Fabrizio De André - singer-songwriter

‘Poet of music’ who spoke for the marginalised in society

Fabrizio De André's lyrics are studied by Italian
students as part of the school curriculum

The singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André, whose songs often celebrated the lives of the marginalised in Italian society and gained him a popularity that has already outlived him by a quarter of a century, died on this day in 1999 in the Città Studi district of Milan.

De André, who was a month short of his 59th birthday, had been diagnosed with lung cancer six months earlier, having been a heavy smoker for much of his adult life. After his death at the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, his body was returned to his native Genoa, where a crowd estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 gathered for his funeral at the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano.

His impact on Italian culture has been such that streets, squares and schools in many towns and cities bear his name. A three-hour tribute to him broadcast on a relatively obscure Italian TV channel to mark the 10th anniversary of his death attracted an audience of almost eight million viewers, as many as tuned in to the new series of Grande Fratello - the Italian version of Big Brother - on a mainstream channel the following evening.

Nicknamed ‘Faber’ by his close friend, the writer and comic actor Paolo Villaggio, and known as ‘the songwriter of the marginalised’ and ‘the poet of the defeated’ as well as simply the ‘poet of music’, De André had a voice of warmth and depth but it was for his lyrics that he acquired a huge following.

De André drew inspiration from
the streets of his home city

Many of his songs told stories of outcasts and rebels or tackled subjects such as prostitution and homosexuality that others regarded as off-limits in a country where the Catholic Church still loomed large over public morality. He did not shy from criticising the church itself, which he felt was riddled with hypocrisy.

His lyrics are often included in school anthologies of modern poetry and he has attained the status of cult hero among some on the Italian political left, itself increasingly marginalised by the shift towards the centre and the right.

Although sometimes spoken of as Italy’s Bob Dylan, De André’s major influences were said to be Leonard Cohen, the Canadian singer-songwriter also renowned for deeply meaningful lyrics, and the French singer-songwriter and poet, Georges Bressens, to whom he was introduced when his father gave him some records as a teenager. It was Bressens who inspired De André to be a pacifist and a libertarian.

He was a jazz enthusiast in his youth, singing and playing the guitar at La Borsa di Arlecchino, a café-theatre located in the basement of the Palazzo della Borsa in Genoa. Always willing to experiment, he explored many types of music in his career, as well as singing in Genoese and Neapolitan dialects in addition to Italian.

Born into a relatively prosperous family in the Pegli district of Genoa in 1940, De André’s early life was inevitably shaped by the war into which Italy was led by Benito Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler and Nazi Germany.  His father, Giuseppe, who had made his money through his purchase of a technical institute in the city, was fervently anti-Fascist, which was part of his reason for taking the family to live in a farmhouse in his native Piemonte, both to avoid the attention of the authorities and to escape Allied bombing. They would not return to Genoa until 1945. 

The writer and comic actor Paolo Villaggio was
De André's close friend and supporter

It was not long before De André began to show both musical talent and a rebellious streak, at the age of eight paying off his violin teacher to let him skip lessons. Later, he would drop out of law school after receiving royalties from a song - La canzone di Marinella (Marinella’s song) - which he sold to Mina, Italy’s all-time biggest selling female star. Its lyrics, which told the story of a young orphan forced into prostitution, provided early evidence of De André’s fascination with the low-life characters populating Genoa's back streets.

He was still a student when he made his stage debut in February 1961, singing two songs as part of a programme of music in a theatre in Genoa. The two songs - Nuvole barocche (Baroque clouds) and E fu la notte (And it was night) were the A and B sides of his debut single, released in 1961.

Although it was 1975 before he could be persuaded to appear on stage in a solo concert, his career would ultimately stretch over four decades, during which he released 14 studio albums, a number of live albums, and numerous singles.  Songs such that established his status as a songwriter and singer of note included Amico fragile, written in stream-of-consciousness style about a drunken evening with friends; Crêuza de mä, a song in Genoese dialect about the tough lives of sailors and fishermen in Genoa; and La ballata del Michè, a song based on the true story of a southern Italian emigrant to Genoa who was sentenced to 20 years in jail after killing a man who had tried to seduce his girlfriend.

Some of his songs were based on his own life experience, not least his kidnapping in 1979, along with his partner, Dori Ghezzi, by bandits in Sardinia, where they lived. They were held for four months until his father paid a ransom, said to be one billion lire. Afterwards, De André wrote Hotel Supramonte, drawing the title from the mountains where he was imprisoned, in which he likened their captivity to the feeling of confinement in love. 

De André's career spanned
almost 40 years

At the trial of the men who seized him, he chose not to condemn his captors, saying that “they were the real prisoners, not I” and blaming the organised crime bosses who made the bandits do their dirty work for them.

Although considered a subversive by the Italian police, De André was never actively involved with politics. Indeed, when the student riots were taking place in 1968, he spent his time writing an album about Jesus, portraying Christ as a revolutionary hero fighting for freedom. Songs from the album are still played in churches, despite De André's lack of faith. 

His adoption by the left as a favourite son followed Silvio Berlusconi’s election victory in 2008, when he won a third term as prime minister, following the collapse of Romano Prodi’s centre left Olive Tree coalition.

Ironically, as they tried to make ends meet during the early 1960s, De Andre and Villaggio would sometimes take work as cruise ships musicians in the backing groups supporting Berlusconi, who was then a singer.

Married twice, to Enrica Rignon, known to him as Puny, and later to Ghezzi, he left two children, a son, Cristiano, from his first marriage, and a daughter, known as Luvi. After his death, he was laid to rest in the monumental Staglieno cemetery, in the De André family chapel.

Pegli is an affluent, mainly residential suburb
but has a lively seafront promenade

Travel tip:

Pegli, where Fabrizio De André was born, is a mainly residential area of Genoa but boasts a lively seafront promenade and a number of hotels. There are good links by road, rail and boat to the central area of Genoa. The port city of Genoa, the capital of the Liguria region, has a rich history as a powerful trading centre with considerable wealth built on its shipyards and steelworks, but also boasts many fine buildings, many of which have been restored to their original splendour.  The Doge's Palace, the 16th century Royal Palace and the Romanesque-Renaissance style San Lorenzo Cathedral are just three examples.  The area around the restored harbour area offers a maze of fascinating alleys and squares, enhanced recently by the work of Genoa architect Renzo Piano, and a landmark aquarium, the largest in Italy.

The cloister at the main building of the University
of Milan, founded in 1924

Travel tip:

Città Studi, where De André was treated at the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, is Milan’s university district. It developed from 1915 onwards to the northeast of the city centre, although there are other buildings around the city that are now part of the University.  The streets of the Città Studi area are notable for bars, pizza restaurants and ice cream shops. The University of Milan was founded in 1924 from the merger of two other academic institutions. By 1928, it already had the fourth-highest number of enrolled students in Italy, after Naples, Rome and Padua. Colloquially referred to as La Statale, it is today one of the largest universities in Europe, with about 60,000 students, and a permanent teaching and research staff of about 2,000.

Also on this day:

1693: Earthquake in southeastern Sicily

1944: The death of Fascist politician Galeazzo Ciano

1975: The birth of the politician Matteo Renzi

1980: The birth of the Giannini sextuplets

Home

Michele Novaro - composer

Patriot who wrote music for Italian national anthem

Michele Novaro was an opera
singer as well as a composer

The composer and singer Michele Novaro, who wrote the music that accompanies Goffredo Mameli’s words in Italy’s national anthem, was born on this day in 1818 in Genoa.

While not as actively involved in the Risorgimento movement as Mameli, who took part in various insurrections and died fighting alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi in the battle for a unified, independent Italy, Novaro was a patriot nonetheless.

A committed liberal in his politics, he was a supporter of the cause of independence and composed the music for several patriotic songs in addition to Mameli’s Il canto degli Italiani - The Song of the Italians - which is also known as Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) and L’inno di Mameli (Mameli’s hymn).

The oldest of five children, Novaro was born into a theatrical background. His father, Gerolamo, was a stagehand at the Teatro Carlo Felice, the Genoa opera house. His mother, Giuseppina Canzio, was the sister of a well-known painter, scenographer and impresario, Michele Canzio.

Novaro attended singing school and achieved a respectable standard as an opera singer. He was good enough to sing in the Genoese premiere of Gaetano Donizetti's opera Gianni di Calais.

He spent three seasons in Vienna as the second resident tenor at Vienna’s Porta Carinthia theater, returning to Italy to take up a post as second tenor and choirmaster at the Teatro Regio and Teatro Carignano in Turin.

Goffredo Mameli, who was killed
fighting alongside Garibaldi

Novaro willingly gave his services in the cause of independence by writing music to patriotic songs, as well as organising fundraisers in support of Garibaldi. 

He and Mameli, who was also from Genoa, were friends and in 1847 after Mameli had written the words for the song that would earn him immortality it was Novaro he sought out to write a suitable score. 

Novaro is said to have received the text of Mameli’s poem at the Turin home of the patriotic writer, Lorenzo Valerio. He immediately sketched out a first draft of the music, which he then completed on his return to his home, staying up late into the night to perfect it.

The writer Anton Giulio Barrili, another friend of Novaro, later wrote about the birth of Il canto degli Italiani, quoting what Novaro had told him following his first sight of the song at Valerio’s home.

‘I sat at the harpsichord, with Goffredo's verses on the music stand, and I strummed, I murdered that poor instrument with my convulsed fingers, always with my eyes on the hymn, putting down melodic phrases, one on top of the other, but a thousand miles away from the idea that they could adapt to those words. 

‘I got up, dissatisfied with myself; I stayed a little longer at Valerio's house, but always with those verses before my mind's eye. I saw that there was no remedy; I took my leave, and ran home. 

‘There, without even taking off my hat, I threw myself at the piano. The tune I had strummed at Valerio's house came back to my mind: I wrote it down on a sheet of paper, the first that came to hand: in my agitation I turned the lamp over on the harpsichord, and consequently also on the poor sheet of paper: this was the original of the hymn "Fratelli d'Italia".’

Friends paid for a memorial for 
Novaro in Staglieno cemetery

Despite leaving his mark on Italian history, Novaro never achieved fame or fortune.

Such money as he did make, he ploughed into setting up a free choral school in Genoa, to which he devoted his later years.  Struggling with declining health and financial difficulties, he died in October, 1885.

His former students arranged for a funeral monument to be erected to him in his hometown in the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, next to the tomb of Giuseppe Mazzini, another major Risorgimento figure who was among his heroes.

Although Il canto degli Italiani was very popular during Italian unification and the following decades, it was not until a century later that it became Italy’s national anthem.

At the time the Kingdom of Italy came into being in 1861, the republican and Jacobin connotations of Fratelli d'Italia were difficult to reconcile with the new state's constitution as a monarchy rather than the republic that Mazzini and his supporters craved. 

The new kingdom instead adopted Marcia Reale (Royal March), the House of Savoy's official anthem, written by Napoleone Giotti and set to music in 1831 by Giuseppe Gabetti. 

Italy finally became a republic after World War Two, following a referendum that rejected the monarchy. On October 12, 1946, it chose Il canto degli Italiani as a provisional national anthem. It retained its de facto status until December 2017, when it was at last recognised as the Italian anthem by law.

The Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, where
Novaro's father worked as a stagehand

Travel tip:

The port city of Genoa (Genova), where Michele Novaro was born, is the capiital of the Liguria region. Once a powerful trading centre, the city’s wealth was built on its shipyards and steelworks, but it also boasts many fine buildings, many of which have been restored to their original splendour.  The Doge's Palace, the 16th century Royal Palace and the Romanesque-Renaissance style San Lorenzo Cathedral are just three examples.  The area around the restored harbour area offers a maze of fascinating alleys and squares, enhanced recently by the work of Genoa architect Renzo Piano, and a landmark aquarium, the largest in Italy. At the time of Novara’s birth, the City Architect was Carlo Barabino, a prominent Neoclassicist who designed the Teatro Carlo Felice Opera, the Palazzo dell'Accademia, and the facades of several other buildings. The theatre opened in 1828. 

The Palazzo Reale - Royal Palace - in Turin is
a reminder of the wealth of the Savoy family

Travel tip:

The Savoy dynasty left a significant mark on Turin, shaping its architecture, culture, and overall identity. The Royal Palace served as the opulent official residence of the Savoy kings for centuries. Its lavish interiors, including the Throne Room and the Royal Apartments, offer a glimpse into the grandeur of the dynasty. Housed within the Royal Palace, the Royal Armoury is now a museum boasting an impressive collection of weapons and armour. Also located inside the Royal Palace, the Savoy Gallery houses a remarkable collection of paintings by Italian and European masters, including works by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Canaletto.  Beyond the city, a network of Savoy palaces, villas, and castles is scattered throughout Piemonte. The city’s Duomo - the Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista - was built between 1491 and 1498 in Piazza San Giovanni. The Chapel of the Holy Shroud, where the Turin Shroud is kept, was added in 1668. Some members of the House of Savoy are buried in the Duomo while others are buried in the Basilica di Superga on the outskirts of the city.

Also on this day: 

1573: The birth of Baroque artist Giovanni Battista Crespi

1896: The birth of writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

1916: The birth of film director Dino Risi

1956: The birth of racing driver Michele Alboreto

1967: The birth of model and singer Carla Bruni

Home

Eugenio Montale - poet and translator

Influential writer was fourth Italian to be awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

Eugenio Montale became a
Nobel Prize winner in 1975

Eugenio Montale, who became one of the most influential Italian writers of the 20th century and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975, died on this day in 1981 in Milan at the age of 84.

Montale's most famous work is often considered to be his first, a collection of poems he published in 1925 under the title Ossi di seppia - Cuttlefish Bones. These poems established his use of stark imagery, his introspective tone and his fascination with themes such as desolation, alienation and mortality, and the search for elusive meaning in a fragmented world.

Later collections such as Le occasioni (1939) - The Occasions - and La bufera e altro (1956) - The Storm and Other Things - reinforced his reputation as one of Italian literature’s 20th century greats.

Montale was born in 1896 in a building overlooking the botanical gardens of the University of Genoa, a short distance from the city’s Piazza Principe railway station. His father, Domenico, was the co-owner of a chemical products company.

As a young man, Montale was dogged by ill health but obtained a qualification in accountancy and for eight years had ambitions to be an opera singer under the tuition of the baritone, Ernesto Sivori. He never performed in public and after Sivori died in 1923 he did not pursue his studies, focussing more and more on literature, taking it upon himself to learn about Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and D'Annunzio in particular.

Eugenio Montale's first volume of poetry
established him as a great literary talent

Despite his frail health, he was passed fit for military service when Italy entered World War One and experienced frontline fighting in the area around Vallarsa and Rovereto. By the time he was discharged in 1920, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant.

Politically, he opposed Fascism to the extent of signing Benedetto Croce’s Manifesto of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, yet after the fall of Mussolini he rejected both the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communists and, apart from a brief membership of the centre-left Partito d'Azione, steered clear of any involvement in politics.

He began publishing poetry in the 1920s, initially influenced by the works of poets such as Ezra Pound and TS Eliot, but also drawing on the inspiration he took from family holidays on the rugged Ligurian coast around the Cinque Terre and Rapallo. Montale often uses imagery drawn from the sea and the Mediterranean landscape to convey feelings of isolation and the fragility of existence.

In 1927, he moved to Florence, where he worked as a journalist and literary critic and mixed in the city's intellectual and artistic circles, attending literary gatherings of the café Le Giubbe Rosse, meeting Carlo Emilio Gadda, Tommaso Landolfi and Elio Vittorini among others.  He worked as an editor for the publisher Bemporad and later became the director of the Gabinetto Vieusseux Library, although he lost that position in 1938 because of his anti-Fascist views. 

From 1948 until his death, Montale lived in Milan. He became literary editor of the Corriere della Sera, dealing in particular with the Teatro alla Scala, and music critic for the Corriere d'informazione.

Montale was buried alongside his wife,
Drusilla, at cemetery outside Florence

Montale’s language skills enabled him to translate works by authors such as William Blake and Wallace Stevens into Italian, introducing these writers to a wider Italian audience. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975 as a recognition of his contributions to Italian poetry, joining Giosuè Carducci  (1904), Grazia Deledda (1926) and Luigi Pirandello (1934) as winners of the prestigious award. They would be followed by Dario Fo in 1997 and, posthumously, by Elsa Morante. Montale had earlier been made a senator for life.

In 1962, in Montereggi, near Fiesole, he had married Drusilla Tanzi, with whom he had been living since 1939. Sadly, after a fall that left her with a fractured femur, she died in October 1964 at the age of 77. He would reflect poignantly on her death in his 1966 collection, Xenia, written in a more personal style. 

In failing health, Montale himself died in Milan’s San Pio X clinic in 1981 a month before his 85th birthday.  A state funeral was held in Milan Cathedral and he was buried in the cemetery next to the church of San Felice a Ema, a suburb on the southern outskirts of Florence, next to his wife Drusilla. 

His archive is preserved at the University of Pavia, with which Montale had a long association and where his daughter, Bianca, was a professor.

The pretty fishing village of Boccadesse is only 
a short distance from the historic centre of Genoa

Travel tip:

The port city of Genoa (Genova), where Eugenio Montale was born, is the capital of the Liguria region. It has a rich blend of mediaeval history, Renaissance architecture, and a vibrant modern culture. Its strategic location has made it a centre of trade and commerce for centuries, with considerable wealth built on its shipyards and steelworks, but also boasts many fine buildings, many of which have been restored to their original splendour.  The Doge's Palace, the 16th century Royal Palace and the Romanesque-Renaissance style San Lorenzo Cathedral are just three examples.  The area around the restored harbour area offers a maze of fascinating alleys and squares, enhanced recently by the work of Genoa architect Renzo Piano, and a landmark aquarium, the largest in Italy, which showcases a diverse array of marine life, from sharks and dolphins to jellyfish and seahorses. The picturesque fishing village of Boccadasse, just outside the historic centre, boasts pastel-coloured houses, a charming harbour, and authentic seafood restaurants.

Manarola, where houses cling to rugged cliffs, is
one of the five villages of the Cinque Terre

Travel tip:

The Cinque Terre, where Montale spent family holidays as a child, is a breathtaking part of the Italian Riviera renowned for its picturesque villages perched on cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is made up of five villages - Riomaggiore, known for its narrow alleys, charming shops, and stunning views; Manarola, which has a picturesque harbour and colourful houses clinging to the cliff; Vernazza, which has mediaeval castle and a sandy beach; Corniglia, which can be reached only by a steep staircase or a shuttle bus but offers stunning views of the surrounding coastline; and Monterosso al Mare, the largest of the five, which has a sandy beach and a historic centre.  The Cinque Terre National Park offers a network of hiking trails that connect the five villages, while boat tours offer the chance to explore the coastline from a different perspective. The Cinque Terre is known for Sciacchetrà, a sweet dessert wine made from dried grapes.

Also on this day:

1492: The birth of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino

1937: The birth of actress Daniela Rocca

1943: Nazis paratroopers free Mussolini from imprisonment at mountain ski resort

Home

Alessandro Varaldo – crime writer and playwright

The first Italian author of gialli to be accepted by Mondadori

Varaldo's Il sette bello was the
first giallo by an Italian

Alessandro Varaldo, the author credited with creating the first fictional Italian police officer, died on this day in 1953 in Rome.

His character, the police commissario Ascanio Bonichi, made his first appearance in Varaldo’s novel Il sette bello - the name by which Italians refer to the seven of diamonds in a deck of cards - which was published by Mondadori in 1931.

The author had been approached by Arnaldo Mondadori himself and encouraged to create a novel in Italian to appeal to the readers who were already eagerly buying their gialli, the Italian translations of English, American and French detective novels that the firm published.

Gialli take their name from the distinctive yellow - giallo in Italian - covers used by Mondadori for their crime novels in the 1930s. 

Varaldo was born in Ventimiglia in Liguria in 1873 and grew up to become a journalist, novelist and playwright. From 1910 onwards he wrote novels, short stories and plays and contributed to newspapers such as Gazzetta del Popolo and Il Caffaro. 

He was president of the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers between 1920 and 1928 and director of the Academy of Dramatic Art in Milan from 1943.

In 1931, the Italian Government had brought in measures to try to curb the number of translated books by foreign authors being published, which encouraged Varaldo, along with other authors at the time, to try his hand at the genre.

Varaldo, who was also a journalist, wrote
seven other gialli in addition to Il sette bello

Esteemed for the quality of his writing, which Mondadori considered essential for the books they published, Varaldo became the first Italian author accepted into Mondadori’s series of gialli, and he went on to write eight mysteries for them. He was able to reconcile the traditionally Anglo-Saxon genre of crime fiction with Fascist values in order to comply with the dictates of the Mussolini regime.

He portrayed Bonichi as a down to earth character from the countryside who solved his cases by chance, rather than using the more scientific methods employed by other fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes.

His novels were set in Rome before the war and described the city’s Baroque and neo-Baroque buildings, which formed a theatrical background during the night and at dawn, when the silhouette of a figure could be illuminated. Crime fiction experts think this evoked an irretrievable past for his readers to escape to.

Varaldo wrote a total of eight gialli between 1931 and 1938 and he also wrote some drammi gialli -detective plays - before his death.

Travel tip: 

Ventimiglia, where Alessandro Varaldo was born, is the last major town on the Italian riviera before the border with France, which is about 6km (3.7 miles) away. Situated about 130km (81 miles) west of the Ligurian capital Genoa, it is not a well known as nearby Sanremo but has plenty going for it, nonetheless, its charm enhanced by the pastel colours of its houses. The town is divided in two by the Roia river, which separates the newer lower town from the old upper town - Ventimiglia Alta - which sits on a hill encircled by walls. Ancient buildings and churches dating back to the 10th century make the climb worthwhile, as does the spectacular view over the Ligurian sea. The mediaeval old town is also home to the Biblioteca Civica Aprosiana - founded by the writer and Augustan monk Angelico Aprosio in 1648 - has one of the largest collections of 17th century manuscripts and books in Italy.  The elegant lower town is best known for the massive open-air market that takes place in the beautiful setting of the lungomare - the promenade - every Friday. There are a smaller number of stalls open on the other days of the week. For beach lovers, the Spiaggia dei Balzi Rossi and the Spiaggia delle Calandre are only a short walk from the centre.

Travel tip:

The Mondadori publishing house, whose Gialli Mondadori broke new ground in publishing in Italy as the first book series to feature detective and crime stories alone, was launched in Ostiglia, an historical town about 160 km (99 miles) southeast of Milan and about 30 km (19 miles) from Mantua. In Roman times, when it was called Hostilia, its location on the Via Claudia Augusta Padana saw it become a trade hub linking Emilia with northern Europe.  In the Middle Ages it was a stronghold of Verona before being acquired in turn by the Scaliger, Visconti and Gonzaga families. The Palazzina Mondadori, an elegant Art Nouveau-style building that was the first Arnoldo printing house, hosts Arnoldo Mondadori’s private library consisting of about 1,000 books, many signed by the authors. Mondadori relocated to Milan in 1929 and now boasts a modern headquarters in the suburb of Segrate, to the east of the centre.

More reading:

How Giorgio Mondadori helped launch the newspaper La Repubblica

Why Augusto De Angelis is regarded as the 'father of Italian crime fiction'

The Naples bank worker who became a leading modern crime writer

Also on this day:

1455: The birth of painter Fra Angelico

1564: The death of painter and sculptor Michelangelo

1626: The birth of biologist Francesco Redi

1967: The birth of footballer Roberto Baggio

1983: The birth of tennis champion Roberta Vinci

Home

Marco Polo - merchant and explorer

Venetian trader who described travels in China 

A 19th century portrait in mosaic of
Marco Polo at Palazzo Tursi in Genoa

The Italian explorer Marco Polo, who achieved a place in history as the first European to write in extensive detail about life in China, is thought by many historians to have died on or close to this day in 1324 in his home city of Venice.

Accounts of his final days say he had been confined to bed with an illness and that his doctor was concerned on January 8 that he was close to death. Indeed, so worried were those around his bedside that they sent for a local priest to witness his last will and testament, which Polo dictated in the presence of his wife, Donata, and their three daughters, who were appointed executors.

The supposition has been that he died on the same evening. The will document was preserved and is kept by the Biblioteca Marciana, the historic public library of Venice just across the Piazzetta San Marco from St Mark’s Basilica. It shows the date of the witnessing of Polo’s testament as January 9, although it should be noted that under Venetian law at the time, the change of date occurred at sunset rather than midnight.

Confusingly, the document recorded his death as occurring in June 1324 and the witnessing of the will on January 9, 1323. The consensus among historians, however, is that he reached his end in January, 1324.

Born in 1254 - again the specific date is unknown - Marco Polo was best known for his travels to Asia in the company of his father, Niccolò, and his uncle, Maffeo.

Having left Venice in 1271, when Marco was 16 or 17, they are said to have reached China in 1275 and remained there for 17 years. Marco wrote about the trip in a book that was originally titled Book of the Marvels of the World but is today known as The Travels of Marco Polo. It is considered a classic of travel literature.

A map showing the journeys said to have been 
made by Marco Polo on his travels to China

The book, which was written in prison after he had been captured during a war between the rival republics of Venice and Genoa upon returning to Italy, describes his experiences in China in terms of first-hand accounts. Sceptical experts have suggested some of the stories might have been appropriated from other explorers and merchants and passed off by Polo as his own. Yet although some of his descriptions of the exotic animals he ecountered seem somewhat fantastical, the accuracy of much of what he described has generally been confirmed in subsequent years.

The book, which Polo dictated to Rustichello da Pisa, a fellow prisoner of the Genoese who happened to be a writer, introduced European audiences to the mysteries of the Eastern world, including the wealth and sheer size of the Mongol Empire and China, providing descriptions of China, Persia, India, Japan and other Asian cities and countries.

Polo’s father and uncle had traded with the Middle East for many years and had become wealthy in the process. They had visited the western territories of the Mongol Empire on a previous expedition, established strong trading links and visited Shangdu, about 200 miles (320km) north of modern Beijing, where Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty, had an opulent summer palace, and which was immortalised by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge as Xanadu.

Their journey with Marco originally took them to Acre in present-day Israel, where - at the request of Kublai Khan - they secured some holy oil from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. They continued to the Persian port city of Hormuz and thereafter followed overland routes that later became known as the Silk Road.

Travelling through largely rough terrain, the journey to Shangdu took the best part of three years.  Marco Polo’s long stay owed itself partly to Kublai Khan taking him into his court and sending him on various official missions.  In that capacity, he extended his travels to include what is now the city of Hangzhou and may have crossed the border into India and what is now Myanmar.

A painting of unknown origin of Marco Polo's
father and uncle presenting a gift to Kublai Khan

The Polos left China in around 1291 or 1292, given the responsibility to escort a young princess to Persia, where she was to marry the Mongol ruler. Their route from Persia took through parts of what is now Turkey, to Constantinople, and then north along the Adriatic to Venice.  They arrived home in 1295.

It was during the second of four wars between Venice and their trading rival Genoa that Marco Polo was captured.  He remained a prisoner until 1299, when a peace treaty allowed for his release.  Thereafter, he continued his life as a merchant, achieving prosperity, but rarely left Venice or its territories again until his death.

His book, known to Italians under the title Il Milione after Polo’s own nickname, introduced the West to many aspects of Chinese culture and customs and described such things as porcelain, gunpowder, paper money and eyeglasses, which were previously unknown in Europe. Contrary to some stories, his discoveries did not include pasta, which was once held widely to have been imported by Marco Polo but is thought actually to have existed in the Italy of the Etruscans in the 4th century BC. 

Christopher Columbus and other explorers are said to have been inspired by Marco Polo to begin their own adventures, Columbus discovering the Americas effectively by accident after setting sail across the Atlantic in the expectation of reaching the eastern coast of Asia.

Marco Polo is buried at the
church of San Lorenzo

Travel tip:

One of the wishes Marco Polo expressed on his deathbed was that he be buried in the church of San Lorenzo in the Castello sestiere of Venice, about 850m (930 yards) on foot from Piazza San Marco. The church, whick dates back to the ninth century and was rebuilt in the late 16th century, houses the relics of Saint Paul I of Constantinople as well as Marco Polo’s tomb. Castello is the largest of the six sestieri, stretching east almost from the Rialto Bridge and including the shipyards of Arsenale, once the largest naval complex in Europe, the Giardini della Biennale and the island of Sant’Elena. Unlike its neighbour, San Marco, Castello is a quiet neighbourhood, where tourists can still find deserted squares and empty green spaces.

Arched Byzantine windows thought to
have been from the Polo family home

Travel tip: 

The Polo family home in Venice, which was largely destroyed in a fire in 1598, was in the Cannaregio sestiere close to where the Teatro Malibran now stands, in Corte Seconda del Milion, one of two small square that recall Marco Polo’s nickname, Il Milione, which may have been coined as a result of his enthusiasm for the wealth he encountered at the court of Kublai Khan in China or as a result of his being from the Polo Emilioni branch of the family. The Byzantine arches visible in Corte Seconda del Milion are thought to have been part of the Polo house.  The Teatro Malibran was originally inaugurated in 1678 as the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, opening with the premiere of Carlo Pallavicino's opera Vespasiano.  It was renamed Teatro Malibran in 1835 in honour of a famous soprano, Maria Malibran, who was engaged to sing Vincenzo Bellini's La sonnambula there but was so shocked as the crumbling condition of the theatre that she refused her fee, insisting it be put towards the theatre’s upkeep instead. 

Also on this day:

1878: The death of Victor Emmanuel II, first King of Italy

1878: Umberto I succeeds Victor Emanuel II

1944: The birth of architect Massimiliano Fuksas

2004: The death of political philosopher Norberto Bobbio

Home

Giancarlo De Carlo - architect

Forward-thinking designer who helped shape modern Urbino

De Carlo's ideas often put him at odds
with more traditional urban planners

The architect Giancarlo De Carlo, who gained international recognition for his forward-thinking work in urban planning, was born in Genoa on this day in 1919. 

De Carlo was also a writer and educator, who was critical of what he saw as the failure of 20th century architecture.   Many of his building projects were in Urbino, the city in Marche known for its 15th century ducal palace and as the birthplace of the painter Raphael.  

He put forward a master plan for Urbino between 1958-64, which involved new buildings and renovations added carefully to the existing fabric of the city, described as genteel modernism and designed with the lives of Urbino citizens in mind. 

The most notable parts of the Urbino project were at the University of Urbino, where he worked for decades, constructing housing, classroom and administration buildings, carefully embedded into the hilly landscape and designed to facilitate ease of movement between parts of the campus.

He also built Matteotti New Village, a social housing project in Terni in Umbria to provide homes for the employees of Italy’s largest steel company, designed housing for working people in Matera in Basilicata and worked on the Mirano Hospital in Venice, buildings for the University of Siena, and the redevelopment of the Piazza della Mostra, Trento.

De Carlo’s buildings reflected his views on the involvement of users and inhabitants in the design process. On the Terni housing project, for example, he insisted that workers be paid to attend consultation sessions to enable him to understand better how they wanted to live. 

The Palazzo Battiferri at the University of Urbino,
part of De Carlo's biggest planning project

He was a member of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and Team 10, which brought together a new generation of architects focussed on a new type of architecture, better suited to local social and environmental conditions.

De Carlo was educated at Milan Polytechnic, where he graduated in engineering in 1943. He joined the Italian navy but with Italy’s surrender to the Allies in September of that year he went into hiding, then joined the Italian Resistance movement. Together with another architect, Giuseppe Pagano, he organized an anarchist-libertarian partisan group in Milan, the Matteotti Brigades.

He resumed his studies in 1948, obtaining an architecture degree from the University of Venice before opening his first studio in Milan.  His progressive views came to the fore when he produced a series of short films denouncing prevalent ideas about the modern metropolis and, as a professor of urban planning, often clashed with other architects, who he claimed put abstract ideas ahead of the interests of people and their environment.

His 1956 housing project in Matera ignored most of what had become the accepted principles of modern architecture in favour of design sympathetic to the geographical, social and climatic context of the region.  Architects who shared his progressive views joined together in the group known as Team 10. 

De Carlo began working on his Urbino project in 1964, winning international recognition for his designs for the University Campus. During the 1968 student uprisings, he sought constructive dialogue with the students and subsequently wrote a number of essays in which he explored his theories on what became known as “participatory architecture”, underpinned by his own libertarian socialist ideals

Among many honours, De Carlo was awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts in 1988 and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1993. He died in Milan in 2005.

As well as being the home of Raphael, Urbino
offers the attraction of a beautiful ducal palace

Travel tip: 

Urbino, which is 36km (22 miles) inland from the Adriatic resort of Pesaro, in the Marche region, is a majestic city on a steep hill.  It was once a famous centre of learning and culture, known not just in Italy but also in its glory days throughout Europe, attracting outstanding artists and scholars to enjoy the patronage of the noble rulers. The Ducal Palace - a Renaissance building made famous by Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier - is now one of the most important monuments in Italy and is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site. Inside the palace, the National Gallery of the Marche features paintings by Titian and Raphael, who was born in Urbino, and there are more examples of Raphael’s paintings at his house - Casa Natale di Raffaello - in Via Raffaello. The University swells the city’s population by up to 20,000. Urbino is home to a number of gastronomic delights, including crescia sfogliata, a flatbread often served stuffed with melted caciotta cheese, and prosciutto di Carpegna, a local cured ham.

Matera is renowned for its famous cave district,
the Sassi di Matera, to which visitors flock

Travel tip:

Declared a European Capital of Culture in 2019, the city of Matera in Basilicata, where De Carlo completed his first important housing project, is famous for an area called the Sassi di Matera, made up of former cave-dwellings carved into an ancient river canyon. The area became associated with extreme poverty in the last century and was evacuated in 1952, lying abandoned until the 1980s, when a gradual process of regeneration began. Now, the area contains restaurants, hotels and museums and is an increasingly popular destination for visitors.  The oldest part of the city, known as the Civita, sits above the cave districts on a flat, rocky plateau. Before they were turned into new dwellings, the caves became an extension to the Civita, used for storage and stabling horses. The Cattedrale della Madonna della Bruna e di Sant'Eustachio, Matera’s duomo, built in Apulian Romanesque style in the 13th century, can be found at Civita’s highest point.  

Also on this day:

1572: The death of Loredana Marcello, Dogaressa of Venice

1685: The birth of composer Lodovico Giustini

1889: The death in Venice of the English poet, Robert Browning

1901: Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal

1957: The birth of novelist Susanna Tamaro

1969: The Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan

Home

Stefanina Moro – partisan

Amazing courage of a young girl who protected her compatriots

Stefanina was a courier who helped
groups of partisans to communicate

Brave teenager Stefanina Moro, who served as a partisan during World War II, died on this day in 1944 in Asti as a result of injuries inflicted upon her by Nazis, who caught her and tortured her for information.

Stefanina, who was born in Genoa in 1927, is thought to have been between 16 and 17 years old when she died of her wounds in a hospital in Asti.

After growing up in the Quezzi district in Genoa, Stefanina became a partisan and later served as una staffetta - a courier - responsible for maintaining communications between groups of partisans to help the Italian resistance movement during the war of Italian liberation.

Sadly, in 1944, Stefanina was captured by Nazis and taken to the Casa del Fascio - the local Fascist party headquarters - in Cornigliano, about seven kilometres (4 miles) west of Genoa, to be interrogated. Stefanina was then moved to the Casa dello Studente in Corso Gastaldi, a former university building that was being occupied by the Nazis and had been turned into a prison.

Prisoners were routinely tortured there under the command of an SS officer, Friedrich Engel, who would come to be known as the ‘Executioner of Genoa’ or the ‘Butcher of Genoa.’ To try to make Stefanina reveal the names of her fellow partisans, the Nazis tortured her for several days, but their attempts were unsuccessful and she would not speak and never gave anyone away.

SS commander Friedrich Engel
ordered the torture of partisans

After her ordeal, she was taken to a hospital in Asti in the Piedmont region, where she died on 9 October as a result of her wounds. It is believed she had not yet reached her 17th birthday.

Stefanina’s name is inscribed on a memorial to all those from the Quezzi district of Genoa, who had died while opposing the Nazi occupation of the city. The dedication on the memorial reads: ‘Non caddero invano ma per la libertà. Il comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Liguria agli eroici caduti del rione di Quezzi. (They did not fall in vain but for freedom. The National Liberation Committee of Liguria to the heroic fallen of the Quezzi district.)

The city of Genoa also named a street in Stefanina’s honour. In Via Stefanina Moro, there is a plaque that says: Via Stefanina Moro – Caduta per la libertà – 1927 – 9/10/1944.

In April 2020 on the 75th anniversary of Italy’s liberation, Sandra Zampa, under secretary at the Ministry of Health in the Giuseppe Conte administration, gave an address honouring the women of the Italian resistance, naming Stefanina Moro alongside other women partisans, such as Nilde Iotti and Irma Bandiera.

Friedrich Engel, under whose command Stefanina’s torture took place, was convicted in absentia of 246 murders by an Italian military court in 1999, for his role in the 1944 executions of Italian prisoners.

A street in the Genoa district of Quezzi, 
where Stefania was born, carries her name

He was then brought before a court in Hamburg in 2002 and tried and convicted on 59 counts of murder. He was sentenced to seven years in prison but because he was by then 95 years old, he was given a stay of that ruling and was able to leave court a free man.

In 2004, Germany’s highest court, the Bundesgerichtshof, overturned the previous ruling on the grounds that, despite acknowledging that Engel ordered the executions, the case of criminal murder had not been proven. The court would not permit a new trial because of Engel’s age and state of health.

Engel died at the age of 97 in February 2006 in Hamburg, more than 60 years after he ordered the torture that led to the death of Stefanina Moro.

The Doge's Palace in Genoa is one of the city's
many splendid 16th century palaces

Travel tip:

Genoa, where Stefanina Moro was born and brought up, is the capital city of Liguria and the sixth largest city in Italy. It has earned the nickname of La Superba because of its proud history as a major port. Part of the old town was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006 because of the wealth of beautiful 16th century palaces there, many of which have been restored to their original splendour.  The Doge's Palace, the 16th century Royal Palace and the Romanesque-Renaissance style San Lorenzo Cathedral are just three examples.  The area around the restored harbour area offers a maze of fascinating alleys and squares.

The Ascensore di Quezzi climbs 249 feet
to link two parts of the hillside district

Travel tip:

The street named after Stefanina, Via Stefanina Moro, is in the Quezzi district of Genoa, where the heroic girl was born. Quezzi, a residential area with many high rise buildings, sits high above the port. Built on a hillside, it has many steep streets. Since 2015, residents and visitors have been able to use the Ascensore di Quezzi - the Quezzi Lift - a kind of cross between a conventional lift and a cable car, which links the lower part of the district at Via Pinetti with the upper part at Via Fontanarossa, 76 metres (249 feet) above, in exactly 100 seconds. The 131m (430ft) journey is in two sections, one with a gradient of 44%, the other with a gradient of 30%. The lift’s single car, which carries a maximum of 25 passengers, tilts at the moment the gradient changes so that its floor remains level.

Also on this day:

1221: The birth of historian Salimbene di Adam

1469: The death of Renaissance painter Fra’ Filippo Lippi

1562: The birth of anatomist and physician Gabriele Falloppio

1841: The birth of Paris art café owner Agostina Segatori

1963: The Vajont Dam Disaster

Home

Niccolò Paganini - musician and composer

Extraordinary talent aroused bizarre suspicions

Niccolò Paganini is widely regarded
as one of history's greatest violinists

The musician and composer Niccolò Paganini, widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, was born on this day in 1782 in Genoa.

Paganini’s ability was so far ahead of his contemporaries that to some observers it defied comprehension. He possessed unusually long fingers, a memory that enabled him to play entire pieces without the need for sheet music, and could play at up to 12 notes per second.

This, combined with his appearance - he was tall and thin, with hollow cheeks, pale skin and a fondness for dressing in black - and a habit of making wild, exaggerated movements as he played, gave rise to outlandish theories that he was possessed by the Devil, or even was the Devil himself.

He also pursued a somewhat dissolute lifestyle, drinking heavily, gambling and taking advantage of his fame to engage in numerous affairs.  

The suspicion of demonic associations stayed with him all his life to the extent that after his death at the age of 58 it was four years before his body was laid to rest because the Catholic Church would not give him a Christian burial, their reticence not helped by his refusal to accept the last rites.

Only years later was it concluded that his long fingers were probably the result of a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome, while the speed of his playing and jerky movements could have been symptoms of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, another inherited condition, whose sufferers have increased flexibility but a lack of coordination.

Paganini has such an accurate memory
that he could play without sheet music

Paganini was born the third of six children. His father, Antonio, was a trader, albeit not a prosperous one, and would supplement his income by playing the mandolin. Niccolò soon learned to play the instrument and had moved on to the violin by the age of seven.

It was soon clear he was blessed with prodigious talent and was soon offered scholarships to study with local teachers in Genoa. His ability quickly outpaced what they could offer him, prompting his father to take him to Parma in search of more advanced tuition.

His progress was interrupted in 1796 when northern Italy was invaded by France and Paganini’s family left the city to move inland along the Polcevera river to Bolzaneto, where they owned another property. Paganini occupied himself by learning to play the guitar, again to an extraordinary standard, although it was an instrument he played largely for his own amusement and for close friends, rather than give public performances.

He embarked on his first solo violin tour at the age of 15, appearing at various places around Italy, but being away from home was not good for his mental health and it was thought that this pushed him towards drinking and gambling as an escape. 

After he recovered, he was appointed first violin of the Republic of Lucca, at that time one of the most powerful city states in Italy, but in 1805 Lucca was annexed by Napoleonic France, and the region was ceded to Napoleon's sister, Elisa Baciocchi.  Paganini stayed, becoming a violinist to the Baciocchi court.  It was during this time that he composed perhaps his most famous work, his 24 Caprices for solo violin.

Paganini's violin Il
Cannone Guarnerius

Eventually, he decided to return to touring, giving concerts around Genoa and Parma, where he had attracted large audiences previously. He was still not well known outside Italy, even after beginning to make appearances at La Scala in Milan, gaining admirers among their international clientele. 

It was not until after Pope Leo XII had conferred upon him the Order of the Golden Spur, the papal equivalent of a knighthood, in 1827, that his fame spread across Europe. The following year, he was invited to play in Vienna, followed by a prolonged tour that saw him perform in almost all the major cities of Germany, Poland and Bohemia. Later, he performed in Paris and London.

Still, his phenomenal ability attracted suspicion. In Vienna, an audience member claimed he had seen the Devil on stage with Paganini. A story circulated that the sound of a woman’s scream could be heard emanating from his violin while he played, the consequence, it was said, of his murdering a woman and making strings from her intestines, while imprisoning her soul within the body of the instrument. 

Given such stories, it was hardly surprising that he made few friends. Two exceptions were Gioachino Rossini, the Italian composer he first met in Bologna in 1818 and for whom he once conducted an opera performance after the sudden death of the regular conductor, and Hector Berlioz, the French composer whom he compared with Beethoven and supported with large sums of money towards the end of his life.

Among his many romantic associations, the most enduring involved a singer from Como, Antonia Bianchi. After meeting in Milan in 1813 they gave concerts together throughout Italy. They had a son, Achille Ciro Alessandro, born in Palermo in 1825, but they were never married and split up in around 1828. 

Paganini began learning the violin
at the age of seven

Paganini’s health was never good. He was diagnosed with syphilis in 1922 and the treatment for it, which involved mercury and opium, did as much damage as it cured. In 1834 he developed tuberculosis while in Paris, which left him prone to infection and bouts of depression.

Touring soon became impossible and he returned to Genoa initially, giving lessons to a small number of pupils, including Camillo Sivori, who would go on to assume his mantle as Italy’s finest violinist. 

Restless, he went back to Paris in 1836 and unwisely invested much money in a casino, which failed so badly he was forced to auction off many of his prized collection of violins and guitars, including several made by Antonio Stradavari in Cremona, in order to recoup his losses. He left Paris for Marseille in 1838 and from there went to Nice, which is where he died in 1840, apparently from internal bleeding as a result of cancer of the larynx. It was the Bishop of Nice who arranged for a local priest to visit him and perform the last rites, but Paganini refused to accept his life was nearing its end and dismissed the priest.

The local church refused to bury him on consecrated ground and his embalmed body remained in the house where he died for more than a year and in the Nice area for almost four years while his son, Achille, pleaded with the Catholic Church to allow his body to be moved back to Italy. Ultimately, Achille’s entreaties were answered by Pope Gregory XVI and Paganini’s body was finally laid to rest at La Villetta cemetery in Parma.

The Fratello Minore fortress above the
Polcevera valley outside Bolzaneto

Travel tip:

Bolzaneto, where the Paganini family had a house while Niccolò was growing up, was once a hamlet located outside the city of Genoa in the Polcevera valley. Today it is a suburb of Genoa, surrounded by many small industries and business firms. On the mountains behind Bolzaneto, at the left side of Polcevera valley, are two fortresses, which are part of the external fortresses of Genoa: the Fort Diamante and a smaller fortress known as Fratello Minore. Close to the Bolzaneto exit of the A7 motorway that runs from Genoa to Milan is what used to be Bolzaneto’s castle, built in the early 14th century but subsequently destroyed in clashes between the Guelphs and Ghibbelines before being rebuilt and destroyed several times thereafter, finally as a grand residence at the beginning of the 20th century.

Paganini's tomb memorial at the
La Villetta cemetery in Parma

Travel tip:

La Villetta, the monumental cemetery at Parma where Paganini’s body was finally buried and an elaborate memorial erected, takes its name after the farm that Duchess Marie Louise of Austria, the second wife of Napoleon, chose as the site for the city's burial ground during her rule of the city from 1816 to 1847. Designed by the engineer Giuseppe Cocconcelli in neoclassical style, it contains the tombs among others of the poet Angelo Mazza and the composer Ildebrando Pizzetti. Paganini’s tomb, housed under a domed portico supported by eight Doric columns, is on the left side of the entrance, opposite the main chapel dedicated to San Gregorio Magno.

Also on this day:

1952: The birth of Oscar-winning actor Roberto Benigni

1962: The death in a plane crash of industrialist Enrico Mattei

1967: The birth of mountaineer Simone Moro

Home