Attilio Bertolucci - poet

Pastoral scenes and family life inspired writer from Parma

Attilio Bertolucci was an important
figure in 20th century Italian poetry 

Writer and poet Attilio Bertolucci was born on this day in 1911 in San Lazzaro, a hamlet in the countryside near Parma in Emilia-Romagna.

Bertolucci wrote about his own family life and became renowned for the musicality of his language while describing humble places and human feelings. He became an important figure in 20th century Italian poetry and was the father of film directors Bernardo and Giuseppe Bertolucci.

Attilio Bertolucci was born into a middle-class, agricultural family. He began writing poems at the age of seven and published his first collection of poems, Sirio, when he was 18.

He went to study law at the University of Parma when he was 19, but soon gave it up in favour of literary studies. He also went to the University of Bologna to study art history. He went on to teach art history at the Maria Luigia boarding school in Parma.

He became a book reviewer and theatre and film critic for the Parma newspaper, La Gazzetta, and developed anti-fascist feelings along with other intellectuals at the time. He worked as foreign editor for the poetry publisher, Guanda, and introduced a range of modern poetry from overseas to Italy.

When he was 20, his work, Fuochi di Novembre, earned him the praise of the Italian poet Eugenio Montale, which enhanced his reputation.

Bertolucci with Bernardo (left), the elder of his two
sons, during the shooting of his 1976 epic, Novecento 

Bertolucci married Ninetta Giovanardi in 1938 but they continued to live in his parental home near Parma. They had their first son, Bernardo, in 1941 and their younger son, Giuseppe, in 1947.

In 1951 he published La capanna Indiana, which won the Viareggio Prize for Literature. In the same year the family moved to Rome. Among the readers who admired his work was the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who became a close friend.

In Rome, Bertolucci worked for the publisher, Garzanti, for Italian radio, and for the daily newspaper, La Repubblica.

From the 1960s onwards the Bertolucci family alternated between their apartment in Rome, their 17th century house in the Apennine village of Casarola, which they visited  in the spring and summer, and their home by the sea in the Ligurian village of Tellaro, where they lived during the autumn. In nearby Lerici, Bertolucci became president of the committee for the Lerici Prize and biennial literary conference.

The cover of Bertolucci's
first published poetry

He published Viaggio d’inverno in 1971, which is considered one of his finest works. It was seen as marking a change to a more complex style from that of his earlier works, where he used humble language to describe pastoral situations.

From 1975, he directed the prestigious literary review magazine Nuovi Argomenti, along with Enzo Siciliano and Alberto Moravia. In 1984 he won another Viareggio Prize for the narrative poem Camera da letto.

His last work was La lucertola di Casarola, a collection of works from his youth, which he published in 1997.

Attilio Bertolucci died in Rome in 2000 at the age of 88. Selections of his poetry have been translated into English by the poets and translators, Charles Tomlinson and Allen Prowle.

Parma is famous for Prosciutto di Parma and
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Travel tip:

Parma is an historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for its ham (Prosciutto di Parma) and cheese (Parmigiano-Reggiano), the true ‘parmesan’. The city was given as a duchy to Pier Luigi Farnese, the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, and his descendants ruled Parma till 1731. The composer, Verdi, was born near Parma at Bussetto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regia. Parma is divided into two parts by a stream. Attilio Bertolucci once wrote about it: ’As a capital city it had to have a river. As a little capital it received a stream, which is often dry.’ This refers to the time when Parma was capital of the independent Duchy of Parma.

Boats fill the tiny quayside at the fishing village
of Tellaro in Liguria, where Bertolucci had a home

Travel tip:

Tellaro, where the Bertolucci family had a seaside home, is a small fishing village on the east coast of the Gulf of La Spezia in Liguria and a frazione of the comune of Lerici. Tellaro has been rated as one of the most beautiful villages of Italy by the guide, I Borghi più belli d’Italia. The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his writer wife, Mary Shelley, lived there in the rented Casa Magni in the early 1820s and drew inspiration from their beautiful surroundings for their writing until Shelley’s death at sea in 1822.

Also on this day:

1626: The consecration of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome

1630: The birth of Eleonora Gonzaga, Holy Roman Empress

1804: The birth of Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora, military leader and statesman

1891: The birth of architect and designer Gio Ponti

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Massimo Carlotto - novelist

Writer wrongly jailed for murder now best-selling author

Massimo Carlotto is best known
for his Alligator mysteries

Massimo Carlotto, the best-selling novelist who spent three years on the run, eight years in jail and a further 11 years clearing his name over a murder he did not commit, was born on this day in 1956 in Padua.

Carlotto, who began his writing career in 1995 with a fictionalised autobiography, Il fuggiasco (The Fugitive), about his time on the run, is best known for his dark crime series featuring an unlicensed investigator, Marco Buratti, nicknamed L’alligatore (The Alligator), six of which have been published in English.

The so-called Carlotto Case became one of the most controversial episodes in Italian legal history.

It began in 1976, at the height of the period of intense political tension and unrest in Italy known as the Years of Lead, when the 19-year-old Carlotto, then a student, was a member of the ultra left activist group, Lotta Continua.

In January of that year, according to his own testimony, he was cycling past the house in Padua where his sister, Antonella, had an apartment, when he heard the cries of a young woman in distress. He entered the building, discovered that the cries were coming not from his sister’s apartment but from that of her neighbour, the front door of which was wide open.

Inside, he found Margherita Magello, a 24-year-old woman he knew superficially, inside a wardrobe, bleeding to death from multiple stab wounds. 

Carlotto pictured at the time of one
of his many trials and retrials

He left the scene, panicking over the fact that his clothes were stained with her blood after he attempted to help her, but after telling friends what had happened, one of whom was a lawyer, decided to go to the carabinieri station station to explain what had happened.

The officers at the police station were not convinced by his story, however, and arrested him on suspicion of murder.  It is likely his political affiliations would not have helped him. In 1972, four of his fellow Lotta Continua members had been jailed for the killing of Luigi Calabresi, the Milan chief of police.

Held in prison for a year, he was tried in Padua in 1977, acquitted through lack of evidence and released. But the prosecution appealed and a further hearing in Venice found against him, sentencing him to 18 years, confirmed by Italy’s supreme court in 1982.

Shortly before the sentence was confirmed, Carlotto went into hiding, fleeing first to France and then Mexico, where he is sheltered by fellow political activists before a police check of his papers led him to be arrested and deported.

Over the next eight years he was tried and retried 11 times while a group of prominent supporters, including journalists, writers and politicians, campaigned on his behalf. He suffered serious illness while in prison but finally, in 1993, with public opinion on his side, the Italian president, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, granted him a pardon.

Several of Carlotto's novels
have been published in English

Although it would take Carlotto and his lawyers until 2004 to have his sentence expunged from the record and all his civil and political rights reinstated, once he had recovered his health he began to write.

His first novel, Il fuggiasco (The Fugitive), was heavily based on his experience in Mexico, while he used what he had learned in prison in Italy, where he was held at different times in maximum security jails in Milan and Turin as well as Padua, alongside some of the country's most hardened criminals, to inform his crime novels.

In an interview in 2005, Carlotto explained that he had won favour as a negotiator between rival factions in prison, and made contacts in the world of organised crime by writing letters and documents for fellow prisoners.

He now uses those contacts to add authenticity to his crime stories. His novels are notorious for the graphic detail of sometimes horrific murders, but he claims all are based on real-life killings and offer a true reflection of crime in modern Italy rather than a toned-down, romanticised version.

The winner of multiple awards, Carlotto’s novels have been published in several different languages. His 2001 novel, Arrivederci, amore ciao, was turned into a film, The Goodbye Kiss, directed by Michele Soavi, in 2005.

The first of his Alligator series, which now numbers 10 novels, was published in 1995. Six have been translated into English, among them The Colombian Mule, The Master of Knots and Gang of Lovers.

Now 65, Carlotto lives with is family in homes in Sardinia and Padua.

Frescoes by Giotto decorate the
walls of the Scrovegni Chapel

Travel tip:

Padua in the Veneto is home to Italy’s second oldest university and is an important centre for art. Its attractions include 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. His scenes depicting the lives of Mary and Joseph, painted between 1303 and 1305, are considered his greatest achievement and one of the world’s most important works of art. The city’s history of student activism goes back to the 19th century, when students and professors at the university gathered in the Caffè Pedrocchi to plot the 1848 uprising against the Austrian occupation of much of northern Italy.

The Palazzo del Bò is the main building
of the University of Padua

Travel tip:

The University of Padua was established in 1222 and is one of the oldest in the world, second in Italy only to the University of Bologna . The main university building, Palazzo del Bò in Via VIII Febbraio in the centre of Padua, used to house the medical faculty. You can take a guided tour to see the lectern used by Galileo when he taught at the university between 1592 and 1610. Other sights that are a must-see on a visit to Padua include the 13th century Basilica di Sant'Antonio.

Also on this day:

1559: The birth of St Lawrence of Brindisi

1913: The birth of prolific songwriter Gorni Kramer

1943: Palermo falls to the Allies

2001: The death of journalist Indro Montanelli

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Natalia Ginzburg - writer and politician

Sicilian raised in Turin became one of Italy’s great postwar novelists

Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) with her husband, the 
leading anti-Fascist figure, Leone Ginzburg

The writer and politician Natalia Ginzburg was born on this day in 1916 in the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

The author of 11 novels and short story collections, as well as numerous essays, Ginzburg came to be regarded as one of Italy’s great postwar writers, alongside Primo Levi, Carlo Levi, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese, Elsa Morante and Giorgio Bassani among others.

Her most famous works include Tutti i nostri ieri - All Our Yesterdays - published in 1952, Lessico famigliare  - Family Sayings -  published in 1963, and La famiglia Manzoni - The Manzoni Family - published in 1983.

She was notable for writing about family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy.

Ginzburg, who was married to a prominent figure in the Italian resistance movement in World War Two, was an active anti-Fascist and a member of the Italian Communist Party in the 1930s.  In later life, she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as an independent.

Ginzburg became a leading light
in postwar Italian literature

Although born in Palermo, Ginzburg spent her early life in Turin, where her father, Giuseppe Levi, was a professor of neuroanatomy at the University of Turin, presiding over a research laboratory that produced three winners of Nobel Prizes.

The family was well connected in social and intellectual circles in Turin. Her sister, Paola, married a future president of the business machines company, Olivetti, of which one of her brothers, Gino, became Olivetti’s technical director. Of her two other brothers, Mario was a journalist and Alberto a doctor. 

As a Jewish family - although her mother, Lidia, was a gentile - they were heavily involved in the city’s anti-Fascist movement and suffered for it. Natalia’s brothers were frequently arrested and sometimes jailed for their activities. Guiseppe Levi was in time stripped of his position at the university and moved to Belgium.

Natalia’s brothers were members of the anti-Fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Liberty), the leader of which was Leone Ginzburg, a professor of Russian Literature at the University of Turin, with whom she began a relationship. 

Like her father, Leone was dismissed from his university position. He was under constant surveillance from Mussolini’s secret police and eventually stopped visiting the Levi family home, worried that he was putting the family in danger. Nonetheless, he and Natalia continued to see one another and were married in 1938. They had three children, the eldest of whom, Carlo Ginzburg, is now an eminent historian.

A recent edition of one of Ginzburg's
most acclaimed works, Family Lexicon

Despite her own Jewish roots and her marriage to Ginzburg, Natalia was allowed to bring up her children largely without harassment. For Leone, however, it was a different story. Placed under precautionary arrest every time an important politician or the King, Victor Emmanuel III, visited the city, in 1941 he was sentenced to internal exile in the remote, impoverished village of Pizzoli in Abruzzo.  He and Natalia and their young family lived there until 1943, when he secretly moved to Rome to edit an anti-Fascist underground newspaper.

Mussolini was deposed but it did not mean the Ginzburgs could rest easy. When Nazi Germany invaded the peninsula, Natalia was determined to be reunited with her husband and managed to persuade a German army unit to take her to Rome, claiming she and her children were refugees who had lost their papers.

They found Leone and went into hiding but it was not long before he was arrested. This time their separation was permanent. By the following February, Leone had died aged 34 after suffering a cardiac arrest in the Rome prison of Regina Coeli, having been subjected to brutal interrogation and torture.

At this time, Natalia Ginzburg’s career as a writer was in its infancy, although she was already the author of a novel published under a pseudonym in 1942 at a time when Mussolini’s race laws barred Jewish authors from seeing their work in print.

After the war, she worked at the Turin publishing house of Giulio Einaudi - of which Leone had been a founder - and became acquainted with some of the leading figures of postwar Italian literature, including Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Pavese and Italo Calvino.  It was Pavese who is said to have given her the most encouragement to write more herself.

Her own output increased after she was married for a second time, in 1950, to Gabriele Baldini, an academic. They lived in Rome and for many years were at the centre of the city’s cultural life, Ginzburg’s novels, short stories, essays and plays attracting much critical acclaim. Having become friends with the director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, she even accepted a small part in his 1964 film, The Gospel According to St Matthew, in which he followed the neorealist tradition of using non-professional actors.

Ginzburg won some of Italy’s most prestigious literary awards, including the Strega Prize for Lessico famigliare and the Bagutta Prize for La famiglia Manzoni.  

She and Baldini had two children, although both were born with severe disabilities and the first died after only a year. Baldini himself died young, in 1969 at the age of only 49.

Ginzburg was never far from active politics. Like so many anti-Fascists from the wartime period, she was at times a member of the Italian Communist Party, although when she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1983 it was as an independent.

Her literary output began to slow down in the 1980s. She died in Rome in 1991 at the age of 75.

Piazza San Carlo in Turin, looking towards the
churches of Santa Cristina and San Carlo

Travel tip:

The original offices of the Einaudi publishing company in Turin were in Via dell'Arcivescovado, a few steps from the beautiful Piazza San Carlo, one of the city's main squares. A stunning example of 16th and 17th century Baroque design, the large piazza is notable for the twin churches of Santa Cristina and San Carlo at the southwest entrance to the square and for the monument to Emanuele Filiberto, a 16th century Duke of Savoy, in the centre. Spectacularly lit up in the evening, the square is home to two of Turin's most famous coffee houses, the Café San Carlo and Café Torino, as well as the Confetteria Stratta, renowned for the exquisite pastries it offers. 

Piazza Municipio is the main square of the 
Abruzzo village of Pizzoli

Travel tip:

Pizzoli was an impoverished village in is a remote, mountainous part of central Italy some 135km (84 miles) northeast of Rome at the time the Ginzburg family were exiled there in 1941. Nowadays it is a well-kept, lively small town popular with visitors to the area as a starting point for trekking holidays in the mountains of the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park. Situated 15km (9 miles) northwest of the city of L'Aquila, Pizzoli is typical of the region in that it has the feel of a different time when life was less frantic. Its local quisine features pork and mutton in abundance, with thin skewers of salted, flame-grilled mutton called Arrosticini among its specialities.

Also on this day:

1602: The birth of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, ruler of France

1614: The death of Saint Camillus de Lellis, a reformed gambler who devoted himself to caring for the sick

1902: The collapse of the bell tower of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice

1948: The shooting in Rome of Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti 

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Luigi Capuana - author and journalist

Sicilian was leading figure in verismo movement

Luigi Capuana combined his writing
with working as a theatre critic 

The author and journalist Luigi Capuana, one of the most important writers of the verismo movement that flourished in Italy in the late 19th century, was born on this day in 1839 in Mineo, a medieval town in southeast Sicily, in the province of Catania.

Verismo - meaning ‘realism’ - sought to portray society and humanity in the manner of a photograph, objectively representing life as it really was, stripped of romanticism. It tended to focus on the lower levels of society, using explicit descriptive detail and realistic dialogue.

Capuana, who was influenced by the French writers Honoré de Balzac and Emile Zola, and his fellow Sicilian Giovanni Verga were two of the earliest advocates of the movement, which was at its peak in the final quarter of the 19th century.

It declined in popularity in the early 20th century but its principles were revived in the neorealism movement that dominated Italian cinema in the immediate years after World War II and is often cited as a golden age in the Italian film industry.

Capuana, whose best-known works were his novels Giacinta (1879), a psychological study of a wronged woman and Il marchese di Roccaverdina (1901), a study of guilt, was born into a wealthy family in Mineo.

He was given every opportunity to take advantage of the best education available, although to a large extent he was self-taught. He dropped out of the prestigious Royal College of Bronte on the grounds of ill health and left the Faculty of Law in Catania to take part in the revolt in Sicily inspired by Garibaldi and the Risorgimento movement, becoming secretary of the Secret Committee of Insurrection in Mineo.

Capuana's friend, Giuseppe Verga,
was also prominent in the movement

The experience inspired his first published work Garibaldi: A Dramatic Legend in Three Cantos, released in 1861. Three years later, he left Sicily to settle in Florence, intent on a literary adventure. 

There he struck up friendships with the most famous writers of the time, including Aleardo Aleardi and Gino Capponi and found regular work as a theatre critic on the newspaper La Nazione.

In 1868 he returned to Sicily, intending only to stay for a brief period, although in the event the death of his father and a change in his own economic circumstances meant he remained in Mineo for the next seven years, working as a schools inspector and later served on the town council, where he was eventually elected mayor.

In 1875 Capuana resumed his literary adventure, moving first to Rome and then, on the advice of his friend, Giuseppe Verga, to Milan, where in 1979 he published Giacinta, regarded by some as the manifesto of the verismo movement.  His experience writing for La Nazione helped open doors at the Milan newspaper, Corriere della Sera, where he again worked as a theatre and literary critic.

From Milan he moved back to Rome, where he was editor of the literary review Fanfulla della Domenica and published several volumes of fairy tales, short stories as well as a number of novels, including Il marchese di Roccaverdina. 

Rome’s literary scene enabled him to meet and form friendships with Gabriele D’Annunzio and Luigi Pirandello among others, while his own success earned him a good living. His novel Giacinta was adapted as a five-act comedy, which was performed at the Teatro Sannazaro in Naples.

In 1902, Capuana returned to Sicily, continuing to write while lecturing in lexicography and stylistics at the University of Catania. He died in Catania in 1915 at the age of 76.

Capuana's house in Mineo
now contains a museum

Travel tip:

Mineo is a town of medieval origins, characterised by a network of narrow streets clinging to a hillside in western Catania, about 64km (40 miles) southwest of Catania, 56km (35 miles) north of Ragusa and 22km (14 miles) east of Caltagirone.  With a population of approximately 5,500, it has a number of churches and other buildings of historical and artistic value, including the churches of Santa Maria Maggiore and Sant’Agrippina. The Palazzo Capuana, where Luigi Capuana was born, now houses a museum commemorating his life, while his resting place at the cemetery of Mineo is marked by a funeral monument by the sculptor Michele La Spina.

The port city of Catania sits in the shadow of
Sicily's active volcano, Mount Etna

Travel tip:

The city of Catania, which is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, is one of the 10 biggest cities in Italy, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. A little like Naples, which is in the shadow of Vesuvius, it lives with the constant threat of a natural catastrophe, having been virtually destroyed by earthquakes twice, in 1169 and 1693, and regularly witnesses volcanic eruptions from nearby Mount Etna. As such it has always been a city for living life to the full. In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks and many restaurants.

Also on this day:

1606: The painter Caravaggio flees Rome after allegedly murdering Ranuccio Tomassoni

1692: The birth of composer Gemiano Giacomelli

1999: Da Vinci’s Last Supper goes back on display in Milan after 20 years of restoration

(Picture credit: Catania photo by Herbert Aust via Pixabay) 

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Benedetto Croce – philosopher and historian

Prolific writer opposed the Fascists and supported democracy

Benedetto Croce influenced literature,
philosophy and politics in his lifetime

Benedetto Croce, one of the most important figures in Italian life and culture in the first half of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1866 in Pescasseroli in the region of Abruzzo.

Croce was an idealist philosopher, historian and erudite literary scholar whose approach to literature influenced future generations of writers and literary critics. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 16 times.

He became a Senator in 1910 and was Minister for Education from 1920 to 1921 in the last pre-Fascist government of the so-called Giolitti era. He is also remembered for his major contribution to the rebirth of Italian democracy after World War II.

Croce was born into a wealthy family and raised in a strict Catholic environment.  However, from the age of 16 he gave up Catholicism and developed a personal philosophy of spiritual life.

In 1883, while he was still a teenager, he was on holiday with his family on the island of Ischia when an earthquake struck the town of Casamicciola Terme and destroyed the house they were staying in. His mother, father and sister were all killed, but although he was buried for a long time, he managed to survive.

Croce inherited his family’s fortune and was able to live a life of leisure, devoting his time to philosophy and writing while living in a palazzo in Naples. His ideas began to be publicised at the University of Rome by Professor Antonio Labriola.

After his appointment to the Senate, Croce was a critic of Italy’s involvement in World War I. He left Government office about a year before Benito Mussolini assumed power.

Benedetto Croce (left), with the first president of
the post-War Italian republic, Enrico De Nicola

In 1923, Croce was instrumental in relocating the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III to the Palazzo Reale in Naples.

After Giacomo Matteotti was assassinated by the Fascists in 1924, Croce was one of the signatories to the manifesto of the anti-Fascist intellectuals and he provided financial support to anti-Fascist writers.

His home and library in Naples were ransacked by the Fascists in 1926 and he was put under surveillance. No mainstream newspaper or academic publication was allowed to refer to him.

Croce kept a diary during World War II entitled ‘Quando l’Italia era tagliato in due (When Italy was cut into two)’.

He made daily entries in this diary between July 1943 and June 1944. He had left his home in Naples, Palazzo Filomarino della Rocca, and gone to Sorrento to escape the Allied air raids.

He was staying in the Villa Tritone, a clifftop residence in Via Marina Grande overlooking the sea. The Germans entered and occupied Naples during September and on 12 September the Germans rescued Mussolini - who had been overthrown by the Fascist Grand Council and held captive - from his prison on Gran Sasso in the mountains of Abruzzo with a glider-borne team.

The entrance to Villa Tritone on Via Marina Grande
in Sorrento, where Croce moved during World War II

On 13 September, Croce writes that he has been receiving anonymous threats. The following day he reports that there were lots of Fascists roaming the streets of Sorrento.

He is advised to leave the Villa Tritone immediately to avoid being taken hostage by Fascists who would use him for propaganda purposes.

The next day’s entry was written by him on Capri. Croce reports that a floating mine was found in the sea below the villa and it was thought the retreating Germans might have been planning to come and take him as they had taken other prominent Italians in Salerno.

A motorboat was sent for him and his daughters from Capri, which was at the time firmly in Allied hands. The family were able to use the stairs that led from Villa Tritone down to the beach to get away. On board were a police commissioner from Capri and an English army officer who had been tasked with rescuing him. 

The boat returned to Sorrento later to collect Croce’s wife and another of his daughters who had stayed behind to pack up their possessions. On board were the same police commissioner and Major Munthe, the son of Axel Munthe, the Swedish doctor who was a Capri resident for a large part of his life and was famous for his best-selling memoir, The Story of San Michele. The Fascist and German radio stations broadcast that ‘Croce and others’ were to be severely punished, but the Allies were able to counter this by broadcasting that the philosopher was now safely on Capri.

When democracy was restored in Italy in 1944, Croce became a minister in the governments of Pietro Badoglio and Ivanoe Bonomi.

He voted for the Monarchy in the Constitutional referendum in 1946. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly that existed until 1948 but he declined to stand as provisional president of Italy.

Croce’s philosophical ideas were expressed in more than 80 books and 40 years worth of articles in his own literary magazine, La Critica. His theories were later debated by many Italian philosophers, including Umberto Eco.

Croce was President of PEN International, the worldwide writer’s association, from 1949 until his death in Naples in 1952.

His widow and daughters established the Fondazione Biblioteca Benedetto Croce in the Palazzo Filomarino della Rocca in 1955. The street on which the palazzo stands is now named Via Benedetto Croce.

The Palazzo Reale in Naples, which houses the
Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III

Travel tip:

The Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, a national library of Italy, now occupies the eastern wing of the 18th century Palazzo Reale in Naples as a result of efforts made on its behalf by Benedetto Croce in the 1920s. It houses nearly one and a half million printed volumes, as well as hundreds of thousands of pamphlets, manuscripts and periodicals. The library had been founded in the 18th century in the Palazzo degli Studi but after various collections were added to it, following the suggestion of Croce, the library was moved to Palazzo Reale and installed in accommodation granted to it by King Victor Emmanuel III.

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A plaque on the exterior wall of the
Villa Tritone commemorates Croce's stay

Travel tip:

A plaque on the exterior wall of Villa Tritone in Sorrento records the residence there during World War II of Benedetto Croce ‘when Italy was cut in two’. A villa had been built on the site in the first century AD by Agrippa Postumus, grandson of Emperor Augustus, and Ovid was said to have been a frequent visitor. This became the site of a convent in the 13th century and then the land was purchased in the 19th century by Count Labonia and the present villa was built. At the beginning of the 20th century William Waldorf Astor bought the villa and designed the garden behind it with windows cut in the high wall on the seaward side to give views of the sea and Vesuvius across the bay.

Book your stay in Sorrento with Booking.com

More reading:

How Mussolini's thugs kidnapped and murder brave politician Giacomo Matteotti

The controversial general who turned against Mussolini

Political philosopher who defined Right and Left in simple terms

Also on this day:

1626: The death of painter Enea Salmeggia

1683: The birth of pathological anatomist Giovanni Battista Morgagni

1707: The birth of playwright Carlo Goldoni

1873: The birth of opera singer Enrico Caruso

2003: The death of comic actor Alberto Sordi

(Picture credit: Palazzo Reale by Vitold Muratov via Wikimedia Commons)

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Giovanni Boccaccio – writer and scholar

Renaissance humanist who changed literature

Boccaccio's Decameron influenced
Chaucer and De Cervantes

One of the most important literary figures of the 14th century in Italy, Giovanni Boccaccio, died on this day in 1375 in Certaldo in Tuscany.

The greatest prose writer of his time in Europe, Boccaccio is still remembered as the writer of The Decameron, a collection of short stories and poetry, which influenced not only Italian literary development but that of the rest of Europe as well, including Geoffrey Chaucer in England and Miguel de Cervantes in Spain.

With the writers Dante Alighieri (Dante) and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), Boccaccio is considered one of the three most important figures in the history of Italian literature and, along with Petrarch, he raised vernacular literature to the level and status of the classics of antiquity.

Boccaccio is thought to have been born in about 1313.  He was the son of a merchant in Florence, Boccaccino di Chellino, and an unknown woman. His father later married Margherita dei Mardoli who came from a well off family. Boccaccio received a good education and an early introduction to the works of Dante from a tutor.

His father was appointed head of a bank in 1326 and the family moved to live in Naples.

Boccaccio was appointed an apprentice at the bank but disliked the work and persuaded his father to let him study law at the University of Naples instead. Although he did not enjoy the study of law it gave him the opportunity to also study literature and science and to meet other scholars.

At that time, he is thought to have fallen in love with Maria, a married daughter of the King of Naples, Robert the Wise, and that he later portrayed her as Fiammetta in his prose romances.

Boccaccio's contemporary
and friend, Petrarch

While in Naples, he began writing poetry and produced Il Filostrato and Teseida, which Chaucer used as sources for his Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight’s Tale. He also wrote La caccia di Diana, a poem in terza rima, a rhyming verse form invented by Dante.

Boccaccio returned to Florence in 1341 where he wrote Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, which was a mixture of prose and poetry. He then wrote a 50-canto poem, Amorosa visione and his novel, Fiammetta.

In 1348 Florence was hit by the Black Death, which killed three-quarters of the population. Boccaccio later featured the plague in The Decameron, although he may have been away in Ravenna at that time.

He began work on The Decameron in about 1349 and completed it in 1352. It was one of his last works written in Tuscan vernacular and it is regarded as his masterpiece.  He revised and rewrote it in 1370 and this manuscript has survived to the present day.

Afterwards he became more closely involved with the development of Italian humanism and started working for the government of Florence, visiting the Romagna, Brandenburg, Milan and Avignon.

In 1350 he was asked to greet Petrarch as he entered Florence and to have him as a guest at his home. The meeting was a great success and they became good friends, Boccaccio subsequently calling Petrarch his teacher.

An illustrated page from a 15th
century copy of The Decameron

Petrarch encouraged Boccaccio to study Greek and Latin literature and as a result Boccaccio wrote Genealogia deorum gentilium, which was considered to be an important reference work on classical mythology that would be consulted for the next 400 years.

Boccaccio and Petrarch believed that much could be learned from antiquity and as a result the revival of classical works became important during the Renaissance.

In 1365 Boccaccio travelled to Venice where he met up with Petrarch again at his residence in Palazzo Molina on the Riva degli Schiavoni, where the poet kept his extensive library.

Boccaccio gave a series of lectures on Dante in 1373 and wrote his final major work, Esposizioni sopra la Commedia di Dante.

When Petrarch died in 1374, Boccaccio wrote a commemorative poem to mark the occasion, which he included in his collection, the Rime.

He became ill himself in 1375 and died on 21 December in his hometown of Certaldo where he is buried in the Church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo.

His entire collection of books was given to the monastery of Santo Spirito in Florence, but after the suppression of the monasteries by the French in the 19th century, many valuable works were lost, including Boccaccio's.

In 1971, the director Pier Paolo Pasolini made a film based on Boccaccio’s Decameron.

The Via Boccaccio in the picturesque
town of Certaldo in Tuscany

Travel tip:

Certaldo, a town of Etruscan and Roman origins about 35km (22 miles) southwest of Florence, commemorates Boccaccio with a statue in the Piazza Boccaccio in Certaldo Basso, the lower part of a town of two halves, the other being Certaldo Alto, the elevated oldest part of the town in which Boccaccio lived, in what is now Via Boccaccio, at the end of which is the church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo, where he is buried.  Another feature of the picturesque upper town, which is accessed via a funicular railway from Certaldo Basso, is Palazzo Pretorio, also known as the Vicariale, the residence of the Florentine governors, which has been restored to its original condition with a facade adorned with ceramic coats of arms. 

Palazzo Molina on the Riva degli Schiavoni was
Petrarch's home in Venice

Travel tip:

Palazzo Molina, which has at different times been known as the Palazzo de Due Torri or Palazzo Navager, and locally as Casa di Petrarca, is a Gothic style palace that can be found a short distance from St Mark’s Square on Venice’s Riva degli Schiavoni, next to the Ponte del Sepolcro. Petrarch lived there with his daughter Francesca, her husband Francescuolo da Brossano and their family for about five years, having moved to Venice through his deep admiration for the city, where he had many friends. 

More reading:

Why Dante remains in exile from Florence

How Petrarch's work inspired the modern Italian language

Pier Paolo Pasolini - controversial director who met a violent death

Also on this day:

69: Vespasian becomes Emperor of Rome

1401: The birth of Renaissance artist Masaccio

1872: The birth of priest and composer Lorenzo Perosi

1931: The birth of circus owner and actress Moira Orfei

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Ippolito Nievo - writer and patriot

Risorgimento novel now seen as an overlooked classic

Ippolito Nievo (above) fought with 
Garibaldi in the cause of unification

The writer Ippolito Nievo, whose posthumously published Confessions of an Italian is now considered the most important novel about the Risorgimento in Italian literature, was born on this day in 1831 in Padua.

Nievo, who was a passionate supporter of the move to unify Italy in the 19th century, drew inspiration from his participation in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Spedizione dei Mille - the Expedition of the Thousand - which sought to achieve that goal.

He died for the cause at the age of just 29, perishing in a shipwreck while transporting important documents from Palermo to Naples.

His legacy was preserved in his most famous novel, in which the central character and narrator shares Nievo’s passions. Nievo completed the work in 1858 but it was not until 1867, six years after his death, that it found a publisher.

Nievo was born into comfortable circumstances.  His father was a prominent lawyer and magistrate in Padua and his mother the daughter of a Friulian countess.  Their home in Padua was the Palazzo Mocenigo Querini, a 16th century house overlooking Via Sant’Eufemia, close to the city centre. 

They also had use of his mother’s ancestral home, a castle in Colloredo di Montalbano, a hamlet just outside the city of Udine in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and of the Palazzo Nievo in Mantua. 

Nievo was inspired by the political goals
of revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini

From 1832 to 1837, when Nievo was a small child, they lived in a house adjoining the Palazzo della Giustizia in Soave, about 60km (37 miles) from Padua, where his father was posted as a judge.  By the late 1840s, Nievo was becoming increasingly fascinated by the writings of Carlo Cattaneo and Giuseppe Mazzini, two of the central philosophical drivers of the Risorgimento.

He is thought to have taken part in a failed uprising in Mantua in 1848, a year marked by a series of insurrections inspired by Italian nationalists seeking to overthrow the Austian grip on the north of the country.  He had been inspired by conversations with his maternal grandfather, Carlo Marin, who had been a prominent official of the Venetian Republic when it fell to the Austrians in 1797.

Nievo refused to follow his father into the law as he felt it would imply submission to the Austrian government and instead pursued a career in journalism.

His political activity intensified in the late 1850s, when he joined Garibaldi’s Cacciatori delle Alpi, a brigade of volunteers fighting to liberate Lombardy, and then participated in the Expedition of the Thousand, given the number 690 in the list of 1,000 patriots.

Nievo embarked in Genoa on 5 May, 1860 setting sail for Sicily. After distinguishing himself in the battle of Calatafimi and in Palermo, he was promoted to colonel and took on administrative assignments, at the same time keeping diaries that served as a chronicle of events. 

It was in this role that he was tasked with bringing back from Sicily all the administrative documents and receipts from the expedition’s expenses. He boarded the steamship Ercole along with other members of the military administration to travel from Palermo to Naples, but during the night between March 4 and 5, 1861, the vessel ran into difficulties off the coast of Sorrento, almost within view of the Bay of Naples, and sank.  There were no survivors.

An English edition of Nievo's
most famous book

It was during the years between these periods of active support for the revolutionary cause that Nievo did the bulk of his writing.

Much of this time he spent in retreat in Colloredo di Montalbano, writing a number of novels set in the Friulian countryside, as well as volumes of short stories and poetry.

He began writing his major work at some point in the mid-1850s. The central character is an 83-year-old man, Carlo Altoviti - thought to be based at least loosely on Carlo Marin - who has decided to write down the history of his long life, from an unhappy childhood to romantic entanglements during the siege of Genoa, and fighting in the cause of revolution in Naples. 

Carlo’s twin passions are the dream of a unified, free Italy and his undying love for Pisana, the woman with whom he is obsessed. With characters ranging from drunken smugglers to saintly nuns and scheming priests, as well as real figures such as Napoleon and Lord Byron, it is an epic novel that tells the story of one man's life and the history of Italy's unification.

When Nievo’s supporters found a publisher years after Nievo’s unexpected death, the book was titled Confessioni di un ottuagenario (Confessions of an octogenarian), because Nievo’s intended title was still deemed politically sensitive.  It was changed later to reflect the author’s wishes.

Nievo’s life is commemorated in a number of locations, including Colloredo di Montalbano and Fossalta di Portogruaro, in the Veneto, where the Castello di Fratta, the scene of Carlo Altoviti’s unhappy childhood, was thought to be located.  There is a statue of him in Cordovado, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where there is a literary park dedicated to his name.

Nievo wrote his masterpiece while in retreat
at the castle in Colloredo di Montalbano

Travel tip:

Colloredo di Monte Albano - known locally as Colloredo di Montalbano - is a small village in Friuli-Venezia Giulia situated about 14km (9 miles) northwest of Udine.  In the 11th century, it was a fief of the Viscounts of Mels, who had received it from the Counts of Tyrol. In 1420, together with all of Friuli, the hamlet was acquired by the Republic of Venice.  The village was severely damaged by the Friuli earthquake in 1976, yet the family castle remains intact.

The Caffè Pedrocchi was at the centre of life for
students and intellectuals in Padua

Travel tip:

Padua’s revolutionary movement had strong links to the city’s Caffè Pedrocchi, a meeting place for business people, students, intellectuals and writers for nearly 200 years. Founded by coffee maker Antonio Pedrocchi in 1831, the café was designed in neoclassical style and each side is edged with Corinthian columns. It quickly became a centre for the Risorgimento movement and was popular with students and artists because of its location close to Palazzo del Bò, the main university building. It briefly became a battleground when the students rose up against the armed Austrians in 1848.  You can still see a hole in the wall of the White Room inside Caffè Pedrocchi made by a bullet fired by an Austro-Hungarian soldier at the students.

Also on this day:

1466: The birth of military commander Andrea Doria

1485: The birth of poet and stateswoman Veronica Gambara

1954: The birth of actress Simonetta Stefanelli

1957: The death of opera singer Beniamino Gigli

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Dacia Maraini – writer

Long career of a feminist novelist and playwright

Dacia Maraini spent part of her childhood
as a prisoner in wartime Japan

Novelist and short story writer Dacia Maraini was born on this day in 1936 in Fiesole in Tuscany.

An Italian writer who is widely recognised abroad, Dacia Maraini is also a respected critic, poet, journalist and playwright. She established la Maddalena, the first Italian theatrical group composed exclusively of women.

The themes of limitation and oppression in Maraini’s writing have their roots in her childhood years, which she spent in a concentration camp in Japan. She then went to live in Sicily, which she has also described as an oppressive setting.

Her writing expresses the concerns of the Italian feminist movement, focusing on issues such as abortion, sexual violence, prostitution and the mother/daughter relationship.

Many of her works are autobiographical and are written in the form of diaries and letters.

Maraini lived with the writer Alberto Moravia from 1962 until 1983 and was a close friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas.

She was the daughter of Sicilian princess Topazia Aliata di Salaparuta, who was an artist, and Fosco Maraini, a Florentine ethnologist.

When she was still a young child, Maraini’s family moved to Japan to escape Fascism in 1938. They were interned in a Japanese concentration camp from 1943 to 1946 for refusing to recognise Mussolini’s Republic of Salò.

Dacia Maraini's novels have won her several
prestigious literary prizes

After the war, the family went to live in Sicily, in the town of Bagheria in the province of Palermo, a few kilometres from the city centre.

Maraini was educated at a boarding school in Florence. After her parents separated and her father moved to Rome, Maraini joined him when she was 18.

She married Lucio Pozzi, a Milanese painter, but they separated after four years. She then met Moravia, who became her long-term partner.

In 1966 she formed a theatre company with Moravia to put on new Italian plays, including her own works. This led to her founding Teatro della Maddalena, for women only, a few years later.  Maraini went on to direct films, write screenplays and also to appear in films.

She became a prolific writer, having produced her first novel, La vacanza, in 1963. Forty years later, her novel Chiara di Assisi – Elogio della Disobbedianza, was published in 2013.

Maraini has won many literary prizes, including the Fregene prize in 1985 for her novel, Isolina, and the premio Camiello in 1990 for her historical novel, la Lunga Vita di Marianna Ucria.

She celebrates her 84th birthday today.

Fiesole's cathedral is said to have been built
on the site of the martyrdom of St Romulus

Travel tip:

Fiesole, a town of about 14,000 inhabitants situated in an elevated position about 8km (5 miles) northeast of Florence, has since the 14th century been a popular place to live for wealthy Florentines and even to this day remains the richest municipality in Florence.  Formerly an important Etruscan settlement, it was also a Roman town of note, of which the remains of a theatre and baths are still visible.  Fiesole's cathedral, built in the 11th century, is supposedly built over the site of the martyrdom of St. Romulus. In the middle ages, Fiesole was as powerful as Florence until it was conquered by the latter in 1125 after a series of wars.

The Villa Palagonia is a great example of
Baroque architecture in Sicily

Travel tip:

Bagheria, where Maraini lived with her family in Sicily, was the subject of her book, Bagheria, published in 1995, which condemns the destruction of Sicily’s artistic and architectural treasures in its transition into a modern city. From the 17th century, when Giuseppe Branciforti, Prince of Butera and former Viceroy of Sicily, built a large villa there, the area, about 10km east of the centre of Palermo, became a preferred location for the vacation homes of the city’s elites.  The Villa Valguarnera and Villa Palagonia, both designed by the architect Tommaso Napoli, were two of the most striking Baroque residences, while the Villa Villarosa were built on more neoclassical lines. Unregulated building in the 20th and 21st centuries has rather diminished the town’s former splendour.

Also on this day:

1868: The death of composer Gioachino Rossini

1894: The death of Sister Agostina Livia Pietrantoni, a nurse murdered by a patient later made a saint

1907: The birth of Princess Giovanna of Italy - Tsaritsa of Bulgaria

1914: The birth of film director Alberto Lattuada

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Giuseppe Marc’Antonio Baretti – author

Dramatic life of the ‘scourge’ of writers

A portrait of Giuseppe Baretti by the English
painter Joshua Reynolds

Literary critic, poet, writer, translator and linguist Giuseppe Baretti was born on this day in 1719 in Turin, the capital city of Piedmont.

His life was often marred by controversies and he eventually had to leave Italy for England, where the drama in his life continued and he was tried at the Old Bailey for murder in 1769.

Baretti’s father had intended him to enter the legal profession but when he was 16 he fled from Turin to Guastalla in Emilia-Romagna where he worked in the import and export business.

His main interest was studying literature and criticism but, after he became an expert in the field himself, his writing was so controversial that he eventually had to move abroad.

Many students of Italian Literature are familiar with the name of Giuseppe Baretti as the writer, editor and proprietor of the fearlessly sarcastic periodical La frusta letteraria, which means 'Literary Scourge', in which he castigated bad authors.

For a few years Baretti wandered from country to country supporting himself by writing.

A Reynolds portrait of Samuel Johnson,
the English writer who befriended Baretti

He was the author of two influential dictionaries, a Dictionary and Grammar of the Italian Language and a Dictionary of the Spanish Language, as well as dissertations on Shakespeare and Voltaire.

Eventually he settled in London, where he was sometimes referred to as Joseph Baretti. He became Secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts and a friend of the writer Samuel Johnson and the actor and playwright David Garrick.

Baretti was a frequent visitor at the home of Hester Thrale, an author whose diaries have been a valuable source of information about both Johnson and 18th century contemporary life. Baretti’s name also occurs repeatedly in James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.

In 1769, Baretti was tried for murder after inflicting a mortal wound with a knife on a man who had assaulted him in the street. Johnson and other friends supported him and gave evidence in his favour at his trial, which resulted in his acquittal. Baretti could have been sentenced to death, but his actions were regarded as self-defence.

He later said he was extremely satisfied with the outcome of the trial and the support of his friends, which had made him ‘an Englishman forever’.

Baretti died in London in 1789 and was buried in Marylebone Chapel in the city.

The facade of the Palazzo Madama, which
was designed by Filippo Juvara

Travel tip:

Turin, where Giuseppe Baretti was born, is the capital city of the region of Piedmont. It has some fine architecture that illustrates its rich history as the home of the Savoy Kings of Italy. Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library and Palazzo Madama, which used to house the Italian senate, is at the heart of ‘royal’ Turin. The elegant Baroque Palazzo Madama, built in white stone, was designed by the architect Filippo Juvara.

The Piazza Mazzini is the beautiful main square of
the town of Guastalla in Emilia-Romagna

Travel tip:

Guastalla, where Baretti went to escape a legal career, is a town in the province of Reggio Emilia in the region of Emilia-Romagna. It lies on the banks of the Po River in the Po Valley, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the cities of Reggio Emilia, Parma and Mantua. In the 16th century Guastallo was the capital of  a duchy ruled by the Gonzaga family and it was visited by the artist Guercino and the writer Torquato Tasso. The town is the headquarters of SMEG, a manufacturer of high-design domestic appliances, which was founded there in 1948.

Also on this day:

1859: The birth of coffee maker Luigi Lavazza

1966: The birth of footballer Alessandro Costacurta

2010: The death of art collector Giuseppe Panza


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