Nicola Rizzoli - football referee

Third Italian to take charge of World Cup Final

Nicola Rizzoli retired in 2017 after
15 years refereeing top-level matches

The football referee Nicola Rizzoli, who in 2014 became the third Italian to take charge of a men’s World Cup Final, was born on this day in 1971 in Mirandola, a town in Emilia-Romagna about 35km (22 miles) north of Modena.

Rizzoli, who had refereed the UEFA Champions League Final in 2013, followed Sergio Gonella (1978) and Pierluigi Collina (2002) in being handed the ultimate honour for football officials.

It was his responsibility to referee the match between Germany and Argentina in the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro to decide the winners of the 2014 tournament, hosted by Brazil. 

At the age of 42, he was the same age as Collina had been when he refereed the Brazil-Germany final in 2002, but three years younger than Gonella was when given charge of hosts Argentina against the Netherlands in 1978.

Germany, who had famously humbled the 2014 hosts by a stunning 7-1 margin in the semi-finals, beat Lionel Messi’s Argentina 1-0 in the 2014 final, thanks to a goal in extra time by the substitute, Mario Götze. 

Rizzoli was commended for his handling of the match, between two of international soccer’s biggest rivals, which passed with no controversial decisions. He was praised for alerting the Germany bench after their midfield player Christoph Kramer began to show the effects of concussion following a blow to the head. Kramer played on for several minutes after the injury but then alarmed Rizzoli by twice asking him if he was playing in the final.

Although born in Mirandola, Rizzoli grew up in Bologna, the home city of his idol among referees, the renowned Collina.

Rizzoli took charge of the
2014 World Cup Final

Like most young Italian boys - and many girls - he had dreams of being a player, but his youth games in the Bologna area were often notable for his arguments with referees. In an interview in May, 2024 with the newspaper, Gazzetta di Modena, he explained that he took up refereeing after a friend suggested that, rather than contest decisions, he should study the rules of the game.

Alongside football, he decided at the age of 13 that he wanted to be an architect. He told the Gazzetta di Modena that, as well as enjoying drawing as a pastime, he ‘loved the smell of paper that you breathed in stationery shops’.

He obtained a degree in architecture at the University of Florence and began to develop a career while simultaneously working his way up the refereeing ladder, from club matches around Bologna to the lower divisions of the Italian professional leagues.

Trying to do both was not without problems. He recalled that a missed flight after refereeing a Serie D match in Calabria led him to question what he was doing and that an offer to join a studio in Milan tempted him to give up his whistle. 

He procrastinated long enough, however, to make the breakthrough he had craved in football when he was given his first Serie A match, between Venezia and Perugia, in April, 2002. 

In the event, he continued to work as an architect for another 10 years, stopping only when his international match commitments began to take up too much of his time. He takes pride in his achievements in the architectural field, too, not least the completion of the Pediatric Oncology building at Sant'Orsola Hospital in Bologna, which he built in 2001.

As an architect, Rizzoli designed the Pediatric
 Oncology unit at Bologna's Sant'Orsola Hospital

In addition to the 2014 World Cup Final and the 2013 Champions League decider, contested between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich at Wembley Stadium in England, Rizzoli officiated in the inaugural UEFA Europa League Final in 2010, as Atlético Madrid defeated Fulham 2–1, and was on the list of referees chosen for both the 2012 and 2016 European Championships.

He refereed in Serie A between 2002 and 2017, achieving his ambition of taking charge in more than 200 top-division matches before he retired. Among his honours, he was named Serie A referee of the year by the Italian Football Federation for seven consecutive seasons between 2011 and 2017 and “world’s best referee” by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics twice, in 2014 and 2015. He was inducted to the Italian Football Hall of Fame in 2018.

After retirement, he became Head of Refereeing for Serie A and more recently was appointed Technical Refereeing Advisor for Concacaf, the FIFA-affiliated governing body for football in North and Central America and the Caribbean.

Rizzoli still lives in Bologna but maintains strong connections with the area around Modena, where his extended family still live.

The restored Castello dei Pico is among the main
sights in Rizzoli's home town of Mirandola

Travel tip:

Mirandola, the town of 22,000 people where Nicola Rizzoli was born, originated as a Renaissance city-fortress. For four centuries it was the seat of an independent principality and a possession of the Pico family, whose most famous member was the polymath Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94).  Besieged in 1510 by Pope Julius II and in 1551 by Pope Julius III, it was taken over by the Duchy of Modena in 1710 but went into decline after its castle - the Castello dei Pico - was partially destroyed in 1714. The castle has recently been restored and is open to the public. Other notable buildings include the 1468 Gothic-style Palazzo del Comune and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which also dates from the late 15th century. The Church of San Francesco, which houses the tombs of the Pico family, collapsed when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit the area in 2012, killing 17 people, injuring many others, and damaging the homes of 14,000 inhabitants.

Piazza Maggiore, dominated by the Basilica of
San Petronio, is at the heart of the city of Bologna

Travel tip:

The city of Bologna, where Nicola Rizzoli grew up and was registered as a referee, has seen its city centre undergo substantial restoration since the 1970s. It is one of the largest and best preserved historical centres in Italy, characterised by 38km (24 miles) of walkways protected by porticoes.  At the heart of the city is the beautiful Piazza Maggiore, dominated by the Gothic Basilica of San Petronio, which at 132m long, 66m wide and with a facade that touches 51m at its tallest, is the 10th largest church in the world and the largest built in brick.  The history of Bologna, one of Italy's oldest cities, can be traced back to 1,000BC or possibly earlier, with a settlement that was developed into an urban area by the Etruscans, the Celts and the Romans.  The University of Bologna, the oldest in the world, was founded in 1088. Bologna’s football club made history in 2024 by qualifying for the UEFA Champions League for the first time.

Also on this day:

1658: The birth of Mary of Modena

1712: The birth of painter Francesco Guardi

1928: The birth of painter Alberto Sughi

2014: The death of racing driver Andrea De Cesaris

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Girolamo Benivieni – poet

Follower of Plato, Dante and Savonarola

Girolamo Benivieni, pictured as an old man in
a painting attributed to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio

The poet Girolamo Benivieni, who turned Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Plato’s Symposium into verse, was born on this day in 1453 in Florence.

His poem was to influence other writers during the Renaissance and some who came later.

As a member of the Florentine Medici circle, Benivieni was a friend of the Renaissance humanists Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano, commonly known as Polician.

Ficino translated Plato’s Symposium in about 1474 and wrote his own commentary on the work.

Benivieni summarised Ficino’s work in the poem De lo amore celeste - Of Heavenly Love - These verses then became the subject of a commentary by Pico della Mirandola.

As a result of all these works, Platonism reached such writers as Pietro Bembo and Baldassare Castiglione and the English poet, Edmund Spencer.

Benivieni later fell under the spell of Girolamo Savonarola, the fiery religious reformer, and he rewrote some of his earlier sensual poetry as a result. He also translated a treatise by Savonarola into Italian, Della semplicità della vita cristiana - On the Simplicity of the Christian life - and he wrote some religious poetry of his own.

Benivieni's tombstone behind the statue of
Savonarola in the Church of San Marco

He took part in Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities and documented the destruction of art works worth ‘several thousand ducats’ at the time.

Lucrezia de’ Medici supported him in his writing and they shared an interest in the works of Dante Alighieri. In 1506 Benivieni published an edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy with maps by Antonio Manetti and commentaries by Benivieni and Manetti.

He drafted a letter for Lucrezia to send to her brother, Pope Leo X, seeking his assistance in bringing Dante’s body back to Florence from Ravenna where he was buried.

Benivieni also used his connection with Lucrezia to advance his ideas on church reform with her brother, and later with her cousin, Pope Clement VII.

In 1530 he wrote a letter to Pope Clement in defence of Savonarola, seeking to have his reputation restored within the Church.

He died in 1542, a few months before his 90th birthday and was buried in the Church of San Marco in Florence next to his friend, Pico della Mirandola.

The Church of San Marco in Florence is close to where
the fiery priest Girolamo Savonarola lived

Travel tip:

The Church of San Marco, where Girolamo Benivieni and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola are buried together, is in Piazza di San Marco to the north of the Galleria dell’Accademia, which houses Michalangelo’s David. The original tombstone is in Latin. It says: ‘Here lies Giovannni Mirandola; known both at the Tagus and the Ganges and maybe even the antipodes. He died in 1494 and lived for thirty-two years. Girolamo Benivieni, to prevent separate places from disjointing after death the bones of those whose souls were joined by Love while living, provided for this grave where he too is buried. He died in 1542 and lived for eighty-nine years and six months.’ Next to the church is the convent of San Marco, now the Museo Nazionale di San Marco, where Savonarola and the painters, Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolomeo, once lived.

The tomb of Dante Alighieri adjoins the
Basilica of San Francesco in Ravenna

Travel tip:

A tomb built for Dante in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence still remains empty. Dante died while living in exile in Ravenna in about 1321. He was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore in Ravenna and a tomb was erected there for him in 1483. Florence has made repeated requests for the return of Dante’s remains to the city but Ravenna has always refused.


More reading:

The Bonfire of the Vanities - preacher Savonarola's war on Renaissance 'excesses'

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – the philosopher who wrote the 'Manifesto of the Renaissance'

Pietro Bembo - the poet and scholar who became Lucrezia Borgia's lover

Also on this day:

1577: The birth of Roman heroine Beatrice Cenci

1778: The birth of the poet and revolutionary Ugo Foscolo

1908: The birth of six-times Italian prime minister Amintore Fanfani


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Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – philosopher

Writer of the 'Manifesto of the Renaissance' met an early death

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: this portrait by
Cristofano dell'Altissimo hangs in the Uffizi

Renaissance nobleman and philosopher, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola died on this day in 1494 in Florence, sparking a murder mystery still not solved more than 500 years later and that led to the exhumation of his body in 2007.

Pico became famous for writing the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which was later dubbed the Manifesto of the Renaissance.

At its heart, the Oration proposed that man is the only species of being to which God assigned no specific place in the chain of being and that man could ascend the chain through the exercise of his intellectual capacity, and for that reason it stresses the importance of the human quest for knowledge.

Renowned for his memory as well as his intellect, he could recite Dante’s Divine Comedy line-by-line backwards and by the time he was 20 he has mastered six languages.

But he made enemies and it his thought that his death at the age of just 31 was the result of poisoning because of concerns that he had become too close to hellfire preacher Girolamo Savonarola, an enemy of Florence's ruling Medici family.

It was Savonarola himself who delivered the funeral oration when Pico was buried at the Convent of San Marco in Florence where he was the Prior.

The philosopher was born into a noble family at Mirandola, near Modena, in 1463. He was the youngest son of Gianfrancesco della Mirandola, Count of Concordia, who lived in the Castle of Mirandola and was closely related to the Sforza, Gonzaga and Este dynasties.

Pico studied at the University of Padua, where he wrote sonnets in Latin and Italian, which because of the influence of Savonarola, who encouraged his followers to burn possessions that might tempt them into sin, he destroyed towards the end of his life.

Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici by the Flemish
Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens

He travelled to Paris, the most important centre in Europe for Philosophy and Theology and it is thought while he was there he began writing his celebrated 900 Theses on religion, philosophy and magic, and came up with the idea of defending them in a public debate.

When he returned to Florence in 1484 he met for the first time Lorenzo de' Medici, also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, who seems to have been charmed by him and wished to help him.

On his way to Rome, where he intended to publish his 900 Theses and debate them with other scholars, Pico stopped off in Arezzo, where he had a love affair with the wife of one of Lorenzo de' Medici’s cousins. He attempted to run away with her but was caught, wounded and imprisoned. He was released only after the intervention of Lorenzo himself.

While recovering from his wounds he became interested in Hebrew writings, which he believed educated people should study. He travelled to Rome to publish his 900 Theses and offered to pay the expenses of any scholars who came to Rome to debate them publicly.

But Pope Innocent VIII halted the proposed debate and condemned part of his 900 Theses as heretical.

Pico fled to France where he was arrested and imprisoned but at the instigation of Lorenzo de Medici he was released and allowed to move back to Florence. He settled in a villa near Fiesole provided by Lorenzo and carried on writing.

After the death of Lorenzo, Savonarola became increasingly influential. This led to a wholesale destruction of books and paintings in Florence.

Pico was determined to become a monk and destroyed his own poetry and gave away his fortune.

When he fell ill in 1494, the King of France, Charles VIII, whose armies would take control of Florence on the day of Pico's death, driving the Medici into exile, sent his own physicians to tend to him but after two weeks of suffering he passed away.

The Castello dei Pico in an image from a 1940s postcard

It was rumoured that Pico was poisoned by his own secretary, who is said to have made a confession to that effect two years later after being arrested by Savonarola, who by then had taken control of Florence from the French.  Some historians believe it was Piero de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo, who ordered his killing.

Another theory was that Pico had died of syphilis but when his body was exhumed in 2007, as part of a project led by Giorgio Gruppioni, a professor of anthropology from Bologna, tests showed toxic levels of arsenic in his remains.

Travel tip:

The small city of Mirandola, which is about 30km north-east of Modena in Emilia-Romagna, developed as a fortress city in Renaissance times and was once an independent principality.  The Palazzo Communale and the Castello dei Pico can both be found in Piazza della Costituente.  The castle was forced to close its door to the public because of damage sustained in an earthquake in 2012.

Hotels in Mirandola from Hotels.com

Fra Angelico's stunning fresco The Last Judgment

Travel tip:

The Convent of San Marco in Florence, which holds the major collection of the works of Giovanni of Fiesole, known as Fra Angelico, stands on the site of a 12th century monastery. It was rebuilt in 1437 by Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici, who entrusted the work to Michelozzo, with the decoration of the walls carried out by Fra Angelico and his assistants, who included Benozzo Gozzoli.   His masterworks are considered to be the The Last Judgment and the The Crucifixion.

Hotels in Florence from venere.com

More reading:

Girolamo Savonarola and the 'Bonfire of the Vanities'

Cosimo de' Medici - banker who founded the dynasty

Why Cosimo II de' Medici was the patron of Galileo

Also on this day: 

1878: Umberto I survives assassination attempt



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