Alfonso Bialetti – engineer

The genius behind one of the most quintessentially Italian style symbols

Alfonso Bialetti (right) pictured in his workshop
at his Crusinallo foundry in the 1930s

Alfonso Bialetti, who became famous for designing the aluminium Moka Express coffee maker, died on this day in 1970 in Omegna in Piedmont.

Originally designed in 1933, the Moka Express has been a style icon since the 1950s, and it remains a famous symbol of the Italian way of life to this day.

Bialetti was born in 1888 in Montebuglio, a district of the Casale Corte Cerro municipality in Cusio, Piedmont. As a young man, he is said to have alternated between assisting his father, who sold branding irons, and working as an apprentice in small workshops.

He emigrated to France while he was still young and became a foundry worker, acquiring metalworking skills by working for a decade in the French metal industry.

In 1918 he returned to Montebuglio, opened a foundry in nearby Crusinallo and began making metal products. This became the foundation of Alfonso Bialetti & Company.

Moka pots made today have the same design
and still carry the L'omino con i baffi logo

He came up with the brilliant idea of the Moka Express, which was to revolutionise the process of making coffee in the home.  The process by which hot water in the pot’s lower chamber is forced by the pressure of steam to percolate through a funnel containing coffee grounds is said to have been influenced by Bialetti’s observations of a washing machine used by his wife.

The name given to his invention was inspired by the city of Mokha in Yemen, one of the world’s leading centres for coffee production.

The Moka’s classic design, with its eight-faceted metallic body, is still manufactured by the Bialetti company today and it has become the world’s most famous coffee pot. The use of aluminium was a new idea at the time because it was not a metal that was traditionally used for domestic purposes.

The design transformed the Bialetti company into a leading Italian coffee machine designer and manufacturer.

At the start, Bialetti sold the Moka coffee pot only at local markets, but many millions of Moka coffee pots were to be sold throughout the world during the years to follow. The Moka express was small, cheap to produce, and easy to use, and made it possible for many more people to brew good coffee in their own homes.

When Alfonso Bialetti’s son, Renato, took over the business, he initiated a big marketing campaign to boost the profile of the Moka coffee pot and to ensure the popularity of the Bialetti brand in the face of many copy-cat products coming on to the market. 

Key to that campaign was the introduction of a Moka ‘trademark’ on every Bialetti coffee pot in the form of a cartoon caricature - L'omino con i baffi - the little man with the moustache - his right arm raised with finger outstretched as if summoning a waiter, based on a humorous doodle of Renato drawn by Paul Campani, an Italian cartoonist.

Alfonso Bialetti was the grandfather of Alberto Alessi, president of Alessi Spa, the famous Italian design house.

In 2007, Bialetti’s company was listed on the online stock market of the Italian stock exchange.

Montebuglio sits on a hillside a short distance
from the picturesque Lago d'Orta

Travel tip: 

Montebuglio, where Alfonso Bialetti was born, is a tiny village occupying a hillside location overlooking the valley of the Strona river in Piedmont, a short distance from Lago d’Orta, one of the smaller lakes of the Italian ‘lake district’ but no less picturesque than its better-known neighbour, Lago Maggiore, which lies a few kilometres to the east, the other side of Monte Falò.  Montebuglio is a parish of the municipality of Casale Corte Cerro, located 15km (nine miles) from Verbania, 50km (31 miles) from the Swiss town of Locarno and 100km (62 miles) northwest of Milan.  The popular Lake Maggiore resorts of Baveno and Stresa are within a short distance of Casale Corte Cerro. The largely wooded countryside around the area is crossed by a dense network of paths, by which walkers are able to reach vantage points on the steep, mountainous slopes from which, in clear weather, it is possible to enjoy a view that includes the Orta, Maggiore, Varese, Monate and Comabbio lakes. 

Stay in Casale Corte Cerro with Booking.com

Omegna is a beautiful and lively town on the north
side of Lake Maggiore's neighbour, Lake Orta

Travel tip: 

Omegna, where Bialetti spent the final years of his life and where the Alessi company still has its headquarters, is a lively town on the north side of Lake Orta, an area of outstanding natural beauty where tree-lined mountains meet the shimmering water of the lake. Omegna’s civilisation dates back to the Bronze Age, with settlements subsequently established there by the Ligures - a tribe from Greece - the Celts and Romans. Omegna, which is popular in the summer months, when it hosts many festivals and concerts, is sometimes referred to as the Riviera di San Giulio, named after an early Christian saint buried on an island in Lake Orta.  Among places to visit are a museum of the town’s history, the Romanesque church of Sant’Ambrogio and the Porta della Valle, sometimes called Porta Romana, one of five ancient protective gates still standing. 

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More reading:

The Turin bar and hotel owner who invented the espresso machine 

The former peasant farmer who founded the Lavazza coffee company

The opening of Venice’s historic Caffè Florian

Also on March 4:

1678: The birth of composer Antonio Vivaldi

1848: The first Italian Constitution is approved by the King of Sardinia

1916: The birth of writer and novelist Giorgio Bassani

1943: The birth of singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla

(Picture credits: Montebuglio by Bart292CCC; Omegna by Fabio Pocci; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Eugenio Barsanti - engineer

Created the first working internal combustion engine

A model of the Barsanti-Matteucci engine
pictured on display at a museum in Milan

The engineer Eugenio Barsanti, whose internal combustion engine was the first working example of the technology known to have been produced, was born on this day in 1821 in Pietrasanta, a town in northern Tuscany.

The Belgian-French engineer Étienne Lenoir and the German Nicolaus Otto are credited with the first commercially successful internal combustion engines, but Barsanti’s machine, which he developed with partner Felice Matteucci, was unveiled in 1853 - six years before Lenoir’s and eight years ahead of Otto’s.

Barsanti might have achieved commercial success himself but shortly after reaching an agreement with a company in Belgium to produce his machine on a commercial scale he contracted typhoid fever, from which he never recovered.

A rather sickly child, known by his parents as Nicolò, Barsanti took the name Father Eugenio after entering the novitiate of the Piarists, the oldest Catholic religious order dedicated to education, where was ordained as a priest.

He took a teaching position at Collegio San Michele in Volterra. It was there, while lecturing on the explosive energy created by mixing hydrogen and air that he realised the potential of using combustible gases to lift the pistons in a motor.

He developed the idea further after meeting Matteucci, an engineer, while teaching at an institute in Florence. 

A postage stamp issued to mark the 150th
anniversary of the engine's invention

After exhibiting their first engine at the prestigious Accademia dei Georgofili in Florence to much excitement, Barsanti and Matteucci travelled to London to obtain a patent. 

By 1856, Barsanti and Matteucci had developed a two-cylinder five horsepower motor and two years later built a two-piston engine designed to provide a source of energy to drive machinery in factories and workshops.

The Barsanti-Matteucci engine was quicker and more efficient than the one developed by Lenoir and won a silver medal from the Institute of Science of Lombardy. They believed it could also be used in the propulsion of ships as an alternative to steam.

After the prototype of their engine was built in Milan, the two were all set to go into mass production at a plant near Liège in Belgium owned by the English industrialist John Cockerill when Barsanti fell ill with typhoid fever. He died on April 18, 1864.

After his partner’s death, Matteucci found himself unsuited to the demands of running a commercial business and failed to secure the contracts necessary to make mass production viable. He returned to his previous work in hydraulics. 

Nicolaus Otto, on the other hand, had a background in business, giving him an edge not only in marketing skills but in the contacts he could approach for investment. He was the first to enjoy significant commercial success producing internal combustion engines and tends to be credited with its invention.

Barsanti's ashes are buried at the 
Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence

Matteucci’s arguments that Otto’s engine was clearly similar to his and Barsanti’s were largely ignored. Nonetheless, many of the documents relating to the original patents he and Barsanti obtained are preserved in the Museo Galileo in Florence, while Barsanti’s achievements are acknowledged in Italy, where a postage stamp was issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Barsanti-Matteucci engine.

In 1954, Barsanti's ashes were moved from the Church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi, the small, Piarist church in Florence, to the Basilica of Santa Croce, to rest alongside the remains of such illustrious Italians as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, the poet Ugo Foscolo and the composer Gioachino Rossini among many others.

Copies of Barsanti’s engines can be seen at the Osservatorio Ximeniano in Florence and the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.

The wide, sandy beach at Marina di Pietrasanta
is 5km long and attracts thousands of visitors

Travel tip:

Pietrasanta, just north of Viareggio in the province of Lucca in Tuscany, still has part of its Roman wall, although as a mediaeval town it was not founded until 1255, expanding around the Rocca di Sala fortress of the Lombards. Its Duomo - the 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, to be followed in later years by such artists as Fernando Botero, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, and Damien Hirst. The town declined during the 17th and 18th centuries, partly due to malaria, but underwent reconstruction in the 19th century. It has a pleasant central square, while the seaside resort of Marina di Pietrasanta is just 3km (1.9 miles) away.  Part of the Versilia coastline, Marina di Pietrasanta boasts some of the area's best beaches, stretching for 5km (3 miles).

The waterfront at Viareggio is notable for its many
examples of Liberty-style architecture

Travel tip:

Viareggio, which can be found just 13km (8 miles) south of Pietrasanta, is a popular resort also known for its excellent sandy beaches and for its carnival, a month-long event dating back to 1873 that runs from February through to March and features parades of giant papier-mache floats designed to represent well-known public figures. The Tuscan resort is also notable for its beautiful Liberty-style architecture, much of it built in its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century, many examples of which thankfully survived heavy bombing in World War Two when the town was a target because of its shipbuilding industry.  The body of the English poet Shelley, who drowned at sea, was washed up on a beach near the resort in 1822.  He was cremated on the beach under the supervision of his friend, the poet Lord Byron. There is a monument to Shelley in the town’s Piazza Paolina.

Also on this day:

54: The death of Roman emperor Claudius

1687: The birth of architect Giorgio Massari

1815: The execution of Joachim Murat, former king of Naples

1884: The birth of anarchist Mario Buda

1988: The birth of sportsman and entrepreneur Piero Dusio

1985: The death of silent movie actress Francesca Bertini

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Italy’s first nuclear reactor opens

Facility based on pioneer Enrico Fermi’s historic Chicago-Pile series

The Ispra-1 reactor was the first nuclear
reactor to be built on Italian soil

The first nuclear reactor to be built on Italian soil was inaugurated on this day in 1959 at Ispra, a small town on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore.

The facility, which preceded the first generation of nuclear power plants serving the need for clean, reliable and plentiful electricity sources for industrial and domestic use, was built purely for research purposes.

It was opened four years ahead of the country’s first commercial nuclear plant, at Latina in Lazio.

The 5 megawatt Ispra-1 research reactor, as it was titled, was modelled on the latest version of the Chicago-Pile 5 series developed by Enrico Fermi, the Rome-born nuclear physicist who created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago-Pile 1, following his discovery that if uranium neutrons were emitted into fissioning uranium, they could split other uranium atoms, setting off a chain reaction that would release enormous amounts of energy.

The Ispra-1 reactor was built by Italy’s National Nuclear Research Council. It was officially transferred to the European Community in March 1961, becoming a Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. 

It was used for studies and research on core physics, new materials for the construction of nuclear power reactors, as well as neutron fluxes and their interaction with living matter.

Until the 1960s, much of Italy’s electricity had been generated from renewable sources. Although the first power plant in continental Europe, opened in Milan in 1883, was carbon-fuelled, the country’s abundance of mountains and lakes enabled it to develop a huge hydroelectric power sector.

The Trino Vercellese nuclear plant was named
after the Italian nuclear pioneer Enrico Fermi

Fossil fuels began to take over in the 1960s to meet the needs of a growing population but there was a common belief that nuclear energy could provide, within only a few years, safely and economically, all the power that Italy needed. 

By 1964, three nuclear power plants had been built, all approximately 50km (31 miles) from major cities. They were at Trino Vercellese, north of Turin, at Sessa Aurunca in Campania, north of Naples, and at Latina, south of Rome.

Yet after the electricity sector in Italy was nationalised in 1962, investment in nuclear stalled. It was not until 1978 that a fourth nuclear power station, at Caorso in Emilia-Romagna, was completed.  The 1973 world oil crisis had prompted another round of enthusiastic plans for the nuclear sector, but again they were ultimately downgraded.

The most significant setback of all followed the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, fallout from which affected parts of northern Italy and was blamed for a decline in birth rate in 1987. The Italian government organised a referendum to gauge public feeling about the future of nuclear power, the results of which led to a decision to close two plants and terminate work on another.

Another referendum in 2011 following a nuclear accident in Japan confirmed that public opinion had not shifted and a new company was created to take charge of decommissioning all nuclear sites in Italy, including the research facility at Ispra.

The Cattedrale di San Marco is an
example of Latina's architecture

Travel tip:

Latina, where one of Italy’s now-decommissioned nuclear power stations was opened in 1963, is a city built during the Fascist era of the 1920s and 1930s when Mussolini’s government fulfilled a pledge to drain the inhospitable, mosquito-ridden Pontine Marshes, visitors to which frequently became infected with malaria. Built on that reclaimed land, and originally called Littoria when it was established in 1932, its stands as a monument to the architectural style that typified the era, which combined some elements of classicism, with its preponderance of columns and arches, with the stark lines of 1920s and 30s rationalism. It has a large number of monuments and edifices, including a town hall with a tall clock tower and a cathedral, designed by architects such as Marcello Piacentini and Angiolo Mazzoni. Renamed Latina in 1946, it has grown into a substantial city with a population of 126,000, making it the second largest city in Lazio after Rome.

Ispra's coastal pathways are popular with
visitors to the Lago Maggiore town

Travel tip:

Ispra, which sits on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore about 25km (16 miles) west of its provincial capital, Varese, is an area popular with walkers for its lakeside footpaths, including the poetically named passeggiata dell’amore, and with golfers for the Parco del Golfo della Quassa. The Joint Research Centre still exists, despite the decommissioning of the nuclear plant. It comprises the Institute for the Protection and the Security of the Citizen (IPSC), the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) and the Institute for Health and Consumer Protection (IHCP). The site itself is an area of natural preservation, covering an area of 157 hectares (390 acres) of pine, birch, oak and chestnut trees.

Also on this day:

1446: The death of architect Filippo Brunelleschi

1452: The birth of Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci

1754: The death of mathematician Jacopo Riccati

1882: The birth of anti-Fascist politician Giovanni Amendola

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The Milan-Monza railway

First line in northern Italy sparked industrial growth 

The first railway line laid in northern Italy was opened on this day in 1840.

The route, almost a straight line, of the
first passenger railway in northern Italy

The line, authorised by Ferdinand I of Austria, within whose empire the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia fell at the time, connected the city of Milan with the smaller city of Monza, covering a distance of 12.8km (eight miles).

It was the second railway line to be built on the Italian peninsula, following on from the shorter Naples-Portici line, which had been opened in October of the previous year.

Italy was a little behind in developing railways. The first steam-powered railway engine had completed its maiden journey some 56 years earlier, in England.   But once Milan-Monza was operational, quickly followed by the first section of what would become a Milan-Venice line, the rest of Italy awoke to their potential.

By the end of the 1840s, there were nine or 10 routes, mainly in the north; by unification in 1861, the network had expanded to more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) and by the early 1870s, there were some 7,000km (4,340 miles) of track, enabling travel from the outposts of Susa in the northwest, close to the border with France, and Udine in the northeast, all the way down to Maglie, south of Lecce, and Cariati, east of Cosenza, in the south.

The Milan-Monza line went under the rather grand title of the Imperiale Regno Privilegiata Strada Ferrata da Milano a Monza - the Imperial and Royal Privileged Railway from Milan to Monza. ‘Privilege’ was the equivalent of ‘concession’ in the bureaucratic language of the time.

An engine by Robert Stephenson similar to those
that saw service on the Milan-Monza line 

The privilege for this railway had been granted by Emperor Ferdinand I in 1838 and construction assigned to the Holzhammer company of Bolzano in what was then Austrian South Tyrol, although the designer was the Italian engineer Guido Sarti.

The track, mounted on stone cubes sunk into the ground and with transverse bars to maintain the gauge, followed a straight course. The starting point was the former Stazione Porta Nuova with an intermediate station at Sesto San Giovanni.

In the interests of safety, tall masonry towers were built along the line, each manned by signalmen who could communicate with one another and the trains using visual and acoustic signals.

The first trains, which were pulled by locomotives built by George Rennie and Robert Stephenson in England, named Milano and Lombardia, ran four times each day, soon increasing to six.  Each train consisted of up to 21 carriages, of which passengers had a choice of first, second or third class, paying fares of 1.5 Austrian lire, 1 lira or 75 cents per journey.

Milano and Lombardia proved rather unreliable, but the services were popular nonetheless. By the end of December, more than 150,000 passengers had been carried and four new locomotives, named Lambro, Brianza, Monza and Adda, were acquired.

The main building of the former Stazione Porta
Nuova now houses a luxury boutique hotel 

As well as providing a service to the public that was much faster than the horse-drawn carriage that railways and the automobile would ultimately replace, the new train connection spurred the growth of industry.

Sesto San Giovanni saw an expansion in the number of spinning mills and the Italian Post Office began to use the line to transport mail. Industry in Monza also began to expand.

The Austrian government originally intended the line to be extended to Bergamo via one branch and to Como via another. In the event, the project was scaled down to allow just the Como leg. The first extensions, to Camnago-Lentate and Camerlata, were completed in 1849, although it was 1875 before it reached Como. 

Today, the Milan-Monza section is part of a line extending through Como to Chiasso in Switzerland. It began to operate electrically powered trains in 1899 and, now fully electrified, the section also carries trains to Bergamo as well as intercity trains linking Milan with Basel and Zurich. 

Monza's beautiful 13th century 
town hall, the Arengario

Travel tip:

The city of Monza is famous for its Grand Prix motor racing circuit, which hosts the Formula One Italian Grand Prix. The city is also home to the Iron Crown of Lombardy - the Corona Ferrea - a circlet of gold with a central iron band, which according to legend, was beaten out of a nail from Christ’s true cross and was found by Saint Helena in the Holy Land. The crown is believed to have been given to the city of Monza in the sixth century and is kept in a chapel in the 13th century Basilica of San Giovanni Battista, the city’s cathedral. When Napoleon Bonaparte was declared King of Italy in 1805, he was crowned in the Duomo in Milan and the Iron Crown had to be fetched from Monza before the ceremony. During his coronation, Napoleon is reported to have picked up the precious relic, announced that God had given it to him, and placed it on his own head. In Piazza Roma, the city's 13th century Arengario - town hall - has echoes of the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan.

The city of Bolzano, in Alto Adige, has a backdrop
of lush, tree-lined mountains 

Travel tip:

Bolzano, home of the Holzhammer company commissioned to build the Milan-Monza railway line, is a city in the South Tyrol province of what is now northern Italy, also known as Alto Adige. It is in a valley flanked by hills covered in lush vineyards. A gateway to the Dolomites mountain range in the Italian Alps, it has a medieval city centre famous for its wooden market stalls, selling Alpine cheeses and hams and loaves of dark, seeded bread. One of the features of the city is the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, which features a Neolithic mummy called Ötzi the Iceman. Buildings of note include the imposing 13th-century Mareccio Castle, and the Duomo di Bolzano with its Romanesque and Gothic architecture. With a population of 108,000 in the city and 250,000 including surrounding suburbs, towns and villages, it is one of the largest urban areas in the Alpine region. Three languages - Italian, German and a local language called Ladin - are spoken in the area, which in 2020 was ranked joint first with Bologna for the best standard of living in Italy.

Also on this day:

1498: Cesare Borgia resigns as a Cardinal of the Catholic Church

1740: Prospero Lambertini elected as Pope Benedict XIV

2008: The death of oil tycoon Franco Sensi

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Domenico Dolce - fashion designer

One half of hugely successful Dolce & Gabbana company

Domenico Dolce is co-founder
of the Dolce & Gabbana company

The designer Domenico Dolce, whose partnership with Stefano Gabbana gave rise to one of the world’s most famous fashion houses, was born on this day in 1958 in Polizzi Generosa, a beautiful town set in the hills of northern Sicily, about 90km (56 miles) southeast of Palermo.

He and Gabbana, who he met in Milan, founded Dolce & Gabbana in 1985. The company took off in 1993 after the pop star Madonna chose them to design the costumes for a concert tour.

The company today generates about €1.3 billion in revenues and employs 5,500 people worldwide.

Dolce was born into the world of clothes. His father was a tailor and his mother worked in retail, at different times selling fabrics and lingerie.  He is said to have learned to sew at the age of six and made costumes for dolls.

After studying at art college in Palermo, Dolce moved to Milan to attend the fashion design school Istituto Marangoni. He already had dreams of working for Giorgio Armani and grew impatient to begin working in the fashion industry, dropping out of his course before completing it and taking a job in the sewing workshop of designer Giorgio Correggiari.

Domenico Dolce (right) pictured with his 
partner Stefano Gabbana in 2010

It was at a Milan nightclub that he met Stefano Gabbana, a young man with similar ambitions. They became friends and Gabbana joined Dolce in working for Correggiari, but after three years decided to leave, first to work independently. In 1985 they began their collaboration, launching their own label, which debuted at Milano Collezioni's Nuovi Talenti show the same year, at which the pair’s designs were worn by friends because they could not afford catwalk models.

The following year, they released their first collection, displayed under the title Real Women, and in 1987 opened their first store in Milan, in Via Santa Cecilia in the city's fashion quarter. 

Dolce’s family moved to Milan to help him develop the business. It was at a factory owned by his father, Severio, at Legnano, about 20km (12 miles) northwest of Milan, that they began production of their lines. Dolce's younger brother, Alfonso, and sister, Dora, remain involved as company executives 

Madonna's Girlie Show World Tour
in 1993 put Dolce & Gabbana on the map

The company expanded geographically, opening its first showroom in Manhattan, New York, in 1990, and in its product range, introducing its first perfume in 1992, but it was when Madonna picked them to design more than 1,500 costumes for her Girlie Show World Tour in 1993 that the Dolce & Gabbana name began to register as a major brand.

Soon, major stars from the entertainment industry were wanting to wear their glamorous, boldly-patterned designs, including actresses Monica Bellucci, Angelina Jolie and Isabella Rossellini and pop star and actress Kylie Minogue, whose Showgirl Homecoming tour in 2006-07 featured costumes by Dolce & Gabbana.  

Although their fashion ranges, many inspired by their love of cinema, were aimed at the high end of the market, Dolce & Gabbana realised that there was much they could do to reach popular audiences as well, and added such things as ties, belts, handbags, sunglasses, watches and footwear to their range, at more affordable prices.

By 2010, the 25th anniversary of the company’s foundation, there were 113 Dolce & Gabbana stores and 21 factory outlets.

As well as being business partners, Domenico and Stefano lived together as a couple for around 20 years, sharing a home in Milan. Although their personal relationship ended, they still work together.  

It was once reported that when the two retired, they would sell the business. More recently they announced tentative plans to pass control of the company instead to members of their extended families, several of whom already work for them and own shares.

Polizzi Generosa enjoys a spectacular location
in the mountains of northeast Sicily

Travel tip:

Dolce’s hometown of Polizzi Generosa is built on a limestone ridge within the Madonie Natural Park in northwest Sicily. It is situated only about 25km (12 miles) inland from the coastal town of Cefalù, yet sits at more than 915m (3,000ft) above sea level.  The roots of Polizzi go back to the Byzantine area but its development came mainly under the Normans, who built the cathedral church of Saint Maria Maggiore in the 11th century. As well as its attractive churches and palaces, Polizzi Generosa offers beautiful views of the surrounding nature reserve.

The 16th century Basilica of San Magno is
situated on Legnano's main square

Travel tip:

Legnano - the hometown of another Italian fashion giant, Gianfranco Ferré - is famous for being the only town, apart from Rome, to which reference is made in the Italian national anthem, thanks to the historic Battle of Legnano, in which the Lombard League inflicted a heavy defeat on the forces of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1176.  Almost 700 years later, Garibaldi referred to the battle as an inspiration in the struggle for unification of Italy.  The 16th century Basilica of San Magno, where Ferré's funeral took place, is the town's most important building.

Also on this day:

1819: The birth of Republican activist Aurelio Saffi

1868: The birth of electrical engineer Camillo Olivetti

1912: The birth of microbiologist Salvador Luria

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Gianluigi Aponte - shipping magnate

Billionaire started with one cargo vessel

Gianluigi Aponti launched his MSC
company in 1970 with one ship

Gianluigi Aponte, the billionaire founder of the Mediterranean Shipping Company, which owns the second largest container fleet in the world and a string of luxury cruise liners, was born on this day in 1940 in Sant’Agnello, the seaside resort that neighbours Sorrento in Campania.

He and his wife, Rafaela, a partner in the business, have an estimated net worth of $11.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

The Mediterranean Shipping Company has more than 510 container ships, making it the second largest such business in the world. Only the Danish company Maersk is bigger.

MSC Cruises, meanwhile, has grown into the fourth largest cruise company in the world and the largest in entirely private ownership. With offices in 45 countries, it employs 23,500 people, with a fleet of 17 luxury cruise liners.

Overall, the Mediterranean Shipping Company, which Aponte began in 1970 with one cargo vessel, has more than 60,000 staff in 150 countries.

Aponte has been able to trace his seafaring ancestry back to the 17th century. His family’s roots are on the Sorrentine Peninsula and there are records of his family’s boats ferrying goods between Naples and Castellammare di Stabia, just along the coast.

His own involvement after the death of his father, who had left Italy to open a hotel in Somalia. Gianlugi returned to his homeland and enrolled at the nautical institute in Naples. He joined the company of the Naples shipping entrepreneur, Achille Lauro, and was employed on the Naples-to-Capri ferry fleet. Eventually, he became a captain.

The MSC logo can be seen on all
of the company's cruise ships

He met his wife, Swiss-born Rafaela Diamant Pinas, when she was a passenger on one of his boats and the couple moved to Geneva.

Aponte for a while worked in banking but craved a return to the maritime industry. He raised $280,000 to buy Patricia, a German freighter, and in 1970 established the Mediterranean Shipping Company. Another cargo ship, which he named Rafaela after his wife, followed a year later.

Operating largely between Europe and Africa, Aponte's fleet had expanded to 20 cargo ships by the 1980s, which the billionaire sold to move into container shipping.

He diversified into cruise lines after buying his mentor Achille Lauro's cruise fleet in 1987, initially under the name Starlauro. The company was renamed MSC Cruises in 1995.

Among the company’s first ships was the ill-fated passenger ship named Achille Lauro, which in 1985 was hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front off the coast of Egypt and in 1994 caught fire and sank off Somalia in the Indian Ocean.

The MSC Opera, one of the Lirica class vessels that marked
the start of the company's investment in modern ships

MSC Cruises became a serious player in the cruise market in the early 2000s, when a €5.5 billion investment programme was launched to build the world’s most modern cruise fleet.

This began with the purchase or commission of four Lirica class vessels, each with the capacity to carry more than 2,000 passengers. Each subsequent generation of cruise ships bearing the company’s distinctive star logo has been bigger than the previous one.

The latest is the Meraviglia class, which comprises two enormous boats, each with 15 passenger decks and which can carry 4,500 guests in addition to more than 1,500 crew. The Meraviglia is the fourth largest cruise ship in service anywhere in the world.

Another massive investment programme was launched in 2014, which included refurbishment of the original Lirica vessels in addition to plans for new boats. Between 2014 and 2026, this investment is expected to total $11.6 million, with an even bigger Meraviglia on the horizon, with capacity for 6,334 guests and powered by Liquefied Natural Gas.

MSC Cruises already has the honour of being the first cruise company in the world to be awarded the coveted ‘6 Golden Pearls’ for its outstanding standards in environmental protection, health and safety.

Aponte has been decorated with many awards, including in 2009 a prize for "Neapolitan Excellence in the World". Alongside the footballer Fabio Cannavaro, who captained the Italy team that won the World Cup in 2006, and the ballerina Ambra Vallo, he was presented with the award at a ceremony at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples by the then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Something of a recluse, Aponte makes few public appearances, largely limited to the christenings of new MSC cruise ships. He lives with his wife in Geneva. His children, Diego and Alexa, both work at MSC, as chief executive and chief financial officer respectively.

A clifftop hotel in Sant'Agnello with Vesuvius in the
background, across of the Gulf of Naples

Travel tip:

Aponte’s birthplace of Sant’Agnello is a small town of just over 9,000 inhabitants which neighbours Sorrento and Piano di Sorrento, which along with another small town, Meta di Sorrento, enjoy a clifftop location overlooking the Gulf of Sorrento, a picturesque bay that forms part of the larger Gulf of Naples.  Like the bigger and better-known Sorrento, Sant’Agnello’s economy relies heavily on the tourist industry and has plenty of hotels and restaurants.

The medieval castle from which the resort of Castellammare
di Stabia, built above a buried Roman city, takes its name

Travel tip:

Castellammare di Stabia, a one-time thriving resort now more often associated with shipyards, was built over the ruins of the ancient Stabiae, a Roman village destroyed in 79 AD by the violent eruption of the Vesuvius volcano, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum.  Some of the ruins are being excavated.  The name of the town is said to derive from the medieval castle that overlooks the Gulf of Naples, which can be found alongside the road from Castellammare to Sorrento, Castello a Mare meaning Castle on the Sea.  The town was the birthplace of Pliny the Elder, who was a philosopher and author as well as a military commander of the early Roman empire.

More reading:

Sophia Loren, Neapolitan siren of the silver screen

Achille Vianelli, the artist who captured the character of Naples

How Cannavaro led Italy to a fourth World Cup

Also on this day:

1574: The death of Giorgio Vasari, painter and architect who was art's first historian

1914: The birth of politician Giorgio Almirante

1980: The plane crash known as the Ustica Massacre


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Calisto Tanzi - disgraced businessman

Man at the centre of the Parmalat scandal 

Calisto Tanzi took over his father's grocery
store when he was 22 years old

Calisto Tanzi, the business tycoon jailed for 18 years following the biggest corporate disaster in Italian history, was born on this day in 1938 in Collecchio, a town in Emilia-Romagna, about 13km (8 miles) from the city of Parma.

Tanzi was founder and chief executive of Parmalat, the enormous global food conglomerate that collapsed in 2003 with a staggering €14 billion worth of debt.

Subsequent criminal investigations found that Tanzi, who built the Parmalat empire from the grocery store his father had run in Collecchio, had been misappropriating funds and engaging in fraudulent practices for as much as a decade in order to maintain an appearance of success and prosperity when in fact the business was failing catastrophically.

Of all those hurt by the collapse, the biggest victims were more than 135,000 small investors who had bought bonds in the company, some of them trusting Parmalat with their entire life savings.

Between 2008 and 2010, Tanzi was found guilty by four different courts of fraud, of the fraudulent bankruptcy of Parmalat, the fraudulent bankruptcy of Parmatour, a travel industry subsidiary, and of false accounting at Parma, the football club he owned.

The Parmalat logo became familiar in almost every
food store and supermarket across Italy and elsewhere

There were several appeals, during which Tanzi, who had been arrested and held in custody immediately following the collapse, was able to continue living on his estate. However, he finally began his sentences in 2011.

The Parmalat story was portrayed as fairy tale of modern Italy. Calisto Tanzi was a 22-year-old university student when his father, Melchiorre, died suddenly in 1961. As the oldest son and out of a sense of duty to the family, Calisto gave up his studies in order to take over his father’s shop.

Family-run grocers were and still are a fixture in Italian high streets. Calisto could have had a comfortable life running such an essential business - but he had bigger ideas.

Parmalat was a major sponsor of sport, including football
and Formula One motor racing

Anticipating that there was a market in Italy for selling milk that could be kept fresh for an extended period, he acquired premises on the outskirts of Parma in which to set up a pasteurisation plant. He bought packaging from the burgeoning Swedish company, Tetra Pak, sterilized the milk by heating it to extremely high temperatures and sealed it in Tetra Pak's cartons. He came up with the name Parmalat to display on the cartons, turning a basic agricultural product into a unique brand.

The venture was a hue success and soon he diversified into pasta sauce, biscuits, yoghurts, fruit juice and ice cream. White lorries carrying the company’s simple petal logo became a familiar sight on Italy's roads.

Parmalat grew to become the entrepreneurial symbol of Parma, and Tanzi the city's most generous benefactor.  The Tanzi family began to be seen as the Agnellis of Parma and Tanzi was determined to extend his largesse.

The court room at Tanzi's trial, in which he was found
guilty of various frauds and jailed for 18 years

He bought the city’s struggling football team and turned them not only into a force in Serie A but in Europe too.  Parmalat also invested heavily in Formula One, including backing the Austrian driver Niki Lauda.

Tanzi promoted the city's Verdi festival, in honour of the region's most famous composer, and paid for the uncovering and restoration of frescoes in the city's cathedral.

At its peak, Parmalat had more than 5,000 employees in Italy, and more than 30,000 in the rest of the world.  Inside the company, however, things were not as they seemed.

Profits were hit hard by the collapse of Latin American economies during the 1990s, and the problems caused by that were compounded by the threatened bankruptcy of the family travel company, Parmatour. 

But Tanzi tried to pretend all was well. Secretly, he began to remove cash - €500 million by his own admission - from Parmalat to prop up Parmatour. But that was only the start.

Tanzi desperately wanted to maintain the appearance that his
business was in good shape when it was actually failing

In the years that followed, in his determination to preserve the illusion of prosperity and not lose face, Tanzi became increasingly reckless, apparently oblivious to the consequences that lies, falsification, forgery and fraud would inevitably bring. Investigators found that he had ordered his accountants to create a complex web of subsidiary companies based in offshore tax havens, which would appear to be holding billions of euros in credits from other Parmalat markets.

It all came crashing down eventually over a sum of just €150 million needed to redeem bonds. One of the company's banks advised them to draw on the €3.95 billion that one subsidiary supposedly had sitting in a Bank of America account in the Cayman Islands. It soon became clear the account did not exist.

In late December 2003, Parmalat filed for bankruptcy protection. The US Securities and Exchange Commission then sued Parmalat, alleging it had wrongfully induced American investors to buy more than $1.5 billion worth of securities. Eventually, Tanzi and others were arrested.

As well as his prison sentence, Tanzi suffered the loss of many of his considerable collection of works of art as paintings by by Picasso, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and others, worth more than €100 million, were seized by police, despite the efforts of friends to hide them, in order to pay back some of the company's losses. He was also stripped of the honours previously bestowed on him by the Italian government.

The headquarters of Parmalat is still in Collecchio

Travel tip:

There is evidence of a settlement in the area of Collecchio since the Paleolithic Age, although it was not until 1796 that it was given the status of a comune.  Its history in the food industry began at the end of the 19th century as a centre for canning and meat products. It became an important centre in the Italian charcuterie industry as well as for dairy products including Parmesan cheese. It is still the headquarters of Parmalat, which was restructured in 2005 and is now a subsidiary of the French group Lactalis. In April 1945, the town was famously liberated from Nazi forces by the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in the Battle of Collecchio.

The church of San Giovanni Evangelista
in Parma with its beautiful facade

Travel tip:

Parma is an historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for its Prosciutto di Parma ham and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the true ‘parmesan’. In 1545 the city was given as a duchy to the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, whose descendants ruled Parma until 1731. The composer, Verdi, was born near Parma at Bussetto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio. Among the main sights is the 11th century Romanesque cathedral and adjoining baptistery, the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, which has a beautiful late Mannerist facade and bell tower, and the Palazzo della Pilotta, which houses the Academy of Fine Arts, the Palatine Library, the National Gallery and an archaeological museum.

More reading:

Nevio Scala - the football manager who brought success to Parma

The mysterious death of Enrico Mattei

Camillo Olivetti - founder of Italy's first typewriter factory

Also on this day:

1494: The death of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

1503: The birth of the Florentine master painter Bronzino

1878: The attempted murder of Umberto I


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Cristoforo Benigno Crespi - entrepreneur

Textile boss created industrial village of Crespi d’Adda

Cristoforo Benigno Crespi built a community
from scratch around his textile factory

The entrepreneur Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, who became famous for creating a company-owned village around his textile factory in Lombardy, was born on this day in 1833 in Busto Arsizio, about 34km (21 miles) northwest of Milan.

A textile manufacturer, in 1869 Crespi bought an area of land close to where the Brembo and Adda rivers converge, about 40km (25 miles) northeast of Milan, with the intention of building a cotton mill on the banks of the Adda.

The factory he built was substantial, with room for 10,000 spindles, but as well the capacity to produce textiles on a large scale, Crespi recognised that it was essential to his plans to have a contented workforce. Consequently, following the lead of other manufacturers in the textile industry outside Italy, he set about providing on site everything to meet the daily needs of his employees.

In addition to the factory premises, he built homes for his workers, a school, a wash-house, a hospital, a church and a grocery store.

Houses were built in English-style parallel rows, with gardens and vegetable plots, and the streets were the first in Italy to have modern electric lighting. The church was a replica of the shrine of Santa Maria di Piazza in Crespi’s home town of Busto Arsizio. The school was fully equipped with every requirement for the education of the children of the village; the Crespi family even paid the salaries of the teachers.

Crespi d'Adda had houses for the workers, a school, a church
and a hospital in addition to a large factory

Crespi built a large castle-like house for himself and was very much lord of the manor. But his benign governance of the town meant that the factory was able to avoid the strikes and social unrest that affected other parts of Italy.

Today, Crespi d’Adda, as the village became known, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as one of the best-preserved workers’ villages in Europe.  The factory is still intact, although largely unused, and the houses are occupied for the most part by the descendants of the workers’ families for whom they were originally built.

Cristoforo Crespi was from the third generation of the family to be involved with the textile industry, starting with his grandfather, Benigno, in the early 1800s.

His initial ambition was to become a priest but he began to help his father, Antonio, in the family business from an early age and eventually abandoned his spiritual leanings to study law at the University of Pavia.

Crespi d'Adda had its own school, built for the children
of the workers in Cristoforo Crespi's factory

The death of Benigno, the family patriarch, combined with difficult trading conditions in the mid-19th century, brought another change of direction. In order to help support the family and the business, Cristoforo took a job in a bank and then in the offices of a cotton manufacturer in Busto Arsizio, while at the same time taking lessons in book-keeping

He left his job there after asking for a pay rise, hoping to save enough money to marry his girlfriend, Pia Travelli, the daughter of a lawyer, and for a time his future was uncertain.

But he made some money from speculating on the raw cotton market, persuaded his father to move from trading in textiles to producing them and a factory they leased at Vaprio d’Adda quickly became profitable.

Cristoforo arrived at Crespi d’Adda through a series of events, which ended with him deciding to break from his family and go it alone. The factory at Vaprio was lost after the owners decided to sell it at auction, and though the disappointment was eased when another at Vigevano brought more success, Cristoforo fell out with his brother, Giuseppe, over plans for expansion and left.

Crespi and his family lives in a castellated villa built
for him by the architect Angelo Colla

His next step was to buy a paper mill in conjunction with two other brothers, Carlo and Pasquale, at Ghemme in the province of Novara. Again, as Italy enjoyed a period of sustained economic growth from the 1870s onwards, the venture was highly profitable. Yet ultimately Cristoforo decided he would rather be in sole charge.

It was at that stage that he found his plot by the Adda and Brembo rivers, about 20km (12 miles) southwest of Bergamo, built a canal to generate hydraulic energy and set about creating his dream.

In addition to his home at Crespi d’Adda, where the cemetery also housed the family mausoleum, Crespi engaged the architect Angelo Colla, who built most of the industrial village, to restore a mansion in Via Borgonuovo in the centre of Milan and build a villa on the shore of Lake Orta in Piedmont.  He began an art collection that included works by Titian, Canaletto and Rubens.

His son, Silvio - one of four children he had with Pia, to whom he was married in 1866  - became an important figure in his own right.  After taking over the running of Crespi d’Adda from his father, he invested in building Italy’s first motorways as well as in the race track at Monza.  He came to be regarded as such a significant figure in Italy that he was asked to be a signatory at the Treaty of Versailles following the end of the First World War.

Cristoforo, whose faculties were badly impaired after a stroke in 1906, died in 1920 at the age of 86. After the Great Depression took its toll on the Italian economy, Crespi d’Adda was sold in 1929.

Crespi had his Villa Pia, on the shore of
Lake Orta, built in a Moorish style

Travel tip:

Crespi’s Moorish-style summer residence on Lake Orta, the smaller lake to the west of Lake Maggiore, was named Villa Pia in honour of his wife. Nowadays, renamed Villa Crespi, it is an exclusive hotel owned by the chef and TV presenter Antonino Cannavacciuolo, and includes a restaurant with two Michelin stars.  It attracted poets, industrialists and even members of the aristocracy, including King Umberto I of Savoy, to live there during the 1930s after the Crespi family sold it. The architect Angelo Colla included features admired by Cristoforo Crespi in Middle Eastern architecture, including stuccoed walls and ceilings, while the building is topped by an immense minaret.  Colla also incorporated columns made from precious marble imported from a number of places in Italy and beyond.

The Museum of the Risorgimento is in the
Palazzo Moriggia in Via Borgonuovo

Travel tip:

Crespi’s mansion in Milan at No 18 Via Borgonuova, a stone’s throw from the high fashion stores on the Via Montenapoleone, is almost opposite the Palazzo Moriggia, which houses Milan’s Museum of the Risorgimento, a collection of objects and artworks which illustrate the history of Italian unification from Napoleon's first Italian campaign of 1796 to the annexation of Rome in 1870. The city of Milan played a key role in the unification process, most notably through the 1848 uprising against the Austrians known as the Five Days of Milan. The exhibits follow the chronological order of events of the Risorgimento, leading the visitor through 15 rooms. For more information, visit http://www.museodelrisorgimento.mi.it/

(Photo credits: View over Crespi d'Adda by Dario Crespi; Crespi School and Castellated Villa in Crespi d'Adda by blackcat; Villa Crespi by Torsade de Pointes; Museum of the Risorgimento by G.dallorto)

More reading:

How Karl Zuegg turned his family farm into a major business enterprise

The biscuit manufacturer who created Italy's Autogrill motorway services

Humble beginnings of the Ferrero chocolate empire

Also on this day:

La Festa di San Luca

1634: The birth of artist Luca Giordano


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