Giuseppe Conte – politician and academic

Lawyer who led Italy despite having no political experience

Giuseppe Conte was head of the Italian
government between 2018 and 2021

Former Prime Minister of Italy Giuseppe Conte was born on this day in 1964 in the town of Volturara Appula in the province of Foggia in Puglia.

Conte served as Italian Prime Minister between 2018 and 2021, becoming the longest serving politically non-affiliated prime minister in the history of Italy.

He was Italy's fifth technocrat prime minister - defined as being appointed without any previous political experience - and the first from southern Italy since Ciriaco De Mita in 1989.

A law professor for a large part of his career, Conte is often referred to as ‘the people’s lawyer’ (l’avvocato del popolo), as this is how he described himself during his first speech as Prime Minister. He is now the president of the Italian political party Movimento Cinque Stelle - the Five Star Movement.

Conte’s father, Nicola, was an employee of the local authority, and his mother, Lillina, was a school teacher. After the family moved to San Giovanni Rotondo, another town in the province of Foggia, Conte attended the nearby liceo classico and then went to study at the Sapienza University of Rome. To this day he remains an avid AS Roma fan, having started to support the club while at university.

After qualifying formally as a lawyer, Conte went to study abroad and later either researched or lectured at several universities. He is currently professor of private law at the University of Florence and sits on the board of trustees of John Cabot University in Rome.

When the 2018 Italian general election resulted in a hung parliament, Conte was proposed as the independent leader of a government that was a coalition between the Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) and La Lega (formerly known as Lega Nord), despite never having held any political position before. He was sworn in as prime minister on 1 June 2018 by Italian President Sergio Mattarella.

Giuseppe Conte (left) and president Sergio
Mattarella meet during the Covid-19 pandemic

In August 2019, Le Lega filed a motion of no confidence in the coalition government and Conte offered to resign as prime minister. Then M5S and the Democratic Party agreed to form a new government between them, with Conte remaining at its head.

As a result, Conte became the first prime minister to lead two separate Italian governments made up of right-wing and left-wing coalition partners.

Despite having begun his political career as a technocrat, Conte became increasingly influential and popular in the field of Italian politics. He introduced a guaranteed minimum income and nationalised important Italian industries

After Italy was badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, his government became the first in the western world to implement a national lockdown to stop the spread of the virus.

Conte resigned from office in 2021 after the Italia Viva party, led by Matteo Renzi, himself a former Prime Minister, withdrew its support for his government.

In 2022, Conte was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the M5S to represent Lombardy.

The village of Volturara Appula in Puglia,
where Giuseppe Conte was born

Travel tip:

Volturara Appula, where Giuseppe Conte was born, is just over 50km (31 miles) west of the city of Foggia situated in rugged countryside not far from the border with Molise. It was once an important city in Puglia but is now a comune with a population of less than 400. Its first mention was in a document of Pope John XIII dated 969 where it is listed as a bishopric. The village has a Romanesque cathedral with a large bell tower that dates back to the 13th century and a so-called ducal palace.

The modern campus of Sapienza University, near
Roma Termini railway station, was built in 1935

Travel tip:

Like many other Italian Prime Ministers, Giuseppe Conte graduated from Rome University, often known simply as La Sapienza, which means ‘the wisdom.’  It can trace its origins back to 1303, when it was opened by Pope Boniface VIII as the first pontifical university. In the 19th century the university broadened its outlook and became recognised as the country's most prestigious seat of learning. A new campus was built near the Termini railway station under the guidance of the architect Marcello Piacentini in 1935. Rome University now caters for more than 112,000 students.

Also on this day:

1849: The death of priest and patriot Ugo Bassi

1919: The birth of film producer Dino De Laurentiis

1920: The birth of songwriter Leo Chiosso

1988: The birth of basketball player Danilo Gallinari

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Italy’s first nuclear reactor opens

Facility based on pioneer Enrico Fermi’s historic Chicago-Pile series

The Ispra-1 reactor was the first nuclear
reactor to be built on Italian soil

The first nuclear reactor to be built on Italian soil was inaugurated on this day in 1959 at Ispra, a small town on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore.

The facility, which preceded the first generation of nuclear power plants serving the need for clean, reliable and plentiful electricity sources for industrial and domestic use, was built purely for research purposes.

It was opened four years ahead of the country’s first commercial nuclear plant, at Latina in Lazio.

The 5 megawatt Ispra-1 research reactor, as it was titled, was modelled on the latest version of the Chicago-Pile 5 series developed by Enrico Fermi, the Rome-born nuclear physicist who created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago-Pile 1, following his discovery that if uranium neutrons were emitted into fissioning uranium, they could split other uranium atoms, setting off a chain reaction that would release enormous amounts of energy.

The Ispra-1 reactor was built by Italy’s National Nuclear Research Council. It was officially transferred to the European Community in March 1961, becoming a Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. 

It was used for studies and research on core physics, new materials for the construction of nuclear power reactors, as well as neutron fluxes and their interaction with living matter.

Until the 1960s, much of Italy’s electricity had been generated from renewable sources. Although the first power plant in continental Europe, opened in Milan in 1883, was carbon-fuelled, the country’s abundance of mountains and lakes enabled it to develop a huge hydroelectric power sector.

The Trino Vercellese nuclear plant was named
after the Italian nuclear pioneer Enrico Fermi

Fossil fuels began to take over in the 1960s to meet the needs of a growing population but there was a common belief that nuclear energy could provide, within only a few years, safely and economically, all the power that Italy needed. 

By 1964, three nuclear power plants had been built, all approximately 50km (31 miles) from major cities. They were at Trino Vercellese, north of Turin, at Sessa Aurunca in Campania, north of Naples, and at Latina, south of Rome.

Yet after the electricity sector in Italy was nationalised in 1962, investment in nuclear stalled. It was not until 1978 that a fourth nuclear power station, at Caorso in Emilia-Romagna, was completed.  The 1973 world oil crisis had prompted another round of enthusiastic plans for the nuclear sector, but again they were ultimately downgraded.

The most significant setback of all followed the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, fallout from which affected parts of northern Italy and was blamed for a decline in birth rate in 1987. The Italian government organised a referendum to gauge public feeling about the future of nuclear power, the results of which led to a decision to close two plants and terminate work on another.

Another referendum in 2011 following a nuclear accident in Japan confirmed that public opinion had not shifted and a new company was created to take charge of decommissioning all nuclear sites in Italy, including the research facility at Ispra.

The Cattedrale di San Marco is an
example of Latina's architecture

Travel tip:

Latina, where one of Italy’s now-decommissioned nuclear power stations was opened in 1963, is a city built during the Fascist era of the 1920s and 1930s when Mussolini’s government fulfilled a pledge to drain the inhospitable, mosquito-ridden Pontine Marshes, visitors to which frequently became infected with malaria. Built on that reclaimed land, and originally called Littoria when it was established in 1932, its stands as a monument to the architectural style that typified the era, which combined some elements of classicism, with its preponderance of columns and arches, with the stark lines of 1920s and 30s rationalism. It has a large number of monuments and edifices, including a town hall with a tall clock tower and a cathedral, designed by architects such as Marcello Piacentini and Angiolo Mazzoni. Renamed Latina in 1946, it has grown into a substantial city with a population of 126,000, making it the second largest city in Lazio after Rome.

Ispra's coastal pathways are popular with
visitors to the Lago Maggiore town

Travel tip:

Ispra, which sits on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore about 25km (16 miles) west of its provincial capital, Varese, is an area popular with walkers for its lakeside footpaths, including the poetically named passeggiata dell’amore, and with golfers for the Parco del Golfo della Quassa. The Joint Research Centre still exists, despite the decommissioning of the nuclear plant. It comprises the Institute for the Protection and the Security of the Citizen (IPSC), the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) and the Institute for Health and Consumer Protection (IHCP). The site itself is an area of natural preservation, covering an area of 157 hectares (390 acres) of pine, birch, oak and chestnut trees.

Also on this day:

1446: The death of architect Filippo Brunelleschi

1452: The birth of Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci

1754: The death of mathematician Jacopo Riccati

1882: The birth of anti-Fascist politician Giovanni Amendola

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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, 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.

Stay in Palermo with Booking.com

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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Giorgia Meloni - politician

Italy’s first female prime minister 

Giorgia Meloni, the first woman to be elected Italy's
PM, on the day she was asked to form a government

Politician Giorgia Meloni, who was elected as Italy’s first female prime minister in October 2022, was born on this day in 1977 in Rome.

Meloni, head of the Fratelli d’Italia party of which she is a co-founder, is a controversial figure in that her political roots are in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the party formed by supporters of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after World War Two. In the past, she has described Mussolini as a “good politician” but one who “made mistakes”. 

Yet she rejects accusations that Fratelli d’Italia - Brothers of Italy - is a far-right party, despite adopting the fascist slogan ‘God, family, fatherland’ and incorporating the tricolore flame from the MSI logo within FdI’s own branding.

Meloni came from a fractured family background. Her Sardinian father, Francesco, left her Sicilian mother, Anna, when she was a year old and she and her older sister, Arianna, were brought up largely by her mother in the working class Garbatella area of Rome.

She studied languages at the Istituto Amerigo Vespucci, a high school about 50 minutes across Rome from where she lived, and today describes herself as able to speak Spanish, English and French as well as her native tongue.

A teenaged Meloni unfurls a banner
for the Youth Action movement

It was while she was at high school that she became politically active, joining Azione Giovani, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, before switching to the once neo-fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN), itself an MSI offshoot. 

As an AN candidate, she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 2006, standing in the Lazio 1 constituency, the boundaries of which correspond to those of the Metropolitan City of Rome.

Re-elected in 2008 on the list of Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, which brought together the AN and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Meloni became the youngest cabinet minister in the history of the Italian Republic when Berlusconi made her Minister for Youth at the age of 31.

Her membership of People of Freedom ended in 2012, however, after a disagreement over the party’s support for technocrat prime minister Mario Monti. With Ignazio LaRussa, Guido Crosetto and others, she formed Fratelli d’Italia, of which she became president in 2014.

Under Meloni’s leadership, Fdl grew from winning just four per cent of the vote at the 2018 general elections to 26 per cent in the snap election of 2022, which made Fratelli d’Italia the biggest single party in the Italian parliament.

Although both Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigration Lega saw their share of the vote fall, they joined with Fratelli d’Italia in a coalition worth around 44 per cent of votes in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, enough to outvote the centre-left Democratic Party and the populist Five Star Movement even if they were to join forces.

The FdI's logo incorporates
the tricolore flame of the MSI

Meloni describes herself as mainstream conservative and a Christian, although her political position is less forgiving in many areas than other European politicians who would identify themselves similarly.

For example, she is opposed to abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and LGBT parenting, and supports a naval blockade to stop boats carrying immigrants across the Mediterranean. While committed to NATO, she was generally lukewarm about the European Union until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, after which she distanced herself from previous comments on forging better relations with Vladimir Putin and pledged to keep sending Italian arms to Ukraine.

Meloni’s opponents frequently cite her approval for Mussolini and coalition with Salvini as a warning that Italy may lurch to the right under her premiership, yet Fratelli d’Italia have gone on record as condemning both the suppression of democracy and the introduction of the Italian racial laws by Mussolini’s regime. Meloni herself insists that there is no place for fascist nostalgia in her party and that her own links with it are in the past.

Although not married, Meloni shares a home with Andrea Giambruno, a journalist for TGcom24, a news channel within Berlusconi’s Mediaset group. They have a daughter, Ginevra, who was born in 2016.

The Art Nouveau design of the Teatro Palladio,
a well-known feature of the Garbatella district

Travel tip:

Although traditionally working class, the Garbatella neighbourhood of Rome, where Giorgia Meloni grew up, is becoming increasingly trendy among young Romans, drawn to it having the feeling of a village within the metropolis.  Situated in Municipio VIII district south of the city centre near the Ostiense railway station, Garbatella was built in the 1920s, inspired by the English garden city, largely made up of single-family houses grouped around communal garden courtyards. It has some interesting architectural styles, including the Teatro Palladio in Piazza Bartolomeo Romano, an example of Art Nouveau style designed by Innocenzo Sabbatini in 1927. Garbatella today has a population of more than 45,000.

The Palazzo Monticitorio was chosen as the home
of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1871

Travel tip:

The Italian Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian parliament, sits at the Palazzo Montecitorio, which can be found between the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps. The Palazzo Chigi, official residence of Italian prime ministers, is nearby. Palazzo Montecitorio was originally designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Ludovico Ludovisi, the nephew of Pope Gregory XV. Following Italian unification, the palace was chosen as the seat of the Chamber of Deputies in 1871 but the building proved inadequate for their needs, with poor acoustics and a tendency to become overheated in summer and inhospitably cold in winter. After extensive renovations had been carried out, with many Stile Liberty touches introduced by the architect Ernesto Basile, the chamber returned to the palace in 1918.

Also on this day: 

1623: The death of writer and statesman Paolo Sarpi

1926: The death of songwriter and sculptor Giambattista De Curtis

1935: The birth of football coach Gigi Radice

1971: The birth of rugby player Paolo Vaccari

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The Borghese Coup

Neo-fascist ‘plot’ aborted at last moment

How the story of the attempted coup was broken
in a Rome newspaper three months after the event

Italians might have woken up on this day in 1970 to learn that the nation’s legitimate government had been overthrown in a neo-fascist coup had the plotters behind the insurrection not abandoned their action at the 11th hour.

The night of December 7-8 had been chosen as the date for Golpe Borghese - the Borghese Coup - the proposed coup d’état by Junio Valerio Borghese, a nobleman descended from the House of Borghese, which originated in Siena and went on to wield significant power and influence in Rome in the 17th century. 

Borghese, a former member of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, had been a naval commander in World War Two who had aligned himself with Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic following the armistice of 1943. He became a prominent neo-fascist in post-war Italy, first as a member of the Italian Social Movement and later setting up his own political party, the Fronte Nazionale (National Front). 

Like many on the far right of Italian politics, Borghese - known as the Black Prince both for his politics and his family history, the Borghese having been part of the so-called Black Nobility - had been alarmed by the rise of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he felt the political mainstream in Italy was doing too little to counter.  Strikes and protests had become commonplace and the tension between right and left had been exacerbated by the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in December 1969, when 17 people were killed in a terrorist act blamed on the neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo. It was the start of the period of unrest that would become known as the Years of Lead.

The neo-fascist politician Junio
Valerio Borghese plotted the coup

The coup Borghese conceived would have installed a coalition of military figures, right-wing politicians and sympathisers in place of the centre-left government led by Christian Democrat Emilio Colombo. The leaders of the PCI were to have been arrested and imprisoned and the party dissolved.

The action had been a year and more in the planning. Borghese had formed an alliance with another neo-fascist group, Avanguardia Nazionale (National Vanguard) led by Stefano Delle Chiaie, and had secretly obtained the promise of support from a force of army dissidents under the control of Lt. Colonel Amos Spiazzi. He had secured financial backing from a number of businessmen and industrialists who shared his misgivings about the rise of the communists and forged links with the secretive masonic lodge Propaganda Due, led by Licio Gelli.  

The Cosa Nostra and ‘Ndrangheta mafia organisations were to play a part also, in return for a scaling back of anti-mafia operations by the state.

Borghese had even gained the tacit approval of the United States for his planned coup, making contact through a number of intermediaries with important figures in the State Department. The Americans, who were still sponsoring NATO’s clandestine, anti-communist post-war activities in Italy under Operation Gladio, apparently indicated they would not oppose the coup provided certain conditions were met, although they reportedly doubted it would succeed.

When the night of the operation arrived, Borghese’s paramilitary force and other supporters were to kidnap the Italian President, Giuseppe Saragat, to murder Angelo Vicari, the head of the police, and to occupy the headquarters of public television broadcaster RAI. The seizure would take place of the presidential residence at the Palazzo Quirinale, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence.  Groups of paramilitaries were positioned in front of the residences of prominent left-wing politicians.

President Giuseppe Saragat was to
have been kidnapped by the plotters

Operations to take control of government offices in the other major Italian cities were also made ready. Spiazzi planned to occupy the whole town of Sesto San Giovanni, a communist stronghold near Milan.

Yet at about 1.40am on December 8, just as the Golpe Borghese  was in its early stages, with militants already inside the Interior Ministry and beginning to loot weapons from the national armoury, Borghese sent out the order that the operation was to be aborted. 

Ordinary Italians knew nothing of any of this until March 17, 1971, when the left-wing Rome newspaper Paese Sera, who had been fed information by government sources, broke the story of a neo-fascist plot to overthrow the state. The first arrests were made later the same day.

Borghese was not among them. He had already fled to Spain, where he would remain until his death four years later, when he was suddenly taken ill with severe abdominal pains after eating his dinner.  The death certificate recorded the cause of death as an acute haemorrhage of the pancreas, although many suspected he had been poisoned.

His reason for abandoning the coup was never established. His own explanation was that there was never a coup, and that all that was being planned was a large-scale protest against the forthcoming visit to Rome of the communist leader of Yugoslavia, Josep Broz Tito. He had decided to call off the protest because of the unpleasant conditions caused by heavy rain.

However, Lt. Colonel Spiazzi confirmed later that a coup had been about to be carried out, only for it to become known that the Christian Democratic government had been tipped off and were ready to trigger Exigency Operation Triangle, which would deploy thousands of troops and police to suppress the plotters and declare martial law.

Three trials of suspected participants in the coup attempt, along with subsequent appeals, were heard between 1978 and 1986 but ultimately all the defendants were acquitted.  This was despite further evidence emerging from the Maxi Trial of Sicilian mafiosi in the mid-80s, when Tommaso Buscetta and other pentiti confirmed that Borghese had sought their help, and that the Palermo journalist Mauro di Mauro, the victim of an apparent mafia killing three months before the planned coup, had been murdered because he had learned about Borghese’s intentions and planned to splash the story.

The Borghese Coup remains one of Italy’s many unsolved mysteries, dismissed by some as a rather comic attempt by incompetent plotters that was never any real threat to the state, but suspected by others to be another example of sinister figures trying to influence the course of events for their own political ends.

The Quirinale Palace in Rome has been the official 
residence of 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents

Travel tip:

The Palazzo del Quirinale was built in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII originally as a summer residence. It subsequently served both as a papal residence and the offices responsible for the civil government of the Papal States until 1870. When, in 1871, Rome became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy, the palace became the official residence of the kings of Italy, although some monarchs, notably King Victor Emmanuel III (1900–1946), lived in a private residence elsewhere. When the monarchy was abolished in 1946, the Palazzo del Quirinale became the official residence and workplace for the presidents of the Italian Republic. So far, it has housed 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents.

The main facade of the Palazzo Borghese, the
historical seat of the Borghese family in Rome

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Borghese, which is notable for its unusual trapezoidal layout, having two parallel sides but two that are not parallel, was the main seat of the Borghese family in Rome. Situated in the Campo Marzio district of central Rome, not far from the Ponte Cavour and and about 600m (0.37 miles) on foot from the Spanish Steps, it was built in about 1560-61 by the architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola on behalf of Monsignor Tommaso del Giglio and acquired by Cardinal Camillo Borghese in 1604, shortly before he became Pope Paul V.  The first floor of the palace has been the seat of the Embassy of Spain in Italy since 1947. The palace originally housed the Borghese family’s art collection, which contained works by Raphael, Titian and many others, before it was transferred in 1891 to the Galleria Borghese in Villa Borghese.

Also on this day:

1577: The birth of painter Mario Minniti

1685: The birth of perfumier Johann Maria Farina

1881: The birth of architect Marcello Piacentini

1925: The birth of politician Arnaldo Forlani

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

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Giorgio Gori - politician

Mayor who steered city of Bergamo through Covid nightmare

Giorgio Gori was elected Mayor of 
Bergamo for the first time in 2014

The politician Giorgio Gori, who as Mayor of Bergamo became one of the spokespersons for Italy during the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, was born in Bergamo on this day in 1960.

Of 158,000 deaths from the virus in Italy since it was identified in a patient from the town of Codogno in February 2020, more than 39,000 have been in the Lombardy region, with the city of Bergamo and the surrounding area suffering the heaviest toll.

Bergamo province lost 4,500 citizens in the first month of the pandemic alone and is haunted by the image of a convoy of military vehicles carrying coffins away for cremation elsewhere because the city’s own crematorium could no longer cope with the numbers of dead.

As television crews descended on the city, Gori regularly agreed to be interviewed on camera and thus was seen by audiences in many countries as the story of Covid-19’s devastating impact on Italy dominated news bulletins.

Gori’s own background is in the media. Educated in the magnificent but traditionally demanding surroundings of the Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi in Bergamo’s historic Città Alta, he went on to study architecture at the University of Milan but at the same time began to contribute to local newspapers, including L’Eco di Bergamo and Bergamo-Oggi, and the city’s own television station, BergamoTV.

In 1984 he began working at Rete4, which at the time belonged to the Arnaldo Mondadori publishing house, but later became part of Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset stable, where Gori would work for 15 years. Between 1991 and 2001, he was director of the three Mediaset networks, Rete4, Canale5 and Italia1. 

Gori is a passionate advocate for the city of
Bergamo, where he was born and grew up

It was through Canale5 that Gori met his wife, the journalist and TV presenter Cristina Parodi, who was one of the faces of Canale5’s flagship news programme, TG5, which launched in 1992. They were married in 1995 and have three children, Benedetta, Alessandro and Angelica.

Benedetta and Angelica were both students in England when the pandemic spread across Europe. Their father made headlines by revealing - the day before UK prime minister Boris Johnson announced a national lockdown - that he had flown his daughters home to Italy, despite it being the European epicentre of the pandemic, because he felt the UK response had been too slow.

Gori was guilty of not taking Covid-19 seriously enough at first, infamously posting a picture of himself on social media in early February, 2020, alongside other diners at a Chinese restaurant, with a caption telling people to ignore the "completely unjustified alarmism” and insisting: “There is nothing to fear!"

He subsequently acknowledged his mistake, admitting that he had underestimated the size of the crisis about to unfold, but his political opponents still make capital of the incident.

Gori left Mediaset in 2001 to partner Ilaria Dallatana and Francesca Canetta in setting up a television production company, Magnolia, which specialised in the development and production of original formats for television and interactive media. Magnolia collaborated with the Rai, Mediaset, LA7 and Sky networks and had some memorable successes, including the hit shows L'isola dei famosi, Piazzapulita, MasterChef Italia and L'eredità.

Gori's wife, the TV journalist Cristina Parodi,
who he met while working for Canale5

As a student, Gori had been quite politically active, aligning himself with groups on the reformist left, such as Azione e Libertà (Action and Liberty) and the Collective of Socialist Students, which had close links with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).

Even as he pursued a career, he never turned away completely from politics and in 2012 he took the bold decision to leave Magnolia in order to devote himself to fulfilling some political ambitions and to help his home city, for which he had much affection.

He joined the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and in 2012 worked as a close adviser to Matteo Renzi, then Mayor of Florence, as he prepared what was ultimately his successful bid to become prime minister.

In Bergamo, Gori set up the InNova Bergamo Association with the aim of studying the issues concerning his city and in 2014 was elected the city’s mayor, defeating the incumbent Franco Tentorio, who represented Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia but had previously been a member of two neo-fascist parties, the Italian Social Movement and Allianza Nationale. 

Gori failed in his attempt in 2017 to become regional president of Lombardy but in 2019 was re-elected as Mayor or Bergamo, the first to be returned for a second term since the position became subject to a public vote.

During the first Covid-19 lockdown in Italy, Gori wrote a book entitled Riscatto - Bergamo e Italia: Appunti per un futuro possibile (Ransom - Bergamo and Italy: Notes for a possible future) in which he describes his life and professional experiences, the story of Bergamo during the first wave of Covid-19, and sets out his view of the path Italy must take to be reborn after the pandemic.

The Piazza Vecchia is the focal point of the
historic Città Alta, Bergamo's older upper town

Travel tip:

Bergamo in Lombardy is a beautiful city with an upper and lower town that are separated by impressive fortifications. The magical upper town - the Città Alta - has gems of medieval and Renaissance architecture surrounded by the impressive 16th century walls, which were built by the Venetians who ruled at the time. Outside the walls, the elegant Città Bassa, which grew up on the plain below, has some buildings that date back to the 15th century as well as imposing architecture added in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the Città Alta is the draw for many tourists, the lower town also has art galleries, churches and theatres and a wealth of good restaurants and smart shops to enjoy.

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The neoclassical facade of the Liceo
Classico Paolo Sarpi in the Città Alta

Travel tip:

The Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi, the high school attended by Gori, is an historic institution in Piazza Rosate in Bergamo’s Città Alta, opposite the rear entrance of the city’s cathedral. Identifiable by its neoclassical facade designed by Ferdinando Crivelli, the Liceo has its roots in the first public school of Grammar, Humanities, and Rhetorics established by the Republic of Venice in 1506 under the name of Accademia della Misericordia. It was renamed after Paolo Sarpi, a Venetian polymath, in 1803, by Napoleonic decree. The building that houses the modern school was built between 1845 and 1852 under the auspices of the Austrian Government, when it was known as Regio Liceo. In 1860, the academy contributed to the Italian Unification with 70 students joining Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, aimed at annexing the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the embryonic Kingdom of Italy. In 2011, the academy took part in the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Italian unification, attended by the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. Garibaldi dubbed Bergamo as La Città dei Mille, because of the major role it played in the Expedition of the Thousand. 

Also on this day:

1867: The birth of poet and librettist Guido Menasci

1874: The birth of politician and winemaker Luigi Einaudi

1926: The birth of playwright and actor Dario Fo

1934: The birth of photographer Mimmo Jodice

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Wilma Montesi - murder victim

‘Body on the beach’ mystery that sparked a national scandal

Wilma Montesi was only
21 when she died

Wilma Montesi, the woman whose unexplained death in 1953 precipitated a scandal that reached the highest levels of the Italian government, was born on this day in 1932 in Rome.

Raised in the Trieste-Salario neighbourhood, little more than a couple of kilometres from central Rome, she was a 21-year-old woman who dreamed of becoming an actress but whose ambitions were known to no one outside her own family and friends until she disappeared from her home in Via Tagliamento on the afternoon of April 9, 1953.

Two days afterwards, her semi-naked body was found on the beach at Torvaianica, some 40km (25 miles) south of the capital. The mystery surrounding her death sparked four years of police investigations and conspiracy theories and the resignation of a senior member of prime minister Mario Scelba’s government.

On the afternoon of her disappearance, Montesi had declined an invitation to go to the cinema with her mother and sister, saying she would go for a walk instead. After she failed to return in time for supper, her family noticed that her ID papers and some jewellery, a gift from her policeman boyfriend that she always wore, were still in her room.

The details of what happened between her saying goodbye to her mother and sister and her body being found, face down and partially submerged, were never fully established. Although it was eventually proved that she was killed, no one was convicted.

The initial investigation suggested Montesi had taken a train from Rome to the popular seaside resort of Ostia but no witnesses reported seeing her in Torvaianica, 20km (12 miles) further down the coast. 

The musician Piero Piccioni was charged
with manslaughter but acquitted

The body was clothed only in a blouse and underwear, yet a police investigation concluded that Wilma’s death had been the result of drowning and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, was recorded as accidental. 

The theory of investigating officers was that she had stepped into the sea to relieve some soreness to her heels caused by a new pair of shoes but had fallen and passed out, probably through fainting. They suggested that her body had been moved by the currents and washed ashore.

What they could not explain was why she might have thought it necessary to remove not only her shoes and stockings but her skirt and suspender belt if her purpose was to bathe her feet. None of the missing clothing had been found.

The case was declared closed, yet the media, naturally intrigued by a mystery, would not let it drop. It turned into the beginnings of a scandal when a magazine ran a story that a young man who had handed in the missing garments at a police station was Piero Piccioni, a jazz musician and composer whose father was the Christian Democrat politician, Attilio Piccioni, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister under Scelba.

Faced with being sued by Piccioni, the author of the story eventually recanted his claim, agreeing to make a donation to charity in return for Piccioni dropping his libel action.

But six months after Wilma’s death, the story resurfaced when a reporter who had been investigating drug-trafficking along the coast near Rome claimed he had found evidence linking the young woman to an estate at Capocotta, a short distance from Torvaianica, that was owned by a wealthy Sicilian marquess, Ugo Montagna, a well-known figure in Rome society and a close friend of Piero Piccioni.

Wilma Montesi's body as it was found, face
down on the beach at Torvaianica

The reporter alleged that the Capocotta estate regularly hosted parties attended by people of power and influence that often turned into drug-fuelled orgies. Wilma Montesi, he said, after initially being recruited as a drug runner, died of an opium overdose at one of these parties, after which her body was left on the beach at Torvaianica so that it appeared she had drowned.

The journalist making this new allegation was arrested and charged with ‘spreading false and tendentious news to disturb public order’ and it was at his subsequent trial that what had been merely a series of salacious stories blew into something bigger.

One of the witnesses, an actress called Anna Maria Caglio who was a former mistress of Montagna, claimed in court that Montagna was a drug dealer and that a number of women had been murdered, casting Piccioni as the killer. She also alleged that Saverio Polito, the Rome chief of police who had closed the Montesi case, was part of a cover-up.

Piero Piccioni, Saverio Polito and Ugo Montagna
pictured during their trial in Venice in 1957

Montagna and Piccioni were arrested and Polito resigned. Piccioni’s father, mindful of the distraction his son’s arrest would cause, stepped down as a minister.

Wilma Montesi’s body was exhumed and a pathologist found that she had drowned but also concluded that she had struggled against an assailant who held her head under the water.  Piccioni was charged with manslaughter and Montagna with being complicit. Polito, Caglio and others were charged with obstruction of justice.

However, despite investigators compiling a vast volume of evidence over three years, a trial in Venice in 1957 was not able to convict anyone apart from Caglio, who was given a suspended sentence. Piccioni, Montagna and Polito were acquitted, and the ‘body on the beach’ mystery remained unsolved.

Montesi is buried at the Verano Monumental Cemetery in Rome. It is believed by some that Federico Fellini's classic film La dolce vita was in part inspired by the Montesi story. 

Gino Coppedè's Villino delle Fate, a building 
with fairytale qualities in the Coppedè district

Travel tip:

The Via Tagliamento, where Wilma Montesi was born, falls within the elegant Trieste-Salario district of Rome, book-ended by Piazza Buenos Aires, close to the Borghese gardens, and Via Chiana. The area, which developed in the 1920s, was originally known as the Quartiere Savoia. A highlight of the area is the Coppedè district, a few steps from Piazza Buenos Aires along the Via Dora. This complex of buildings described as a "pastiche" of architectural styles ​​was built between 1915 and 1927 by the architect Gino Coppedè. Fanning out from around Piazza Mincio, with its enchanting Fontana delle Rane (Fountain of the Frogs), it includes buildings such as the Palazzina del Ragno and the Villino delle Fate that resemble those imagined in fairytales. 

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Torvaianica, on the coast of Lazio south of
Rome, has a broad expanse of beach

Travel tip:

Torvaianica, a coastal town of 12,700 residents occupying an 8km (5 miles) stretch of coastline, had a place in history long before the Montesi scandal.  According to Vergil's Aeneid, the Trojan hero Aeneas landed there, a story that was confirmed after the excavation of the ancient Roman town of Lavinium. Torvaianica takes its name from a coastal watch tower, Torre del Vajanico, built in 1580 to repel Barbary pirates. The tower, damaged during World War II, was demolished during the 1960s. The town itself had been founded in the 1940s, after the draining of the nearby Pontine Marshes. Originally a fishing village, it is now a tourist resort. 

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Also on this day:

1702: The birth of architect Giovanni Battista Vaccarini

1757: The birth of eye surgeon Giuseppe Forlenza

1857: The birth of sculptor Giuseppe Moretti

1869: The birth of opera impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza

(Picture credits: Piero Piccioni by CharlieFoxtrot66; Villino del Fate by The Doc; Torvaianica beach by RaeBo; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Ferdinando Galiani - economist and philosopher

Leading figure in the Neapolitan Enlightenment

Ferdinando Galiani spent much of
his life in government service

The economist and philosopher Ferdinando Galiani, whose theories on market economics are considered to be years ahead of his time, was born on this day in 1728 in Chieti, now in Abruzzo but then part of the Kingdom of Naples.

Galiani spent much of his life in the service of the Naples government, spending 10 years as secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador in Paris before returning to Naples in the role of councillor of the tribunal of commerce, being appointed administrator of the royal domains in 1777.

A fine writer and wit as well as a talented economist, Galiani wrote a number of humorous works as well as two significant treatises, the first of which, Della Moneta, was written while he was still a student, at the age of 22.

Initially published anonymously, Della Moneta - On Money - was ostensibly a work about the history of money and the monetary system, but Galiani used it as an opportunity to intervene in the Neapolitan debate on economic reform, his opinions on the development of the Neapolitan economy evolving into a theory of market value based on utility and scarcity.

At the same time, he put forward what was then a revolutionary notion of the importance of freedom to the well-being of any society, one shared by many contemporary thinkers, including the French writer and philosopher Voltaire.

Advancing arguments based on the principle of personal freedom, Galiani suggested that the value of anything should be determined by the mutual agreement of buyer and seller, with prices and wages set naturally according to demand.

Galiani's seminal work, Della
Moneta, which he wrote at 22

He argued that any form of control of the market would lead to injustices in society and could therefore be defined as tyranny. 

Galiani’s views on fairness could almost certainly be attributed to the education he received from his uncle, Monsignor Celestino Galiani, a prominent archbishop, whose intention was to prepare his nephew for a life as a clergyman.

In the event, Galiani revealed a talent not only for economics but as a witty writer, whose clever parodies of the Neapolitan literary style established his reputation as a humorist. In all his writing, however, he was faithful to the fundamental principles of truth and justice imbued in him by his uncle. 

During his time in Paris, Galiani wrote his second important treatise, Dialogues sur le commerce des blés - Dialogues on the Grain Trade - in which he argued in favour of regulation of the corn market on the basis that free international trade in grain, not so much a commodity as a necessity, risked the wellbeing of the population if foreign markets were more attractive to producers than domestic ones.

Galiani wrote fluently in both French and Italian, and his letters are seen as valuable for their depiction of economic, social, and political life in 18th-century Europe. He died in Naples in 1787 at the age of 58.

Chieti's Baroque Cathedral
of San Giustino

Travel tip:

Chieti, the capital of the Abruzzi region, is among the most historic Italian cities, reputedly founded in 1181BC by the Homeric Greek hero Achilles and named Theate in honour of his mother, Thetis. The city is notable for the Gothic Cathedral of San Giustino, which has a Romanesque crypt dated at 1069 but is mainly of later construction, having been rebuilt a number of times, usually because of earthquake damage.  The main part of the cathedral is in early 18th century Baroque style.  Situated about 20km (12 miles) inland from the Adriatic city of Pescara, the city consists of Chieti Alta, the higher part and the historic centre, and the more modern Chieti Scalo.

Pescara, with the snow-capped mountains of the
Gran Sasso range in the background

Travel tip:

Pescara, a city of almost 120,000 people on the Adriatic in the Abruzzo region, is known for its 10 miles of clean, sandy beaches, yet is only 50km (31 miles) from the Gran Sasso mountain range, the snow-capped peaks of which are visible even from the coast on a clear winter’s day. The city is the birthplace of the poet, patriot and military leader, Gabriele D’Annunzio. His childhood home, the Casa Natale di Gabriele D’Annunzio, which can be found in the historic centre of the city on the south side of the Fiume Pescara, which bisects the city, houses a museum about his life and works. The Museo delle Genti d'Abruzzo has exhibitions on regional industries like ceramics and olive oil. Pieces by Miró and Picasso are on view at the Vittoria Colonna Museum of Modern Art.

Also on this day:

1684: The birth of cook and unlikely war hero Maria Bricca

1916: The death of composer Paolo Tosti

1930: The birth of fashion designer Roberto Capucci

1946: The birth of fashion designer Gianni Versace

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