com

The impressive trophy room at AC Milan's
Mondo Milan museum in Milan

Travel tip:

Football fans can learn more about Arrigo Sacchi's success and that of all the AC Milan teams in the club's 117-year history by looking round the Mondo Milan Museum, which has a large collection of historic memorabilia as well as many interactive features.  It can be found within the Casa Milan, the club's new city headquarters - not to be confused with its stadium - in the Portello district, about 6km (4 miles) northwest of the city centre. The museum includes a trophy room that has replicas and originals of the club’s 42 major trophies, including an enormous replica of the Champions League trophy that measures 3m tall and weighs 800kg.

Also on this day:

1474: The birth of Saint Angela Merici, who founded the monastic Ursuline Order

1858: The saints day of nun Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello

1918: The birth of Alberto Marvelli, wartime Good Samaritan 

(Milanello picture by Razzairpina via Wikimedia Commons)

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Gianluca Festa - footballer

Sardinian became a favourite in England

Gianluca Festa is currently coach of the
Greek Super League side AEL

The footballer and coach Gianluca Festa, who played 177 matches in Italy’s Serie A but is best remembered as the first Italian defender to sign for a club in England’s Premier League, was born on this day in 1969 in Cagliari.

Festa joined Middlesbrough in January 1997 after manager Bryan Robson agreed to pay Inter-Milan £2.7 million for the centre-back, who joined his Italian compatriot Fabrizio Ravanelli at the northeast England club.

Ravanelli had arrived in England the previous summer as one of a number of Italian stars to move from Serie A, a sign that the Premier League was beginning to challenge Serie A for the right to be called Europe’s top league.  Chelsea had signed Gianluca Vialli from Juventus and Roberto Di Matteo from Lazio, to be joined by Parma’s Gianfranco Zola later in the autumn, and Sheffield Wednesday had bought Festa’s former Inter teammate Benito Carbone.

Four of those five were forwards - Di Matteo operated in midfield - and Middlesbrough, who had been promoted in 1995 but were finding their second season difficult, broke new ground by tapping into Italy’s reputation for producing top-quality defenders.

Festa was unable to prevent Middlesbrough’s relegation in the 1996-97 season but helped them reach the final of the FA Cup, scoring against Chesterfield in the semi-final and having a goal controversially disallowed for offside against Chelsea in the final at Wembley, which the London team won 2-0 with Di Matteo one of the goalscorers.

Festa spent five and a half seasons
in the red shirt of Middlesbrough

Ravanelli left to join Marseille at the end of that season but Festa stayed, helping Middlesbrough win promotion back to the Premier League at the first attempt and to stay in the top division throughout the rest of his time with the club, where he remained for five and a half seasons, becoming a favourite with supporters.

A multi-talented sportsman who excelled in martial arts and was a national junior champion at tennis, Festa joined his hometown club Cagliari as a schoolboy, making his senior debut in 1986 aged 17. Cagliari dropped to the third tier of Italy’s football pyramid at the start of Festa’s career but after appointing Claudio Ranieri as coach won consecutive promotions and were back in Serie A for the 1990-91 season.

Festa’s outstanding performances soon attracted the attention of other clubs and signed for Inter in 1993. He did not impress coach Osvaldo Bagnoli, who transferred him to Roma, but was back at San Siro within a year and shone under new coach Ottavio Bianchi, going on to make 70 appearances for the nerazzurri before earning his move to England.

After leaving Teesside in 2002, he helped another English team, Portsmouth, win promotion to the Premier League but did not play for them in the top division, instead returning to Cagliari, taking part in another promotion-winning season before winding down his playing career by turning out for a number of local teams in Sardinia while preparing for a career in coaching.

Following a short stint as assistant manager at Cagliari in his first appointment, Festa managed the small Lombardy club Lumezzane before briefly returning to England, where Leeds United’s Italian chairman Massimo Cellino invited him to help with training sessions and considered appointing him manager, although in the end he chose another candidate.

Back in Italy, Festa had two unsuccessful spells as head coach of Cagliari and then Como. He is currently in his second term in charge of AEL in the Greek Super League, based in the city of Larissa.

Cagliari's historic centre has
many steep, narrow alleys

Travel tip:

Cagliari is the capital of the island of Sardinia, an industrial centre and one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean. Yet it is also a city of considerable beauty and history, most poetically described by the novelist DH Lawrence when he visited in the 1920s. As he approached from the sea, Lawrence set his eyes on the confusion of domes, palaces and ornamental facades which, he noted, seemed to be piled on top of one another. He compared it to Jerusalem, describing it as 'strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy.’  What he saw was Cagliari’s charming historic centre, known as Castello, inside which the city’s university, cathedral and several museums and palaces - plus many bars and restaurants - are squeezed into a network of narrow alleys.

The spectacular Stadio Giuseppe Meazza at San
Siro is home to Inter and AC Milan

Travel tip:

Gianluca Festa had success in Italy with Internazionale, the club usually known as Inter-Milan, playing at the magnificent Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, in the San Siro district of northwest Milan. The stadium, which can accommodate almost 80,000 spectators, was completed in its original form in 1926. A number of extensive renovations, the last of which was completed ahead of the 1990 World Cup finals, gave the stadium its distinctive appearance, with its top tier supported by 11 cylindrical towers which incorporate spiral walkways. Giuseppe Meazza, from whom the stadium takes its name, spent 14 years as a player and three terms as manager at Inter.  Since 1947, Inter and their city rivals AC Milan have shared the stadium.

Also on this day:

44BC: The death of Julius Caesar

1673: The death of artist Salvator Rosa

1738: The birth of criminologist Cesare Beccaria

1849: The death of hyperpolyglot Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti

(Cagliari picture by Juli Kosolapova on Unsplash; Stadio Giuseppe Meazza by Clemens Teichmann from Pixabay)

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The founding of AC Milan

English roots of one of Italy’s football giants

The Milan team that were Italian champions in 1901:
Herbert Gilpin (left) is next to Alfred Edwards in the middle row

The football club that would eventually become known as AC Milan was founded on this day in 1899.

Although Juventus have won twice as many domestic Serie A titles - 36 to their 18 - AC Milan have been Italy’s most successful club in international club football, winning 18 trophies, including the European Cup/Champions League on seven occasions.

Yet the club owes its existence largely to five expatriate Englishmen, who conceived the idea of forming a football club - a cricket and football club, to be more accurate - during an evening at the Fiaschetteria Toscana bar, a few steps from the Duomo in the centre of Milan, where they would meet frequently to socialise.

The group comprised Alfred Edwards, a businessman from Shropshire, players Samuel Davies, from Manchester, David Allison and Edward Nathan Berra, both English but born in France, and Herbert Kilpin, who is remembered as the club’s driving force.

Herbert Kilpin in the striped shirt that
remains the rossoneri livery to this day

Kilpin, a butcher’s son from Nottingham, was both a footballer and a businessman. He had been a founder-member of the Garibaldi Reds, the amateur team in which Nottingham Forest has its roots, and had found his way to Italy after his boss, the famous lacemaker Thomas Adams, sent him to work with the Turin textiles merchant Edoardo Bosio, who in turn directed him to work in Milan.

The five formally founded Milan Cricket and Foot-Ball Club in a room they had hired at the Hotel du Nord et des Anglais, now the five-star Hotel Principe di Savoia, on Piazza della Repubblica.

Edwards, a former British vice-consul in Milan, was the club's first elected president. Berra managed the cricket section, while Kilpin was player-manager of the football team. It was determined at the outset that red and black would be the club colours and they have been nicknamed the rossoneri ever since.

The team did not have to wait long for success, winning their first Italian championship in 1901 after the fledgling competition had been won in each of its first three seasons by Genoa Football and Cricket Club, another team formed by English ex-pats.

It was the first of three titles in six years and the run of success may have continued had the club not fractured in 1908, when a dispute over whether ‘foreigners’ - that is, players who were neither Italian nor British - could play, led to the formation of breakaway club Internazionale.

Kilpin retired in 1908 and it was not until the 1950s that success returned for the club.

By then the name of AC Milan was well established.  The club, which had dropped ‘cricket’ from its title in 1919, was ordered by Mussolini’s Fascists to be known as Associazione Calcio Milano in 1939, after the Italian dictator outlawed the use of English names.

The club always wanted to recognise its English heritage, however, and after the end of the Second World War reverted to Associazione Calcio Milan, a compromise that incorporated the anglicised spelling of the city’s name.

The beautiful Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
was built in the late 19th century

Travel tip:

The Fiaschetteria Toscana, where Herbert Kilpin and his friends would meet in Milan, was a wine shop and bar in Via Giovanni Berchet, a short street opposite the eastern entrance of the elegant glass vaulted Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the oldest shopping mall in Italy - built in the late 19th century - that connects Piazza del Duomo with Piazza della Scala. The bar no longer exists, its premises now housing a restaurant, although its name has been preserved in the Bubu Fiaschetteria Toscana, a bar in Via Bartolomeo Eustachi, about 3km (2 miles) outside the city centre to the northeast.

The Stadio Giusppe Meazza in the San Siro
district has been AC Milan's home since 1926

Travel tip:

AC Milan played at five different grounds in their early years, but since 1926 their home has been the magnificent Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, in the San Siro district of northwest Milan. The stadium, which can accommodate almost 80,000 spectators, was completed in its original form in 1926. A number of extensive renovations, the last of which was completed ahead of the 1990 World Cup finals, gave the stadium its distinctive appearance, with its top tier supported by 11 cylindrical towers which incorporate spiral walkways. The stadium was named after Giuseppe Meazza, who spent 14 years as a player and three terms as manager at Inter, in 1980.  Since 1947, AC Milan and Inter-Milan have shared the stadium. 

Also on this day:

1944: The birth of businessman Santo Versace, entrepreneurial brain behind the fashion empire

1945: The death of Giovanni Agnelli, founder of Fiat

1952: The birth of World Cup winner Francesco Graziani

1954: The birth of singer-songwriter Ivana Spagna

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Rocco Commisso - entrepreneur

US businessman with roots in Calabria

Rocco Commisso cheering on his Fiorentina
team from the stands in Florence

Rocco Commisso, the founder of the American cable TV provider Mediacom and owner of football clubs in the United States and Italy, was born on this day in 1949 in Marina di Gioiosa Ionica, a small seaside town in Calabria.

With annual revenues of more than $2,000 million, Mediacom is the fifth largest cable company in the US, having been launched from Commisso’s basement in 1995, when he began to buy up small community cable systems, mainly in the Midwest and Southeast. It now has its headquarters in Blooming Grove, New York.

Commisso, a football fan from his childhood, bought a majority stake in the New York Cosmos club in 2017 and completed the purchase of ACF Fiorentina in Italy two years later, with plans to return each club to its glory days of the past.

With a southwest aspect on the Ionian coast, Marina di Gioiosa Ionica is something of an idyllic spot today, blessed with wide beaches and clear inviting water. As Commisso was growing up, however, it was a relatively deprived area as Italy struggled to rebuild after World War Two and it was not uncommon for families to leave the area in search of prosperity elsewhere.

Rocco’s father, a carpenter, joined a stream of emigrants from the area to the United States, setting up as a carpenter just outside Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Once established, he paid for the rest of the family to join him and Commisso left for a new life at the age of 12, with his mother and two siblings.  A year after arriving, the Commisso family moved to New York, making their home in the Bronx.

Commisso grew his Mediacom empire after 
starting the business in his basement

A bright student, Commisso made rapid progress at school but it was his talent for football and music that were most helpful in advancing his education.

In 1963, a week after moving from Pittsburgh, he entered a talent show at the Wakefield Theatre in the Bronx and landed a weekly gig playing the accordion to entertain the audience before and between movie showings. The manager of the theatre took a liking to him and helped him obtain a place at the Mount Saint Michael Academy, a prestigious private high school, where he studied while working at his brother’s pizza restaurant in his spare time.

His football skills, acquired during a childhood in which his heroes were the likes of John Charles and Omar Sivori at Juventus, helped him with the next step in his education, first of all winning him a 50 percent scholarship at New York University and then a full scholarship at Columbia, one of America’s great Ivy League universities, where he graduated in industrial engineering in 1971.

A degree from Columbia University opened doors, for Commisso to a position at the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, who allowed him to arrange his shifts so that he could study for an MBA from Columbia Business School.

A natural entrepreneur, he always had an eye for a side hustle and in 1975 he opened a discotheque in the Bronx specifically geared towards Italian immigrants, who appreciated the mix of dance music and traditional Italian crooners.

Commisso still has the accordion skills that helped
him progress after arriving in New York

Meanwhile, his business career took him into the financial sector, in which he worked for Chase Manhattan Bank before moving to the Royal Bank of Canada, where his work involved making finance available to the media and communications sectors.

That led first to a position as Chief Financial Officer for Cablevision, which grew to become the eighth largest company in the sector in the US under his stewardship, and then to him launching Mediacom.

Meanwhile, he never lost his affection for football and was captivated by the launch of the North American Soccer League in the 1970s, becoming a regular fan of the New York Cosmos, the team of Brazil legend Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer and the Italian star Giorgio Chinaglia.

The Cosmos went out of business in 1985 after the NASL boom faded. The name was relaunched in 2009 but teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in 2017, when Commisso moved in to save it from a second extinction.  The club’s current status, in the National Independent Soccer Association, effectively the third tier of professional football in the United States, is a long way from the extravagance of the early 1970s but Commisso has ambitions to return the club to the top of the American game.

He has similar ambitions for Fiorentina, whom he bought in 2019 after being approached by several clubs in Serie A. Fiorentina were a powerful club in the 1960s and 70s. Their last Serie A title came in 1969 but Commisso has plans to turn them into a force again. 

Married with two children, Commisso lives in Saddle River, New Jersey.  According to the Bloomberg Index, he is worth around nine billion dollars. 

Marina di Gioiosa Ionica is blessed with long
expanses of wide beaches

Travel tip:

Commisso’s home town of Marina di Gioiosa Ionica is situated in the province of Reggio Calabria, about 80km (50 miles) southwest of Catanzaro and about 120km (75 miles) northeast of Reggio Calabria, with a population of just over 6,500. As well as offering broad beaches and clean water for bathing, the town has the remains of an ancient Roman theatre that was unearthed in the early 20th century, a relic of the former Roman settlement of Romechium.  There are also a number of towers built to defend the area against invasions by Saracens and Turks. 

Catanzaro's rebuilt duomo, the Cattedrale di
Santa Maria Assunta

Travel tip:

The city of Catanzaro, the nearest major population centre to Marina di Gioiosa Ionica, is a city largely reconstructed following major earthquakes in 1783 and 1832, that destroyed all its ancient monuments. The small Norman church of Omobono was one of only a few survivors. Overlooking the confluence of the Fiumarella and Musofalo rivers, Catanzaro offers beautiful scenery with peaks, ridges, mountain ranges as far as the eye can see. The city’s cathedral, built over a Norman cathedral built in 1121, was given a Renaissance façade in the 16th century but has been destroyed and rebuilt at least twice since, most recently after the Allied bombings of 1943.

Also on this day:

1553: The birth of Alfonso II d’Este, the last Duke of Ferrara

1710: The death of Baroque composer Bernardo Pasquini

1947: The birth of football coach Nevio Scala

1954: The birth of former Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni

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Sandro Mazzola - footballer

Tragedy instilled determination to succeed

Sandro Mazzola wore the famous
colours of Inter for his whole career

The footballer Sandro Mazzola, widely regarded as one of Italy’s greatest players after a glittering career with Internazionale of Milan and the Italian national team, was born on this day in 1942 in Turin.

A forward or attacking midfield player with all the attributes of the world’s best players, Mazzola won four Serie A titles and two European Cups for Inter-Milan, largely under the coaching of Helenio Herrero. His goals tally in Serie A games alone was 116 in 417 appearances. He was capped 70 times by the national team, part of the side that won the 1968 European championships and reached the World Cup final in 1970.

Mazzola always saw his success as a tribute to his father, Valentino, a brilliant player who was captain of the Torino team that was almost entirely wiped out in the Superga air disaster of 1949, when a plane carrying the team back from a friendly in Portugal crashed in thick fog into the rear wall of the Basilica of Superga, which overlooks the city of Turin.

His parents had divorced in 1946 but Valentino won custody of his son and instilled in him a love of football, as well as teaching him the basic skills. Sandro was only six when his father was killed and would later reveal that it was his desire to preserve the memory of their brief time together and build on Valentino’s legacy that drove him on to succeed.

He developed his career with Inter rather than Torino after a close friend of his father, the Inter forward Benito Lorenzi, persuaded his mother that Sandro and his brother, Ferruccio, should sign up as mascots for the Milan club.

Mazzola with his father, Valentino, a
short time before his father died 

Although they had little to do but lead the team out on match day, mascots were rewarded with a bonus if the team won of up to 10,000 lire, which helped their mother support them after they joined the Inter Milan youth academy. Both were good enough to sign professional contracts in 1960.

Ferruccio would find success elsewhere, with Venezia and then Lazio, but Sandro remained with Inter for his entire career, making his debut in 1961. It was hardly a glorious debut, a team packed with youth team players suffering a 9-1 thrashing by Juventus, although Mazzola did score Inter’s solitary goal, from the penalty spot.

Herrera’s teams were notoriously defensive, preferring to allow the opposing team to dominate possession with a view to hitting them on the counter-attack. Already feeling the pressure of expectation that came with being Valentino Mazzola’s son, Sandro knew he had to do outstanding things to make his presence count as an attacking player under Herrera’s regime.

He lacked the grace, perhaps, of his father, who was a sleek inside forward who scored a remarkable 118 goals in 195 league matches for Torino, but more than made up for it in speed and work-rate, while also possessing creativity and an eye for goal.

He became an integral part of Herrera’s team, which between 1963 and 1966 won Serie A three times, the European Cup twice and the Intercontinental Cup twice.  Mazzola scored twice as Inter beat Real Madrid in the 1964 European Cup final and was the top scorer in Serie A with 17 goals the following season.

Mazzola (left) with his Azzurri team-mate
and rival Gianni Rivera

Mazzola made his international debut at the age of 20 and played in his first World Cup in England three years later.  He was an outstanding performer as Italy became European champions in 1968 but found himself competing for a place with Gianni Rivera at the World Cup in 1970, when coach Ferruccio Valcareggi decided he could not play both together and devised a bizarre system by which Mazzola would play the first half of matches and Rivera the second.

The Azzurri reached the final in 1970 but lost 4-1 to Brazil and when Valcareggi finally decided he could accommodate both Mazzola and Rivera in his team at the 1974 World Cup in West Germany they were both past their prime.

After retiring from football as a player in 1977, Mazzola served Inter in various roles. He was sporting director between 1995 and 1999 and held a similar position with Torino between 2000 and 2003.  He has also worked in television for many years, holding the distinction of commentating for Telemontecarlo when Italy won the World Cup in Spain in 1982 and for Rai when they were victorious again at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The Stadio Giuseppe Meazza has been an iconic
sight in the Milan landscape for almost a century

Travel tip:

Sandro Mazzola played his football for Inter at the magnificent Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, the stadium Inter have shared with their city neighbours, AC Milan, in the San Siro district of northwest Milan since 1947. The stadium, which can accommodate almost 80,000 spectators, was completed in its original form in 1926. A number of extensive renovations, the last of which was completed ahead of the 1990 World Cup finals, gave the stadium its distinctive appearance, with its top tier supported by 11 cylindrical towers which incorporate spiral walkways. The stadium was named after Giuseppe Meazza, who spent 14 years as a player and three terms as manager at Inter, in 1980.  The stadium’s days may be numbered, however, with plans submitted in May 2020 for a new stadium to be built next door to the current site.

The Basilica di Superga was built by architect
Filippo Juvarra on a mountain overlooking Turin

Travel tip:

The Superga Disaster that claimed the life of Valentino Mazzola and 30 others is commemorated with a simple memorial at the site of the crash, at the back of the magnificent 18th century Basilica di Superga, which overlooks the city of Turin.  Mounted on a wall, the damaged parts of which were never restored, is a large picture of the Grande Torino team, with a memorial stone that lists all the names of the victims of the disaster, under the heading I Campioni d’Italia.  The basilica, which sits at an altitude of some 425m (1,395ft) above sea level and often sits serenely in sunlight while mist shrouds the city below, can be reached by a steep railway line, the journey taking about 20 minutes.

Also on this day:

1830: The death of Francis I of the Two Sicilies

1931: The birth of film director Paolo Taviani

1936: The birth of actress Virna Lisi

1982: The birth of golfer Francesco Molinari

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Fabio Cannavaro - World Cup winner

Defender captained Azzurri to 2006 triumph

Fabio Cannavaro in action at the
2006 World Cup finals

The footballer and coach Fabio Cannavaro, who was captain of the Italy team that won the 2006 World Cup in Germany, was born on this day in 1973 in Naples.

In a hugely successful playing career, the central defender was part of the excellent Parma team that won the UEFA Cup and the Coppa Italia under coach Alberto Malesani in the late 1990s, winning another Coppa Italia in 2002 with Pietro Carmignani in charge.

But his biggest glories were to come after he left Italy for Spain to play for Real Madrid under the Italian coach Fabio Capello, winning the La Liga title twice in 2006 and 2007.

His 136 appearances for the Azzurri made him the most capped outfield player in the history of the Italian national team (only goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon has more caps in total) and the feat of winning La Liga and the World Cup in the same year helped him win the coveted Ballon d’Or, awarded annually by the magazine France Football to the player judged to be the best in Europe. He is only the third defender to be given the award, joining the company of Franz Beckenbauer and Matthias Sammer. 

Cannavaro, who also played for Inter-Milan and Juventus, retired from playing in 2011 and has since coached teams in the United Arab Emirates and China, where he currently works for the Chinese Super League club Guangzhou Evergrande.

Cannavaro in his days as a young
professional with Napoli

The son of a bank clerk, Cannavaro learned to play football in the street with his brother, Paolo, who would also become a professional. A fanatical Napoli supporter, he was a 13-year-old ball boy at the Stadio San Paolo when the club won the Serie A title for the first time in their history in 1987, thanks to the brilliance of their icon Diego Maradona.

His own talent earned him games for a suburban Neapolitan team at Bagnoli and it was while playing for them that he was spotted by a scout from Napoli.  Soon he was turning out for Napoli’s youth team and earning an invitation to train alongside Maradona and the senior squad. A ball-winning midfield player at that time, he caused a stir in one training session when he launched a sliding tackle against the club’s prized asset that won the ball but made the coaching staff wince. Cannavaro was ticked off for being too aggressive but Maradona spoke up in his defence and reportedly gave him a pair of boots as a souvenir at the end of the session.

Cannavaro made his first-team debut for Napoli in 1993 at the age of 19. Despite standing only 5ft 9ins (1.75m), he was deployed as a centre-back alongside another of his heroes, Ciro Ferrera, after coach Claudio Ranieri determined that his anticipation, tackling, distribution and his ability to launch attacks from defensive more than compensated from his lack of height.

He might have made his career with his hometown club had Napoli not run into financial difficulties in the mid-1990s, obliging them to accept an offer of the equivalent of £6 million for him from Parma, whom he joined in the summer of 1995.

As well as enjoying trophy-winning success with the Emilia-Romagna club, of whom he was made captain not long after he arrived, he also played for two seasons alongside his brother, Paolo, who also made the move from Napoli to Parma, in 1999. 

Cannavaro with sports minister Giovanna Melandra, president Giorgio
Napolitano and coach Marcello Lippi at a night of celebration in Rome

After his success with Parma, Cannavaro’s transfer value rocketed, to the extent that Inter paid €23 million (£14 million) for his services in 2002. His spell at the San Siro did not bring any trophies but his own value was barely diminished and he moved to Juventus in a deal worth €20 million (£13.6 million) in 2004.

The transfer to Turin reunited him with former Parma teammates Buffon and Lilian Thuram and, for a season, with his former Napoli idol Ferrara, although it was an ill-fated move.  Juventus won the Serie A title in 2005 and 2006 under Capello’s astute management only to have the titles stripped after the so-called Calciopoli scandal, in which several clubs were found to have sought to influence the appointment of referees perceived as friendly to their cause.  Juventus were relegated to Serie B as a consequence.

Cannavaro subsequently followed Capello to Madrid and enjoyed the most successful spell of his career. When he returned to Juventus in 2009 after three years in Spain he was not the player he was. Juve supporters turned on him both for his erratic form and for having turned his back on the club in 2006 and in 2010, after a disappointing World Cup in South Africa, left the club on a free transfer to join Al-Ahli in the UAE.

Cannavaro enjoyed more success
in Spain with Real Madrid

As an international player, Cannavaro had been part of Cesare Maldini’s Italy Under-21 team, which won the European championships in 1994 and 1996, before being elevated to the senior national team in 1997.  He starred in the Italy team that beat England 1-0 at Wembley, thanks to a Gianfranco Zola goal.

Quickly establishing his place in the side, Cannavaro helped the Azzurri reach the quarter-finals of the 1998 World Cup and the final of the 2000 European championships, in which they lost to France, but was injured in the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, in which Italy lost to the latter in the round of 16.

Cannavaro succeeded Paolo Maldini as captain in 2002 and settled into the role as a natural leader.  The European championships of 2004 were a disappointment but coach Marcello Lippi brought the team to its peak at the 2006 World Cup, the highlight of which was a 2-0 defeat of the hosts in the semi-finals, thanks to goals by Fabio Grosso and Alessandro Del Piero, with Cannavaro playing a key role in the second, launching an attack from a defensive position in the way that Ranieri identified during his formative years with Napoli.

A fractious final against France, famous for the sending-off of the French skipper Zinedine Zidane, was won on penalties, but Cannavaro’s performance in defence was hailed as decisive, earning him the nickname of the ‘Berlin Wall’ among Italy fans. Returning to Italy, Cannavaro held the trophy aloft at a rapturous night of celebration on the Circus Maximus in Rome.

He subsequently overtook Paolo Maldini’s record of 126 caps but after a disappointing World Cup in South Africa in 2010 announced his retirement from international football.

Cannavaro set up a charity with
former teammate Ciro Ferrara

Following his final transfer to Al Ahli in the UAE, Cannavaro moved into coaching. Much of his post-playing career has been spent in China, where he won the 2019 Chinese Super League title with Guangzhou Evergrande and was briefly in charge of the China national team.

Cannavaro, the father of three children with his wife, Daniela, who he married in 1996, joined with Ciro Ferrara after they had finished playing to set up the Fondazione Cannavaro Ferrara, a charity aimed at helping to buy equipment for a cancer hospital in their native Naples.

He attracted controversy in 2015 when he, Daniela and Paolo were handed jail sentences of between four and 10 months when they re-entered property that had been seized by police during an investigation into the player’s tax affairs. They appealed against the verdict and the sentences were suspended.

Cannavaro’s son, Christian, has followed his father in becoming a player, currently turning out for another Campanian team, Benevento.

The city of Parma is famous for its gastronomy
and is the home of Prosciutto di Parma (Parma ham)

Travel tip:

Parma, where Cannavaro enjoyed a successful spell early in his career, is an historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for its ham (Prosciutto di Parma) and cheese (Parmigiano-Reggiano), the true ‘parmesan’. The city was given as a duchy to Pier Luigi Farnese, the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, and his descendants ruled Parma till 1731. The composer, Verdi, was born near Parma at Bussetto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio.

The Arch of Trajan is one of a number
of Roman relics in the city of Benevento

Travel tip:

In ancient times, Benevento, which can be found about 70km (43 miles) northeast of Naples, was one of the most important cities in southern Italy, along the Via Appia trade route between Rome and Brindisi. The town is in an attractive location surrounded by the Apennine hills, and while it suffered considerable damage during the Second World War, there are many Roman remains, including a triumphal arch erected in honour of Trajan and an amphitheatre, built by Hadrian, that held 10,000 spectators and is still in good condition. The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, originally built in the 13th century, has undergone major reconstruction work, while the original bronze doors for the cathedral are now kept inside the building.

Also on this day: 

1506: The death of painter Andrea Mantegna

1583: The birth of composer Girolamo Frescobaldi

1808: The death of writer and literary critic Saverio Bettinelli

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