Filippo Illuminato - partisan

Teenager who gave his life for his city

The young partisan Filippo Illuminato,
killed at the age of 13

The partisan fighter Filippo Illuminato died on this day in 1943 in Naples.

He was among more than 300 Italians killed in an uprising known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli - the Four Days of Naples - which successfully liberated the city from occupying Nazi forces ahead of the arrival of the first Allied forces in the city on 1 October.

Illuminato’s memory has been marked in a number of ways in the southern Italian city, honoured because he was only 13 years old when he was killed by German gunfire in a street battle in the famous Piazza Trieste e Trento, just a few steps from the Royal Palace. His last act had been to blow up a German armoured car.

Born into a poor family, Illuminato was working as an apprentice mechanic when he decided to join the uprising, which was sparked by a brutal crackdown imposed by the Nazis in response to the Italian government’s decision to surrender to the Allies, confirmed in the signing of the Armistice of Cassabile on 3 September on the island of Sicily.

The German forces, which had numbered 20,000, had responded to the news by banning all assemblies and introducing a curfew. Thousands of Italian soldiers and citizens were rounded up and deported, bound for labour camps in the north of the country.

Citizens who remained in the city were warned that any insurrection would be punished by execution and the destruction of the homes of each individual offender. The wounding or killing of any German soldier would be avenged with the deaths of 100 Neapolitans.  Word spread that the Germans had been instructed to "reduce Naples to cinders and mud" before they retreated from the Allied invasion.

Neapolitans welcome the arrival of Allied troops in the city
following the four-day uprising

After a number of sporadic incidents, a more consolidated rebellion began on 26 September, when around 500 citizens, their stock of weapons and ammunition bolstered by a raid on a German munitions store in the Vomero quarter a few days earlier, attacked German soldiers who had rounded up 8,000 Neapolitans for deportation.  A number of further insurgencies occurred in other parts of the city later in the day, including the capture of a German weapons depot in Castel Sant’Elmo.

Illuminato had by this stage taken up arms with other members of his family and friends. The German forces knew they had a full-scale insurrection on their hands and street battles broke out as the resistance fighters were sought out.  It was during one such battle that Illuminato was killed - but only after an act of personal bravery that would posthumously be recognised by the awarding of the Gold Medal of Military Valour, Italy's highest award for gallantry.

Fighting with a group of partisans in the heart of the city, he became separated as other men sought cover from a German patrol. Yet he courageously advanced on a German armoured car that was moving from Piazza Trieste e Trento into Via Toledo, which was then known as Via Roma.

The main post office in Naples was destroyed by the
German occupiers before they withdrew

Illuminato destroyed one vehicle with a grenade and continued to advance despite the German patrol opening fire, managing to throw another grenade before he fell under a hail of bullets.

Over the following two days, the Germans began to withdraw, aware that the advancing Allied forces were only a few kilometres away to the south. By the time American and British soldiers arrived, no Nazis remained in the city.

Although there were three times as many deaths among partisans and civilians as there were among the German forces, the uprising was hailed as a victory because it played a part in the decision of the Nazi command not to mount a defence of Naples against the invading Allies, and thwarted Hitler’s instructions to his army to leave the city in ruins in their wake.

Nazi troops did torch the State Archives of Naples, which destroyed many historical documents, and blew up the main post office, but quit without bringing about the wholesale destruction Hitler had wanted.

Illuminato became a symbol of the Four Days. His memory is preserved in the city in a number of ways, including a street name - the Via Filippo Illuminato in the Fuorigrotta district - and a high school in the Mugnano district.

The Piazza Trieste e Trento, where Filippo Illuminato was
gunned down in 1943, as it looks today

Travel tip:

The Piazza Trieste e Trento is a much smaller space than the vast Piazza del Plebiscito it adjoins, but is nonetheless an important square at the convergence of the Via Toledo, Via Chiaia and the Via San Carlo. Around its perimeter can be found the Teatro San Carlo, a wing of the Royal Palace, the Palazzo Zapata, the Galleria Umberto I and the Caffè Gambrinus.  The square acquired its current name in 1919 in celebration of the Italian victory in the First World War.

The Via Toledo in Naples - known as Via Roma until 1980 - is
one of the main commercial streets in the centre of the city

Travel tip:

Via Toledo is a busy street in Naples, linking Piazza Dante with Piazza Trieste e Trento. One of the most important shopping streets in the city, it is almost 1.2 km (0.75 miles) long. Created by Spanish viceroy Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, 2nd Marquis of Villafranca in 1536, it was designed by Ferdinando Manlio, an Italian architect.  It was called Via Roma between 1870 to 1980 to celebrate the Italian unification.  The Metro station Toledo, which can also be found on the street, is one of the city’s more unlikely must-see places. One of a number of so-called ‘art stations’ on the line linking Piazza Garibaldi and Piscinola, Toledo is famous for its breathtaking escalator descent through a vast mosaic by the Spanish architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca known as the Crater de Luz – the crater of light – which creates the impression of daylight streaming into a volcanic crater.


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Achille Vianelli - painter and printmaker

A painting by Achille Vianelli of the coastline at Posillipo.
Vianelli was a member of the Posillipo School.

Artist from Liguria who captured scenes of Naples

The painter and printmaker Achille Vianelli, whose specialities were landscapes and genre pictures, notably in his adopted city of Naples, died on this day in 1894 in Benevento in Campania.

For a while he worked at the French court, giving painting lessons to King Louis Philippe. Some of his works have sold for thousands of euros.

Vianelli was born in 1803 in Porto Maurizio in Liguria. When he was a child, his family moved more than 1,200km (750 miles) to the other end of the Italian peninsula to the coastal town of Otranto in the province of Lecce, where his father, Giovan Battista Vianelli, Venetian-born but a French national, had been posted as a Napoleonic consular agent.

Achille spent his youth in Otranto before, in 1819, he moved to Naples. His father and sister moved to France, although they would return to Naples in 1826. Achille took a job in the Royal Topographic Office.

Vianelli was a friend of the
painter Giacinto Gigante

In Naples, he became close friends with Giacinto Gigante, with whom he shared an interest in painting. Together, they studied landscape painting, attending the school of the German painter Wolfgang Hüber, after which Vianelli became a pupil of Anton Sminck van Pitloo, a professor at the Accademia di Belli Arti in Naples who had a studio in the Chiaia neighborhood of Naples.

Pitloo is regarded as the father of the Posillipo School, a group of landscape painters, based in the Posillipo area of Naples, a stretch of coastline extending from Mergellina to the headland at Parco Virgiliano, overlooking the volcanic islet of Nisida, on the northern side of the Bay of Naples.

Both Vianelli and Gigante were members of the Posillipo School, along with Teodoro Duclere, Vincenzo Franceschini, Consalvo Carelli and others.

In the 1830s, Vianelli gradually moved away from oil landscape painting, increasingly devoting himself to perspective views of squares and church interiors, in watercolor. He experimented with sepia monochromes, of which he developed a valuable technique.

 Vianelli's view of the Piazza di San
 Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples

Many of his views were etched or lithographed and published in books dedicated to the city of Naples.

In 1848 he moved to Benevento, where he founded a drawing school in the Cloister of Santa Sofia. Among his students was Gaetano de Martini.

Vianelli enjoyed success with his work and his fame spread beyond Italy. King Louis Philippe invited him to give him painting lessons and Vianelli lived in France temporarily. He died in Benevento, at the age of 91 years.

His son Alberto, born in 1847, was also a landscape painter. A sister, Flora, had married Teodoro Witting, a German landscape painter and engraver active in Naples in 1826, while another sister, Eloisa, married Giacinto Gigante in 1831.

Villa Donn'Anna is near Mergellina, at the bottom of the
main road through Posillipo, known as Posillipo Hill

Travel tip:

Posillipo is a residential quarter of Naples that has been associated with wealth in the city since Roman times. Built on a hillside that descends gradually towards the sea, it offers panoramic views across the Bay of Naples towards Vesuvius and has been a popular place to build summer villas. Some houses were built right on the sea’s edge, such as the historic Villa Donn’Anna, which can be found at the start of the Posillipo coast near the harbour at Mergellina.

The magnificent Arch of Trajan is one of
several Roman relics in Benevento

Travel tip:

In ancient times, Benevento was one of the most important cities in southern Italy, along the Via Appia trade route between Rome and Brindisi. The town is in an attractive location surrounded by the Apennine hills, and it suffered considerable damage during the Second World War, there are many Roman remains, including a triumphal arch erected in honour of Trajan and an amphitheatre, built by Hadrian, that held 10,000 spectators and is still in good condition. The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, originally built in the 13th century, has undergone major reconstruction work, while the original bronze doors for the cathedral are now kept inside the building.

More reading:

The Neapolitan legacy of sculptor and architect Domenico Antonio Vaccaro

How Neapolitan painter Francesco Solimena became one of the most influential artists in Europe

Why Luca Giordano was the most celebrated Naples artist of the late 17th century

Also on this day:

1696: The birth of operatic soprano Francesca Cuzzoni

1725: The birth of amorous adventurer Giacomo Casanova

1959: The birth of Olympic marathon champion Gelindo Bordin



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Giuseppe Mercalli - seismologist

Giuseppe Mercalli became southern Europe's biggest
authority on earthquakes and volcanic activity

Scientist who invented Mercalli Scale died in fire

The seismologist and volcanologist Giuseppe Mercalli, who at the time of his death was director of the Vesuvius Observatory, died in a fire at his home in Naples on this day in 1914.

The initial suspicion was that Mercalli, who devised a scale for determining the strength of earthquakes according to the intensity of shaking, had knocked over a paraffin lamp accidentally after falling asleep while working late.

However, an examination of his remains suggested by may have been strangled after disturbing an intruder, who then soaked his clothes in petrol before setting light to them. A sum of money worth the equivalent of $1,400 (€1,250) today was missing, although no one was ever apprehended for the crime.

Born in Milan, Mercalli was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and became a professor of Natural Sciences at the seminary of Milan, although he left under something of a cloud because of his support for Antonio Rosmini, a controversial priest and philosopher who campaigned for social justice and was fiercely critical of various aspects of how the Roman Catholic church operated.

Mercalli collecting data on the edge of the crater of Vesuvius,
with an aide on hand to keep him from falling

After he had left, the Italian government appointed him a professor at Domodossola in Piedmont, followed by a post at Reggio di Calabria. He was professor of geology at the University of Catania in the late 1880s and was given a post at the Naples University in 1892. He became director of the Vesuvius Observatory in 1911.

He is best remembered for the Mercalli intensity scale for measuring earthquakes which, in modified form, is still used today.

While studying seismic activity in Italy in the late 19th century, Mercalli’s access to seismic instrumentation was limited. Most of Mercalli's information came from personal accounts and observations of damage. To provide consistency in his analyses, he decided he needed a way to measure the relative effects of each event.

He first developed a scale with six degrees, with the most disastrous earthquakes given an intensity of six, but felt that this did not provide enough precision.  Another intensity scale called the deRossi-Forel scale that was gaining in prominence at the same time had the advantage of 10 degrees of intensity, although Mercalli felt it lacked meaningful description.

Mercalli was ordained as a priest before
beginning his scientific career

In 1902, Mercalli modified this 10-degree scale to include the detail he desired, and his new scale quickly caught on among European scientists

Mercalli also observed eruptions of the volcanoes Stromboli and Vulcano in the Aeolian Islands and his descriptions of these eruptions became the basis for two indices in the Volcanic Explosivity Index: 1 - Strombolian eruption, and 2 - Vulcanian eruption.

The scale has been tweaked by various other seismologists but remains the basis for determining an earthquake’s intensity. It is now known as the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale.

Mercalli also engaged in detailed cataloguing of Italian earthquakes, which enabled him to produce a book - I vulcani e fénomeni vulcanici in Italia - which he used to assemble a clear picture of where most of the events happened.

Mercalli's work built his reputation across southern Europe, and he was often called upon to study events throughout the continent.  He travelled to Spain in 1884 to examine the aftermath of the Andalusian earthquake, and in 1887 Mercalli was the lead investigator of the deadly event in Imperia along the French and Italian Riviera.

He became famous even beyond scientific circles, to the extent that his death and the speculation over the circumstances was reported in the New York Times.

Some fascinating buildings line Piazza Mercato in the
medieval heart of Domodossola

Travel tip:

The name Domodossola is familiar to many Italian children as a line - ‘D’ is for Domodossola - recited in learning the alphabet at school. It is, in fact, a very pleasant town in northern Piedmont, close to the border with Switzerland and the last town at the Italian end of the Simplon Pass and the Simplon railway tunnel. Domodossola has a charming medieval centre around the Piazza Mercato, which has a number of interesting buildings. The Collegiale Church of Santi Gervasio and Protasio is the town’s most important church, while just outside the town is the Sacro Monte Calvario, a Roman Catholic sanctuary that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Palazzo Silva in Piazza Chiossi houses a civic museum. The area is surrounded by outstanding Alpine countryside, which can be admired from a light railway linking Domodossola and Locarno in Switzerland.

Domodossola hotels by Booking.com

The vast crater of Mount Vesuvius, which remains classified
as an active volcano despite being quiet since 1944

Travel tip:

The Vesuvius Observatory today is part of the Mount Vesuvius National Park, which was created in 1955. The crater of the volcano itself is accessible to visitors, albeit by guided tour only, and there is a road to within 200 metres of it, but after that the ascent is on foot only.  The crater is about 200 metres deep and has a maximum diameter of about 600 metres. The climb is said to be well worth it because the view takes in the entire coastline from the Gulf of Gaeta, some 84km (52 miles) to the north, to the Sorrento peninsula. Visitors can take the Naples-Sorrento line of the Circumvesuviana railway and get off at Ercolano station, from where a shuttle bus runs to the park. As well as the observatory, there is a museum, a visitor centre, a restaurant and a shop where you can buy Lacrima Christi del Vesuvio, the wine made from the grapes grown on the sloped of the volcano.

More reading:

1944 - the last Vesuvius eruption

How Italy's worst earthquake almost destroyed Messina and Reggio Calabria

The devastating quake that led to an architectural golden age

Also on this day:

1661: The birth of Venetian composer Francesco Gasparini, who gave Vivaldi a job

1923: The birth of cartoonist Benito Jacovitti

1943: The birth of politician Mario Monti, who was Italy’s prime minister from 2011 to 2013

(Picture credits: Mercalli on slopes of Vesuvius by Sailko; Domodossola by Little Joe; Vesuvius crater by S J Pinkney)

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Ferdinando Carulli - classical guitarist and composer

Neapolitan wrote first guide to playing the instrument

Ferdinando Carulli was born in Naples but spent much of
his life in Paris, where he taught and composed guitar music

The composer Ferdinando Carulli, who published the first complete method for playing the classical guitar as well as writing more than 400 works for the instrument, was born on this day in 1770 in Naples.

Carulli was also influential in changing the design of the guitar, which had a smaller body and produced a less resonant sound when he started out, to something much more like the classical guitars of today.

The son of an intellectual advisor to the Naples Jurisdiction, Carulli first trained as a cellist and received instruction in musical theory from a local priest.

He became interested in the guitar in his 20s and became so enthusiastic about the instrument he decided to devote himself to it entirely.  The guitar was little played and there were no guitar teachers in Naples in the late 18th century, so Carulli had to devise his own method of playing.

In time, he began to give concerts in Naples, playing some pieces of his own composition. These were popular, attracting large audiences who enjoyed the different sound that the guitar produced.

Carulli did much to make
the guitar widely popular

This encouraged Carulli to venture further afield and he engaged on a tour of Europe. He met his future wife, Marie-Josephine Boyer, in France. They married in around 1801 and had a son, Gustavo.  Carulli moved with his family to Milan, where he began to publish some of his works, but it was not long before they decided to settle in Paris, which was then seen as the capital of the music world.

Carulli became both a successful musician and teacher in Paris, attracting other guitarists from across Europe to join him in the French capital, helping him fulfil his ambition of making guitar music fashionable and popular, even in such a challenging environment. Members of the Parisian nobility would come to him for lessons. Filippo Gragnani, another Italian guitarist, with whom he collaborated on some pieces, devoted a number of duets to Carulli.

It was in Paris that Carulli wrote his method of classical guitar, entitled Harmony Applied to the Guitar. The book was hugely popular and many editions were published. His most influential work, Method, Op. 27, published in 1810, is still used widely today in training students of the classical guitar.

The guitar Carulli would have first played would have had
five pairs of strings, similar to this one

Later in life, Carulli worked with the instrument makers Antonio de Torres Jurado and Pierre René Lacôte in introducing significant changes for improving the sound of the guitar.

By the early 19th century, the guitar had evolved from a shallow lute-like instrument with five pairs of strings to something more closely resembling the guitars of today, with a long neck and circular sound hole in the middle, and with a deeper body providing greater resonance of sound. Early guitars produced a sound more like that of a violin.

Carulli died in Paris in February 1841, eight days after his 71st birthday.

The Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella in Naples
was established during Napoleonic rule of the city

Travel tip:

The famous Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella in Naples evolved from four institutions set up in the 16th century with the prime purpose of providing a refuge for orphan children.  The name ‘conservatorio’ relates to this original purpose, which was to conserve the lives of the children.  The oldest was the orphanage of Santa Maria di Loreto, situated in the poor fisherman’s district of the city. These institutions aimed to provide tuition in various skills, including music.  In time they acquired such a good reputation for providing a musical education that they began to be seen as music colleges primarily, and Naples eventually became one of the most important centres for musical training in Europe, nicknamed the “conservatory of Europe". Under the rule of Joachim Murat, the French cavalry leader Napoleon installed as King of Naples for a short period in the early 19th century, the original four conservatories were consolidated into a single institution, which was relocated in 1826 to the premises of the ex-monastery, San Pietro a Maiella.

Look for a hotel in Naples with Booking.com

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples
adjoins the Royal Palace

Travel tip:

The most famous musical venue in Naples is the Teatro di San Carlo opera house in Via San Carlo, directly adjoining the Royal Palace. It is the oldest continuously active venue for public opera in the world, having opened in 1737, decades before both the Milan's Teatro alla Scala (La Scala) and Venice's Teatro La Fenice.  It is less known that there is smaller theater inside the Royal Palace, often used by the Neapolitan ballet company. Among the resident composers and musical directors in the 19th century, as the venue’s prestige grew, were Gioachino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti.  One name readily associated with San Carlo is the great tenor, Enrico Caruso, although the Naples-born star in fact did not appear there after 1901, having taken umbrage at being booed by a section of the crowd during a performance of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.


More reading:

Antonio Janigro - the cellist who found accidental fame in Yugoslavia

How Luigi Boccherini popularised cello music in the 18th century

How Domenico Sarro's opera was given historic status as the first to be played at Teatro San Carlo

Also on this day:

1621: Alessandro Ludovisi becomes Pope Gregory XV

1891: The birth of politician Pietro Nenni

1953: The birth of boxing world champion Vito Antuofermo

1953: The birth of tragic missionary Ezechiele Ramin

(Picture credits: Conservatorio by Armando Mancini; Teatro di San Carlo by Radomil)

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Giovanni Alfonso Borelli – physiologist and physicist

Neapolitan was the first to explain movement

Giovanni Alfonso Borelli was a
pioneer of biomechanics

The scientist who was the first to explain muscular movement according to the laws of statics and dynamics, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, was born on this day in 1608 in Naples.

Borelli was also the first to suggest that comets travel in a parabolic path.

He was appointed professor of mathematics at Messina in 1649 and at Pisa in 1656. After 1675 he lived in Rome under the protection of Christina, the former Queen of Sweden. She had abdicated her throne in 1654, had converted to Catholicism and gone to live in Rome as the guest of the Pope.

Remembered as one of the most learned women of the 17th century, Christina became the protector of many artists, musicians and intellectuals who would visit her in the Palazzo Farnese, where she was allowed to live by the Pope.

Borelli’s best known work is De Motu Animalium - On the Movement of Animals - in which he sought to explain the movements of the animal body on mechanical principles. He is therefore the founder of the iatrophysical school. He dedicated this work to Queen Christina, who had funded it, but he died of pneumonia in 1679 before it was published.

A page from Borelli's De Motu
Animalium on arm movement

For this work he has become known as the father of modern biomechanics. The American Society of Biomechanics named its most prestigious award the Giovanni Borelli Award in 1984.

The award is given to scientists for the originality, quality and depth of their research, and its relevance to the field of biomechanics.

Borelli also wrote astronomical works, including a treatise in 1666 that considered the influence of attraction on the satellites of Jupiter.  In a letter published in 1665, using the pseudonym Pier Maria Mutoli, he was the first to suggest the idea that comets travel in a parabolic path.

The Castel Nuovo in Naples, built in the 13th century
and rebuilt by Alfonso I in 1453

Travel tip:

Borelli was born in the Castel Nuovo area of Naples to a Spanish infantryman serving in the city and a young Neapolitan girl. The castle was called ‘nuovo’, new, when it was built in the 13th century to distinguish it from two earlier ones in Naples, Castel d’Ovo and Castel Capuano. Alfonso I, King of Naples and Sicily, had it completely rebuilt in 1453, the year of his triumphant entry into Naples. Alfonso later ordered the construction of the superb Arco di Trionfo, one of the most significant expressions of early Renaissance culture in southern Italy.

The Palazzo Farnese in Rome, once home of the former
Queen Christina of Sweden, now houses the French embassy

Travel tip:

Palazzo Farnese, where Borelli would visit his patron, Queen Christina, is one of the most important High Renaissance palaces in Rome. Owned by the Italian republic, the palazzo in Piazza Farnese was given to the French Government in 1936 for a period of 99 years and currently serves as the French embassy in Italy. One of the scenes in Puccini’s opera Tosca is set in Palazzo Farnese.

More reading:

The physicist who inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

The 18th century anatomist who turned pathology into a science

The scientist who gave new 'life' to a dead frog and a new word to the language

Also on this day:

1453: The birth of Renaissance beauty Simonetta Vespucci

1813: The birth of scientist Paolo Gorini

1978: The birth of goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon


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Maurizio Sarri - football manager

Chelsea’s former Napoli coach is 60 today

Maurizio Sarri spent more than 20 years working in
global finance before devoting himself to football

The football coach Maurizio Sarri - currently manager of Chelsea in the English Premier League - was born on this day in 1959 in Naples.

Sarri, who has an unusual background for a professional football coach in that he spent more than 20 years in banking before devoting himself to the game full-time, took over as Chelsea manager last summer, succeeding another Italian, Antonio Conte.

Previously, he had spent three seasons as head coach at SSC Napoli, twice finishing second and once third in Serie A.  He never played professionally, yet he has now held coaching positions at 19 different clubs.

Sarri was born in the Bagnoli district of Naples, where his father, Amerigo, a former professional cyclist, worked in the sprawling but now derelict Italsider steel plant.  It was not long, however, before the family moved away, however, first to Castro, a village on the shore of Lago d’Iseo, near Bergamo, and then to Figline Valdarno, in Tuscany, his father’s birthplace.

It was there that Sarri grew up and played football for the local amateur team. A centre half, he had trials with Torino and Fiorentina but was deemed not quite good enough for the professional game.

Sarri's Napoli team twice finished runners-up in
Serie A but were unable to overhaul Juventus

Instead, he focussed on a career in banking, finding employment with the prestigious Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which has a history going back more than 500 years. He was held in such high regard as a currency trader he was posted to London, Zurich, Frankfurt and Luxembourg at times.

His love of football remained with him, however, and in 1990 he began coaching alongside his high-flying day job, first with the local amateur team at Stia, a pretty town in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, close to the sources of the Arno river.  They were in the eighth tier of the Italian football pyramid.

Sarri left Stia after one season and continued to work with small Tuscan clubs, winning promotion promotion with Faellese, Cavriglia and Antella. When in 2000 he took over at Sansovino, the team representing the historic town of Monte San Savino, near Arezzo, he was so certain he could win promotion to Serie D in his first season he vowed to quit coaching and concentrate on his banking career if they failed.

As it was, they were promoted and he decided instead to quit banking, relinquishing a good salary and job security to focus full time on football.

Sarri achieved promotion with
several small clubs in Italy

The decision looked a good one when he achieved more promotion success with another Tuscan club, Sangiovannese, whom he took to Serie C1, but less so over the following few years when spells in Serie B with Pescara, Arezzo (where he succeeded - and was replaced by - Antonio Conte, ironically), Verona and Perugia, and even a return to the lower tiers with Grosseto, Alessandria and Sorrento, yielded largely frustration and several sackings.

Sarri’s big break came in the summer of 2012 when, six months after being dismissed by Sorrento, he was hired as coach by Fabrizio Corsi, the chairman of ambitious Tuscan Serie B club Empoli, who judged that Sarri was a technically gifted coach who, given a squad of better quality than some of those he had worked with, would be able to achieve success.

His assessment was correct. Corsi backed him with some strong signings and, after just missing promotion in his first season in charge, when Empoli were beaten in the play-off final, Sarri led the team directly to Serie A at the second attempt.

After keeping Empoli safely in the top flight in the 2014-15, Sarri was taken on by Napoli, the club of the city of his birth, of which he had been a lifelong fan.  It seemed a bold choice to replace the proven Rafa Benitez but, it transpired, a shrewd one.

Having honed to perfection his fluid, attacking 4-3-3 system over the years, Napoli enjoyed three exceptional seasons. Playing the most exciting football in Serie A, Napoli set a club record by scoring 80 goals in the 2015-16 campaign, yet despite selling top scorer Gonzalo Higuain to arch rivals Juventus, surpassed it by a staggering 14 goals - the most scored by any team in one season in Serie A history - the following year.

Sarri is a heavy smoker - even during matches, although at
most grounds regulations do not permit him to do so

They did so thanks to a Sarri masterstroke, converted wide player Dries Mertens into a free-scoring centre forward so that he could invest the €90 million from the Higuain sale in other areas of the team.

Napoli were Serie A’s campioni d’inverno - the accolade given to the team top at the halfway stage - twice in Sarri’s three seasons, even though he was never able to hold off Juventus in the late stages of the campaign. His reputation received a further boost, ahead of his move to England, when no less a coach than Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola described Sarri’s Napoli as the “best team I have faced in my career” following their meeting in the Champions League.

Famously a heavy smoker - he would chain-smoke even during matches in Italy - he is married to Marina with one son. He keeps his private life quiet, spending his downtime at his villa on the Italian riviera.

Sarri's assistant manager at Chelsea is the club's former star player, the Sardinian Gianfanco Zola.

The Piazza Marsilio Ficino is the main
square in Figline Valdarno

Travel tip:

Figline Valdarno, situated in the upper reaches of the Arno valley some 35km (22 miles) southeast of Florence, is an historic town that was a major cultural centre during the Renaissance. The centre is the Piazza Marsilio Ficino, an attractive market square, at the end of which is the church of Santa Maria Assunta, which adjoins the Museum of Sacred Art, in which can be found a panel painting from the late 1400s of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, attributed to Cigoli.  An Annunciation painted by the young Cigoli can also be found in the Chapel of the Villa San Cerbone, where the refectory contains a Last Supper by Giorgio Vasari.  L'Antico Caffe Greco, in the centre, is run by a Napoli supporter, Agostino Iaiunese.

The Loggia dei Mercanti in Monte San Savino, where
Sarri enjoyed success with the local team, Sansovino

Travel tip:

Perched on a mountain that overlooks the Esse Valley, about 22km (14 miles) southwest of Arezzo and inhabited since the Etruscan period, Monte San Savino, where Maurizio Sarri coached the local team to promotion, was the home of the notable 15th century sculptor and architect Andrea Sansovino, who lived in the town’s most prosperous era. Relics of that golden period include the Porta Fiorentina, the striking Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Vertighe, several picturesque small churches, the Palazzo Di Monte, the Logge dei Mercanti and an impressive Synagogue. The town has an annual porchetta festival to celebrate the traditional Tuscan speciality of slow-roasted pig.



More reading:

The southern Italian roots of top coach Antonio Conte

Why Chelsea fans rate Gianfranco Zola their greatest player of all time

Ottavio Bianchi - the northerner who steered Maradona's Napoli to the club's first Serie A title

Also on this day:

987: The death of powerful Venetian Doge Pietro Orseolo

1890: The birth of silent movie star Pina Menichelli

1903: The birth of car designer Flaminio Bertoni


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Manuela Arcuri - actress and model

TV drama star who portrayed woman who killed Mafia boss

The glamorous Manuela Arcuri has evolved
from model to popular TV actress

The actress and former model Manuela Arcuri, who received accolades for playing the lead role in a truth-inspired drama about a grieving widow who shot dead a gang boss, was born on this day in 1977 in Anagni, an ancient town in southern Lazio.

Arcuri portrayed a character based on Assunta ‘Pupetta’ Maresca, who made headlines in 1955 when she walked into a bar in Naples and shot dead the Camorra boss who had ordered the killing of her husband, just three months after they were married.

The four-episode drama, aired in 2013 on the Italian commercial TV channel Canale 5, was called Pupetta: Il coraggio e la passione (Pupetta: Courage and Passion). Directed by Luciano Odorisio and also starring Tony Musante, Eva Grimaldi and Barbara De Rossi, the series confirmed Arcuri’s standing as a television actress of note, winning her the award of best actress at the 2013 Rome Fiction Fest.

She had appeared by then in leading roles in a number of TV dramas and mini-series, including Io non dimentico (I Don’t Forget), Il peccato e la vergogna (The Sin and the Shame) and Sangue caldo (Hot Blood).

Manuela Arcuri met the real 'Pupetta'
during the making of the 2013 series

Arcuri’s ambition from an early age was to forge a career in show business. She attended art school in Latina, where she grew up, before moving to Rome to enrol at the Pietro Scharoff Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she graduated in 1997.

A girl of classic Italian beauty, she took her first modelling assignments at the age of 15 and her career as a glamour model evolved more quickly than her acting career, although she was steadily building up film credits for minor roles.  Her magazine shoots led rapidly to her being projected as a sex symbol, which quickly opened doors into television, where glamorous female presenters remain a ratings winner.

In 2002, still a relative newcomer, she was given huge exposure when she was chosen to co-host the Sanremo Music Festival alongside the veteran male presenter, Pippo Baudo.

Now, bigger and better TV parts began to be offered. She participated in the popular TV drama series Carabinieri and in 2005 played the title role in Imperia, la grande cortigiana, a TV film about the 16th century Roman courtesan and celebrity, Imperia Cognati.

In 2008, she met the challenge of appearing at the Teatro Parioli in Rome in a six-week run of the comedy Il primo che mi capita, then landed her biggest TV role to that point as the female lead in Io non dimentico, a drama set in Naples in the 1930s.

The statue in Porto Cesareo
that caused such controversy

Arcuri has a large following of fans, some of whom have expressed their admiration for her in unusual ways, such as the statue that was erected in 2002 by the local tourist board to celebrate the beauty and prosperity of the fishing port and resort of Porto Cesareo in Puglia, about 30km (19 miles) from the city of Lecce.

Carved by the sculptor Salvatino De Matteis, it depicts a female figure carrying a hollow shell brimming over with fish but with the hair, facial features - and cleavage - of Ms Arcuri, beneath which is an inscription that hailed the actress as a symbol of beauty and prosperity, a perfect match for Porto Cesareo itself.

Not surprisingly, the choice of an actress and glamour model over a more traditional symbol, such as a goddess or saint, or even a mermaid, divided opinion, with outspoken protests in particular by the wives of local fishermen, who had begun a daily ritual of touching the statue’s buttocks to bring them luck before they set out to sea.

For a while the statue was removed, only to later be reinstated after an equally voluble outcry from those who approved of it.  Ms Arcuri, who attended the original unveiling, returned to see it reborn.

Romantically linked with a series of high-profile men, including the footballer Francesco Coco, Arcuri has had a long-term relationship with the entrepreneur Giovanni Di Gianfrancesco, with whom she had a four-year-old son, Mattia.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria Annunziata
in Anagni dates back to the 11th century

Travel tip:

Anagni, where Manuela Arcuri was born, is an ancient town in the province of Frosinone in Lazio, 70km (43 miles) southeast of Rome in an area known as Ciociaria, named after the primitive footwear, ciocie, a type of sandal, worn by people living in the area. The town produced four popes, the last one being Boniface VIII, who was hiding out there in 1303 when he received the famous Anagni slap, delivered by an angry member of the fiercely antipapal Colonna family after he refused to abdicate. After his death the power of the town declined and the papal court was transferred to Avignon. The medieval Palace of Boniface VIII, is near the Cathedral in the centre of the town.

Search for a hotel in Anagni with tripadvisor

The Cathedral of San Marco, in the 'ideal' Fascist town of
Latina in Lazio, was built in 1932

Travel tip:

Latina, a town built in the middle of what used to be the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, has been described as a living monument to Fascism - not in the sense of celebrating the horrors of the darker side of Mussolini’s grip on power, but as an example of the dictator’s utopian dreams of efficient modern cities for the Italian people.  Mussolini drained the malaria-ridden Pontine swamps and gave the reclaimed land to peasants and settlers, building them houses in exchange for their labour and sweat. The centre of Latina - inaugurated in 1932 as Littoria - has been preserved almost as it was. The Fascist buildings remain in place, their rationalist architecture decorated with pagan statues as well as military and rural bas-reliefs. The Cattedrale di San Marco, designed by Oriolo Frezzotti and built in 1932, is a good example of the fusion of classical and modern, linear styles that was typical of Fascist architecture.


More reading:

The true story of Assunta Maresca - the 'little doll' who shot dead a Mafia boss 

Pippo Baudo - the record-breaking host of Sanremo

Mara Carfagna - from glamour model to politician

Also on this day:

1337: The death of the brilliant painter Giotto

1921: The birth of Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia

2016: The death of Maria Teresa de Filippis, the first woman to drive in Formula One


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Renato Carosone – singer-songwriter

Composer revived popularity of the traditional Neapolitan song

Renato Carosone wrote such classic songs as
 Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano and Mambo Italiano

Renato Carosone, who became famous for writing and performing Neapolitan songs in modern times, was born Renato Carusone on this day in 1920 in Naples.

His 1956 song Tu vuo’ fa’ l’Americano - 'You want to be American' - has been used in films and performed by many famous singers right up to the present day.

Torero, a song released by him in 1957, was translated into 12 languages and was at the top of the US pop charts for 14 weeks.

Carosone studied the piano at the Naples Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella and obtained his diploma in 1937, when he was just 17. He went to work as a pianist in Addis Ababa and then served in the army on the Italian Somali front. He did not return to Italy until 1946, after the end of the Second World War.

Back home, he had to start his career afresh and moved to Rome, where he played the piano for small bands.

Carosone's Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano featured
in a 1958 movie starring Totò

He was asked to put together a group for the opening of a new club and signed Dutch guitarist, Peter van Houten and Neapolitan drummer, Gegè di Giacomo, with whom he launched the Trio Carosone.

When Van Houten left to pursue a solo career, Di Giacomo remained with Carosone and they recruited more musicians to form a new band.

The band was popular both in Italy and abroad during the 1950s and the songs Carosone composed, many inspired by his native city, achieved high sales after being recorded.

In 1957, Carosone and his band started off a US tour with a concert in Cuba and finished off with a triumphant performance at Carnegie Hall in New York.

In 1960, Carosone made the shock announcement that he was retiring. He was at the height of his career and his decision caused uproar. It was even suggested that he had received criminal threats, but nothing was ever proved. Away from the music business, Carosone took up painting.

He made a comeback in 1975 in a televised concert. He then performed in live concerts and at the Sanremo Music Festival, continuing to make TV appearances until the late 1990s.

Carosone retired from the music scene in 1960 but made
a comeback at the 1975 Sanremo Music Festival

His biggest hits, such as Tu vuo’ fa’ l’Americano, Mambo Italiano and Torero were written in collaboration with the Neapolitan lyricist Nicola Salerno, who was known as Nisa. They developed a perfect understanding and it was said that after just a few words from Carosone, Nisa could write a funny story based on them.

Carosone's original version of Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano was performed by him in the film Totò, Peppino e le fanatiche (directed by Mario Mattoli, 1958). The song was featured in the 1960 Melville Shavelson film It Started in Naples, in which it was sung by Sophia Loren. It was also performed by Rosario Fiorello in the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

The melodies of Carosone, influenced by jazz and swing, helped revive the popularity of Neapolitan songs, which he presented in a modern manner.

Carosone died in 2001 in Rome at the age of 81 and was buried in the Flaminio Cemetery in the city.

Carosone's boyhood home in Naples was in a street close
to the historic square, the vast Piazza Mercato

Travel tip:

Carosone lived as a child in Vico dei Tornieri, in the historic centre of Naples near Piazza Mercato, which is now a lively commercial area, but was once the setting for the city’s important executions. He studied the piano at the Naples Conservatory, which has been housed in a monastery next to the Church of San Pietro a Majella since 1826. The church and monastery are in Via San Pietro a Majella, which leads off the top of Via dei Tribunali.

The Cimitero Flaminio in Rome, where Carosone was
buried, is the largest cemetery in the city

Travel tip:

Carosone was laid to rest in the Cimitero Flaminio in Via Flaminio in Rome, which is also known as Cimitero di Prima Porta, and is the largest cemetery in the city. Prima Porta is a suburb of Rome on the right bank of the Tiber. An important marble statue of Augustus Caesar was discovered in the area in 1863.

More reading:

The classic songs of Cesare Andrea Bixio

Giambattista De Curtis - the man behind Torna a Surriento

Why Totò is still regarded as Italy's finest funny man

Also on this day:

1698: The birth of poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio

1929: The birth of film director Sergio Leone

1952: The birth of politician Gianfranco Fini

Watch Renato Carosone and his musicians perform Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano

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Domenico Sarro – composer

Court choirmaster wrote several important operas

Domenico Sarro, as depicted
by Nicolò Maria Rossi

Opera composer Domenico Sarro was born on this day in 1679 in Trani, a seaport north of Bari in Apulia.

He was given the middle name, Natale, which is the Italian word for Christmas.

Sarro is famous for being the composer of Achille in Sciro, the opera chosen for the opening night of the new Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1737.

He studied music from the age of six at Sant’Onofrio, a church near Porta Capuana, one of the ancient city gates of Naples, which at the time was the location of the city’s music conservatory. His first opera, L’opera d’amore, was performed in Naples in 1702.

He was appointed assistant choirmaster to the Neapolitan court in 1702 and by 1706 was having his religious music performed in churches in Naples. He wrote several of what were then referred to as three-act musical dramas, which were performed in theatres and private palaces throughout the city.

Sarro’s opera, Didone abbandonata, was premiered on February 1, 1724 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples. It was the first setting of a major libretto by the writer Pietro Metastasio, who would become the most celebrated librettist of the 18th century. The intermezzo, Dorina e Nibbio or L’impresario delle canarie, has been performed extensively by orchestras since then, right up to the present day. It has also been imitated by composers such as Tomaso Albinoni, Francesco Gasparini, Leonardo Leo and Martini il Tedesco.

The title page of Sarro's opera
Didone Abbandonata

Sarro’s 1726 opera, Valdemaro, is considered important because it demonstrates Sarro’s interest in the upper voice, as in this opera the melodic lines are dominant in the upper voices.

Sarro, sometimes called Sarri, also wrote many vocal cantatas, which have been admired by music experts for their charm and inventiveness.

The only known portrait of Domenico Sarro is part of a painting called The Viceroy at the Festa of the Quattro Altari by Nicolò Maria Rossi. Sarro is one of the many composers depicted by the artist as part of the Neapolitan Court.

Domenico Sarro died in Naples in 1744, aged 65.

Trani's 12th century duomo - the Cattedrale di San Nicola
Pellegrino - stands on a platform on the sea

Travel tip:

The port of Trani, where Domenico Sarro was born, is about 40km (25 miles) to the northwest of Bari. It was a flourishing port as early as the 11th century because of its location on the Adriatic Sea. In 1063 Trani issued a maritime law code, believed now to be the oldest in western Europe. Trani has lost its old walls and bastions but still has a 13th century fort,  which has been restored as a museum and performance venue. The 12th century Cathedral on a raised site over the sea is dedicated to St Nicholas the pilgrim, a Greek who died there in 1094 while on the way to Rome.

Search tripadvisor for a hotel in Trani

The church of San Pietro a Majella, looking
along Via dei Tribunali

Travel tip:

Sarro studied at the Music Conservatory when it was in Sant’Onofrio in Naples. Today, the Music Conservatory is in the complex of San Pietro a Majella, close to Via dei Tribunali, one of the main thoroughfares in the heart of the centro storico in Naples. It is the last of a string of establishments that were once music conservatories in Naples, dating back to when the Spanish ruled the city in the 16th century. One of the earliest, I Poveri di Gesù Cristo, was founded in 1589 by Marcello Fossataro, a Franciscan monk. It was next to the Church of Santa Maria a Colonna on Via dei Tribunale, but in 1743 it was converted into a church seminary.

More reading:

Tomaso Albinoni, the Venetian most famous for his haunting Adagio in G Minor

How Pietro Metastasio progressed from street entertainer to great librettist

Francesco Gasparini, the musical director who gave Vivaldi a job

Also on this day:

Vigilia di Natale - Christmas Eve

1836: The birth of food canning pioneer Francesco Cirio

1897: The birth of Lazzaro Ponticelli, the longest surviving veteran of World War One


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