Debut of Italy’s national football team

Illustrious history began with victory over France

The Italy team of 1910 wore white shirts. The players
were allowed to chose either white shorts or black

The first official international football match involving Italy took place on this day in 1910 in Milan.

Officially formed four months earlier, the Azzurri made their debut at the Arena Civica in Milan, beating France 6-2 in front of a crowd said to number 4,000 spectators.  The match was refereed by Henry Goodley, an Englishman.

The team’s first goal was scored after 13 minutes by Pietro Lana, a forward with the AC Milan club, who went on to score a hat-trick, including a penalty kick.  The team played in white shirts, adopting the famous blue colours the following year.

In a team dominated by Milan-based players, the other goals were scored by Internazionale’s Virgilio Fossati, Giuseppe Rizzi of the Ausonia-Milano club and Enrico Debernardi, who played for Torino. Fossati, tragically, was killed six years later while fighting for the Italian Army in World War One.

Organised football had begun in Italy in 1898 with the founding of the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio - the Italian Football Federation - who arranged the first national championship, won by Genoa.

The FIGC was primarily concerned with domestic football and it was the newspaper La Stampa, a daily journal published in Turin, who first mooted the idea of a team to represent the nation. 

The Arena Civica in Milan as it would have looked
in the early part of the 20th century

In addition to England and Scotland, who faced each other in the world’s first international football match in 1872, many countries around Europe and elsewhere had national teams and many Italians felt that their country needed to follow their lead.

The FIGC duly announced in January, 1910, that it was to select a national team to make its debut in Milan during the federation’s annual national congress in May of that year.

A commission to select the team was appointed but by mid-April the identity of Italy’s first international opponents had not been decided, while a domestic dispute was about to wreck the selection process.

This involved Pro Vercelli, the Piedmont-based club who were one of the most successful in the early years of the Italian championship, and Internazionale, the team we now recognise as Inter-Milan.

The two had finished the 1909-10 Prima Categoria - forerunner of Serie A - level on points. According to the FIGC rules, Pro Vercelli - champions for the last two seasons - should have won the title by virtue of their superior goal difference.

Yet the FIGC decided to ignore that rule and ordered the teams instead to meet in a play-off on April 24 to decide the title.

Pro Vercelli quite reasonably objected, pointing out too that several of their players would not be available because they were committed to appear in a military tournament on the same day. Yet their pleas were rejected.

The Italian national team won the first of its four
World Cups on home soil in 1934

In protest, Pro Vercelli fielded their fourth team - essentially a youth team - for the play-off, which they lost 10-3. FIGC’s response was to ban Pro Vercelli from competition for the rest of 1910 and suspend their players, six of whom happened to form the bedrock of the 22-man squad chosen for Italy’s first international match.

Despite this, the match went ahead as planned on May 15 with France the chosen opponents from a shortlist of three alongside Switzerland and Hungary.

The FIGC were understandably keen that the event, the showpiece of their annual congress, should end in victory and chose France largely on the basis of their poor form. They had been hammered 10-1 by England in April, having previously lost 4-0 to neighbours Belgium.

Furthermore, their travel to Milan involved a 16-hour overnight train journey, disembarking at the city’s railway station at 5am on the day of the match. Not surprisingly, their weary players proved no match for the Italy team, even in the absence of the Pro Vercelli contingent.

For all its significance, the game attracted scant newspaper coverage, with only a brief report in the Milan daily, Corriere della Sera. A 6-1 defeat in the team’s next fixture, against Hungary in Budapest, hardly helped their early efforts to excite the nation.

Nonetheless, it was only 24 years before Italy would be world champions, winning the first of their two World Cups under manager Vittorio Pozzo.

The Azzurri have gone on to become established as one of the superpowers of international football, winning the World Cup four times in total. Only Brazil have been more successful, with five wins.

The main grandstand at the Arena Civica is a 
striking example of neoclassical architecture

Travel tip:

The Arena Civica - now known as the Arena Gianni Brera in memory of one of Italy’s most popular football journalists - can be found in the Parco Sempione behind the Castello Sforzesco in central Milan. It is one of the city's main examples of neoclassical architecture, an elliptical amphitheatre commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte soon after he became King of Italy in 1805. At one time the home of the Milan football club Internazionale, it is nowadays home to Brera Calcio FC, a lower league football team, as well as a venue for international athletics and rugby union and a host of non-sports activities, including jazz festivals and pop concerts. It can accommodate up to 30,000 spectators.

The beautifully preserved
Basilica of Sant'Andrea

Travel tip:

Vercelli, once home of one of Italy’s strongest football teams, is now best known as the centre of Italy’s rice production industry, with many of the surrounding fields in the vast Po plain submerged under water during the summer months. Rice has been cultivated in the area since the 15th century. The city, which has around 46,500 inhabitants, is in Piedmont, some 85km (53 miles) west of Milan and about 75km (46 miles) northeast of Turin. It is reckoned to be built on the site of one of the oldest settlements in Italy, dating back to 600BC, and was home to the world's first publicly-funded university, which was opened in 1228 but folded in 1372. Vercelli’s Basilica of Sant'Andrea is regarded as one of the most beautiful and best-preserved Romanesque buildings in Italy.  

Also on this day:

1567: The baptism of composer and musician Claudio Monteverdi

1902: The birth of musician and band leader Pippo Barzizza

1936: The birth of actress and singer Anna Maria Alberghetti

1943: The birth of opera singer Salvatore Fisichella

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Zita of Bourbon-Parma

The long life of the last Habsburg Empress

A portrait of Zita taken in 1911,
shortly before her marriage

Zita of Bourbon-Parma, the last Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, was born Zita Maria delle Grazie Adelgonda Micaela Raffaella Gabriella Giuseppina Antonia Luisa Agnese on this day in 1892 on the family estate, the Villa Le Pianore, near Viareggio in the province of Lucca in Tuscany.

Zita was the 17th child of the Duke of Parma, Robert I, and his second wife, Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal, but her family was poor, even if it did claim descent from Louis X of France. The family villa was situated between Pietrasanta and Viareggio, occasionally moving to stay in Robert’s other property, Schwarzau Castle in Austria.

After her father’s death, Zita was sent to a convent on the Isle of Wight in England to complete her education.

For a time, Zita considered following the lead of  three of her sisters and becoming a nun, but at the age of 19 she married Archduke Charles, the great nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. The two had known each other as children and became reacquainted in 1909, at a time when Charles was under pressure to find a wife. 

They were married at the Schwarzau Castle in October 1911 and went on to have eight children together. 

Within three years, in 1914, the Emperor’s heir, Franz Ferdinand, was shot dead in Sarajevo in the incident that led to the outbreak of the First World War. The Emperor himself died two years later and Zita’s husband, Charles, succeeded him as Emperor. Zita suddenly found herself an Empress in the middle of a world war, in which she had relatives on both sides.

Zita and Archduke Charles
at their wedding in Austria

Two years later, after Austria-Hungary had lost the war, Charles was forced to abdicate. The Habsburgs were deposed and the former empire became home to the states of Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, while other parts were annexed to several eastern European countries.

Charles died less than three years later, in 1922, while the couple were living in Madeira and from that day onwards Zita lived on alone, mostly in exile. She never remarried but continued to raise her family. She spent 63 years mostly living in Switzerland and the United States, never relinquishing her claim to a throne that no longer existed.

She died at the age of 96 in March 1989. After a huge state funeral in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Zita was buried in the crypt alongside 142 other members of the Habsburg dynasty. An impoverished Italian noblewoman, Zita was the last Habsburg to wear a crown in a line that had worn it first in the year 1282.

Zita was declared Servant of God by Pope Benedict XVI and in 2009 the process was opened for her beatification.

Viareggio's Grand Hotel Royal, a notable example  
of the Tuscan resort's Liberty-style architecture

Travel tip:

Viareggio, where Zita was born and brought up, is now a popular seaside resort in Tuscany with beautiful sandy beaches and fine examples of Liberty-style architecture, which include the Grand Hotel Royal. Near the Villa Paolina, which was the home of Napoleon’s sister, Paolina Bonaparte, there is a monument to the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, close to the point on the coastline that his body was found following his death in a shipwreck. Paolina, who was a great admirer of Shelley’s work, is said to have chosen the location for the villa for that reason.

Pietrasanta's Duomo - the Collegiata di San
Martino - dates back to the 13th century

Travel tip:

Pietrasanta is a town in northern Tuscany, to the north of Viareggio. It had Roman origins and part of a Roman wall still exists. The medieval town was built in 1255 upon the pre-existing Rocca di Sala fortress of the Lombards and the Duomo (Collegiate Church of San Martino) dates back to the 13th century. Pietrasanta grew in importance in the 15th century due to its marble, the beauty of which was first recognised by the sculptor, Michelangelo.  At different times belonging to Genoa and Lucca, Pietrasanta came under Medici control in 1484 before being seized by Charles VIII of France in 1494.  Pope Leo X, a member of the Medici family, gave Pietrasanta back to his family.  The town declined during the 17th and 18th centuries, partly due to malaria. The seaside resort of Marina di Pietrasanta is 3km (1.9 miles) away.

Also on this day:

1740: The birth of opera composer Giovanni Paisiello

1914: The birth of orchestra conductor Carlo Maria Giulini

1946: The abdication of Vittorio Emanuele III, King of Italy

2013: The death of fashion designer Ottavio Missoni

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Escape from San Vittore prison

How a terrorist and a mass murderer brought terror to streets of Milan

Corrado Alunni was the driving force
behind the San Vittore escape

Milan citizens were left cowering in fear on this day in 1980 when police engaged in a prolonged shootout in the streets around San Vittore prison, which is situated less than three kilometres from the Duomo.

It followed an escape from the 19th century institution organised jointly by the notorious criminal and mass killer Renato Vallanzasca and the Red Brigades terrorist Corrado Alunni.

Vallanzasca, the head of the Milanese crime gang Banda della Comasina, had been in jail for much of the last eight years and was serving a life sentence for his role in a number of kidnappings and armed robberies, which had resulted in the deaths of a number of police officers, bank staff and members of the public.

Alunni, who had been a member of both the Red Brigades and the Communist terror group Prima Linea, had been jailed in 1978 after his arrest following an armed attack on a carabinieri patrol in the city of Novara in Piedmont.

In the days leading up to their escape attempt, the two had managed to smuggle a number of firearms into the prison and discussed how they would force prison guards to open the gates.

The action began to unfold during an afternoon exercise session on Monday, 28 April. At about 1.15pm, Vallanzasca and Alunni, together with Vallanzasca’s gangland second-in-command, Antonio Colia, and 16 other prisoners, executed their plan.

Renato Vallanzasca was one of Milan's
most notorious gangsters

The three in the group carrying the smuggled-in weapons seized a senior prison officer, Romano Saccoccio, using him as a human shield as they walked towards the exit gates, shooting two guards who refused to give them the keys and taking their weapons as well.

Once outside, the escaping group scattered into the streets around the prison, situated on the Viale di Porta Vercellina, but apparently without much thought as to where they were going. 

Police were quickly in pursuit and both Vallanzasca and Alunni were injured during fierce exchanges of fire. Alunni was shot in the stomach and Vallanzasca suffered a serious head wound. Six prisoners managed to shake off their pursuers, although it was only a short time before they were recaptured.

Alunni, who was 33 at the time, declared the escape attempt to be a success despite it ending so quickly.

“The essential thing was to be able to escape, overcoming all the barriers of men and structures,” he said. “Even if it ended badly, I must say that we won the first test.”

In subsequent trials over his terrorist activities, including those into the kidnapping and murder of the former prime minister, Aldo Moro, in 1978, Alunni accumulated more than 20 years in prison sentences. In 1987, for the first time, he expressed a will to disassociate himself with the armed political struggle that came to be known as The Years of Lead.  He died in 2022 at the age of 74.

Vallanzasca, meanwhile, became a veteran of escape attempts, although none successful and at 72 years of age he remains in jail, having been sentenced during his criminal career to life imprisonment four times, along with other sentences adding up to 295 years.

The San Vittore prison was
completed in 1879

Travel tip:

The San Vittore prison, the official address of which is Piazza Gaetano Filangieri, was built between 1872 and 1879 in a post-unification project when it was deemed that Milan needed a new prison. At the time, its location was on the outskirts of the city but urban expansion in the 150 years since then means that it is now anything but, falling well within the circonvallazione interna, the city’s internal ring road. Designed by the engineer Francesco Lucca, the prison’s perimeter walls were originally built in medieval style, presumably in the hope of giving the building some aesthetic appeal, but have since been replaced with rather ugly concrete. Its inmates have ranged from the Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci, who was locked up during the Fascist era, to the Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore ‘Totò’ Riina.

The Basilica di Sant'Abrogio is
a short walk from San Vittore

Travel tip:

A more conventional tourist attraction within a short walk of San Vittore is the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio, in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio. It was originally built by Saint Ambrose, who is Milan’s patron saint, when he was bishop, on the site of an earlier Christian burial ground. After his remains were placed there, the church was named after him. It was rebuilt in the 11th century and further modified in the 15th century.  Aurelius Ambrosius was born in 340, training as a lawyer before becoming Bishop of Milan. After his ordination he wrote about religion, composed hymns and music and was generous to the poor.  His feast day is celebrated on 7 December each year.

Also on this day:

1400: The death of lawyer Baldus de Ubaldis

1876: The birth of car maker Nicola Romeo

1945: The death of Benito Mussolini

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Tiberius – Roman Emperor

The decline of a leader who ruled from a beautiful place of exile

The Death of Tiberius, perhaps attended by Caligula,
imagined in an 1864 painting by Jean-Paul Laurens

After starting his reign in glory, the Emperor Tiberius slowly deteriorated and is reputed to have become steadily crueller and more debauched until he died on this day in 37 AD in Misenum, now Miseno, in Campania.

Tiberius had become the second Roman Emperor, succeeding his stepfather, Augustus, in 14 AD. As a young man, he had been a successful general, but at the age of 36 he chose to retire and go and live in Rhodes because he was determined to avoid getting involved in politics. 

However, after the deaths of both grandsons of Augustus, his ailing stepfather had no choice but to make Tiberius his heir.

Tiberius inherited the throne at the age of 54 and was at first a hardworking ruler, trying to pass sensible and far-seeing laws. He stopped pointless, costly conflicts and the waste of the empire’s money and was said to have left the imperial coffers much fuller than when he inherited them.

But he was constantly at odds with the Senate, who claimed he gave vague orders to them and that they had to debate the orders among themselves so that they could decide what to do and therefore some of his legislation was never passed.

Tiberius left Rome after 13 years
and never returned to the city

After 13 years, Tiberius decided he had had enough and he went to live in a magnificent villa on the island of Capri in the Bay of Naples. He never visited Rome again and delegated his power over the Senate to the commander of his guard.

As the years passed by, Tiberius became increasingly paranoid and brooded constantly on the loss of his son, Drusus Julius Caesar, who was said to have died in mysterious circumstances.

Many historians have claimed that Tiberius became steadily more cruel and vindictive as he grew older, and that he enjoyed torturing his victims, the people he perceived to be his enemies. He then liked to kill them by having them thrown off the cliffs at a spot on Capri that has become known as Salto di Tiberio - Tiberius’s Leap.

One senator was allegedly condemned to death just for having carried a coin, with the head of Tiberius on it, into a public lavatory with him.

The Emperor Tiberius was also reputed to have become a paedophile, bringing in young boys and girls to take part in imperial orgies at his villa on Capri.

When he was 71, Tiberius brought his 18-year-old great-nephew, Caligula, to live on Capri and subsequently named him as heir to the empire. For six years Caligula remained docile and obedient towards Tiberius, although he was said to occasionally display signs of the sadism that would subsequently blight his years as emperor.

Early in AD 37, Tiberius travelled to what was then Misenum to take part in military games. After injuring his shoulder throwing the javelin, he became seriously ill. He eventually lapsed into unconsciousness and doctors declared that his death would be imminent. Caligula then took the imperial ring from his great uncle’s finger and showed himself to a local crowd as the new Roman emperor.

Then Tiberius apparently woke from his coma and demanded food, which terrified Caligula. However, one of the heir’s quick-thinking allies rushed into the bedroom of Tiberius and finished him off by smothering him in a blanket. Tiberius was 77 when he died and he had been in power for 22 years.

The historian Tacitus wrote that people in Rome cheered when they heard that Tiberius was dead, only to panic when they heard he had recovered. Then they rejoiced again when they heard that the debauched emperor’s life had finally ended.

Modern Miseno, looking towards Capo Miseno, 
which offers views across the Bay of Naples

Travel tip:

Misenum, where Tiberius was injured and died, is now known as Miseno and is one of the frazioni of Bacoli in the province of Naples. Nearby Capo Miseno marks the north western end of the Bay of Naples, from where there are incredible views of Capri, Ischia, Sorrento, and Mount Vesuvius. For centuries, Misenum was the biggest naval base in the Roman empire and housed thousands of sailors.  Its beautiful natural setting and proximity to the nearby Roman cities of Puteoli - modern Pozzuoli - and Neapolis (Naples), Misenum also became a popular location for Roman luxury villas.

Villa Jovis, as it might have looked in the time of
Tiberius. Today, there are only ruins

Travel tip:

Tiberius ruled his empire from the Villa Jovis on Capri and the sheer cliff beside the villa, known as the Salto di Tiberio - Tiberius’s Leap - is said to be the precipice from which the Emperor had his victims hurled to their deaths. The biggest of 12 residences Tiberius had built on Capri, Villa Jovis occupies a spectacular position at the top of Monte Tiberio on the north east corner of the island. With an elevation of 334m (1,096ft), Monte Tiberio is the second-highest peak on the island, topped only by Monte Solaro (589m; 1,932ft) in Anacapri. Access to the remains of the villa is only possible on foot, and involves an uphill walk of about two kilometres from Capri town along Via Tiberio.

Also on this day:

1820: The birth of tenor Enrico Tamberlik

1886: The birth of athlete Emilio Lunghi - Italy’s first Olympic medallist

1940: The birth of film director Bernardo Bertolucci

1978: The kidnapping of former Italian PM Aldo Moro

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Francesco de’ Pazzi - banker

Medici rival at heart of Pazzi Conspiracy

The moment at which Giuliano de' Medici is killed,
imagined by 19th century painter Stefano Ussi

The banker Francesco de’ Pazzi, a central figure in the Pazzi Conspiracy that sought to overthrow the Medici family as the rulers of Florence, was born on this day in 1444.

De’ Pazzi killed Giuliano de’ Medici, stabbing him to death during mass at the Florence Duomo as the conspirators attempted to seize control.

But Giuliano’s brother, Lorenzo the Magnificent, with whom he was joint ruler, escaped with only minor wounds.

Simultaneously, other conspirators rode into the Piazza della Signoria declaring themselves the liberators of the city. But the people of Florence were loyal to the Medicis and attacked them.

Within hours, despite Lorenzo appealing for calm, an angry mob determined to exact revenge had hunted down and killed more than 30 conspirators or suspected conspirators, including Francesco.

One of nine children born to Antonio de’ Pazzi and Nicolosa, daughter of Alessandro degli Alessandri, Francesco was an important figure in the Pazzi banking business, having been appointed papal treasurer.

Sandro Botticelli's portrait of the
ill-fated Giuliano de' Medici

This in itself made for a tense relationship between the Medici and the Pazzi, even though they were actually related thanks to the marriage of Guglielmo de' Pazzi and Bianca de' Medici, Lorenzo’s elder sister.

The administration of the papal finances was a coveted prize for any banking family and Pope Sixtus IV’s decision to take responsibility away from the Medici Bank in favour of the Pazzi antagonised Lorenzo in particular.

Sixtus IV, from a poor bacground originally, was determined to enrich both his own Della Rovere family and their cousins, the Riario family. He had designs on the rich Florentine territories for the benefit of his nephews, including the nobleman Girolamo Riario, and also to finance the expensive works undertaken by him in Rome.

The rift between Rome and the Medicis occurred when Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan, changed his mind about selling the town of Imola, which occupied a strategic position on the trade route between Florence and Venice, to Lorenzo de’ Medici in favour of a deal with Sixtus IV, provided that Sixtus agreed to the marriage of his daughter, Caterina Sforza, to Girolamo Riario.

Lorenzo, as Sforza’s banker, refused to finance the deal, not wishing to see an extension of the papal states, at which Sixtus turned to the Pazzis and handed the contract for the papal treasury to them.

There were suspicions that the Pazzi Conspiracy was actually conceived in Rome but the Pazzi had reasons of their own to turn against the Medici, not least the decision of Lorenzo to introduce a law that prevented a considerable sum of money flowing into the Pazzi coffers with the death of Giovanni Borromei, the very wealthy father in law of Giovanni de’ Pazzi, another of Francesco’s brothers.

Da Vinci's drawing of
Bandini's hanging

Borromei’s fortune should have passed to Beatrice Borromei, Giovanni de’ Pazzi’s wife. But Lorenzo changed the law so that daughters could not inherit in the absence of any brothers, and that in those circumstances any legacy would pass instead to male cousins.

A further source of friction between Lorenzo and the Pazzi was his appointment of Lorenzo's brother-in-law Rinaldo Orsini as Archbishop of Florence in succession to the late Pietro Riario in 1474. The candidates overlooked included Francesco Salviati, a relative of the Pazzi family and friend of Francesco.

Whatever its origins, it is generally accepted that the chief conspirators in the Pazzi Conspiracy were Girolamo Riario, Francesco de' Pazzi and Francesco Salviati, the trio who attacked Lorenzo and Giuliano in the Florence duomo, the magnificent Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, on the morning of April 26, 1478.

Giuliano was assassinated by Francesco de' Pazzi together with Bernardo Bandini di Baroncelli, suffering a sword wound to the head as well as being stabbed 19 times.  Lorenzo was attacked by two of Jacopo Pazzi's men, but managed to escape.

Salviati then took a number of Jacopo Pazzi's men to the Piazza della Signoria hoping to be received by the Florentine populace as liberators. Instead, they were attacked. Along with Francesco de' Pazzi and several others, Salviati was hanged from the windows of the Palazzo Vecchio.

More than 30 suspected conspirators were caught and killed within hours of the attack and over the course of the next eight months some 50 more were captured and executed, including Bandini dei Baroncelli, who had escaped to Constantinople but was arrested and returned, to be hanged from a window of the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo while still dressed in Turkish clothing. 

Jacopo de' Pazzi, head of the family, escaped from Florence but was caught and brought back to be tortured and then hanged from the Palazzo della Signoria next to the decomposing corpse of Salviati. 

All other members of the Pazzi family were banished from Florence, and their lands and property confiscated. The family name was erased from public registers, while all buildings and streets carrying it were renamed. Anyone named Pazzi had to take a new name; anyone married to a Pazzi was barred from public office.

The Palazzo Vecchio guards 
over Piazza della Signoria

Travel tip:

The Piazza della Signoria has been the focal point of the city of Florence since the 14th century. Overlooked by the imposing Palazzo Vecchio, it was the scene of the triumphant return of the Medici family in 1530, three and a half decades after they had been driven from the city by the supporters of the fanatical priest, Girolamo Savonarola. The controversial cleric's famous bonfires of the vanities were built in the middle of the square.  The piazza della Signoria contains several important sculptures and statues, including a copy of Michelangelo's David - the original is in the Galleria dell'Accademia - Baccio Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus, Bartolomeo Ammannati’s Fontana del Nettuno and Benvenuto Cellini’s statue of Perseo holding Medusa's head.

The Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore is the 
dominant feature of the Florence skyline

Travel tip:

The Florence duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore - with its enormous dome by Filippo Brunelleschi and campanile by Giotto, is one of Italy's most recognisable and most photographed sights, towering above the city and the dominant feature of almost every cityscape. From groundbreaking to consecration, the project took 140 years to complete and involved a series of architects. Arnolfo di Cambio, who also designed the church of Santa Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio, was the original architect.  When he died in 1410, 14 years after the first stone was laid, he was succeeded by Giotto, who himself died in 1337, after which his assistant Andrea Pisano took up the project.  Pisano died in 1348, as the Black Death swept Europe, and a succession of architects followed, culminating in Brunelleschi, who won a competition to build the dome, which remains the largest brick-built dome ever constructed.

Also on this day:

1453: The birth of Renaissance beauty Simonetta Vespucci

1608: The birth of physiologist and physicist Giovanni Alfonso Borelli

1813: The birth of scientist Paolo Gorini

1969: The birth of world champion swimmer Giorgio Lamberti

1978: The birth of goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon

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Giovanni Treccani – businessman and patron of culture

Industrialist used his profits to encourage learning and preserve patrimony

Giovanni Treccani made
his fortune in textiles

Textile entrepreneur and publisher Giovanni Treccani, who founded an Italian encyclopaedia now known as Enciclopedia Treccani, was born on this day in 1877 in Montichiari near Brescia in Lombardy.

Born Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri, he was the son of a pharmacist and a noblewoman from Brescia. At the age of 17 he emigrated to Germany to work in the textile industry. He returned a few years later with a small amount of capital and the technical knowledge necessary to set up his own textile business in Italy. He began in a small way but went on to become a captain of industry.

In the years after World War I, Treccani was the owner of several cotton mills. In 1919, he was able to give a generous sum of money to help the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, the oldest scientific institute in Europe, which was in grave difficulties.

In 1923, he donated La Bibbia di Borso d’Este, a rare illustrated manuscript, to the Kingdom of Italy, after paying five million lire to buy it in Paris. This was to prevent a major work of Renaissance art from going overseas. The volume is currently housed in the Biblioteca Estense of Modena.

The following year, Treccani became a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy and in 1931 he set up the society Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, which later became Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. The institute published the Enciclopedia Italiana and the Dizionario Biografica degli Italiani. Treccani had seen young Germans using encyclopaedias and dictionaries and realised that Italy lacked a national encyclopaedia of its own.

The Enciclopedia Italiana originally consisted of 35
volumes, published serially between 1929 and 1936

From 1925 to 1937, Treccani oversaw the industry section of the encyclopaedia. From 1933 to 1938 he was vice president, and from 1954 honorary president of the institute.

Treccani was given the title of Count in 1937 and two years later received an honorary degree in literature and philosophy from the University of Milan in recognition of his contribution to history and culture. He had founded the Lombardy committee of the History and Risorgimento Society, of which he was president from 1929 to 1938, and set up the Association of Italo-German Culture in 1932. He also served as president of the Theatre Museum at La Scala in Milan.

In 1942 he set up the Treccani degli Alfieri Foundation which published The History of Milan.  In 1949 he founded As.Li.Co. (Associazione Lirica e Concertistica) to give young singers opportunities to sing in prestigious theatres. The year before he died, Treccani set up a foundation for the History of Brescia.

Today, there are online editions of the Treccani Enciclopedia and Treccani Dictionary.

Treccani, who was the father of the painter Ernesto Treccani, died in Milan in 1961.

The Piazza della Loggia is an elegant square
in the centre of the Lombardy city of Brescia

Travel tip:

Treccani was born in Brescia, Lombardy’s second city after Milan. Although a place of great artistic and architectural importance, Brescia is not well-known to tourists. It had become a Roman colony before the birth of Christ and there are remains from the forum, theatre, and a temple. The town was fought over by different rulers in the middle ages but came under the protection of Venice in the 15th century. There is a distinct Venetian influence in the architecture of the Piazza della Loggia, an elegant square in the centre of the town, which has a clock tower like the one in Piazza San Marco in Venice. Next to the 17th century Duomo is a much older cathedral, the unusually shaped Duomo Vecchio, also known as la Rotonda, which is still open to the public. The Santa Giulia Museo della Citta covers more than 3000 years of Brescia’s history, housed within the Benedictine Nunnery of San Salvatore and Santa Giulia in Via Musei. The nunnery was built over a Roman residential quarter, but some of the houses, with their original mosaics and frescoes, have now been excavated and can be seen from above by visitors to the museum.

The Biblioteca Estense in Modena began life as
the library of the dukes of Este in the 14th century

Travel tip:

The Biblioteca Estense in Modena was the family library of the dukes of Este and is known to have existed as far back as the 14th century. Situated below the Palazzo dei Musei in Modena, It is considered one of the most important libraries in Italy and now has more than 500,000 printed works. The Biblioteca’s most famous manuscript is the 1,200-page Bible of Borso d’Este, which is extensively bordered with miniatures. It was bought at auction by Giovanni Treccani after World War I and presented to the Kingdom of Italy. It is kept out of view of the public for conservation reasons but a 1963 replica of the manuscript has been put on display in its place.

Also on this day:

106BC: The birth of Roman politician and philosopher Cicero

1698: The birth of poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio

1785: The death of opera composer Baldassare Galuppi

1920: The birth of singer-songwriter Renato Carosone

1929: The birth of film director Sergio Leone

1952: The birth of politician Gianfranco Fini

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Panettone and pandoro - festive treats

Which can claim the oldest Christmas tradition?

Panettone is served as a Christmas treat by families
not just in Italy but all over the world

The festive treats tucked into by Italian families on Christmas Day almost always include a wedge or slice of panettone, the fluffy sweet bread with the familiar dome shape that sells in tens of millions at this time of year.

In little more than 100 years since it was first produced commercially on a large scale, panettone has gained such popularity that it has become readily available in food outlets on almost every continent.

It is rare to find a supermarket in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, or in most western European countries, which does not have panettone jostling for shelf space with indigenous Christmas specialities.

Nowadays, panettone is finding increasing competition from another Italian sweet bread frequently seen on Christmas tables, its tall star-shaped rival, pandoro.  

A recent Twitter poll conducted by the website thelocal.it found that panettone was still the preferred choice of about two thirds of participants, but pandoro’s popularity is almost certainly on the rise.

Bauli is one of the oldest brands of 
the classic panettone bread

But which of them has the more authentic historical claim to be Italy’s true Christmas cake?

One story in Italian folklore claims that panettone was served at a lavish, 12-course Christmas Eve banquet thrown in the late 15th century by Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, but only after the dessert made by the Duke’s head pastry chef, had accidentally been burned. 

A young kitchen assistant called Toni is said to have saved the day by adding raisins and orange peel to some dough left over from the original dessert to fashion an impromptu cake. The Duke and his guests are said to have enjoyed the cake so much they asked the pastry chef what it was called, to which he replied ‘Pane di Toni’ - Tony’s bread.

There is no way of knowing whether that story is authentic. The earliest actual record of a sweet bread resembling panettone is that which appeared in a register of expenses of the Borromeo college of Pavia in 1599.

The entry for December 23 of that year includes the costs for five pounds of butter, two pounds of raisins and three ounces of spices for the baker to make 13 loaves to be given to college students on Christmas Day.

Large scale manufacture of panettone began in Milan in the early part of the 20th century. Baker Angelo Motta was the first to set up a production facility for the bread, creating its characteristic dome shape by making the dough rise three times in a 20-hour period.

Pandoro is often sliced and dusted with
icing sugar for the Christmas table 

Pandoro is similarly thought to date back to the 15th century, when Venetian bakers are said to have dusted cone-shaped loaves with real gold for their wealthy clients, hence the name pan d’oro - bread of gold - although others believe the name derives from the golden colour obtained by adding egg to the dough.

The pandoro made today, though, originates in Verona and is thought to have evolved from a traditional Veronese Christmas cake called nadalin, invented in the 13th century to celebrate the first Christmas in the city under the rule of the Scala family. 

Nadalin was a flat cake with a crust of granulated sugar, marsala wine, almonds and pine nuts, but its star shape, said to represent the comet that guided the Magi to Bethlehem, is thought to have been the inspiration for the shape of pandoro.

Industrial-scale production of pandoro began in Verona 1894 in a factory begun by entrepreneur Domenico Melegatti.

Both panettone and pandoro are sold today as Christmas specialities. Pandoro generally comes with icing sugar to sprinkle over the cone before serving. A popular way to serve pandoro is to slice the bread horizontally and arrange the star-shaped slices so that they resemble the shape of a Christmas tree.

The Roman amphitheatre in Verona is one of 
the city'a many tourist attractions

Travel tip:

Verona, the traditional home of pandoro, is the third largest city in northeast  Italy, with a population across its whole urban area of more than 700,000. It has a wealth of tourist attractions, of which the Roman amphitheatre known the world over as L’Arena di Verona is just one. The city was also the setting for three plays by Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew - although it is unknown whether the English playwright ever actually set foot in the city.  Nonetheless, tourists flock to visit a 13th century house in Verona where Juliet is said to have lived, even though there is no evidence that Juliet and Romeo actually existed and the balcony said to have inspired Shakespeare’s imagination was not added until the early 20th century.

The beautiful Piazza Ducale in Vigevano, as
seen from the Castello Sforzesco

Travel tip:

The banquet thrown by Ludovico il Moro, who was a member of the Sforza family, quite likely took place at the Castello Sforzesco in Vigevano, a Lombard fortress developed by the Visconti family and rebuilt between 1492–94 for Ludovico, who transformed the fortification into a rich noble residence. Leonardo da Vinci was often his guest at Vigevano, as was the architect Donato Bramante, who designed the tower that watches over the beautiful rectangular Piazza Ducale, which was completed in 1493 as the forecourt to the castle.  The Peroni Brewery was founded by Giovanni Peroni in Vigevano in 1846.

Also on this day:

800: Charlemagne, King of the Franks and the Lombards, crowned Holy Roman Emperor

1874: The birth of soprano Lina Cavalieri

1988: The birth of singer-songwriter Marco Mengoni

Natale - Christmas Day

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Enrico Rastelli – juggler

Performer whose juggling record has never been surpassed

Enrico Rastelli practised until he
had skills that set him apart

Enrico Rastelli, who is thought to have been the greatest juggler of all time, died on this day in 1931 in Bergamo in Lombardy.

Rastelli began his career in the circus ring and practised his juggling skills constantly until he was able to achieve levels of skill beyond those of any of his contemporaries. By the 1920s he had become a star, touring Europe and America, amazing audiences with his skill and amassing large earnings.

Eventually he made the move to performing in vaudeville shows in theatres where he would appear in full football strip and juggle up to five footballs at a time.

Rastelli had been born in Russia in 1896, into a circus family originally from the Bergamo area of Lombardy. Both his parents were performers and trained him in circus disciplines including acrobatics, balancing, and aerial skills. He made his debut at the age of 13 as part of his parents’ aerial act.

He practised juggling diligently and by the age of 19 was performing his own solo juggling act. He started by manipulating sticks and balls in Japanese style. While many jugglers at the time would throw and catch plates, hats, and canes, Rastelli restricted himself to working with balls and sticks and achieved higher technical skills than any other juggler of this period.

In 1917, Rastelli married Harriet Price, a highwire artist, and they had three children. They frequently toured Europe with his act and established a permanent home in Italy, building a large Liberty style villa in Bergamo, 

Rastelli's routine often involved
performing with footballs

While on tour in Europe in 1931, Rastelli contracted pneumonia and had to return home to Bergamo quickly. Sadly, his condition worsened and he died in the early hours of the morning of 13 December of anaemia, aged 34.

When his funeral took place in Bergamo, it was attended by thousands of people. He was buried in the Cimitero Monumentale in Bergamo and a life-sized statue of him was erected at his tomb, showing him spinning a ball on his raised finger.

The February 1932 edition of Vanity Fair magazine included a full-page photograph of Rastelli, captioned: ‘One of the most sensational attractions in the international world of vaudeville.’ The magazine said Rastelli had elevated juggling to an art, ‘due not only to the amazing agility and complexity of the juggling itself,’ but also ‘to the incredible ease of his execution, and the visual impression made on the audience.’

The Juggling Hall of Fame website says Rastelli was ‘the most famous and in the opinion of many, the greatest juggler who ever lived.’ They say that as well as his work with large balls, he could also juggle up to ten small balls, which is generally considered to be the record.   

The beautiful Piazza Vecchia is the focal point
of Bergamo's mediaeval Città Alta

Travel tip:

The Lombardy city of Bergamo, where Enrico Rastelli’s family had their roots and where Rastelli himself built a house for his family, can be found approximately 50km (31 miles) northwest of Milan. It is a beautiful city with an upper and lower town that are separated by impressive fortifications. The magical upper town - the Città Alta - has gems of mediaeval and Renaissance architecture surrounded by the impressive 16th century walls, which were built during the time the city belonged to Venice. Outside the walls, the elegant Città Bassa, which grew up on the plain below, has some buildings that date back to the 15th century as well as imposing architecture added in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the Città Alta, with the enchanting Piazza Vecchia at its heart, is the draw for many tourists, the lower town also has art galleries, churches and theatres and a wealth of good restaurants and smart shops to enjoy.

No 9 Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, the former home
of juggler Enrico Rastelli and his family

Travel tip

Enrico Rastelli’s home in Bergamo was a beautiful villa on the edge of the Santa Lucia neighbourhood of the Città Bassa, at No 9 Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, where it can still be admired. He had it built in Stile Liberty, the Italian variation of Art Nouveau that was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which had influences of the Baroque architectural style but also incorporated elements that had their roots in Japanese and Far Eastern art. With ornate arches over the upper floor windows, balconies and an extra floor forming a tower in one corner, it is a good example of the style. The villa is thought to be owned now by the Praderio family, well known locally for their historic fabric shop in nearby Via XX Settembre, one of Bergamo’s main shopping streets.

Also on this day:

1466: The death of Renaissance sculptor Donatello

1521: The birth of Pope Sixtus V

1720: The birth of playwright Carlo Gozzi

La Festa di Santa Lucia

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The Borghese Coup

Neo-fascist ‘plot’ aborted at last moment

How the story of the attempted coup was broken
in a Rome newspaper three months after the event

Italians might have woken up on this day in 1970 to learn that the nation’s legitimate government had been overthrown in a neo-fascist coup had the plotters behind the insurrection not abandoned their action at the 11th hour.

The night of December 7-8 had been chosen as the date for Golpe Borghese - the Borghese Coup - the proposed coup d’état by Junio Valerio Borghese, a nobleman descended from the House of Borghese, which originated in Siena and went on to wield significant power and influence in Rome in the 17th century. 

Borghese, a former member of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, had been a naval commander in World War Two who had aligned himself with Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic following the armistice of 1943. He became a prominent neo-fascist in post-war Italy, first as a member of the Italian Social Movement and later setting up his own political party, the Fronte Nazionale (National Front). 

Like many on the far right of Italian politics, Borghese - known as the Black Prince both for his politics and his family history, the Borghese having been part of the so-called Black Nobility - had been alarmed by the rise of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he felt the political mainstream in Italy was doing too little to counter.  Strikes and protests had become commonplace and the tension between right and left had been exacerbated by the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in December 1969, when 17 people were killed in a terrorist act blamed on the neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo. It was the start of the period of unrest that would become known as the Years of Lead.

The neo-fascist politician Junio
Valerio Borghese plotted the coup

The coup Borghese conceived would have installed a coalition of military figures, right-wing politicians and sympathisers in place of the centre-left government led by Christian Democrat Emilio Colombo. The leaders of the PCI were to have been arrested and imprisoned and the party dissolved.

The action had been a year and more in the planning. Borghese had formed an alliance with another neo-fascist group, Avanguardia Nazionale (National Vanguard) led by Stefano Delle Chiaie, and had secretly obtained the promise of support from a force of army dissidents under the control of Lt. Colonel Amos Spiazzi. He had secured financial backing from a number of businessmen and industrialists who shared his misgivings about the rise of the communists and forged links with the secretive masonic lodge Propaganda Due, led by Licio Gelli.  

The Cosa Nostra and ‘Ndrangheta mafia organisations were to play a part also, in return for a scaling back of anti-mafia operations by the state.

Borghese had even gained the tacit approval of the United States for his planned coup, making contact through a number of intermediaries with important figures in the State Department. The Americans, who were still sponsoring NATO’s clandestine, anti-communist post-war activities in Italy under Operation Gladio, apparently indicated they would not oppose the coup provided certain conditions were met, although they reportedly doubted it would succeed.

When the night of the operation arrived, Borghese’s paramilitary force and other supporters were to kidnap the Italian President, Giuseppe Saragat, to murder Angelo Vicari, the head of the police, and to occupy the headquarters of public television broadcaster RAI. The seizure would take place of the presidential residence at the Palazzo Quirinale, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence.  Groups of paramilitaries were positioned in front of the residences of prominent left-wing politicians.

President Giuseppe Saragat was to
have been kidnapped by the plotters

Operations to take control of government offices in the other major Italian cities were also made ready. Spiazzi planned to occupy the whole town of Sesto San Giovanni, a communist stronghold near Milan.

Yet at about 1.40am on December 8, just as the Golpe Borghese  was in its early stages, with militants already inside the Interior Ministry and beginning to loot weapons from the national armoury, Borghese sent out the order that the operation was to be aborted. 

Ordinary Italians knew nothing of any of this until March 17, 1971, when the left-wing Rome newspaper Paese Sera, who had been fed information by government sources, broke the story of a neo-fascist plot to overthrow the state. The first arrests were made later the same day.

Borghese was not among them. He had already fled to Spain, where he would remain until his death four years later, when he was suddenly taken ill with severe abdominal pains after eating his dinner.  The death certificate recorded the cause of death as an acute haemorrhage of the pancreas, although many suspected he had been poisoned.

His reason for abandoning the coup was never established. His own explanation was that there was never a coup, and that all that was being planned was a large-scale protest against the forthcoming visit to Rome of the communist leader of Yugoslavia, Josep Broz Tito. He had decided to call off the protest because of the unpleasant conditions caused by heavy rain.

However, Lt. Colonel Spiazzi confirmed later that a coup had been about to be carried out, only for it to become known that the Christian Democratic government had been tipped off and were ready to trigger Exigency Operation Triangle, which would deploy thousands of troops and police to suppress the plotters and declare martial law.

Three trials of suspected participants in the coup attempt, along with subsequent appeals, were heard between 1978 and 1986 but ultimately all the defendants were acquitted.  This was despite further evidence emerging from the Maxi Trial of Sicilian mafiosi in the mid-80s, when Tommaso Buscetta and other pentiti confirmed that Borghese had sought their help, and that the Palermo journalist Mauro di Mauro, the victim of an apparent mafia killing three months before the planned coup, had been murdered because he had learned about Borghese’s intentions and planned to splash the story.

The Borghese Coup remains one of Italy’s many unsolved mysteries, dismissed by some as a rather comic attempt by incompetent plotters that was never any real threat to the state, but suspected by others to be another example of sinister figures trying to influence the course of events for their own political ends.

The Quirinale Palace in Rome has been the official 
residence of 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents

Travel tip:

The Palazzo del Quirinale was built in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII originally as a summer residence. It subsequently served both as a papal residence and the offices responsible for the civil government of the Papal States until 1870. When, in 1871, Rome became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy, the palace became the official residence of the kings of Italy, although some monarchs, notably King Victor Emmanuel III (1900–1946), lived in a private residence elsewhere. When the monarchy was abolished in 1946, the Palazzo del Quirinale became the official residence and workplace for the presidents of the Italian Republic. So far, it has housed 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents.

The main facade of the Palazzo Borghese, the
historical seat of the Borghese family in Rome

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Borghese, which is notable for its unusual trapezoidal layout, having two parallel sides but two that are not parallel, was the main seat of the Borghese family in Rome. Situated in the Campo Marzio district of central Rome, not far from the Ponte Cavour and and about 600m (0.37 miles) on foot from the Spanish Steps, it was built in about 1560-61 by the architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola on behalf of Monsignor Tommaso del Giglio and acquired by Cardinal Camillo Borghese in 1604, shortly before he became Pope Paul V.  The first floor of the palace has been the seat of the Embassy of Spain in Italy since 1947. The palace originally housed the Borghese family’s art collection, which contained works by Raphael, Titian and many others, before it was transferred in 1891 to the Galleria Borghese in Villa Borghese.

Also on this day:

1577: The birth of painter Mario Minniti

1685: The birth of perfumier Johann Maria Farina

1881: The birth of architect Marcello Piacentini

1925: The birth of politician Arnaldo Forlani

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

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