Showing posts with label Reggio Calabria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reggio Calabria. Show all posts

22 January 2024

Giuseppe Musolino - brigand

Vengeful killer who became an unlikely folk hero

Giuseppe Musolino spent  most of his life in jail
Giuseppe Musolino spent 
most of his life in jail
Giuseppe Musolini, the Calabrian bandit whose fight for justice after a wrongful conviction turned him into a folk hero despite the multiple murders he committed in a quest for vengeance, died on this day in 1956 in a psychiatric hospital in Reggio Calabria.

He was 79 years old when he passed away, having been just 22 when he was sentenced to 21 years in prison for an attempted murder he swore he did not commit, with the evidence against him no better than circumstantial.

He escaped after just three months and embarked upon a killing spree in which he may have murdered as many as nine individuals and attempted the murder of several others, most of whom had played a part in what he saw as a corrupt trial.

The revenge killings took place during his two years and nine months on the run, during which Calabrians took to him as a symbolic figure, representing the people of an impoverished region against a state system rigged against them.

His story captured the imagination of not only Italians - southern Italians in particular - but of the wider world, with readers of newspapers in Europe and the United States eagerly awaiting the next update.

It all began with a brawl in Santo Stefano, the village in the Aspromonte mountains, a short distance from the city of Reggio Calabria, where Musolino had been born in 1876.  Musolino, a carpenter and woodcutter by trade, was drinking in his father’s tavern when he and his friend, Antonio Filastò, became involved in an argument with Vincenzo and Stefano Zoccali, two brothers from one of the village’s more powerful families, reputed to be part of a picciotteria, a criminal gang of the type that would later evolve into the region’s fearsome mafia, known as the ‘Ndrangheta.

An artist's imagined scene of the moment Musolini was captured
An artist's imagined scene of the
moment Musolino was captured 
The dispute was ostensibly over a delivery of hazelnuts, although it was also mooted that Musolino and Vincenzo Zoccali were rivals for the affections of a local girl. The fight spilled into the street, where others became involved and knives were drawn until one side produced guns and fired shots in the air to send the participants scattering for cover.  Musolino left the scene with stab wounds in his hand and arm, apparently inflicted by Zoccali.

The attempted murder charge came from what happened a day or two later when Zoccali’s family claimed a shot was fired at him at the stable where he kept horses. The assailant remained out of view behind a wall but witnesses testified to having heard Musolino shout and also to have found a hat belonging to him at the scene. They also said he had sworn a vendetta against the Zoccalis, which at the time was seen as a criminal offence.

A complaint was lodged with the police, although by the time they had decided to arrest Musolino he had long disappeared, having been tipped off that he was a wanted man. It took police six months to find him.

When his trial took place in Reggio Calabria, it was before a judge whose political associations gave him every encouragement to find against Musolino, while witnesses were thought to have either been bribed or intimidated by the Zoccali family to commit perjury. The judge, meanwhile, denied Musolino’s own lawyers the chance to call any witnesses who would testify for his innocence and sentenced him to 21 years in jail with hard labour, handing his friend, Antonio Filastò, a seven-year term.

Musolino was led away in a fury, shouting that if he had not sworn a vendetta against the Zoccalis, he would do so now. He also vowed revenge against all those who had given evidence against him, promising to kill them all as well as the prosecutor and the judge.

King of the Mountains is one of several books about Musolino
King of the Mountains is one of
several books about Musolino
He and Filastò were locked up at the prison fortress of Gerace Marina, located in present-day Locri on the Ionian coast, but within three months had escaped, taking advantage of the deteriorating condition of the fortress, which allowed them to hack away at the cement in the stone walls and create a hole to climb through, sliding down the outside with the aid of a ladder made from sheets and bed slats.  Musolino claimed that San Giuseppe, patron saint of carpenters and protector of the poor, had visited him in a dream to point out which part of the stone walls they should target.

Musolino hid in the Aspromonte mountains, one by one working through his list of targets, committing five murders in his first eight months out of captivity and continuing to pursue his goal of revenge for almost three years.  He found local people only too willing to help him, giving him food and hiding places despite a bounty of 5,000 lire being offered to anyone who caught him and turned him over to the police.

Many felt his trial had simply been a representation of the attitudes towards the south held by many northern Italians, who had led the fight to unify the country on behalf of the wealthy Kingdom of Sardinia but had subsequently disparaged southern Italians as backward and ignorant. There was a particular sense of betrayal in Santo Stefano, home of the Romeo family, who were patriots and major supporters of unification in Calabria, helping Garibaldi conquer the region and even joining him on his march north to Naples.

During his time on the run, Musolino, who claimed to be descended from French nobility on the side of his mother, wrote to Italy’s new king, Victor Emmanuel III, appealing for help for the people of Calabria. Eventually, he decided to leave Calabria and head north, hoping at some point to be able to meet Victor Emmanuel in person and ask to be pardoned.

Musolino hoped to ask Victor Emmanuel III for a pardon
Musolino hoped to ask Victor
Emmanuel III for a pardon
Despite the local police having been joined by the carabinieri corps and the army in searching for Musolino in the Aspromonte mountains, he left the area unnoticed. When he was captured, by accident, he was more than 800km - almost 500 miles - away in Acqualenga, just south of Urbino in Marche.

Walking along a country lane in October 1901, he caught sight of three carabinieri officers, whom he assumed were looking for him, and ran away. They saw him and pursued him, catching up with him when he tripped over a wire supporting a grapevine and fell.

Musolino was transferred by train to a prison in Catanzaro in Calabria on October 24, 1901 to await a second trial, which took place many hundred of miles away from his homeland in Lucca, Tuscany. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and taken to Portolongone prison near Livorno on the Tuscan coast, where he remained until 1946.

In that year, he was declared to be mentally ill and transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Reggio Calabria, where he died on January 22, 1956.

Giuseppe Musolino’s story had a huge impact worldwide, with mass circulation newspapers such as Corriere della Sera and Il Mattino at home giving it extensive coverage, along with international journals including The Times in London, Le Figaro in Paris and the New York Times.  Their reporting, which included tales of stealing from the rich to give money to the poor, convinced some readers that he was a romantic figure akin to the heroic outlaw of English folklore, Robin Hood.

A film, Il Brigante Musolino (1950), directed by Mario Camerini and starring Amedeo Nazzari, told the story to cinema audiences. The celebrated poet Giovanni Pascoli wrote an ode to him and the English writer Norman Douglas devoted a whole chapter of his book, Old Calabria, to his tale, which also inspired recording artists in many genres to write wrote songs about him.  Other books include King of the Mountains: The Remarkable Story of Giuseppe Musolino, Italy's Most Famous Outlaw, by Dan Possumato.

Santo Stefano in Aspromonte attracts winter visitors to its nearby ski slopes
Santo Stefano in Aspromonte attracts winter
visitors to its nearby ski slopes
Travel tip:

Santo Stefano in Aspromonte, birthplace of Giuseppe Musolino, is a village perched on a rocky spur in a mountainous area of the province of Reggio Calabria. The area, which falls within the area of the beautiful Aspromonte National Park, has attractions for summer and winter stays, the mountain areas dotted with pathways and stairways for trekking and the ski slopes of Gambarie nearby. The village itself boasts an historic centre of nooks and crannies, steep staircases, pretty palaces and fountains, as well as the remains of the ancient Abbey of San Giovanni a Castaneto. The area is renowned for its production of oil, cereals and fruit, while wild mushrooms and chestnuts trees abound in the nearby woodlands. 

The remains of an ancient Greek theatre in the vicinity of the Calabrian resport of Locri
The remains of an ancient Greek theatre in the
vicinity of the Calabrian resport of Locri
Travel tip:

The coastal city of Locri, on Calabria’s Ionian Sea coast, was originally a Greek colony founded at the end of the eighth century BC by Greek refugees who settled on the coast. It became a major centre in the political and artistic life of Magna Graecia, the name the Romans gave to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy. The modern Locri has attractions that include a museum and archaeological park that is home to ancient Greek ruins and artifacts, the scenic Lungomare di Locri and the Monument to the Five Martyrs of Gerace, dedicated to five Locride citizens who were executed in the Risorgimento for having fought for freedom. Locri has more than 12,000 inhabitants, is an important administrative and cultural centre on the Ionian Coast and is only 90 minutes away from the International Airport of Lamezia Terme.

Also on this day:

1506: The founding of the Papal Swiss Guard

1889: The birth of supercentenarian Antonio Todde

1893: The birth of mobster Frankie Yale

2005: The death of veteran soldier Carlo Orelli


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6 February 2020

1783 Calabria Earthquakes

Before photography was possible, copper plate engravings served to record major events, including the 1783 earthquakes
Before photography was possible, copper plate engravings
served to record major events, including the 1783 earthquakes

Series of powerful tremors killed at least 35,000


The Calabrian peninsula of southwest Italy was waking up to the unfolding horror of a sequence of five deadly earthquakes on this day in 1783.

A major tremor destroyed the town of Oppido Mamertina in what is now the province of Reggio Calabria on 5 February, killing almost 1,200 residents, followed by another just after midnight on 6 February, setting off a tsunami that claimed still more lives.

The effects of the first quake  - which has been classified at an estimated 7.0 on the Richter magnitude scale - were felt over a much wider area, however, with countless land and rockslides.  The whole of the island of Sicily is said to have shaken.

In total, it is thought some 180 villages were effectively destroyed, with far more buildings reduced to rubble than remained standing. The city of Messina, on the northeast tip of Sicily, was seriously hit and many casualties were reported there also.

The city’s medieval Duomo was badly damaged, while a tsunami caused the walls of the harbour to collapse.

Another engraving of the late 18th century depicts the  turbulence in the Strait of Messina caused by the quakes
Another engraving of the late 18th century depicts the
turbulence in the Strait of Messina caused by the quakes
This first shock was thought to have claimed in the region of 25,000 lives across the large area affected as buildings ill-equipped to withstand such violent shaking, strong enough to knock people off their feet, simply collapsed.

Only a few hours later, just after midnight on 6 February a second major tremor occurred closer to Messina, this time put at a magnitude of 6.2. This caused a substantial rockslide into the sea near the coastal town of Scilla on the Italian mainland, which in turn set off a tsunami.  Many residents in Scilla, fearful of their homes collapsing after the 5 February quake, had taken refuge on the beach only to be swept away by the giant wave. It is reckoned around 1,500 died in Scilla.

Further up the peninsula, in the area of the Serre Mountains, about 40km (25 miles) from the first quake, a third one took place, more powerful than the second at 6.6 magnitude, at approximately 1.10pm on 7 February, flattening a string of villages between the towns of Acquaro and Soriano Calabro. Again, there were hundreds of casualties.

A period of less violent shocks followed until, on 1 March, another significant quake, put at magnitude 5.9, struck near the town of Filadelfia, about 30km (19 miles) south of Lamezia Terme. Although it took place some 100km (62 miles) northwest of Scilla and the seat of the first tremors, it was later determined to have been part of the same seismic sequence.

This engraving shows the tsunami crashing into the  fishing village of Scilla, with boats capsizing
This engraving shows the tsunami crashing into the
fishing village of Scilla, with boats capsizing
Damage and casualties this time were light, but that could not be said of the fifth major event, in the space of just over seven weeks, that struck on 28 March, just a few kilometres from Filadelfia, between the towns of Girifalco and Borgia. This tremor has been recorded at 7.0 magnitude, just as powerful as the first, with many villages destroyed and a further large number of residents killed.

The total number of deaths resulting from the series of earthquakes is put at 35,000 at least, although some estimates point to a figure nearer 50,000. Either way, it is one of the four deadliest seismic events in Italian history in which estimates of casualty numbers are available.

Modern science knows that the cause of earthquakes and other seismic activity in Sicily and southern Italy is caused by the collision of the African and Eurasian plates - two of the seven largest tectonic plates that make up the surface of the earth.

In the 18th century, however, there were different explanations, including one theory that there were ‘fire channels’ inside the earth, of which volcanoes were the manifestation on the surface, and that chemical reactions between gas, water and metal elements in subterranean voids were the cause of earthquakes and eruptions.

This seemed to be supported by another phenomenon that occurred at around the same time in the form of a sulfuric fog that covered much of Europe in the summer of 1783, which scientists thought was due to gas released by the Calabrian quakes although contemporary studies suggest the two things were not connected.

It is thought, instead, that the fog was the result of sulfuric gases released by a volcanic eruption in Iceland of which mainland Europeans had no knowledge.

The ancient fishing village of Chianalea sits on the water's  edge in the shadow of the Castello Ruffo
The ancient fishing village of Chianalea sits on the water's
edge in the shadow of the Castello Ruffo
Travel tip:

The resort town of Scilla on the north-facing Calabrian coast, situated about 23km (14 miles) north of the city of Reggio Calabria, grew up around a picturesque fishing village sheltered by cliffs and a rocky spur, atop which sits the Castello Ruffo, originally a sixth-century fortification but which has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times.  Beneath is the sandy beach of Marina Grande, now lined with hotels. The main part of the expanded town sits above the cliffs on a plateau. On the other side of the promontory is the less developed village of Chianalea, where houses cling to the water’s edge along a single, cobbled thoroughfare.



Messina's cathedral and bell tower have had to be rebuilt on several occasions due to disasters and war
Messina's cathedral and bell tower have had to be
rebuilt on several occasions due to disasters and war
Travel tip:

Messina, the Sicilian city separated from mainland Italy by the Strait of Messina, is the third largest city on the island and home to a large Greek-speaking community. The 12th century Duomo - the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta - has a bell tower which houses one of the largest astronomical clocks in the world, built in 1933. Originally built by the Normans, the cathedral, which still contains the remains of King Conrad, ruler of Germany and Sicily in the 13th century, suffered much damage in 1783 and then had to be almost entirely rebuilt following the massive earthquake that struck in 1908, and again in 1943, after a fire triggered by Allied bombings.

More reading:

How Italy's worst earthquake may have killed 200,000

The earthquake in Sicily that led to an architectural rebirth

The Naples earthquake of 1626

Also on this day:

1453: The birth of poet Girolamo Benivieni

1577: The birth of Beatrice Cenci, Roman heroine

1788: The birth of poet Ugo Foscolo

1908: The birth of politician Amintore Fanfani 


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19 October 2018

Umberto Boccioni - painter

Artist who died tragically young was key figure in Futurism


Boccioni's 1905 self-portrait, which can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
Boccioni's 1905 self-portrait, which can be found in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
The painter Umberto Boccioni, who became arguably the leading artist of Italian Futurism before the First World War, was born on this day in 1882 in Reggio Calabria.

Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that was launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.  Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.

The Futurists admired the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, all of which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention. Their work attempted to capture the dynamism of life in a modern city, creating images that convey a sense of the power and energy of industrial machinery and the passion and violence of social change.

Boccioni became part of the movement after meeting Marinetti in Milan early in 1910, after which he joined Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo in signing Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters.

Boccioni's The City Rises is considered by many art historians to be the first true Futurist painting
Boccioni's The City Rises is considered by many art
historians to be the first true Futurist painting
In the same year, Boccioni completed one of his finest works, entitled La città che sale, which is translated as The City Rises. The painting, which many consider to be the first truly Futurist painting, combines static images of building construction as the background to the scene, but in which the dominant image is of men and horses melded together, the men desperately trying to harness control of the beasts, suggesting a primeval conflict between humanity and beasts in a changing, mechanised world.

Boccioni became the main theorist of the artistic movement but only after he and Severini and other Futurists traveled to Paris in around 1911 and witnessed the Cubism of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso did the movement begin to take real shape.

The influence of this was visible in Boccioni’s La strada entra nella casa - The Street Enters the House - later in 1911, which had geometric elements and the perspectival distortion familiar in Cubism, as the artist sought to create the sensation of the noises and images of the street filling the house on the opening of a window.

The Farewells - part of Boccione's State of Mind series - can be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art, also in New York
The Farewells - part of Boccione's State of Mind series - can
be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art, also in New York
His series Stati d'animo - States of Mind - contained similar geometric features, while La risata - The Laugh - created a scene that is broken apart and distinctly abstracted by a loss of structural borders, in line with the Cubist and Futurist demand that audiences dissect the images seen in everyday life, and notice each piece and its contribution to the whole.

Boccioni also became interested in sculpture. In 1912 he published the Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, in which he advocated the use in sculpture of non-traditional materials such as glass, wood, cement, cloth, and electric lights, and for different materials to be used in combination
in one piece of sculpture.

His most famous work, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), is one of the masterpieces of early modern sculpture. Cast in bronze some years after his death, the piece is seen as an expression of movement and fluidity. It is depicted on the Italian-issue 20 cent euro coin.

Boccione's Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913) is on display at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
Boccione's Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913) is on display
at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
Boccioni’s father was a government employee whose job required him to make frequent changes of location. Soon after Boccioni’s birth, the family relocated to the north and he and his older sister Amelia grew up largely in Forlì, Genoa and Padua. At the age of 15, in 1897, Boccioni moved with his father to Catania in Sicily, where he would finish school.

In around 1898, he moved to Rome and studied art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, where he met Gino Severini. Both he and Severini became students of Giacomo Balla, who introduced them to the modern Divisionist technique.

Boccioni’s style at the time leaned towards the neo-impressionist. It was around the time he was in Rome that he produced his 1905 self-portrait, which differs greatly from his Futurism.

After spending time in Paris and Russia, Boccioni moved to Milan in 1907.

Boccione's best-known sculpture is Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, completed in 2013
Boccione's best-known sculpture is Unique Forms
of Continuity in Space,
completed in 2013
In 1914, Boccioni published his book Futurist Painting and Sculpture, the most comprehensive account of Futurist artistic theory written by a founding member.

The following year, enthused by the possibility that the violence of the Great War in Europe would bring about some of the societal change that Futurists advocated, Boccioni - along with Marinetti, Russolo and other Futurists - signed up to fight as a volunteer.

The battalion he had joined disbanded in December 2015 and Boccioni returned to painting.  But in June 1916 he was conscripted to the Italian Army and stationed outside Verona with an artillery brigade.

During a training exercise in August, Boccioni was thrown from his horse and trampled, suffering injuries from which he died at the age of just 33. Many art historians say that with his death Italy’s Futurist movement was effectively at an end.

Piazza Duomo in Reggio Calabria, where Umberto Boccioni was born in 1882
Piazza Duomo in Reggio Calabria, the city where Umberto
Boccioni was born in 1882
Travel tip:

Reggio Calabria is the oldest city in Calabria, the most important in what became known as Magna Graecia - Great Greece - after settlers began to arrive in the 8th century BC.  A few years after Boccioni left the area, a huge earthquake destroyed large parts of Reggio Calabria, which had to be substantially rebuilt. It is notable now for its fine Liberty buildings and its linear plan.  The best of what could be salvaged of the Greek remains can be seen in the National Archaeological Museum of Magna Graecia, housed in Palazzo Piacentini.


Catania has many Roman ruins, including this amphitheatre in Piazza Stesicoro, which was buried by an earthquake in 1693
Catania has many Roman ruins, including this amphitheatre
in Piazza Stesicoro, which was buried by an earthquake in 1693
Travel tip:

The city of Catania, where Boccioni completed his education, is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea. It is one of the 10  biggest cities in Italy, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. Catania has been virtually destroyed by earthquakes twice, in 1169 as well as 1693, and regularly witnesses volcanic eruptions from nearby Mount Etna.  In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and has enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks and many restaurants.

More reading:

How Carlo Carrà was applauded for capturing the violence at an anarchist's funeral

Luigi Russolo and the phenomenon of 'noise music'

The Futurist behind the famous conical Campari soda bottles

Also on this day:

1956: The birth of micro-biologist Carlo Urbani, who uncovered the SARS virus

2012: The death of three-times Giro d'Italia winner Fiorenzo Magni


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14 June 2018

Salvatore Quasimodo - Nobel Prize winner

Civil engineer wrote poetry in his spare time


Salvatore Quasimodo is one of six Italians to win the Nobel Prize in Literature
Salvatore Quasimodo is one of six Italians to win
the Nobel Prize in Literature
Salvatore Quasimodo, who was one of six Italians to have won a Nobel Prize in Literature, died on this day in 1968 in Naples.

The former civil engineer, who was working for the Italian government in Reggio Calabria when he published his first collection of poems and won the coveted and historic Nobel Prize in 1959, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage in Amalfi, in Campania, where he had gone to preside over a poetry prize.

He was taken by car to Naples but died in hospital a few hours later, at the age of 66.  He had suffered a heart attack previously during a visit to the Soviet Union.

The committee of the Swedish Academy, who meet to decide each year’s Nobel laureates, cited Quasimodo’s “lyrical poetics, which with ardent classicism expresses the tragic experiences of the life of our times".

The formative experiences that shaped his literary life began when he was a child when his father, a station master in Modica, the small city in the province of Ragusa in Sicily, where Salvatore was born in 1901, was transferred in January 1909 to Messina, at the tip of the island closest to the mainland, to supervise the reorganisation of train services in the wake of the devastating earthquake of December 1908.

Much of the city had been destroyed in the quake, as had Reggio Calabria, just across the Straits of Messina, and Quasimodo’s family lived in a freight wagon in an abandoned station. The physical devastation all around them had a profound effect on Salvatore, as did his daily contact with survivors in their struggle to come to terms with the destruction of their surroundings and the catastrophic loss of human lives, with perhaps as many as 120,000 killed in the areas worst hit.

Quasimodo worked as a civil engineer before turning to writing full time
Quasimodo worked as a civil engineer before
turning to writing full time
Quasimodo attended college in Palermo and, later, the rebuilt Messina, where he was able to publish his poetry for the first time in a journal he founded with a couple of fellow students.

He graduated in maths and physics and moved to Rome, hoping to continue his studies with a view to becoming an engineer.  But he had little money and had to abandon his studies in order to earn a living, taking a number of short-term jobs. In time he moved to Florence, where he got to know a number of poets and developed an interest in the hermetic movement, a form of poetry in which the sounds of the words are as important as their meaning.

Eventually in 1926 he handed a position with the Ministry of Public Works in Reggio Calabria, working with civil engineers as a surveyor.  He continued to write and to study Greek and Latin, making friends both in literary and political circles, including an anti-fascist group in the city. He also married for the first time. His published his first collection of poetry, called Acque e terre (Waters and Lands) in 1930.

He was transferred a number of times with his job, to Imperia, Genoa and Milan, before he quit to write full time from 1938.  In 1941 he was appointed professor of Italian literature at the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory of Music in Milan, a position he held until his death.

After the Second World War, in which he was an outspoken critic of Mussolini but did not join the Italian resistance movement, his poetry shifted from the hermetic movement to a style that reflected his increasing engagement with social criticism.

The area of the Sicilian town of Modica in which  Salvatore Quasimodo was born in 1901
The area of the Sicilian town of Modica in which
Salvatore Quasimodo was born in 1901
Among his best-known volumes were Giorno dopo giorno (Day After Day), La vita non è sogno (Life Is Not a Dream), Il falso e il vero verde (The False and True Green) and La terra impareggiabile (The Incomparable Land).

He won numerous prizes in addition to the Nobel Prize, in which he joined Giosuè Carducci (1906), Grazia Deledda (1926) and Luigi Pirandello (1934) as Italian winners of the Literature award. Eugenio Montale (1975) and Dario Fo (1997) followed him.

After his first wife had died in 1948, he was married for a second time to the film actress and dancer, Maria Cumani, with whom he had a tumultuous relationship that produced a son, Alessandro, before they were legally separated in 1960.

After his death in Naples, he was buried in the Monumental Cemetery in Milan in the Famedio - a place reserved for the tombs of famous people - alongside another great writer, novelist, poet and playwright, Alessando Manzoni.

Modica's spectacular cathedral of San Giorgio
Modica's spectacular cathedral of San Giorgio
Travel tip:

Built amid the dramatic landscape of the Monti Iblei, with its hills and deep valleys, the steep streets and stairways of the medieval centre combined with many examples of more recent Baroque architecture, including a spectacular cathedral, make UNESCO-listed Modica is one of southern Sicily's most atmospheric towns, with numerous things to see in its two parts, Modica Alta, the older, upper town, and Modica Bassa, which is the more modern but still historic lower town. Famous in Sicily for its chocolate, it has the reputation of a warm and welcoming city with an authentic Sicilian character.

Part of the dramatic cityscape of Ragusa
Part of the dramatic cityscape of Ragusa
Travel tip:

Nearby Ragusa, the principal city of the province and just 15km (9 miles) from Modica, is arguably even more picturesque. Set in the same rugged landscape with a similar mix of medieval and Baroque architecture. again it has two parts - Ragusa Ibla, a town on top of a hill rebuilt on the site of the original settlement destroyed in a major earthquake in 1693, and Ragusa Superiore, which was built on flatter ground nearby in the wake of the earthquake.  A spectacular sight in its own right and affording wonderful views as well, Ragusa Ibla may seem familiar to viewers of the TV detective series Inspector Montalbano as the dramatic hillside city in the title sequence. The city streets also feature regular in location filming for the series, based on the books of Andrea Camilleri.

More reading:

Giosuè Carducci - Italy's first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Dario Fo - the outspoken genius whose work put spotlight on corruption

The playwright born in a village called Chaos

Also on this day:

1800: Napoleon defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo

1837: The death of the poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi

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