Anna Possi - bar owner

Centenarian still serving coffee 365 days a year

Anna Possi has been serving her customers at
the Bar Centrale in Nebbiuno for 67 years 

Anna Possi, the bar owner who in 2024 attracted the world’s media to her door when she celebrated her 100th birthday by opening for business as usual, was born on this day in 1924 in Vezzo in Piedmont.

Possi owns and manages the Bar Centrale in Nebbiuno, a village overlooking picturesque Lago Maggiore just a few kilometres from her place of birth. She has been brewing and serving coffee to visitors and regular customers there since the bar opened on May 1, 1958, and has been in sole charge since her husband, Renato, died in 1974.

She is known as the oldest bartender in Italy - perhaps in Europe - and proudly advertises her status with a sign on the wall outside the bar’s entrance on Via Torino, which reads “Qui si trova la barista più longeva d'Italia” - “Here you will find the longest-serving bartender in Italy”.

Opening even on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day, she wakes at 5.50am, eats a light breakfast while catching up with the news on the internet, and raises the shutters at 7am to be ready for her earliest customers, remaining open until 7-7.30pm.

On warm, summer evenings, she will stay open as late as 9.30pm, allowing her clientele to enjoy the splendid views across the lake on offer from her garden tables.

To mark her 100th birthday, she was awarded the honorary title of Commander of the Republic of Italy, yet has no plans to retire as long as she retains the gift of good health. She looks after her wellbeing by eating sparsely, taking a half-hour walk every evening and believes that her daily interaction with customers is the key to her sprightliness.

Universally known among her regular customers as Nonna Anna - or Anna Renè after her late husband - she makes few concessions to her advancing years apart from accepting some help from her daughter, Cristina, who lives with her in the rooms above the bar and works by day across the road at the local Municipale, the council offices.

Anna's unique status is proudly advertised
on a sign outside the Bar Centrale

Anna was born into the catering business. Her parents ran a guesthouse and trattoria at Vezzo, another hillside village just 10km (six miles) from Nebbiuno. She attended school and went to teacher training college but willingly helped out in the family business whenever she could, whether assisting in the kitchen or waiting at table.

During World War Two, she spent hours stirring a huge pot of polenta, which was given to partisans hiding from the occupying German army.

As a young woman, she moved first to Novara, the second largest city in Piedmont about 40km (25 miles) to the south, and then to Genoa, the coastal city in Liguria, working in bars and restaurants before returning home to buy the bar in Nebbiuno, with Renato. 

The bar’s peak years, according to Anna, were from the 1960s through to the 1980s. 

At first, equipped with pinball machines, a football table and a jukebox, and one of the first to offer video games, the Bar Centrale was a trendy meeting place for young people, who would spend their afternoons playing games and listening to hits.

Its clientele included footballers Gianni Rivera and Fulvio Collovati, who had homes nearby while playing for AC Milan, and even Angelo Moratti, the oil tycoon who owned Inter Milan from 1955 to 1968 and often visited the area.

Today’s customers have a different profile, made up mainly of pensioners from the village and of curious visitors attracted by Anna’s unique claim to fame. The jukebox, meanwhile, has made way for a book stand, where customers can exchange unwanted titles for books they want to read. Yet business remains brisk.

Anna has hinted that she may wind down, if not step aside completely, when Cristina retires from her job at the Municipale, perhaps breaking the habit of the last 50 years or so by actually taking a holiday. Until then, though, the Bar Centrale’s shutters will continue to open at 7am sharp, every day.

The skyline of Novara is dominated by the huge
cupola of the Basilica of San Gaudenzio

Travel tip:

Novara, where Anna Possi worked as a young woman, is the second biggest city in the Piedmont region after Turin. It is situated nearer to Milan than Turin, the Lombardy capital being around 50km (31 miles) east of Novara, while Turin is almost 100km (62 miles) to the southwest. Founded by the Romans, Novara was later ruled by the Visconti and Sforza families. In the 18th century it was controlled by the House of Savoy, who lost it to the Austrians in the 1849 Battle of Novara. This led to the abdication of Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia and ruler of the Savoyard state and is seen as the beginning of the Italian unification movement.  The most imposing building in Novara is the Basilica of San Gaudenzio, which has a 121-metre high cupola designed by Alessandro Antonelli, the creator of Turin’s similarly towering Mole Antonelliana. Novara’s duomo, the cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, is the city’s most important church. It is built where the temple of Jupiter stood in Roman times, opposite the oldest remaining building in Novara, the Battistero. Also worth seeing is the Broletto, a medieval architectural complex made up of four historic buildings built in different eras, around a central courtyard. 

Find hotels in Novara with Expedia

Nebbiuno's hillside location offers visitors a
beautiful view over Lago Maggiore

Travel tip:

Vezzo and Nebbiuno, the two villages that have been central to Anna Possi’s life, both lie in the scenic Vergante area of Piedmont, on the western side of Lake Maggiore, which forms a natural border with the neighbouring Lombardy region.  Hilly terrain, lush forests and panoramic lake views are characteristic of the area, which contains notable peaks in Monte Cornaggia and Monte Toriggia, both of which climb to beyond 900m (2,950ft), the area being bordered in the west by Monte Mottarone, which reaches 1,492m (4,895ft) above sea level, part of the Alpi Biellesi e Cusiane. The Vergante area also includes the section of Lake Maggiore that contains three of the four Borromean Islands - Isola Madre, Isola Bella and Isola dei Pescatori. The area offers attractions all year round, including trekking along well-maintained paths in the summer months, gastronomic tours against the backdrop of autumn colours to enjoy dishes combining the products of the forest and the lake, skiing in the winter and a kaleidoscope of spring colours from an abundance of azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons.

Book accommodation in the Vergante area with Hotels.com

More reading:

How Antonio Todde became the oldest living man in the world

The World War One survivor who lived to be 110

The Inter Milan fan who for 10 months was Europe’s oldest living person

Also on this day:

1625: The death of portrait painter Sofonisba Anguissola 

1892: The birth of racing driver Tazio Nuvolari

1974: The birth of world champion ice dancer Maurizio Margaglio

1975: Doctor and scientist Giuseppe Moscati made a saint

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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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Gianfranco Ferré - fashion designer

Sought to create clothes for real women 

Gianfranco Ferré

Gianfranco Ferré, who became one of the biggest names in Italian fashion during the 1980s and 1990s, was born on this day in 1944 in Legnano, a town in Lombardy north-west of Milan, between the city and Lake Maggiore, where in adult life he made his home.

Ferré was regarded as groundbreaking in fashion design in the same way as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in that his clothes were created with real people rather than catwalk models in mind, yet without compromise in terms of aesthetic appeal.

At the peak of his popularity, his clients included Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Jordan, Paloma Picasso, Sophia Loren and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. 

Ferré first trained to be an architect, placing emphasis on the structure of his garments in which strong seams were often a prominent feature. He was once dubbed the Frank Lloyd Wright of fashion, which was taken to be a reference to the powerful horizontals in his designs.  His staff addressed him as "the architect".

He was also well known for inevitably including variations of white dress shirts in his collections, adorned with theatrical cuffs or multiple collars.  At one point, Ferré blouses were an essential in the wardrobe of high-flying career women.

Ferré won the Italian fashion industry's 'Oscar' - the Occhio D'Oro Award - six times and became the first designer from outside France to be made artistic director of Christian Dior in Paris, for whom he worked between 1989 and 1997.

From high school in Legnano, Ferré moved to the Politecnico di Milano University, where he graduated with a degree in architecture.  His first job was in the design studio of a furniture company but amused himself by designing accessories for a girl friend that were noticed by the owners of a boutique in Portofino, who asked him to design for them.

The Basilica of San Magno in Legnano, where the funeral
of Gianfranco Ferré took place in 2007

After a period working for a rainwear company, he founded his own company, Baila, in 1974, and four years later in 1978 founded his own fashion house in the Brera district of Milan with his friend and business partner, Franco Mattioli.  He launched his first collection of pret-a-portér (ready-to-wear) clothing for women, which was followed the same year by a more sporty line, Oaks by Ferré. His first man's collection was released in 1982 and added a perfume range in 1984.

On leaving Dior, he returned to full-time to working on the Ferré clothing and accessory lines, which by now had substantial export sales in the United States.  But he and Mattioli fell out over the direction of the company and in 2000 they sold 90 per cent of Gianfranco Ferré SpA, although Ferré stayed on as creative director. 

Ferré died in 2007 at the age of 62, a few days after being admitted to hospital in Milan, having suffered a massive brain hemorrhage.  A big, bear-like figure, nonetheless always beautifully dressed in one of his trademark three-piece suits, he had always struggled to control his weight and had had at least one stroke previously. 

He was buried in his home town of Legnano after a funeral attended by giants of the fashion world, including Giorgio Armani, Valentino Garavani and Donatella Versace.

Travel tip:

Legnano 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 Gianfranco Ferré's funeral took place, is the town's most important building.

Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore

Travel tip:

Lake Maggiore is the largest lake in Italy at some 34 miles (64km) long, its most northerly extremity extending into Switzerland.  While the upper end is of alpine character, the lake in general enjoys a mild climate all year round and is famous for the greenery of its surrounding terrain and for its gardens, many growing rare and exotic plants, in particular those located on the Borromean Islands and Isola Bella.

(Photo of Basilica of San Magno by Heimdall CC BY-SA 2.5)
(Photo of Isola Bella by MbDortmund GFDL 1.2)

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