Gaetano Cozzi – historian and writer

Professor pursued academic research despite his disability

Gaetano Cozzi overcame disability to
become an expert on Venetian history

Historian, professor, and writer Gaetano Cozzi, who became an expert on the history of Venice and taught at both Venice and Padua Universities, was born on this day in 1922 in Zero Branco in the province of Treviso in the Veneto.

Although confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, Cozzi became famous internationally because of his research into the life of writer and statesman, Paolo Sarpi, and his own writing about the relationship between law and society in Italy.

Cozzi grew up in Legnano, a municipality of Milan, and went to military school. At the age of 20, he became a second lieutenant in the Alpine troops. While attending a training school in Parma he was kicked by a horse and suffered a leg wound. A vaccine injected into him to treat the wound caused a serious infection and although his condition stabilised after a few months he was left paralysed in his lower limbs.

He had to have frequent periods in hospital, but his medical treatment, rather than demoralising him, stimulated him intellectually. He began to take an interest in politics and came into contact with the Liberal Party in Italy. He contributed to the Resistance in 1943, while lying in his hospital bed, by writing for Italian newspapers that carried propaganda pieces. He later left the Liberal Party for the Radical party and then joined L'Unità Popolare, a short-lived Democratic and Liberal political party.

Despite being paralysed, Cozzi prepared to take his university exams and he graduated in History of Italian Law at the University of Milan in 1949. His thesis was about the writer Paolo Sarpi, and the relationship between the state and the church in Italy.

Cozzi moved to Venice to continue his research, even though life was difficult for him there because of his disability. He also found it difficult to find accommodation because of the large population in the city at the time. 

Paolo Sarpi, the Venetian writer on whose
work Cozzi became a leading authority

After the founding of the Institute for the History of Venetian Society and State, he was appointed its secretary in 1955.

His first book, about Nicolò Contarini, who was the Doge of Venice in 1630, had to be dictated by Cozzi to his mother in 1958 because his illness had once again forced him to lie in bed.

Cozzi was appointed to teach history at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature in Venice and while attending a meeting at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in 1960, he met Luisa Zille, an expert in philology, who he married in 1962 in Venice. He later collaborated with his wife to edit the Complete Works of Paolo Sarpi.

In 1966, Cozzi was appointed by the ancient University of Padua to teach medieval and modern history at their faculty of Political Sciences.

After returning to teach at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in 1970, he fought for a degree course in history to be created there. 

Cozzi was a prolific writer about criminal justice and prisons in the Venetian Republic and he also wrote The History of Venice, published in two volumes in 1986 and 1992.

In 1987, he became a board member of the newly established, Treviso-based Benetton Foundation for Studies and Research.

All Cozzi’s writing and research had to be interspersed with long periods in hospital because of complications with his health. He suffered a further blow when his wife, Luisa, who was suffering from depression, took her own life in 1995.

Cozzi’s teaching career came to an end in 1998 with a ceremony at Ca’ Foscari, where he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus.

The historian died in 2001 in Venice at the age of 78. He was buried in the cemetery at Zero Branco next to his wife, Luisa. His gravestone bears the inscription: ‘Still together, always together.’

Casa Luisa e Gaetano Cozzi, just outside Zero
Branco, has a library housing the Cozzi archive

Travel tip:

Zero Branco is a comune - municipality - in the province of Treviso in the Veneto, located about 20km (12 miles) northwest of Venice and about 10km (6 miles) southwest of Treviso.  Casa Luisa e Gaetano Cozzi in Via Milan is now a cultural centre in the countryside outside Zero Branco, having been bequeathed to Fondazione Benetton in Gaetano Cozzi’s will. It is an eight-hectare complex consisting of a former farmhouse, rustic outbuildings, and agricultural land, which is used by the Benetton Foundation for agricultural research.  A library houses Cozzi’s documents and archives that are made available to scholars. Luisa’s Bechstein piano is preserved there and musical activities take place at Casa Cozzi in her memory.

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Porticoes and weeping willow trees line the
picturesque Canale Buranelli in pretty Treviso

Travel tip:

The pretty town of Treviso is 30km (19 miles) north of Venice. Visitors can stroll along by canals, but unlike Venice they are fringed by willow trees and adorned with the occasional water wheel and you won’t encounter large tour groups coming in the opposite direction. There are plenty of restaurants serving authentic cucina trevigiana and cucina veneta, but at more modest prices than you will find in Venice, and plenty of places to sample locally-produced Prosecco. Treviso is close to the so-called strada del prosecco, the road between Valdobbiadene and Conegliano, which is lined with wineries producing Prosecco DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata), the stamp of quality given to the best Italian wines. It takes only about ten minutes to walk from the railway station through the 16th century Venetian walls and along Via Roma, Corso del Popolo, and Via XX Settembre to Piazza dei Signori, at the centre of Treviso. From this central square, a short walk through Piazza San Vito leads to a picturesque part of Treviso, Canale Buranelli. You can walk alongside the canal under the porticoes of the houses and see the flower-decorated balconies on the ornate buildings on the other side. Nearby is Treviso's fish market - the  Pescheria, which is held daily on a very small island in the middle of the River Sile. Treviso’s Duomo, built in the 12th century but remodelled in the 15th, 16th, and 18th centuries, houses Titian’s Annunciation, painted in 1570, and frescoes painted by his arch rival, Pordenone.

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More reading:

Paolo Sarpi, the patriotic Venetian who the Pope wanted dead

Luciano Benetton, the entrepreneur who co-founded clothing brand

Why Treviso commemorates star tenor Mario del Monaco

Also on this day:

1616: Europe's first free public school opens in Frascati, near Rome

1881: The birth of car manufacturer Ettore Bugatti

1904: The birth of Umberto II, the last king of Italy

1919: The birth of cycling great Fausto Coppi

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Bernardo Accolti – poet and politician

Writer rose to become a duke but died in poverty

Bernardo Accolti became one of the most
popular love poets of the Renaissance

One of the most popular and well-known Italian love poets of the late Renaissance, Bernardo di Benedetto degli Accolti, was born on this day in 1458 in Arezzo In Tuscany.

Referred to as ‘Unico Aretino’ because of his noble origins and his ability to express himself in verse, Accolti lived at many of the Italian courts and had platonic relationships with some of the most important noblewomen of his time, including Lucrezia Borgia, Isabella d’Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga.

Although born into a noble family, Accolti always had ambitions to acquire more social status for himself, and he eventually managed to accumulate enough money to purchase a Duchy to rule over.

While he was growing up, Accolti had lived with his family in Florence, where he received a humanist education. After moving to Rome when he was a young man, he started writing poetry.

One of his most well-known works, which has survived to this day, is his comedy in verse, Virginia, which was based on a story from Boccaccio’s Decameron and was composed for a wedding in Siena.

But the poet was then exiled from Florence for reasons that are not known and so he returned to Rome, where he was given work as a writer of papal bulls by Pope Alexander VI.

After receiving a pardon by Florence, he returned to the city, but he was exiled again in 1497. Always loyal to the Medici, he was accused of financing the attempt made by Piero Il Fatuo to conquer the city.

Accolti had lent him 200 florins to carry out a plot against Girolamo Savanorala, who was then head of the Florentine Republic. The main conspirators were caught and beheaded and Accolti was exiled permanently.

The painter Raphael painted Accolti as
one of the figures in his Parnassus fresco

But after he returned to Rome, he found his popularity as a poet had grown and he was sought after by many of the Italian courts.

Accolti travelled to Milan, Mantua, Urbino, and Naples, where he would sing his own verses and accompany them on the lute, or lira da braccio, a Renaissance stringed instrument.

He had close relationships with many of the noble ladies he encountered, but it is thought his true love was revealed in his verses to Elisabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino. He also dedicated two sonnets to Lucrezia Borgia, but there is no evidence that he was ever her lover.

After Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope Leo X in 1513, Accolti was given high office because of his previous loyalty to the Medici family.

The first printed editions of his works were published at this time, Virginia in 1512, and a few years later, a collection of his verses.

By then he had amassed enough wealth to buy the Duchy of Nepi from the Pope, an ancient city now in the province of Viterbo in Lazio. He moved into the fortress that had been built there by the Borgias and he built a new residential wing on to it with a motto over the entrance.

But he proved to be a poor administrator and sometimes took violent reprisals against people who opposed him in the Duchy. In 1523, there was a revolt against him by the locals but he managed to suppress it with the help of the Pope’s Swiss Guards.

After being expelled from Nepi three times, Accolti was unable to gather the funds to reconquer it for a fourth time.

Pope Paul III, who had been his protector until then, revoked his title of Duke, as he was intending to give the Duchy to his own illegitimate son. Nepi was later incorporated into the Duchy of Castro.

Accolti returned to Rome, poor and desperate He died there in February 1535, leaving two illegitimate children, Alfonso Maria and Virginia.

A definitive collection of his work was published in Venice by Nicolo d’Aristotele in 1530 and it was reprinted in the year of Accolti’s death.

In 1996, a full collection of his verses was published, which included 58 previously unpublished poems that had been kept in the Vatican archives.

Accolti appears as a character in some passages of Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, and he was a close friend of Pietro Aretino, who was also a poet from Arezzo.

The beautiful Piazza Grande in Arezzo, the sloping
square, paved in red brick, at the heart of the city

Travel tip:

Arezzo is one of the wealthiest cities in Tuscany. Despite its medieval centre suffering massive damage during the Second World War, targeted for its strategic importance on the Italian rail network, many monuments, churches and museums survived or were reconstructed. Its main sights include the Basilica di San Francesco, with its beautiful History of the True Cross fresco cycle by Piero della Francesca, the central Piazza Grande, with its sloping pavement in red brick, the Medici Fortress, the duomo and a Roman amphitheatre. The original duomo was built on the nearby Pionta Hill, over the burial place of Donatus of Arezzo, who was martyred in 363. In 1203 Pope Innocent III had the cathedral moved within the city's walls, to the current site in another elevated position a short walk from Piazza Grande.  The construction of the current structure started in 1278 and continued in phases until 1511, although the façade visible today, designed by Dante Viviani, was not completed until 1914, replacing one left unfinished in the 15th century.  The interior contains several notable artworks, including a relief by Donatello, entitled Baptism of Christ, and a cenotaph to Guido Tarlati, lord of Arezzo until 1327, said to be designed by Giotto, near to which is Piero della Francesca's Mary Magdalene.  

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The Rocca - or Castello Borgia - casts an imposing
shadow over the town of Nepi in northern Lazio

Travel tip:

Nepi, the town that Accolti acquired when he bought the Duchy of Nepi, can be found 50km (31 miles) north of Rome, about 20km (12.4 miles) from Lago Bracciano. It is in the area known as ancient Etruria, having been a pre-Roman settlement before the Romans arrived and established a stronghold in 383 BC and eventually conquered the entire region. Throughout the Renaissance era, it was the feudal domain of the noble families of Lazio and passed successively from the Orsini to the Colonna and then the Borgia. The Rocca - the 15th-century Borgia Castle that was once the property of Lucrezia Borgia - dominates the skyline making it an imposing presence.  Accolti's coat of arms was discovered in a residential extension of the castle, dating it between September 1521 and the beginning of 1535. A graceful monumental aqueduct looks Roman but was built in more recent history to carry spring water. Acqua di Nepi mineral water is bottled and distributed nationwide. The ancient Porta Roman was the main gate, and is still the primary entry to the historic centre. Other attractions include the Palazzo Comunale, a Renaissance style villa built by Sangallo the Younger for Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, which has in front of it a fountain presumed to have been the world of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

Find hotels in Nepi

Also on this day:

1522: The birth of naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi

1871: The birth of adventurer Scipione Borghese

1920: The birth of partisan Manrico Ducceschi 

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Alessandro Tassoni – poet

Writer famed for legendary bucket in a belfry

Alessandro Tassoni was a political
commentator and literary critic

The writer Alessandro Tassoni, who became famous for a poem about an historic battle which included a story about a stolen bucket, was born on this day in 1565 in Modena in Emilia-Romagna.

Tassoni’s bucket, which inspired his mock-heroic poem La secchia rapita (The Rape of the Bucket), is still on public display to this day in the belfry of Modena Cathedral.  

According to some critics, his poem was one of the earliest - and best - Italian poems of its type, and it became very popular in Italy and abroad. 

Tassoni, who also wrote about politics and was a literary critic, was born into a noble family. He lost both of his parents at an early age and was brought up by his grandfather. He first saw the bucket in Modena Cathedral when he was taken there by his grandfather.

At the age of 13, he was taught Latin and Greek and he went on to study philosophy, law, and rhetoric at the universities of Bologna, Pisa, and Ferrara.  

In 1597 he entered the service of Cardinal Ascanio Colonna and went with him to Spain as his first secretary. After his return to Italy, Tassoni went to live in Rome.

He wrote a booklet, le Filippiche, which he published in 1612 anonymously because it attacked the Spanish domination of certain parts of Italy and he was afraid of reprisals. 

But the work became famous enough to attract the attention of Charles Emanuel I Duke of Savoy and in 1618 he hired Tassoni to work for him in Turin and gave him the title of first secretary.

The bucket of Tassoni's famous epic poem today
hangs in the belfry of the Torre della Ghirlandina

Tassoni went to work for Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi in 1626 and then he served under Francesco I d’Este, Duke of Modena. 

The poet died in 1635 in his home town of Modena and a statue of him was later erected in front of the city’s Ghirlandina, the cathedral’s bell tower.

Tassoni is also remembered for his political writing and his works of literary criticism, such as Considerazioni sopra le rime del Petrarca, and Pensieri diversi, an encyclopaedia covering scientific, literary, historical, and philosophical topics, but he is mainly remembered for his satirical poem about the bucket.

La secchia rapita was written by Tassoni between 1614 and 1615 and it was first published in Paris. It couldn’t be published in Italy until Tassoni had modified it to make it comply with the censorship rules imposed by the Catholic Church. 

Tassoni paid to have the first Italian edition bearing his own name published, and the final edition was published in 1630. 

The story related by the poem was loosely based on a war fought between Modena and Bologna in 1325. Most of the events in the poem are fictional, and it refers to a battle that had, in reality, been fought 100 years before the war. But the poem relates what  purports to be an episode when the soldiers from Modena stole a bucket from their Bolognese enemies.

This exploit was not reported by historians from that period. However, a bucket that is claimed to have been the one stolen has been on display in the Torre della Ghirlandina in Modena from Tassoni’s time up to the present day.

In the poem, the theft of the bucket results in a war, in which the Olympian Gods take part, in the tradition of Homer’s Iliad. The war is only resolved when the Pope intervenes to bring it to an end.

The poem references contemporary events and people who were alive at the same time as the author, and its primary purpose was to entertain readers.

For the last 20 years, Tassoni has been remembered in Modena when the city gives out the annual Alessandro Tassoni Literary Award.

The Ducal Palace in Modena, designed by Luigi
Bartolomeo Avanzini, dates back to 1635

Travel tip:

Modena is a city on the south side of the Po Valley in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, known for its car industry, because Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati have all been located there. The city is also well-known for its balsamic vinegar. Operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti and soprano Mirella Freni were both born in Modena. One of the main sights in Modena is the huge, Baroque Ducal Palace, begun by Francesco I on the site of a former castle in 1635. His architect, Luigi Bartolomeo Avanzini, created a home for him that few European princes could match at the time. In the Galleria Estense, on the upper floor of the Palazzo dei Musei in Modena, is a one-metre high bust of Francesco I d’Este, Duke of Modena, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Tassoni's statue

Travel tip:

The Cathedral of Modena and its bell tower, Torre della Ghirlandina, are both UNESCO World heritage sites. The tower stands more than 89 metres (292ft) tall and can be seen outside the city from all directions. Inside, there is the Sala della Secchia room, which has 15th century frescoes, and the tower also houses a copy of the oaken bucket, from the War of the Bucket referred to by Tassoni in his poem, which was fought between Modena and Bologna in 1325. The tower was built in 1179, with five floors, and was initially called Torre di San Geminiano. It was renamed after the top of the tower was decorated with two ghirlande - marble railings - during a later renovation. The statue of Alessandro Tassoni, which stands at the foot of the tower, was sculpted by Antonio Cavazza and erected in 1860.

Also on this day:

1871: The birth of soldier and politician Pietro Badoglio

1924: The birth of actor Marcello Mastroianni

1943: The death of 13-year-old partisan Filippo Illuminato

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Eugenio Montale - poet and translator

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

Eugenio Montale became a
Nobel Prize winner in 1975

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travel tip:

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

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

Travel tip:

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

Also on this day:

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

1937: The birth of actress Daniela Rocca

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

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Matteo Strukul – writer

Author is published worldwide in 20 languages

Matteo Strukul's historical novels about the Medici
family have been best sellers in Italy

Writer and journalist Matteo Strukul, best known for his best-selling historical novels about the powerful Medici family, was born on this day in 1973 in Padua (Padova) in the Veneto region.

Strukul’s first novel was a dark thriller set in the Veneto, which was published in 2011 in Italian as La ballata di Mila. The novel was translated into English and issued in 2014 as The Ballad of Mila.

He then wrote four historical novels set in Florence between the 15th and 17th centuries following the rise of the house of Medici, which all became best sellers in Italy and have sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. The first novel, I Medici, una dinastia al potere, was awarded the Premio Bancarella in 2017. This prestigious award has been won in the past by Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Umberto Eco, and Ken Follett. The novel was published in English in 2019 as Medici Ascendancy. 

Strukul’s novels have now been translated into more than 20 different languages.

Matteo Strukul studied law at the University of Padua and went on to study for a PhD in European Contract Law at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Strukul's first Medici novel
translated into English

He is an adjunct professor of interactive storytelling at Link Campus University in Rome and writes in the cultural section of the weekly magazine Il venerdi di Repubblica. 

Strukul, whose first published works were biographies of singer-songwriters, has also written Vlad, a comic book trilogy, for the publishers Feltrinelli, based on the historic character of Vlad the Impaler. This was the man that gave Bram Stoker the inspiration for the character of Count Dracula.  Strukul's latest novel, La crypta di Venezia, was published in April this year.

In 2018, Strukul was recognized as Excellent Paduan by the Municipality of Padua and won the Premio Emilio Salgari for adventure literature for the novel Giacomo Casanova - La sonata dei cuori infranti (Giacomo Casanova, the sonata of broken hearts). 

He is the creator and founder of the literary movement Sugarpulp and artistic director of the festival of the same name. On the Sugarpulp website he says his favourite wine is Raboso del Piave, which is said to be an austere wine with aromas reminiscent of morello cherry, wild blackberry and plum, but also cinnamon, leather, vanilla and pepper

Strukul, who now lives between Padua, Milan, and Berlin, celebrates his 51st birthday today.

The Palazzo Bo is the main building of the University
of Padua, Italy's second oldest university

Travel tip:

The University of Padova, where Matteo Strukul studied for his waw degree, was originally established in 1222 and is one of the oldest universities in the world - second in Italy only to the University of Bologna. The main university building is Palazzo del Bo in Via 8 Febbraio, which was named after the tavern known as Il Bo (‘the ox’ in Venetian dialect) that had been acquired by the university as new premises in 1493. Originally this building housed the university’s renowned medical faculty and visitors can see the pulpit that was used by Galileo Galilei when he taught at the university between 1592 and 1610 and the anatomy theatre built in 1594, which is the oldest surviving medical lecture theatre in the world today.  Padua is also known as the home of the Scrovegni Chapel, the inside of which is covered with frescoes by Giotto, an artistic genius who was the first to paint people with realistic facial expressions showing emotion.

 

Ca' Foscari, the historic home of the University of
Venice, sits at the widest bend of the Grand Canal

Travel tip:

Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, where Matteo Strukul studied for his PhD,  was founded in 1868. Its main campus is a large Gothic palace which looks out over the Grand Canal in Venice, but there are other sites belonging to the university elsewhere in Venice, and in Mestre and Treviso. Ca’ Foscari was originally built for the Doge Francesco Foscari in 1453 and was designed by the architect Bartolomeo Bon in Venetian Gothic style. During the annual historic Regatta in Venice, a wooden platform known as La Macchina is placed in front of Ca’Foscari, from which the Venetian authorities watch the race. It is also the place on the Grand Canal where the race finishes and is where the prizes are distributed. The University has made parts of the palace accessible to the public, opening some of its most beautiful rooms, such as the Aula Baratto and the Aula Berengo, to visitors.

Also on this day:

1474: The birth of poet Ludovico Ariosto

1504: Michelangelo's David unveiled

2014: The death of soprano Magda Olivero

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Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello – poet

Talented writer kept record of 1848 rebellions and produced verses in local dialect

Enrico Scuri's 1838 portrait of Pietro Ruggeri
da Stabello (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo)

Prolific writer Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello, who became famous after his death for the poetry he had written in his local dialect, was born on this day in 1797 in a hamlet near Zogno, a short distance from the city of Bergamo in Lombardy.

Ruggeri da Stabello wrote a valuable account of events that occurred in the north of Italy during revolts against the Austrian occupying army, which were later collected in a volume entitled Bergamo Revolution of the Year 1848.

He was the second son of a Bergamo couple, Santo Ruggeri and Diana Stella Ceribelli, who had moved to the Brembana valley to escape the riots that followed the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797.

When Pietro Ruggeri became an adult, he added the words da Stabello to his name, to honour the small village where he had grown up, which is less than one kilometre from the municipality of Zogno in Val Brembana, to which it belongs.

After Pietro Ruggeri moved to live in Bergamo to study for a diploma in accountancy, he began to compose verses, inspired by his contact with local people and what he had witnessed of how they lived their daily lives in the city.

He wrote his 1816 work, Letter of Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello Against the Widespread Misery, in the Italian language, more for his own pleasure than as a literary exercise. He went on to write four more works in Italian between 1820 and 1822 that were never published.

Ruggeri da Stabello started to write poetry in the Bergamo dialect from about 1822. As his fame spread, he was portrayed in a painting by Enrico Scuri and invited to social gatherings to meet other learned people from the area, while he continued to do a variety of jobs to earn his living.

He founded and became president of The Philharmonic Academy in Bergamo and he was painted on the occasion by Luigi Deleidi, a Bergamo artist, who was also known as Nebbia.

Ruggeri da Stabello wrote sonnets dedicated to his friends and some well-known people, such as the painter Francesco Coghetti, and he started to compile, but never finished, a Bergamo-Italian vocabulary.

Ruggeri da Stabello is commemorated with
a mounted bust in Bergamo's Piazza Pontida 

During 1848, he wrote his volume about the revolts against the Austrians while he was being forced to take refuge in the safer territory of Zogno, because of verses he had written in honour of Pope Pius IX and of Italy, after the Austrians returned to occupy the country.

Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello died in Bergamo in 1878. He was buried in the cemetery of San Maurizio in the Città Bassa, but his tomb was lost after the cemetery was closed.

However, his writing was evaluated after his death and he was recognised as the greatest writer in the Bergamo dialect ever known. In appreciation of his talent, his native city named a street after him and erected a mounted bust of him in Piazza Pontida, one of the historic squares in the Città Bassa, Bergamo’s lower town. 

In 1933, another Bergamo citizen, Bortolo Belotti, published some of his poetry in the volume, Pietro Ruggeri, Poet from Bergamo.

Modern Italian is now the most widely spoken language in Bergamo, but the Bergamo dialect - dialetto Bergamasco - is still seen on menus, street signs and often reproduced in popular Bergamo sayings. Linguistically it is closer to French and Catalan, than to Italian. It is still spoken in some of the small villages out in the province of Bergamo and the area around Crema, another city in Lombardy.

Because of migration in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bergamo dialect is still spoken in some communities in southern Brazil.

The town of Zogno nestles in Val Brembana, 
a beautiful valley north of Bergamo

Travel tip:

The municipality of Zogno, where Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello was born, is about 11km (7 miles) north of Bergamo in the Brembana Valley. Set in beautiful countryside, Zogno has a 17th century church, San Lorenzo Martire, as well as a modern church, the Santuario di Maria Santissima Regina. The village of Stabello now has a population of fewer than 500 people. The Val Brembana is an area rich in history and traditions, about which much can be learned by visiting the San Lorenzo Museum and the Valley Museum. Zogno also attracts many visitors to the Terme di Bracca spa facility.

Piazza Pontida, in Bergamo's Città Bassa, was
once a hub of commercial activity in the city

Travel tip:

Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello’s statue stands in Bergamo's Piazza Pontida in the Città Bassa, the Lombardy city's lower town. It is near the junction of Via Sant’Alessandro and Via XX Settembre, which would have been the hub of the lower town in the 15th century. The piazza is close to a point known for centuries as Cinque Vie (five roads), where traffic from Milan, Lecco, Treviglio and Crema would converge. It was the place where goods arriving in Bergamo would be unloaded before being sent up to the Città Alta (upper town). Some of the portici (porticos) date back to the 15th century, when farmers and merchants would shelter from the sun under them, while negotiating over the goods. It would have been a lively scene, with storytellers and poets roaming from one inn to the next, entertaining the crowds who had come to trade in the square. There are now modern shops doing business behind the porticos, but the square is still a popular meeting place with plenty of bars and restaurants.

Also on this day:

1823: Fire damages Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls

1850: The birth in Italy of Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint

1933: The birth of cartoonist Guido Crepax

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Pietro Della Valle – composer and travel writer

Adventurous Roman wrote unique accounts of 17th century Persia and India 

Della Valle's journey expanded
knowledge of Indian history

Composer, musicologist, and writer Pietro Della Valle, who travelled to the Holy Land, Persia and India during the Renaissance and wrote about his experiences in letters to a friend, died on this day in 1652 in Rome.

Della Valle was born in Rome into a wealthy and noble family and grew up to study Latin, Greek, classical mythology and the Bible. Another member of his family was Cardinal Andrea della Valle, after whom the Basilica Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome was named.

Having been disappointed in love, Pietro Della Valle vowed to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He sailed from Venice to Istanbul, where he lived for more than a year learning Turkish and Arabic.

He then travelled to Jerusalem, by way of Alexandria, Cairo, and Mount Sinai, where he visited the holy sites. He wrote regular letters about his travels to Mario Schipano, a professor of medicine in Naples, who later published them in three volumes.

Della Valle moved on to Damascus, went to Baghdad, where he married a Christian woman, Sitti Maani Gioenida, and then to Persia, now known as Iran. While in the Middle East, Della Valle created one of the first modern records of the location of ancient Babylon. 

A 17th century representation
of Della Valle's visit to India

His wife died after delivering a stillborn child in Persepolis, but Della Valle continued his journey, taking her embalmed body with him so that it could eventually be buried in his family vault in Rome. 

Reaching Surat in north western India in 1623, he was introduced to the king of Kaladi in south India. Della Valle’s memoirs about his experiences provide the best contemporary account of society in that area in the 17th century and are one of the most important sources of history about that period for the region.

The traveller continued southward along the coast to Calicut for the next year and returned to Italy by way of Basra in southern Mesopotamia - now Iraq - and through the desert to Aleppo in Syria, finally reaching Cyprus and then Rome in 1626. 

He was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber - an honorary ceremonial position in the papal court - by Pope Urban VIII to reward him for his exploits. 

From his 36 letters to Schipano, which contained more than a million words, three volumes were eventually published: Turkey (1650), Persia (1658) and India (1663). Part of his accounts of his time in India have been translated into English.

Della Valle was also a keen book collector and purchased rare manuscripts while he was in Syria that he brought back to Italy with him.

Once living back in Rome, Della Valle concentrated on music, composing religious music and writing treatises about musical theory, which praised the music of the time countering the criticisms of other contemporary writers. He also wrote libretti for musical spectacles that were performed in Rome.

After his death in 1652, Pietro Della Valle was buried alongside his wife in the family vault in Santa Maria Ara Coeli in Rome.

The Basilica of Santa Maria Ara Coeli on the
Campidoglio Hill, where Della Valle is buried

Travel tip

Santa Maria Ara Coeli, the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Altar in Heaven, where Pietro Della Valle is buried in his family’s vault, is on the highest summit of the Campidoglio, one of the seven hills of Rome. It houses relics belonging to Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine. It is claimed the church was built on the site where the Tiburtine Sibyl prophesied the coming of Christ to the Emperor Augustus. In the Middle Ages, condemned criminals used to be publicly executed at the foot of the steps. It is now the designated church of Rome City Council.

The beautiful Basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle,
in the Sant'Eustachio district of Rome

Travel tip

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle, named after Cardinal Andrea della Valle, and dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle, is a minor basilica in the rione of Sant’Eustachio in Rome. The dome of the church is the third largest in Rome, behind St Peter’s and the Pantheon. Building work started on the church in 1590 following the designs of Giacomo della Porta and Pier Paolo Olivieri. The church was used as a setting by the composer Puccini for his opera, Tosca.

Also on this day:

753BC: The founding of Rome

1574: The death of Tuscan ruler Cosimo I de’ Medici

1922: The death of castrato singer Alessandro Moreschi

1930: The birth of actress Silvana Mangano

1948: The birth of surgeon and charity founder Gino Strada

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Alessandro Varaldo – crime writer and playwright

The first Italian author of gialli to be accepted by Mondadori

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travel tip: 

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

Travel tip:

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

More reading:

How Giorgio Mondadori helped launch the newspaper La Repubblica

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

The Naples bank worker who became a leading modern crime writer

Also on this day:

1455: The birth of painter Fra Angelico

1564: The death of painter and sculptor Michelangelo

1626: The birth of biologist Francesco Redi

1967: The birth of footballer Roberto Baggio

1983: The birth of tennis champion Roberta Vinci

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Marco Malvaldi – crime writer and chemist

Author has mastered the science of detective fiction

Marco Malvadi began his writing
career with La briscola in cinque

Novelist Marco Malvaldi, who has written a prize-winning mystery featuring the real-life 19th century Italian culinary expert Pellegrino Artuso as his fictional sleuth, was born on this day in 1974 in Pisa.

Malvaldi, who is a graduate in chemistry from Pisa University, has also written a travel guide about his home town with the title Scacco alle Torre (Checkmate to the Tower), which has been presented at the Pisa Book Festival. In the book, he writes a story about a nocturnal walk through the city entitled Finalmente soli (Finally Alone), which was inspired by an image taken by a professional photographer, Nicola Ughi, a fellow Pisan, who has become his official portraitist. 

He began his writing career in 2007 with a mystery novel, La briscola in cinque (Game for Five), published by Sellerio Editore. The novel’s protagonist, Massimo, a barista, and the owner of a bar named BarLume, which is a play on the Italian word barlume, which means 'flicker of light', is forced into the role of investigator in the fictional seaside resort town of Pineta on the Tuscan coast.  

Other books in the series followed and three have been translated into English: Il gioco delle tre carte (Three-card Monte), Il re dei giochi (The King of Games) and La carta più alta (The Highest Card).

In 2011, Malvaldi’s novel, Odore di chiuso (The Scent of Must) was published by Sellerio Editore and later published in English under the title, The Art of Killing Well. It featured Pellegrino Artusi, a renowned 19th century gastronomist from the Romagna region, as his fictional detective. The novel was awarded the Isola d’Elba Award and the Castiglioncello Prize. 

Malvadi's novel The
Art of Killing Well

Malvaldi published a thriller in 2012, Milioni di milioni (Millions of Millions), which is set in the fictional Tuscan town of Montesodi Marittimo, and features a university geneticist and an archivist, who form an unusual team of amateur investigators. In 2013, Malvaldi was awarded the literary prize, Premio Letterario La Tore Isola d’Elba - two of five literary honours his books have won.

After graduating, Malvaldi also did research in the department of pharmacy at Pisa University and he has written several books about science. His book, Le due teste del tiranno: metodi matematici per la Libertà (The Two Heads of the Tyrant: Mathematic Methods for Freedom), published in 2017, won a 2018 Asimov award, for the best book in scientific dissemination published in Italy.

Malvaldi, whose birthday today is his 50th, has also co-authored books with Roberto Vacca, Dino Leporini, journalist and poet Ernesto Ragazzoni among many others. 

Malvaldi’s partner is Samantha Bruzzone, who is also a chemist and passionate about detective fiction. Together, they have written two children’s books and in 2022 the novel, Chi si ferma e perduto (Who Stops is Lost).

Pisa's leaning tower began to 
tilt soon after it was built

Travel tip:

Pisa is world famous for its leaning tower, which Malvaldi writes about in his book Scacco alle Torre (Checkmate to the Tower). Work began on the construction of a freestanding bell tower for the Cathedral in Pisa in 1173. The tower’s famous tilt began during the building process and is believed to have been caused by the laying of inadequate foundations on ground that was too soft on one side to support the weight of the structure. The tilt got worse over the years until work had to be carried out to correct it in the 20th century. At its most extreme, the tower leaned at an angle of 5.5 degrees but since the restoration work carried out between 1990 and 2001 the tower leans at about 3.99 degrees. The tower was reopened to the public in 2001, when it was declared that it would be stable for another 300 years.

The picturesque harbour at the port of Portoferraio
on the island of Elba off the Tuscan coast

Travel tip:

The Tuscan coast, which Malvaldi fictionalises in some of his books, has a long stretch of sandy beaches that include holiday destinations such as Viareggio, Forte dei Marmi, Catiglioncello, Follonica, Castiglione della Pescaia, Porto Ercole, Talamone, and many others. Off the coast is the island of Elba, a popular destination for holidaymakers who arrive by ferry at Portoferraio, where there is an old port and a modern seafront with hotels. The west coast of the island has sandy beaches, but the east coast is more rugged with high cliffs. Inland there are olive groves and vineyards producing the wine, Elba DOC. You can visit Napoleon’s two residences while he was in exile on the island, Palazzina Naopleonica, a modest house built around two windmills in Portoferraio, and Villa San Martino, his country house, further inland at San Martino and decorated inside with Egyptian-style frescoes.

Also on this day:

98: Trajan becomes Emperor of Rome 

1861: Italy elects its first parliament

1881: The birth of mobster Frank Nitti

1901: The death of composer Giuseppe Verdi

1927: The birth of writer and novelist Giovanni Arpino

1962: The birth of musician Roberto Paci Dalò

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