Cesare Maria De Vecchi – Fascist politician

Mussolini supporter helped to lead historic march

De Vecchi served as Governor
 of Italian Somaliland

Cesare Maria De Vecchi, one of the four leaders of the March on Rome in 1922 that resulted in Benito Mussolini’s Fascist party winning power in Italy, was born on this day in 1884 in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont.

De Vecchi was both a soldier and colonial administrator and he was accused of committing the first war crime of Fascist Italy when, under his leadership as Governor of Italian Somaliland, 100 civilians were killed while he pursued a ‘scorched earth policy’ between 1925 and 1927.

After graduating in jurisprudence, De Vecchi had become a successful lawyer in Turin. He took part in the final events of World War I, finishing with the rank of captain and decorations for valour.

On his return to Italy, he became a supporter of the National Fascist Party and went on to become head of his local Fascist squadre, or militia.

In 1921, De Vecchi was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and he later became under-secretary at the Treasury and under-secretary at the Finance Ministry during Benito Mussolini’s Government.

In October 1922, Fascist Party leaders planned a march on Rome and, on October 28, Fascist demonstrators led by De Vecchi, Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo and Michele Bianchi approached the capital.

The Italian Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, wished to declare a state of siege, but this was overruled by King Victor Emmanuel III, who wanted to avoid bloodshed.

He persuaded Facta to resign and on October 30, 1922, he appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, transferring political power to the Fascists without armed conflict. On October 31 the Fascists paraded in Rome, while Mussolini formed his coalition government. 

After becoming Governor of Italian Somaliland in 1923, De Vecchi left the Italian political scene for a while to serve abroad and he was made Count of Val Cismon, a new title created for him by Victor Emmanuel III.

He was made a Senator by the king in 1925 and, during the 1930s, he chaired the Piedmont committee for the history of the Risorgimento and organised events and lectures to celebrate the period.

De Vecchi (2nd right), with (from left) De Bono, Bianchi,
Mussolini and Balbo, leaders of the March on Rome

As Minister for Education, De Vecchi promoted a version of history that identified the House of Savoy as the link between Imperial Rome and the Rome of Fascism.

He reformed the education system by  giving control of all high school education to the government, which could decide scholastic curriculums and apply censorship on textbooks before and after their publication. 

While De Vecchi was serving as Governor of Rhodes, he enacted the Italian racial laws, which stripped Jews of their assets and restricted their rights. He forced Jews to move their cemetery and give up the tombstones of their ancestors to provide materials for the rebuilding of the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes. 

On March 6, 1940, Count Galeazzo Ciano, wrote in his War Diaries: ‘For the first time I found a person who wants to declare War with the Germans against France and England. This person is no less than the intrepid Cesare Maria de Vecchi di Val Cismon! The Americans say that a sucker is born every minute; one only has to look for him. This time I have found one. Cesare Maria is, above all, a man of pomposity and vain illusions, who dreams of obtaining a marshal's baton and decorations and hopes to gain them through the blood of others.’

After the announcement of the Armistice of Cassabile in September 1943, De Vecchi authorised German forces to enter the port of Piombino in southern Tuscany and forbade any act of resistance. However, units of the Royal Italian Navy and Royal Italian Army supported by local people prevented the Germans from landing at Piombino. They killed about 100 of them and captured more than 200 Wehrmacht soldiers. 

The following day, De Vecchi ordered the freeing of the Germans and the returning of their weapons to them, after which he signed the surrender of his division to the Germans. On September 13, De Vecchi, with a pass given to him by German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, took refuge in Piedmont. 

In early October 1943, De Vecchi went into hiding from Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, which had condemned him to death in his absence. After the war he escaped to Argentina on a Paraguayan passport.

After returning to Italy in 1949, De Vecchi supported the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement but refused to accept any political or institutional office within the movement. De Vecchi died in Rome in 1959.

Piazza Mazzini, the main square in Casale
Monferrato, where Cesare De Vecchi was born

Travel tip:

Casale Monferrato in Piedmont, where Cesare Maria De Vecchi was born, is situated on the south bank of the Po river, about 60km (37 miles) east of the regional capital, Turin, at the foot of the Monferrato hills.. A town with around 36,000 inhabitants today, it was founded in Roman times and later turned into a major citadel by the Gonzaga family. At the heart of the historic centre is Piazza Mazzini, which grew on the site of the Roman forum. The square is dominated by an 1843 equestrian statue by Abbondio Sangiorgio of King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia.  To the east of the square is the Lombard Romanesque cathedral of Sant'Evasio, founded in 742 and rebuilt in the early 12th century, occupying the site of a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter.  The Castello dei Paleologi, on Piazza Castello, is a hexagonal fortress that probably dates from 1000 and was rebuilt in the 15th century with corner towers and a moat. The town is famous for Krumiri Rossi, traditional curved dry biscuits created in the 19th century. Sitting in the heart of the Monferrato wine region, its local wines include Barbera and Grignolino.

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The Alps provide a mountainous backdrop to Turin, the
regional capital of Piedmont that was once Italy's capital

Travel tip:

Piedmont in northern Italy is the second largest region after Sicily. It borders France, Switzerland and the Italian regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Aosta Valley and a small part of Emilia-Romagna. Piedmont was acquired by Otto of Savoy in 1046 and its capital was established at Chambery, which is now in France. The Savoy territory became the Duchy of Savoy in 1416 and the seat of the Duchy was moved to Turin in 1563 by Duke Emanuele Filiberto. After Victor Amadeus II became King of Sardinia in 1720, Piedmont became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Turin grew in importance as a European capital city. It was at the centre of the fight for the unification of Italy and was the region of birth of the first prime minister of Italy, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour. Turin was the first capital of the unified Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1865, before the capital moved to Florence in 1865 and later to Rome in 1871. The mountainous areas of Piedmont, which make up more than 40 per cent of the region, including several major sections of the Western Alps, play a vital part in the power production of the region and of northern Italy as a whole. The region’s hydroelectric plants supply energy for industry, transportation, and domestic use. The Alpine and sub-Alpine meadows afford excellent pasture for cattle as the base of a prosperous dairy industry, while the lowlands produce wheat and rice, vegetables and fruit. The hills south of the Po are noted for the production of some of Italy’s highest-quality wines, both of the sparkling and still varieties. 

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Further reading:

Galeazzo Ciano, the son-in-law Mussolini had executed as a traitor

Italo Balbo, the former Blackshirt thug who was Mussolini’s ‘heir apparent’

The March on Rome - the insurrection that put Fascists in power

Also on this day:

1812: The birth of Maria Cristina of Savoy

1812: The birth of poet and patriot Aleardo Aleardi

1893: The birth of writer and novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda

1897: The death of soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, second wife of Giuseppe Verdi

1949: The birth of painter Enzo Cucchi

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Nicola Bombacci - revolutionary

Communist who eventually allied with Mussolini

Nicola Bombacci led the
Italian Communist Party

Nicola Bombacci, who was executed with Fascist leader Benito Mussolini after partisans intercepted their attempt to flee Italy in 1945, was born on this day in 1879 in Civitella di Romagna, a small town about 40 minutes by road from the city of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna. 

Although he ended his life as a political ally of the right-wing dictator, Bombacci’s roots were in Marxism. Indeed, he had been a founder-member in 1921 of the Italian Communist Party, alongside among others Antonio Gramsci, the left-wing intellectual who was subsequently arrested by Mussolini and sentenced to 20 years in jail.

He shifted his position during the 1930s, seeing fascism as a form of national socialism that could unify Italy. He embraced Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, the German puppet state in northern Italy created after the Nazis had freed the deposed dictator from house arrest in 1943, believing it to represent a blend of Marxist principles and fascist ideology that could still be a force for good.

Born little more than 20km (12 miles) from Mussolini’s home town of Predappio, Bombacci’s connections with the future dictator can be traced back to his early 20s, when they attended the same teacher training college in Forlimpopoli.

Both became members of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), their political beliefs so closely aligned that both were part of the revolutionary Massimalisti wing on the far left of the party.

Benito Mussolini shared Bombacci's 
enthusiasm for left-wing politics

Their paths diverged when Mussolini began to lose faith in orthodox socialism, believing that national identity in the shape of culture, tradition, language and race had become as important as removing class divides in the kind of society he sought to create. 

In 1919 - the same year that Bombacci became Secretary of the PSI - Mussolini was hosting a rally in Milan that saw the establishment of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group), which would evolve into the National Fascist Party two years later.

Bombacci led the PSI with notable success, winning 32.3 per cent of the vote in the 1919 general election, which made them the biggest party by votes and seats. 

However, he resigned his position only a year later, feeling his authority had been compromised when his proposed constitution of the Soviets in Italy was rejected. In the summer of 1920 he was among an Italian delegation that went to Soviet Russia, participating in the Second Congress of the Communist International, and in 1921 opted to join Gramsci and fellow Marxist Amadeo Bordiga in founding the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I).

As support for Mussolini grew, opponents such as the Socialists and Communists increasingly became the target of violent attacks by Blackshirt thugs, no less so after his Fascist Party were handed power in 1922 following the March on Rome.

Gramsci’s arrest in 1926 followed two years after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, 29-year-old founder and leader of the Unified Socialist Party, who had delivered a speech in parliament accusing Mussolini of winning the 1924 general election by fraud and intimidation.

Antonio Gramsci, Bombacci's fellow
communist, was arrested and jailed

Yet despite these incidents, Bombacci remained on friendly terms with his former fellow Massimalista, believing that Mussolini shared his own objective of creating a better Italy for working people, even if their methods were at odds.

Expelled from the PCI in 1927 for taking a pro-fascist position, Bombacci responded by becoming openly fascist, although he never officially joined the National Fascist Party.  By the beginning of the 1940s, Bombacci’s position had shifted to the degree that he began publishing pamphlets warning the Italian population on the dangers of Bolshevism and attacking Stalin for betraying socialist values.

Mussolini in turn helped Bombacci by providing financial support for the care of his sick son, Wladimiro, and allowing him to found and edit a new magazine, La Verità, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, promoting views aligned to those of the regime.

Their relationship became stronger still after Mussolini, freed from captivity by Nazi paratroopers after being arrested on the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III 1943, was installed as leader of the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state established on territory controlled by the Germans in northern and central Italy.

Bombacci voluntarily travelled to the republic’s headquarters in Salò, on the shores of Lake Garda, where he became an advisor to Mussolini. He was the author of the economic theory of fascist socialisation, designed to put more power in the hands of workers through the state control of businesses and the means of production. 

The bodies of Bombacci (first left)
and the others in Piazzale Loreto

In speeches he delivered to Italian workers in Genoa in 1945, he proclaimed that "Stalin will never make socialism; rather Mussolini will."

It was not long, however, before the Allied advance from the south steadily forced the German army into retreat. Sensing that it was only a matter of time before the Italian Social Republic collapsed, Mussolini hatched a plan to escape to Switzerland. 

Along with Mussolini’s mistress, Claretta Petacci, Bombacci and other loyalists, including Achille Starace and Alessandro Pavolini, accompanied the former Duce in a car hoping to reach the Swiss border. They had been on the run for only a day, however, when Mussolini was recognised at a checkpoint set up by Italian partisans at Dongo on the shores of Lake Como and captured.

Two days later, Mussolini and the others were executed. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung by their feet from a beam above a petrol station in Piazzale Loreto, symbolically chosen as it had been the scene of a massacre of Milanese citizens by Fascist militia a year earlier.

A view from Piazza Principale
in Civitella di Romagna

Travel tip:

Nicola Bombacci was born in Civitella di Romagna, a charming small town in the province of Forlì-Cesena, about 30km (19 miles) southwest of Forlì and 40km (25 miles) southwest of Cesena. It is bisected by the Bidente river in an area of picturesque green hills. It has a well-preserved mediaeval centre with bastion walls as well as an ancient castle.  Civitella di Romagna is known for its annual cherry jam festival and hosts numerous markets throughout the year. The Santuario della Beata Vergine della Suasia, situated at the western end of the town, is a significant religious site dating back to the 18th century.

The waterfront at Salò, these days a pleasant and
popular resort among visitors to Lake Garda

Travel tip:

For all its regrettable association with such a despised figure as Mussolini, Salò has recovered to become a pleasant resort on the shore of Lake Garda, visited by many tourists each year. Its promenade, the Lungolago Zanardelli, is the longest of any of the lakeside towns and it has a Duomo, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Annunziata, that was rebuilt in Gothic style in the 15th century. The Museo di Salò commemorates, among other things, the resistance against Fascism. During his time as leader of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini lived about 18km (11 miles) to the north of Salò in the Villa Feltrinelli at Gargnano, a sumptuous lakeside palazzo which he confiscated from the Feltrinelli family, who had built it at the end of the 19th century as a summer residence. 

Also on this day: 

51: The birth of Roman emperor Domitian

1784: The birth of philanthropist and businessman Sir Moses Montefiore

1913: The birth of baritone Tito Gobbi

1925: The birth of composer Luciano Berio

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Nunzia De Girolamo - politician and television presenter

Lawyer who moved from debating to dancing

De Girolamo served in prime minister
Enrico Letta's cabinet from 2013 to 2014

Politician and lawyer Nunzia De Girolamo, who served as Minister of Agriculture in the government of Enrico Letta from 2013 to 2014, was born on this day in 1975 in Benevento in Campania.

Nunzia - now a television presenter - became a member of the Italian parliament, representing Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, in 2008, and she was re-elected to parliament in 2013. She went on to become the youngest member of the Letta cabinet and one of just seven female politicians appointed.

While growing up, Nunzia attended the Liceo Classico Pietro Giannone in Benevento and then entered the faculty of jurisprudence to study law at the University of Rome La Sapienza. After graduating, she went into the legal profession.

Nunzia worked in the fields of civil law, employment law, and commercial law before going into politics.

She became a member of Forza Italia, but left the party in 2009. Voters chose her as an individual member of the People of Freedom party, when she stood for parliament for the second time.

In 2011, she married Francesco Boccia, the Minister for Regional Affairs and Autonomy. They had a daughter, who they named Gea.

After leaving the People of Freedom party in November 2013, Nunzia joined Angelino Alfano’s New Centre Right party.

However, she resigned from office in 2014, after claims were made that she had conducted herself improperly. Nunzia denied any wrongdoing, saying she had left her ministerial post in order to defend herself against the allegations made against her. After Prime Minister Letta accepted her resignation, Nunzia became the second minister to resign from the cabinet in the nine months since the elections.

With dancer Raimondo Todaro, De Girolamo
 reached the finals of Ballando con le Stelle

She subsequently served as House whip for the New Centre Right party, but she failed to be re-elected to the Chamber in the 2018 elections.

In 2019, Nunzia took part in the 14th series of the programme, Ballando con le Stelle, Italy’s version of the BBC's popular programme, Strictly Come Dancing and America's Dancing with the Stars. 

She was partnered by professional dancer Raimondo Todaro and the couple enjoyed some lively exchanges with the programme’s panel of judges at the end of their dances each week, yet were popular enough with the public to be one of six couples voted through to the finals show. 

The former politician’s Ballando con le Stelle appearances have been followed by regular television work. Since 2021 she has been presenter of the Rai Uno show Ciao Maschio, which discusses issues from a male perspective.

This article was updated in October, 2026.

Benevento's Arch of Trajan
echoes the city's Roman past

Travel tip: 

Benevento, Nunzia De Girolamo's birthplace, is a city built on a hill some 50km (31 miles) northeast of Naples in Campania. As Beneventum, it was an important Roman trading station along the Via Appia route between Rome and Brindisi and its Roman remains are a particular attraction to visitors. An outdoor theatre built by Hadrian to seat 10,000 spectators has been preserved in relatively good condition, as has the city's marble Trajan's Arch, built during the second century to mark the opening of the Via Traiano trade route. The arch had ornate decorative carvings of exceptional detail, which celebrate the life and times of Emperor Trajan. Benevento suffered extensive damage from bombing in World War Two and several major buildings, including the city's Duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria de Episcopio - had to undergo restoration or complete rebuilding work. The church of Saint Sophia, a circular building with Byzantine touches consecrated in around 760, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

The palace housing the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza
church, which was bought with a tax on wine

Travel tip: 

The University of Rome - often referred to as the Sapienza University of Rome or simply La Sapienza, meaning 'knowledge' - was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, as a place for  ecclesiastical studies over which he could exert greater control than the already established universities of Bologna and Padua. The first pontifical university, it expanded in the 15th century to include schools of Law, Medicine, Philosophy and Theology. Money raised from a new tax on wine enabled the university to buy a palace, which later housed the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza church. The university was closed during the sack of Rome in 1527 but reopened by Pope Paul III in 1534. In 1870, La Sapienza ceased to be the papal university and as the university of the capital of Italy became recognised as the country's most prestigious seat of learning. A new modern campus was built in 1935 under the guidance of the architect Marcello Piacentini. 

Also on this day:

1881: The death of missionary Saint Daniele Comboni

1891: The birth of Mafia boss Stefano Maggadino

1921: The birth of poet Andrea Zanzotto

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Tiberius – Roman Emperor

The decline of a leader who ruled from a beautiful place of exile

The Death of Tiberius, perhaps attended by Caligula,
imagined in an 1864 painting by Jean-Paul Laurens

After starting his reign in glory, the Emperor Tiberius slowly deteriorated and is reputed to have become steadily crueller and more debauched until he died on this day in 37 AD in Misenum, now Miseno, in Campania.

Tiberius had become the second Roman Emperor, succeeding his stepfather, Augustus, in 14 AD. As a young man, he had been a successful general, but at the age of 36 he chose to retire and go and live in Rhodes because he was determined to avoid getting involved in politics. 

However, after the deaths of both grandsons of Augustus, his ailing stepfather had no choice but to make Tiberius his heir.

Tiberius inherited the throne at the age of 54 and was at first a hardworking ruler, trying to pass sensible and far-seeing laws. He stopped pointless, costly conflicts and the waste of the empire’s money and was said to have left the imperial coffers much fuller than when he inherited them.

But he was constantly at odds with the Senate, who claimed he gave vague orders to them and that they had to debate the orders among themselves so that they could decide what to do and therefore some of his legislation was never passed.

Tiberius left Rome after 13 years
and never returned to the city

After 13 years, Tiberius decided he had had enough and he went to live in a magnificent villa on the island of Capri in the Bay of Naples. He never visited Rome again and delegated his power over the Senate to the commander of his guard.

As the years passed by, Tiberius became increasingly paranoid and brooded constantly on the loss of his son, Drusus Julius Caesar, who was said to have died in mysterious circumstances.

Many historians have claimed that Tiberius became steadily more cruel and vindictive as he grew older, and that he enjoyed torturing his victims, the people he perceived to be his enemies. He then liked to kill them by having them thrown off the cliffs at a spot on Capri that has become known as Salto di Tiberio - Tiberius’s Leap.

One senator was allegedly condemned to death just for having carried a coin, with the head of Tiberius on it, into a public lavatory with him.

The Emperor Tiberius was also reputed to have become a paedophile, bringing in young boys and girls to take part in imperial orgies at his villa on Capri.

When he was 71, Tiberius brought his 18-year-old great-nephew, Caligula, to live on Capri and subsequently named him as heir to the empire. For six years Caligula remained docile and obedient towards Tiberius, although he was said to occasionally display signs of the sadism that would subsequently blight his years as emperor.

Early in AD 37, Tiberius travelled to what was then Misenum to take part in military games. After injuring his shoulder throwing the javelin, he became seriously ill. He eventually lapsed into unconsciousness and doctors declared that his death would be imminent. Caligula then took the imperial ring from his great uncle’s finger and showed himself to a local crowd as the new Roman emperor.

Then Tiberius apparently woke from his coma and demanded food, which terrified Caligula. However, one of the heir’s quick-thinking allies rushed into the bedroom of Tiberius and finished him off by smothering him in a blanket. Tiberius was 77 when he died and he had been in power for 22 years.

The historian Tacitus wrote that people in Rome cheered when they heard that Tiberius was dead, only to panic when they heard he had recovered. Then they rejoiced again when they heard that the debauched emperor’s life had finally ended.

Modern Miseno, looking towards Capo Miseno, 
which offers views across the Bay of Naples

Travel tip:

Misenum, where Tiberius was injured and died, is now known as Miseno and is one of the frazioni of Bacoli in the province of Naples. Nearby Capo Miseno marks the north western end of the Bay of Naples, from where there are incredible views of Capri, Ischia, Sorrento, and Mount Vesuvius. For centuries, Misenum was the biggest naval base in the Roman empire and housed thousands of sailors.  Its beautiful natural setting and proximity to the nearby Roman cities of Puteoli - modern Pozzuoli - and Neapolis (Naples), Misenum also became a popular location for Roman luxury villas.

Villa Jovis, as it might have looked in the time of
Tiberius. Today, there are only ruins

Travel tip:

Tiberius ruled his empire from the Villa Jovis on Capri and the sheer cliff beside the villa, known as the Salto di Tiberio - Tiberius’s Leap - is said to be the precipice from which the Emperor had his victims hurled to their deaths. The biggest of 12 residences Tiberius had built on Capri, Villa Jovis occupies a spectacular position at the top of Monte Tiberio on the north east corner of the island. With an elevation of 334m (1,096ft), Monte Tiberio is the second-highest peak on the island, topped only by Monte Solaro (589m; 1,932ft) in Anacapri. Access to the remains of the villa is only possible on foot, and involves an uphill walk of about two kilometres from Capri town along Via Tiberio.

Also on this day:

1820: The birth of tenor Enrico Tamberlik

1886: The birth of athlete Emilio Lunghi - Italy’s first Olympic medallist

1940: The birth of film director Bernardo Bertolucci

1978: The kidnapping of former Italian PM Aldo Moro

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Emanuele Notarbartolo - banker and politician

First major figure to be assassinated by Mafia

Emanuele Notarbartolo spent 14 years
in charge of the Banco di Sicilia

The banker and politician Emanuele Notarbartolo, whose determination to end corrupt banking practices in Sicily in the late 19th century would cost him his life, was born on this day in 1834 in Palermo.

Notarbartolo served as a conservative Mayor of Palermo from 1873 to 1876 and director of the Banco di Sicilia from 1876 to 1890.

He saved the bank from going bust by stamping down on the practice of doling out large and effectively unsecured loans to favoured individuals but in doing so made many enemies.

Having survived being kidnapped in 1882, Notarbartolo was stabbed to death in his first-class compartment on a train just outside Palermo in 1893, his body thrown out of the carriage on to the track side.

Although ultimately they were set free as the legal process broke down, Raffaele Palizzolo, a rival politician with Mafia connections as well as a fellow member of the Banco di Sicilia board, and a boss of the Villabate mafia clan, Giuseppe Fontana, were identified as being responsible for his death. Each was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Murders involving members of the Cosa Nostra were commonplace but the victims were generally other mafiosi or associates. Notarbartolo’s death is thought to have been the first instance of a politician or other prominent public figure being killed on Mafia orders.

Notarbartolo was born into one of Palermo’s most important aristocratic families and was given the title Marquis of San Giovanni. Orphaned as a child, he moved to Paris in his early 20s and then to London, where he developed a passion for economics and politics, becoming a supporter of liberal conservatism which on his return to Italy placed him on the Historical Right.

Newspapers in Italy covered the trial of
Notarbartolo's alleged killers extensively

He joined the Sardinian Army and joined Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand, taking part in the Battle of Milazzo as his red-shirted followers captured the island of Sicily and pushed towards the mainland.

Notarbartolo’s participation was rewarded with public office in Palermo, where he was for a while assessor of the city’s police force before being appointed president of the civic hospital. In his capacity as Mayor, to which office he was elected in September 1873, he promoted the construction of Palermo’s enormous opera house, the Teatro Massimo.

He developed a reputation for moral integrity, thanks to which he was appointed General Manager of the Banco di Sicilia in February 1876 at the behest of the Rome government led by Marco Minghetti. 

His brief was to reorganise the banking system on the island, which had fallen into such chaos that the Banco di Sicilia was at the brink of bankruptcy, threatening dire consequences for the entire Sicilian economy.

Notarbartolo soon discovered that incompetent bank managers were granting substantial loans to so-called entrepreneurs and builders purely on the basis of patronage, without asking for guarantees and allowing generous repayment terms.

This impacted on a considerable number of powerful people in Palermo, politicians and criminals alike, who had become used to easy finance with no questions asked. It was not long before there were plots to oust Notarbartolo.

Notarbartolo's rival Raffaele 
Palizzolo was one of the accused

Yet he was not intimidated, even when he was kidnapped. After paying 50,000 lire as a ransom, he was released unharmed and vowed to redouble his efforts to rid the bank of corruption. By now he had several rows with Palizzolo and suspected that his rival was behind the kidnap, although it was never proved.

He wrote to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce in Rome, outlining the lax and corrupt practices he had exposed, but the letter was somehow intercepted and fell into the hands of Palizzolo, who informed the other members of the bank’s board. In 1890, his opponents, with the backing of Francesco Crispi’s government, forced Notarbartolo to resign.

After his successor as director of the bank made a number of reckless and costly decisions, there was talk of Notarbartolo being reinstated. Days after this came to light, he was killed.

Soon after the train carrying Notarbartolo towards Palermo from his country estate near Sciara left the station at Trabia, some 33km (21 miles) southeast of the capital along the Tyrrhenian coast, it entered a tunnel, at which moment two men entered the banker’s compartment and attacked him, stabbing him 27 times.  His body, thrown from the compartment, was found in undergrowth by the track.

Fontana and two supposedly complicit railway workers were arrested, but a court in Palermo quickly acquitted Fontana and convicted the railway workers. Despite testimony from a carabinieri officer pointing to him as a possible instigator of the murder, Palizzolo - by then a member of the Chamber of Deputies -  was never called.

Further trials in Milan and Bologna eventually found Fontana and Palizzolo guilty, the former of killing Notarbartolo, the latter of commissioning the murder. Each was sentenced in 1902 to 30 years in prison, only for the Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome to overturn the verdicts a year later on the basis of procedural defects.

A new trial took place in Florence in 1904 at which a new witness was to be produced on behalf of the prosecutors after another mafioso, Matteo Filippello, had confessed to being the other man in the railway carriage attack.  A few days before he was due in court, however, Filippello was found dead, police reporting that he had hanged himself. 

Fontana and Palizzolo were both then acquitted on the grounds of lack of evidence, the latter apparently welcomed by a cheering crowd on his return to Palermo.

Notarbartolo's bust
in Palazzo Pretorio

Travel tip:

Emanuele Notarbartolo is commemorated in Palermo in the Via Emanuele Notarbartolo, an important street in the city, part of a long, straight thoroughfare that stretches across the city from the harbour area in the direction of Monte Cuccio to the west. The street, which intersects with the Via della Libertà, has a modern feel with a mix of shops, offices and apartment buildings and a scattering of Liberty-style villas typical of the city. Palermo Notarbartolo station can be found halfway along.  A bust of Notarbartolo, carved by Antonio Ugo, can be seen in Palermo’s Palazzo Pretorio, where the city’s municipal council meets.

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Sciara, which sits on a plain in the shadow of Monte 
San Calogero, was founded by Notarbartolo's ancestors

Travel tip:

Sciara, where Emanuele Notarbartolo lived when away from Palermo, is a village just over 40km (25 miles) southeast of the Sicilian capital within the Monte San Calogero Nature Reserve, with its characteristic lush vegetation. The municipality was founded in 1671 by one of Notarbartolo’s ancestors, Baron Filippo Notarbartolo, by royal decree of Charles II of Spain. It was one of more than 30 fiefdoms owned by the family. Filippo built Sciara’s elevated castle and a couple of churches, including the Chiesa di Sant’Anna. The area is quite poor and many houses were left empty after families emigrated to the north of Italy, to Germany and the United States in the 1970s and ‘80s. Those villages who remain are often involved in the production of tomatoes, olives and artichokes.

Accommodation in Sciara from Booking.com

More reading:

The Sicilian lawyer who made it his life's work to take on Mafia

The Palermo businessman who refused to pay

The president’s brother killed by the Mafia

Also on this day:

1507: The death of Renaissance painter Gentile Bellini 

1806: The birth of military general Manfredo Fanti

1821: The death in Rome of English poet John Keats

1822: The birth of archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi

1910: The birth of artist Corrado Cagli

(Picture credits: Notarbartolo bust by Sicilarch; Sciara panorama by Azotoliquido; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Niccolò Machiavelli dismissed from office

Enforced retirement gives public servant time to write about his ruthless ideas

Statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, whose name has become synonymous with the words ‘cunning’ and ‘duplicity’, was dismissed from office in Florence on this day in 1512 by a written decree issued by the Medici rulers.

The Ponte Vecchio over the River Arno in Florence

Machiavelli was forced to withdraw from public life and retired to his home in the Chianti region of Tuscany, where he wrote his most famous work, The Prince, which was to give the world the political idea of ‘the ends justify the means’.

Had the Medici not distrusted him, Machiavelli might have continued to serve in Florence as a diplomat and military leader. 

He may never have passed on to mankind the ideas he had learnt from his work during the turbulent period in Italian history when popes and other European countries were battling against Italy’s city states for power.

In The Prince he was able to write with first-hand knowledge about the methods he had seen used by Cesare Borgia and his father Pope Alexander V1 to take over large parts of central Italy.

The ideas he put forward were to make the word ‘machiavellian’ a regularly used pejorative adjective and the phrase ‘Old Nick’ to become an English term for the devil.

The book put forward the idea that the aims of princes, such as glory and survival, could justify the use of immoral means.  

Machiavelli also advocated that it is safer to be feared than to be loved, if you can’t achieve both, and he recommended that if an injury has to be done to a man ‘it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared’.

His ideas were to exert a lasting, profound influence on western political thought and are still referred to today. But in modern times, people have begun to interpret them as pragmatic observations rather than as encouraging ruthlessness, cruelty and violence in people.

Machiavelli never got back into public office after the decree of 7 November 1512 and he died at his home in 1527 at the age of 58.

Travel Tip:

Machiavelli wrote ‘The Prince’ at his country home in Sant’Andrea in Percussina, south of Florence, in the heart of Chianti country near San Casciano Val di Pesa. The house where he is believed to have lived is now a Bed and Breakfast called La Fonte del Macchiavelli.

Travel Tip:

There is a monument to Machiavelli in the beautiful Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, where many famous Florentines are buried. A marble structure by Innocenzo Spinazzi was erected in his memory in 1787. The Latin inscription on the front of the monument translates as: ‘No eulogy is equal to such a name’. 

More reading:

'The ends justify the means' - the life of Niccolò Machiavelli

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