Manuela Di Centa - Olympic skiing champion

Friulian won five medals at a single Winter Games

Manuela Di Centa in action at the 1994 Winter
Olympics in Norway, where she won five medals

The Olympic skier, mountaineer and former politician Manuela Di Centa was born on this day in 1963 in the small town of Paluzza in the mountainous north of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, less than five miles (8km) from the Austrian border.

Di Centa made history at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, when she won a total of five medals, including two golds - the only cross-country skier to accumulate so many medals at a single Games.

Three times Italy’s national fell running champion, Di Centa went on to become the first Italian woman to climb Mount Everest when she scaled the world’s highest peak in 2003, planting the five-ringed Olympic flag at the summit.

A member of the International Olympic Committee from 1999 to 2010, Di Centa has also represented her region as a politician, sitting in the Italian Chamber of Deputies for the Forza Italia and People of Freedom parties between 2006 and 2013.

Born and raised in the beautiful surroundings of the Carnia region of Friuli, Di Centa grew up in a family of Nordic skiers and took to skis almost as naturally as learning to walk.

Di Centa on her ascent
of Mount Everest

After some impressive displays in youth level skiing, she made her debut for the Italy national team at the age of 17 in 1980, contested her first World Championships events in 1982 and competed in her first Winter Olympics in Sarajevo in 1984.

She won her first medals in either competition at the 1991 World Championships on home territory in Val di Fiemme in the Dolomites, when she won silver in the four by 5km relay - alongside Bice Vanzetta, Gabriella Paruzzi and Stefania Belmondo - and individual bronze over 5km and 30km.  The 5km relay team repeated their bronze medal success at the Olympics at Albertville in France the following year.

Di Centa pocketed a World Championship 30km silver and a medal of the same colour in the four by 5km relay at Falun in Sweden in 1993 but it was at the Olympics in Lillehammer the following February that she hit her peak.

She medalled in all five cross-country events in which she competed, winning golds over 15km and 30km, silver in the 5km and pursuit, and a second bronze in the four by 5km relay. 

No cross-country skier - male or female - has won five medals at a single Winter Olympics before or since. Another relay bronze at the 1998 Games in Nagano in Japan raised her career total Olympic medal haul to seven, after which she announced her retirement from competition.

Her World Championship medal haul was also seven - including four silvers but no gold. She twice won her sport’s prestigious World Cup, finishing first in 15 events all told and being crowned overall champion in 1994 and 1996.

Di Centa's official photograph as a
member of the Chamber of Deputies

An accomplished fell runner as well as a skier - winning the Italian championships in 1985, 1989 and 1991 - Di Centa then turned her knowledge of mountainous terrain into more achievement.

Having revealed that she had two childhood dreams - to compete at the Olympics and to climb the world’s highest mountain - she achieved the latter on May 23, 2003 by becoming the first Italian woman to reach the 8,848m summit of Mount Everest. 

She needed supplementary oxygen for the final 1,500m but was determined to complete the climb - 50 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay conquered it for the first time in 1953.  Di Centa celebrated by planting the Olympic and Italian flags at the summit.

Di Centa has also enjoyed a successful career as a television presenter, mainly in programmes dedicated to her beloved mountains, and successfully ran for election to the Chamber of Deputies in 2006 as a Forza Italia candidate for Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and in 2008 for Trentino Alto-Adige as a member of Il Popolo della Libertá - the People of Freedom.

Married to the mountaineer and cross-country skier Fabio Meraldi, Manuela di Centa is the sister of another Olympic cross-country skiing gold medallist, Giorgio Di Centa, and the cousin of long distance runner Venanzio Ortis, who was European 5,000m champion in 1978.

Giorgio Di Centa won Olympic gold in the 50km and four by 10km events at the Turin Olympics in 2006, where Manuela was one of the flag bearers and, in her role as Italian representative on the IOC, presented her brother with one of his golds.

Manuela and Giorgio’s maternal grandmother, Irma Englaro, served with distinction as a Carnic Porter during the First World War, one of a legion of local women who helped Italy’s war effort along the Carnia front by transporting supplies and ammunition in their back-borne panniers.

Carnia, the region in which Paluzza is situated, 
 is an area of outstanding natural beauty 

Travel tip:

Manuela Di Centa’s place of birth, Paluzza - Paluce in Friulian dialect - is a small town of around 2,200 inhabitants situated about 120km (75 miles) northwest of Trieste and approximately 50km (31 miles) northwest of Udine, in the historic Carnia region of Friuli, close to the border with Austria. It is best known today as a ski resort, famed for its cross-country ski runs, but historically it was a key strategic defensive position where a castle - Castrum Moscardum - was built in the 13th century to guard the valley against invaders from the north. One tower of the castle remains standing today. The valley in which Paluzza sits - the Val Bût or Canale di San Pietro - is one of five that make up the picturesque Carnia region, which includes 27 municipalities. Carnia is thought to take its name from the Germanic Carni tribe who are thought to have migrated south from around 400 BC, reaching the area through the Plöcken Pass.

The Loggia del Lionello is a feature of Udine's
beautiful main square, Piazza della Libertà

Travel tip:

Udine, the nearest city to Di Centa’s home town, is an attractive and wealthy provincial city and the gastronomic capital of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Udine's most attractive area lies within the mediæval centre, which has Venetian, Greek and Roman influences. The main square, Piazza della Libertà, features the town hall, the Loggia del Lionello, built in 1448–1457 in the Venetian-Gothic style, and a clock tower, the Torre dell’Orologio, which is similar to the clock tower in Piazza San Marco - St Mark's Square - in Venice.  The city was part of the Austrian Empire between 1797 and 1866 and retains elements of a café society as legacy from that era, particularly around Piazza Matteotti, known locally as il salotto di Udine - Udine's drawing room.  Long regarded as something of a hidden gem, Udine does not attract the tourist traffic of other, better-known Italian cities, yet with its upmarket coffee shops, artisan boutiques and warm, traditional eating places in an elegant setting, it has much to commend it.

Also on this day:

1788: The death of royal exile Charles Edward Stuart

1857: The birth of architect Ernesto Basile

1888: The death of Saint Don Bosco

1925: The birth of fashion designer Mariuccia Mandelli

1933: The birth of Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano

1942: The birth of actress Daniela Bianchi

1951: Final of the first Sanremo Music Festival

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Forza Italia - political party

Movement that gave media magnate Silvio Berlusconi political power

The Forza Italia logo, displaying the colours
of the Italian flag, soon became a familiar sight

The shape of Italy’s political landscape changed on this day in 1994 with the launch of the Forza Italia party, whose leader, the wealthy media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, served as Italy’s prime minister three times.

Work had been going on behind the scenes to lay the foundations of the party for several months, going back to Berlusconi and a group of friends and business colleagues meeting in a notary’s office in Milan in June 1993 to give legal status to what was called the Forza Italia Association for Good Government.

By November, a network of Forza Italia Clubs was established, quickly attracting many thousands of members. Details of this network appeared in the media, although Berlusconi denied that they were branches of a political party - despite news in December that an address on Via dell'Umiltà in Rome had been registered as Forza Italia headquarters. Its office was in the same building that once housed the headquarters of the Italian People's Party, a forerunner of the Christian Democracy party.

On January 18, 1994, however, it was confirmed that Forza Italia would be fielding candidates in the elections due to be held in March of that year.

Il Movimento politico Forza Italia, to give the party its full title, emerged from a period of profound political upheaval in Italy, when the traditional powers of the nation’s political history were swept away in a far-reaching corruption scandal uncovered by the Milan magistrate Antonio Di Pietro and his team of investigators.

The charismatic Berlusconi was a
natural vote winner for the party

The investigation, which became known as Mani Pulite - Clean Hands - eventually led to more than 3,000 arrests, the indictment of more than half the members of the Italian parliament and the collapse and dissolution of both the Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party, whose leader, Bettino Craxi, had been convicted on two charges of political corruption and was due to face trial on a further four when he died in 2000.

Amid this turmoil, filling the void in particular left by the once all-powerful Christian Democrats, Berlusconi, the former property investor who made his fortune after launching Italy’s first private TV network, saw his opportunity to launch a bid for political power.

Drawing on a line from a popular football chant in his choice of Forza Italia as its name, Berlusconi and his allies designed a party that would stand for market-oriented economic policies and a strong national identity combined with traditional conservative values. The party advocated lower taxes, minimal government intervention in the economy and law changes aimed at boosting economic growth.

They wanted to focus their appeal towards moderate voters, former Christian Democrat voters largely, who were - in Berlusconi’s own description - "disoriented, political orphans and who risked being unrepresented".

In fact, the words ‘forza Italia’ - literally ‘Italy force’ but interpreted by English-language commentators as meaning something akin to ‘Go Italy’ - had previously appeared in Christian Democrat slogans during the 1987 election campaign.

An individual with natural charisma, Berlusconi had both the image and the resources to turn the new party into an overnight success. He managed the project himself as both a successful businessman and, by challenging the broadcasting monopoly of the state-owned Rai network, an establishment outsider. Meanwhile, his television channels - Canale 5, Rete 4 and Italia 1 - provided a ready-made platform to connect with the public. His own personality won many of Forza Italia's votes.

Berlusconi waves to a cheering crowd during
his third successful campaign for office

He also seemed to have an innate ability to persuade seemingly incompatible political groups to join coalitions, without which forming a government in Italy is virtually impossible.  

Forza Italia’s immediate success, winning 366 seats in the Chamber of Deputies as the largest party at the 1994 elections, came after Berlusconi had formed a campaigning alliance in the north with Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord, and in the south with Gianfranco Fini’s post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale, two parties who for the most part despised one another. Lega Nord left the coalition in December and Berlusconi’s first stint as prime minister ended after just 251 days but uniting Bossi and Fini for even a few months could be seen as remarkable.

The centre-left held away for the next five years but Forza Italia regrouped and won power again in 2001 after Berlusconi had brought together the disparate ambitions of north and south again in his Casa delle Libertà - House of Freedoms - alliance. 

This time, Forza Italia and their allies having won almost a third of the vote, Berlusconi was installed as prime minister for a second time, staying in post for four years and 340 days, his executive proving to be the longest lived in the history of the Republic.

Despite being investigated over numerous scandals during his next period in opposition, Berlusconi won a third term as prime minister in 2008, although this time under the banner of Il Popolo della Libertà - People of Freedom - after joining forces with Fini’s Alleanza Nationale. This time, he stayed in office for three years and 192 days.

The merger between the two parties meant that Forza Italia did not officially exist between 2008 and 2013 but with the disbanding of the People of Freedom it was relaunched. Although barred from office himself after being convicted of tax fraud, Berlusconi remained the party’s figurehead until his death in 2023, having been elected to the Senate after his ban expired.

The reformed Forza Italia has yet to achieve the same level of popularity as the original version but remains a significant player in Italian politics and was part of the centre-right coalition led by Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), whose victory at the 2022 elections put current prime minister Giorgia Meloni in power.

The Trevi Fountain in Rome, with its backdrop of
the Palazzo Poli, is one of Rome's best-known sights

Travel tip:

The Via dell'Umiltà in Rome is part of the Trevi district in the heart of the city. A beautiful, elegant and historic neighbourhood, it is best known for the Trevi Fountain, which was officially opened in 1762 and has become one of the city’s best-known landmarks.  The district is also home to the Palazzo Barberini, the 17th century palace to which three of Rome’s greatest architects - Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernin - all contributed and which now houses part of the collection of Italy’s National Gallery of Ancient Art. Other notable sights in the district are the Fontana del Tritone and Fontana Barberini, the Palazzo Colonna and the Palazzo Quirinale, official residence of the Italian president.

The Palazzo Chigi, off the Via del Corso, is the
official residence of the Italian prime minister

Travel tip:

Silvio Berlusconi’s official residence during his terms in office as prime minister was the 16th-century Palazzo Chigi, which overlooks the Piazza Colonna and the Via del Corso in Rome. The palace was in the ownership of the Chigi family, part of Roman nobility, from 1659 until the 19th century. It became the residence of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to Italy in 1878 before being bought by the Italian state in 1916, when it became the home of the Minister for Colonial Affairs. Later it was the official residence of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and in 1961 became the official meeting place of the Council of Ministers, whose president is the head of the Italian government - the prime minister - and who was allowed to use the palace as his official home in Rome.

Also on this day: 

1543: The birth of musician Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder

1880: The birth of cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster

1946: The birth of operatic soprano Katia Ricciarelli

1950: The birth of basketball player Dino Meneghin

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Nunzia De Girolamo - politician and television presenter

Lawyer who moved from debating to dancing

De Girolamo served in prime minister
Enrico Letta's cabinet from 2013 to 2014

Politician and lawyer Nunzia De Girolamo, who served as Minister of Agriculture in the government of Enrico Letta from 2013 to 2014, was born on this day in 1975 in Benevento in Campania.

Nunzia became a member of the Italian parliament, representing Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, in 2008, and she was re-elected to parliament in 2013. She went on to become the youngest member of the Letta cabinet and one of just seven female politicians appointed.

While growing up, Nunzia attended the Liceo Classico Pietro Giannone in Benevento and then entered the faculty of jurisprudence to study law at the University of Rome La Sapienza. After graduating, she went into the legal profession.

Nunzia worked in the fields of civil law, employment law, and commercial law before going into politics.

She became a member of Forza Italia, but left the party in 2009. Voters chose her as an individual member of the People of Freedom party, when she stood for parliament for the second time.

In 2011, she married Francesco Boccia, the Minister for Regional Affairs and Autonomy. They had a daughter, who they named Gea.

After leaving the People of Freedom party in November 2013, Nunzia joined Angelino Alfano’s New Centre Right party.

However, she resigned from office in 2014, after claims were made that she had conducted herself improperly. Nunzia denied any wrongdoing, saying she had left her ministerial post in order to defend herself against the allegations made against her. After Prime Minister Letta accepted her resignation, Nunzia became the second minister to resign from the cabinet in the nine months since the elections.

With dancer Raimondo Todaro, De Girolamo
 reached the finals of Ballando con le Stelle

She subsequently served as House whip for the New Centre Right party, but she failed to be re-elected to the Chamber in the 2018 elections.

In 2019, Nunzia took part in the 14th series of the programme, Ballando con le Stelle, Italy’s version of the BBC's popular programme, Strictly Come Dancing and America's Dancing with the Stars. 

She was partnered by professional dancer Raimondo Todaro and the couple enjoyed some lively exchanges with the programme’s panel of judges at the end of their dances each week, yet were popular enough with the public to be one of six couples voted through to the finals show. 

The former politician’s Ballando con le Stelle appearances have since been followed by regular television work presenting programmes for Rai Uno.

Benevento's Arch of Trajan
echoes the city's Roman past

Travel tip: 

Benevento, Nunzia De Girolamo's birthplace, is a city built on a hill some 50km (31 miles) northeast of Naples in Campania. As Beneventum, it was an important Roman trading station along the Via Appia route between Rome and Brindisi and its Roman remains are a particular attraction to visitors. An outdoor theatre built by Hadrian to seat 10,000 spectators has been preserved in relatively good condition, as has the city's marble Trajan's Arch, built during the second century to mark the opening of the Via Traiano trade route. The arch had ornate decorative carvings of exceptional detail, which celebrate the life and times of Emperor Trajan. Benevento suffered extensive damage from bombing in World War Two and several major buildings, including the city's Duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria de Episcopio - had to undergo restoration or complete rebuilding work. The church of Saint Sophia, a circular building with Byzantine touches consecrated in around 760, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

The palace housing the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza
church, which was bought with a tax on wine

Travel tip: 

The University of Rome - often referred to as the Sapienza University of Rome or simply La Sapienza, meaning 'knowledge' - was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, as a place for  ecclesiastical studies over which he could exert greater control than the already established universities of Bologna and Padua. The first pontifical university, it expanded in the 15th century to include schools of Law, Medicine, Philosophy and Theology. Money raised from a new tax on wine enabled the university to buy a palace, which later housed the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza church. The university was closed during the sack of Rome in 1527 but reopened by Pope Paul III in 1534. In 1870, La Sapienza ceased to be the papal university and as the university of the capital of Italy became recognised as the country's most prestigious seat of learning. A new modern campus was built in 1935 under the guidance of the architect Marcello Piacentini. 

Also on this day:

1881: The death of missionary Saint Daniele Comboni

1891: The birth of Mafia boss Stefano Maggadino

1921: The birth of poet Andrea Zanzotto

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Mara Carfagna - politician

Former glamour model now important voice in Italian parliament

Mara Carfagna has defied detractors to
become a powerful politician

The politician Mara Carfagna, a one-time glamour model and TV hostess who is now vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian parliament, was born on this day in 1975 in Salerno.

Originally named Maria Rosaria Carfagna, she left high school to study dance at the school of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, obtaining a diploma before going on to study acting and the piano.

In 1997 she won a beauty contest as Miss 1997 and participated in the finals of Miss Italia. She had her first experience in television as one of the co-presenters during the 1997-98 season of the Rai variety show, Domenica In, with Fabrizio Frizzi.

Carfagna found herself in demand as a model and posed for some magazine and calendar shoots, but at the same time was studying law at the University of Salerno, graduating with honours in 2001.

More television work came her ways as a glamourous co-presenter of the Mediaset show La domenica del villaggio alongside Davide Mengacci, moving on to present another entertainment show Piazza grande together with Giancarlo Magalli.

Former premier Silvio Berlusconi
made Mara Carfagna a minister

At the same time she was developing a career in politics. She began to take an interest in women’s rights issues and in 2004 joined Forza Italia, the party led by the then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

In 2006 she was nominated as a candidate in Campania and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. She soon attracted the attention of Berlusconi, who was also owner of the Mediaset TV channels for which she worked, who made a tongue-in-cheek but demeaning suggestion that his party should practise the ancient law of primae noctis, which allowed feudal lords to select any female subject of his choice for his sexual gratification.

Carfagna ignored the comment and gained a reputation as a hard-working parliamentarian.  Berlusconi lost his position as prime minister at the 2006 election but won it back two years later.

When the controversial leader named Carfagna in his new cabinet as Minister for Equal Opportunity, she attracted a new wave of publicity.

The magazine Maxim, for whom she had appeared as a cover model, ran some of her pictures again, ranking her at No 1 in a feature entitled “World’s hottest politicians.”

Carfagna (right) greets former president Giorgio Napolitano
on the occasion of International Women's Day in 2009

It was also recalled that a year before winning back power, Berlusconi had said of Carfagna: "If I was not already married I would have married her immediately".  The comment led Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, to demand an apology, although Carfagna dismissed it as "gallant and harmless."

As a minister, she has been an outspoken campaigner in a number of areas, from the level of crime in her home city of Salerno to the management of waste disposal in Campania, as well as prostitution, homophobia and violence against women.

In 2008, a few months after taking office, she attracted some ironic comments from political writers and opposition politicians when she proposed a law making street prostitution a crime, with fines for both clients and prostitutes, over and above existing laws forbidding the exploitation of prostitutes by pimps. The bill was her first major initiative as a minister.

Carfagna has clashed with Italy's controversial
deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini

Her remarks condemning “women who sell their bodies for money” was seized upon in particular by the Italian Committee for the Rights of Prostitutes, who claimed to represent an estimated 70,000 prostitutes working in the country.  But Catholic charities praised her.

In 2009 she became the first political promoter of the law against stalking, later included in the penal code thanks to the Maroni decree.

Also in 2009 she launched the first campaign against homophobia and against violence based on sexual orientation to be carried out by an Italian government.

Carfagna has continued to build her reputation as a politician determined to bring about change and in March this year was elected vice president of the Chamber of Deputies as a reflection of the respect she has gained.  Recently, she has been an outspoken critic of Italy's controversial current deputy prime minister, the Lega politician Matteo Salvini.

Via Botteghelle, typical of the narrow streets
to be found in Salerno's historic old town

Travel tip:

Salerno, situated some 55km (34 miles) south of Naples with a population of about 133,000, is a city with a reputation as an industrial port and is often overlooked by visitors to Campania, who tend to flock to Naples, Sorrento, the Amalfi coast and the Cilento. Yet it has an attractive waterfront and a quaint old town, at the heart of which is the Duomo, originally built in the 11th century, which houses in its crypt is the tomb of one of the twelve apostles of Christ, Saint Matthew the Evangelist. It is also a good base for excursions both to the Amalfi coast, just a few kilometres to the north, and the Cilento, which can be found at the southern end of the Gulf of Salerno. Hotels are also cheaper than at the more fashionable resorts.

Hotels in Salerno by TripAdvisor

Amalfi occupies a spectacularly beautiful setting on the
Campania coast between Naples and Salerno

Travel tip:

Amalfi, just 25km (16 miles) along the coast from Salerno, occupies a dramatic natural setting at the foot of steep cliffs along the stretch of spectacular Campania coastline that takes its name from the town and is one of Italy’s best-known tourist attractions. The town itself attracts huge numbers of visitors each year.  Its ninth-century Duomo dominates the town's central piazza, sitting at the top of a wide flight of steps. The cloister (Chiostro del Paradiso) and museum close by house sculptures, mosaics and other relics.  Radiating away from the cathedral, narrow streets offer many souvenir shops and cafes for visitors.  Amalfi is accessible by bus from Sorrento and Salerno and there are boat services that run along the coast.

More reading:

Silvio Berlusconi - the entrepreneur who became Italy's most controversial prime minister

How Irene Pavetti swapped political office for television

The political campaigner Emma Bonino

Also on this day:

1737: The death of violin maker Antonio Stradivari

1957: The death of entrepreneur Camillo Castiglioni

1966: The birth of record-breaking goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca


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Alessandra Mussolini – politician

Controversial granddaughter of Fascist dictator

Alessandra  Mussolini is an Italian MEP

The MEP Alessandra Mussolini, niece of actress Sophia Loren and granddaughter of Italy’s former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, was born on this day in 1962 in Rome.

Formerly an actress and model, Mussolini entered politics in the early 1990s as a member of the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, which had its roots in the Italian Social Republic, the German puppet state led by her grandfather from September 1943 until his death in April 1945.

Her views have changed in more recent years and she has become known for embracing modern issues including abortion, artificial insemination, gay rights and civil unions from a progressive standpoint that has more in common with left-wing feminism.

She has left behind her association with the far right and serves on the European Parliament as representative for Central Italy under a centre-right Forza Italia ticket.

However, she is not without some admiration for the policies of her grandfather.  Only recently she caused consternation when asked her opinion on what to do about an escalating Mafia war in the Roman seaside resort of Ostia by claiming that “granddad would have sorted this out in two or three months.”

Mussolini in her days as an
 aspiring young actress

The daughter of Benito Mussolini’s fourth son Romano, a jazz pianist who married Sophia Loren’s younger sister, Anna Maria Villani Scicolone, also an actress, she was taken under Loren’s wing as a child and was only 14 years old when she appeared with her aunt (in the role of her daughter) and Marcello Mastroianni in Ettore Scola’s award-winning movie Una giornata particolare (A Special Day).

After studying at the American Overseas School and then Sapienza University in Rome, where she graduated in 1986 and then obtained a Master’s in medicine and surgery, Alessandra returned to the cinema, winning acclaim for her role in another Loren hit, Sabato, domenica e lunedi (Saturday, Sunday and Monday), directed by Lina Wertmüller.

Somewhat ironically, given her ancestry, she had a part in the American-made film The Assisi Underground, which focussed on the efforts of a Franciscan priest to rescue Jews from the Nazis

She also recorded an album of romantic pop songs, albeit released only in Japan, and twice posed for Playboy magazine shoots.

She was elected to the Italian parliament in 1992 for a Naples constituency as a member of MSI, which would later evolve into the Allianza Nationale.  The following year she ran for Mayor of Naples, although she was beaten by the former communist, Antonio Bassolino.

Alessandra has inherited some of her
grandfather's talent for passionate speeches

At the time she did not shy from associations with her grandfather’s politics.  At an MSI rally in Rome in 1992, during which supporters defied party instructions not to wear blackshirts and give Fascist salutes, she stood on a balcony at the Palazzo Venezia, from which the self-proclaimed Duce had delivered many speeches, and shouted “Grazia, Nonno!” (Thanks, Granddad!) as supporters marched past.

Later, she quit the Allianza Nationale after its leader, Gianfranco Fini, in an attempt to move the party away from its perceived position at the far right, made a visit to Israel in which he apologised for Italy’s role as an Axis Power in the Second World War and described Fascism as part of the “absolute evil” that brought about the Holocaust, although she conceded that the world should “beg the forgiveness of Israel” for what had happened.

When she then formed the Social Action party and organised a coalition named Social Alternative, it was expected she would continue to propagate a far-right ideology, so it came as a surprise that she chose to campaign on progressive policies usually associated with the left.

After the Italian general election of April 2008, Mussolini served as a member of the Italian parliament within Silvio Berlusconi's alliance of right wing parties, The People of Freedom.

In the election in February 2013, she was elected to the Senate for The People of Freedom, which was rebranded in November 2013 as Berlusconi relaunched Forza Italia, which had brought him huge success in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, including an unprecedented nine years as prime minister, the longest-serving Italian leader since Benito Mussolini.

In the 2014 European Parliament election, Alessandra Mussolini was elected for Forza Italia, a position she still holds.

The Palazzo Venezia looks out over the Piazza Venezia
and the Via del Plebiscito

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Venezia, formerly known as the Palace of St. Mark, is a palace in central Rome, just north of the Capitoline Hill. Originally a modest medieval house intended as the residence of the cardinals appointed to the church of San Marco, in 1469 it became a residential papal palace. In 1564, Pope Pius IV, to curry favour with the Republic of Venice, gave the mansion to the Venetian embassy to Rome on condition that part of the building would remain a residence for the cardinals. Today, the palace, which faces Piazza Venezia and Via del Plebiscito, houses a museum. Its association with Benito Mussolini, who had an office in the palace, led to the balcony from which he made his speeches remaining covered up for many years amid fears it would become a place of pilgrimage for Fascist sympathisers, but it has recently been renovated and opened to the public.

Roman ruins at Ostia Antica

Travel tip:

The seaside resort of Ostia lies 30km (19 miles) to the southwest of the centre of Rome, yet is part of the Rome metropolitan area and thus the only part of the city on the Tyrrhenian Sea.  Situated just across the Tiber river from Fiumicino, home of Rome’s largest international airport, it adjoins the remains of the ancient Roman city of Ostia Antica. Many Romans spend the summer holidays in the modern town, swelling a population of about 85,000.

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Letizia Moratti – politician and businesswoman

First woman to be Mayor of Milan and head of RAI

Letizia Moratti was a government minister
and the first female Mayor of Milan

Letizia Moratti, one of Europe’s best-known businesswomen and a successful politician, was born on this day in 1949 in Milan.

Married to the oil magnate Gianmarco Moratti, she was chair of the state television network RAI between 1994 and 1996, a minister in former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s second and third administrations and Mayor of Milan between 2006 and 2011.

Born Letizia Maria Brichetto Arnaboldi, her antecedents are the Brichetto family from Genoa, who founded the first insurance brokerage company in Italy, and the noble Arnaboldi family from Milan.  Her grandmother, Mimona Brichetto Arnaboldi, was a society hostess in the 1930s and an outspoken opponent of Fascism.

Letizia attended a private school in Milan and had classical dance classes at the Carla Strauss Academy in the Brera district.  She attended the University of Milan and graduated in political science.

At around the same time, she met Gianmarco Moratti, an oil contractor whose brother, Massimo, a petrochemicals tycoon, is the former chairman of Internazionale.

With funding from the Moratti family, Letizia launched her first business at the age of 25 when she founded GPA, an insurance brokerage which eventually became a subsidiary of the Moratti Group.  In 1990 she joined the board of the Italian Commercial Bank.

Moratti with the president Giorgio Napolitano on
the occasion she was honoured by the state

It was during Silvio Berlusconi’s first administration, in 1994, that she became the first woman to be chair of RAI. During her two years in the role, she supervised radical internal reorganization turned losses into a significant profit.

Moratti joined Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and served as Minister for Education, Universities and Scientific Research from 2001 to 2006, during which time she introduced reforms in the Italian schools system and in university teaching.

After leaving national government she stood for mayor of her home city in 2006 and won with a 52 per cent share of the vote, which opened the way for her follow her own ideals, particularly in terms of the environment.

The first woman to be elected mayor of the city, she introduced measures to encourage Milanese citizens to ride bicycles, increasing the number of secure places to leave bicycles and making available 5,000 bicycles to rent, and to discourage the use of cars by introducing a congestion charge based on emissions.

During her period in office, she also made a successful bid to have Milan host Expo 2015.

Moratti has been a fervent campaigner
against drug abuse

Moratti failed to win a second term, losing to a left-wing candidate who, ironically, was supported by her brother-in-law, Massimo, who could never quite reconcile his support for his sister-in-law with his opposition to Berlusconi, owner of Inter’s city rivals, AC Milan.

Away from politics, Moratti has been a fervent anti-drugs campaigner. Since 1996 she has been a member of the steering committee of Rainbow - the International Association Against Drugs – and in March 2000 she was appointed Civic Ambassador of the United Nations against Drugs and Crime.

She is the founder of the San Patrignano Foundation, which aims to help drug users find a different path.

Since February 2012, Moratti has been developing microcredit projects aimed at helping disadvantaged people who do not qualify for traditional bank loans.

In January 2014 she was awarded the honour of Grande Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.

She has two children, Gabriele and Gilda, and is currently chair of the management board of UBI Banca.

A typical narrow street in the trendy Brera
district of Milan

Travel tip:

The Brera district of Milan is so named because in around the ninth century, for military purposes, it was turned into a ‘brayda’ – a Lombardic word meaning ‘an area cleared of trees’.  Today, it is one of Milan’s most fashionable neighbourhoods, its narrow streets lined with trendy bars and restaurants, and has been home to artists and writers traditionally, giving it a Bohemian feel that has brought comparisons with Montmartre in Paris.  The Brera is home to the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and the Brera Art Gallery.

Bicycles to rent are a feature of Milan today

Travel tip:

Visitors to Milan by car should note that access to the centre of the city is subject, like London and other major cities, to a congestion charge, introduced during Letizia Moratti’s time as mayor.  The area covers about 8.2 square kilometres and is controlled by entry gates with cameras.  Charges vary for residents and non-residents and the vehicle’s pollution rating. Whereas hybrid and electric cars have benefitted from exemptions, some diesel vehicles are banned.  There are a number of out-of-town car parks with transport access to the centre, where many visitors take advantage of the bicycle rental scheme, also introduced by Letizia Moratti.

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Bud Spencer – swimmer-turned-actor

Competed at two Olympics before turning to screen career

Bud Spencer (right) with Terence Hill in the 1974
comedy Watch Out, We're Mad!

The actor known as Bud Spencer was born Carlo Pedersoli on this day in 1929 in Naples.

He was best known for the series of so-called Spaghetti Westerns and comedies he made with another Italian-born actor, Terence Hill.

Hill was from Venice and his real name was Mario Girotti.  They began their partnership in 1967 in a Spaghetti Western directed by Giuseppe Colizzi called God Forgives…I Don’t! and were asked to change their names so that they would sound more American.

Pedersoli came up with Bud Spencer because his movie idol was Spencer Tracy and his favourite American beer was Budweiser.   The two would go on to make 18 movies together, with westerns such as Ace High (1968) and They Call Me Trinity (1970) winning them box office success.

As Carlo Pedersoli, he had already achieved a measure of fame as a swimmer, the first Italian to swim the 100m freestyle in less than one minute.  He represented Italy at the Olympics in Helsinki in 1952 and Melbourne four years later, on each occasion reaching the semi-final in the 100m freestyle.

He also played professional water polo, winning an Italian championship with SS Lazio and a gold medal at the 1955 Mediterranean Games in Barcelona.

Bud Spencer in 2015

In a rich and varied life, Pedersoli also learned how to fly jets and helicopters, ran his own airline and, at the personal invitation of Silvio Berlusconi, stood as a Forza Italia candidate in regional elections in Lazio in 2005, although he was not elected.

Born in the Santa Lucia area of Naples, Pedersoli showed an aptitude for swimming from an early age.  His family moved to Rome when he was 10 and he began to swim competitively while attending high school.  He attended Rome’s Sapienza University from the age of 17, studying chemistry, but was forced to give up his course when his family moved again, this time to South America.

For two years, he worked at the Italian consulate in Recife, Brazil, and became fluent in Portuguse.

Back in Rome, he made his debut in international swimming competition in 1949 and, after his 59.5 sec 100m freestyle in 1950 he swam for Italy in the European championships in Vienna.  After a silver medal at the 1951 Mediterranean Games in Alexandria (Egypt), he was called up for the Italian Olympic squad.

At the same time, Pedersoli was studying law and taking his first tentative steps in the movie business, landing a part as a Praetorian Guard in in the 1951 MGM epic Quo Vadis, filmed in Italy.

There was no overnight rise to fame.  He married Maria Amato, daughter of the Italian film producer Giuseppe Amato, in 1961, but his career did not take off until that Spaghetti Western offer in 1967.  A distinctive figure, heavily built and with a thick black beard, he quickly became a favourite, particularly for the way his character would end on-screen fights by slamming his fist down on the head of his opponent.

Before he found fame as Bud Spencer the movie star,
Carlo Pedersoli was a Olympic swimmer

He decided he would learn to fly after appearing with Terence Hill in a 1973 adventure comedy called All The Way Boys, in which Colizzi took his two Spaghetti Western characters and placed them in a modern context, as bush pilots in South America, where they made money by faking aircraft crashes for insurance scams.

By 1984, with a licence to fly jets and helicopters, Spencer had set up Mistral Air, an air-mail handler which also flew Catholic pilgrims to sacred religious sites.  He later sold the airline to Poste Italiane, who also operate commercial passenger flights.

Spencer had a number of starring roles on television in the 1990s and continued to make films until well into his 70s.  He died in Rome in 2016, aged 86.  His movies with Terence Hill are still regularly shown on television and he retains an enthusiastic following in several countries around Europe, notably Germany and Hungary.

Via Santa Lucia leads from the Royal Palace
to the waterfront at Castel dell'Ovo

Travel tip:

Santa Lucia is the area of central Naples that can be found between the Royal Palace and Borgo Marinari, the small island on which stands Castel dell’Ovo.  The first settlement there was established by the Greeks and the Roman general Lucullus was so taken with the views across the bay that he built a sumptuous fortified villa, Castellum Lucullanum, that would eventually become the home in exile of the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus.  Nowadays, the area is a mix of grand hotels, sailing clubs and many fine fish restaurants.

Castel dell'Ovo with the yachts and harbourside restaurants
of Borgo Marinari in the foreground

Travel tip:

Castel dell’Ovo was built on the site of the Castellum Lucullanum, which was demolished in the 9^th century. The castle was built by the Normans in the 12^th century and remains the oldest fortified structure in Naples.  It took its name from a legend about the Roman poet Virgil, who in medieval times was thought to have mystical powers.  The legend had it that Virgil placed a magical egg – ouvo in Italian – in the foundations, and that had the egg ever broken then the castle would be destroyed that Naples would suffer a series of catastrophes.

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Umberto Bossi - politician

Fiery leader of separatist Lega Nord

Umberto Bossi founded Lega Nord in 1991

Controversial politician Umberto Bossi was born on this day in 1941 in the town of Cassano Magnago in Lombardy.

Until 2012, Bossi was leader of Lega Nord (Northern League), a political party whose goal was to achieve autonomy for northern Italy and establish a new independent state, to be called Padania.

With his distinctive, gravelly voice and penchant for fiery, sometimes provocative rhetoric, Bossi won a place in the Senate in 1987 representing his original party, Lega Lombarda. He was dismissed as an eccentric by some in the political mainstream but under his charismatic leadership Lega Nord became a force almost overnight.

Launched as Alleanza Nord in 1989, bringing together a number of regional parties including Bossi’s own Lega Lombarda, it was renamed Lega Nord in 1991 and fought the 1992 general election with stunning results.

With an impressive 8.7% of the vote, Lega Nord went into the new parliament with 56 deputies and 26 senators, making it the fourth largest party in Italy.

By 1996 that share had risen to 10% and Bossi had become a major figure in Italian politics.

Three times he was Silvio Berlusconi’s key ally, helping the former prime minister win power in 1994, 2001 and 2008 - and lose it in the first instance, when his withdrawal of support for Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia-led coalition brought about the government's collapse.

Bossi had a reputation for provocative speeches

Despite that, Bossi served in the next two Berlusconi governments as a minister. In time, he accepted that a secession from Italy was an unrealistic ambition, but he continued to press for greater autonomy for the northern regions and extracted promises from Berlusconi in return for his support.

He was Minister for Institutional Reforms and Devolution from 2001 to 2004 and Minister of Federal Reforms from 2008 to 2011.

Bossi may well have become an even bigger figure on the Italian political stage had he not suffered a serious stroke in 2004, a setback from which he ultimately recovered but which cost him considerable momentum.  Shortly before the illness, he had become a member of the European Parliament.

He resigned as general secretary in 2012, having become embroiled in a financial scandal, with accusations levelled at him by prosecutors that he misappropriated funds directed to Lega Nord through the Italian tax system.

Bossi had become interested in politics while at the University of Pavia, where he studied medicine, through a meeting with Bruno Salvadori, leader of the centre-left Valdostan Union party.  During this time he also had a brief flirtation with a music career, performing as a singer-songwriter under the name of Donato.

Advancing years and the effects of a stroke
did not stop Bossi campaigning

His own political motivations were quite narrow, driven by the perception that the rich north is burdened with subsidising the poorer south.  In 1982, the autonomist Lega Lombarda was born.  Lega Nord emerged from alliances made with similar movements in Veneto and Piedmont, driven by calls to break away from Rome and build a new country called Padania.

Most of Bossi’s firebrand speeches at the time depicted the south of Italy and the capital, Rome – which he dubbed ‘Roma ladrona’ or ‘thieving Rome’ – as a black hole of corruption and waste, relentlessly eating up the taxes of hard-working, decent northerners. He and his fellow Lega Nord politicians brazenly pandered to the pockets of old-fashioned contempt for southerners that still existed in the north of the country.

Apart from southerners, targets for Bossi’s ire included the European Union, which he once described as a "the Soviet Union of the West”, while his outspoken comments on homosexuality and immigration provoked at times fierce reactions.

Married with four children, Bossi voluntarily stepped down as leader during the 2012 investigation, claiming he was doing so “for the good of the party”.  He was immediately made Lega Nord’s honorary president.

Lega Nord supporters gathered in Venice as Bossi made his
1996 'declaration of independence' from a floating pontoon

Travel tip:

Despite the sense of theatre attached to as Umberto Bossi’s symbolic ‘declaration of independence’ for Padania at a rally of green-shirted supporters in Venice in 1996, the ‘country’ of Padania has never existed as anything other than a geographical or socio-economic term to describe the area that encompasses Val Padana – the Po Valley.  There is some evidence also that Padanian was a term once used to group languages spoken by population groups north of a line linking La Spezia in Liguria with Rimini on the Adriatic coast.  Bossi’s Lega Nord tended to define Padania as a broad area of northern Italy consisting of Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria.

A view over the rooftops of Cassano Magnago

Travel tip:

Bossi’s home town of Cassano Magnago is situated about 20km (12 miles) south of Varese in Lombardy, adjoining the city of Gallarate and close to the Valle del Ticino national park.  The area is said to have been populated since around 500BC and there is evidence that it held a strategic position and was the scene of a battle during the Roman conquest of Milan in 225BC. Apart from being Bossi’s birthplace, it is the home of the 18^th century sculptor Giovanni Battista Maino and the two-times Giro d’Italia winner Ivan Basso.

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