Annibale Bergonzoli - soldier

Commander who was both decorated and imprisoned by the British

Bergonzoli's beard made him an instantly
recognisable figure among Italian generals

The military commander Annibale Bergonzoli, who served the Italian army in both world wars and led an Italian expeditionary force supporting General Francisco Franco’s nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, was born on this day in 1884 in Cannobio, a town on the shore of Lago Maggiore.

Bergonzoli had the distinction of being awarded a medal for bravery by the British during World War One only to be held by them as a prisoner of war after being captured during World War Two.

As a boy, Bergonzoli always had a taste for adventure. He completed a 1.5 mile (2.4km) swim across Lago Maggiore at the age of seven. He enrolled at the Military Academy of Modena, graduating with the rank of sub-lieutenant in 1907.

He joined the Royal Italian Army in 1911 and was immediately sent to take part in the Italo-Turkish War, helping to take control of the areas of the Ottoman Empire in Libya that became known as Italian Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, as well as some islands in the Aegean Sea.  He remained in Libya for some years after the conflict.

In the First World War, after initially declaring neutrality, Italy sided with Britain, France and Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary and Bergonzoli was awarded the British Military Cross for bravery for his defence of Monte Rovegno in Liguria. He had a prominent role in the Salonika Campaign in the Balkans, in which he became part of the Allied High Command as a combined force of Austria, Germany and Bulgaria was defeated.

Some of the 30,000 Italians taken prisoner 
following the damaging defeat at Bardia

By the time the First World War ended, Bergonzoli had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was Chief of Staff of the XXV Division. Promotion to Colonel soon followed.  Red-haired, he had also grown an extravagant and striking beard that gained him the nickname barba elettrica - ‘electric whiskers’.

When the Fascists took control of Italy in 1922 and reformed the army, Bergonzoli retained his rank and was put in control of three regiments.

Elevated to Brigadier General in 1935, he participated in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, playing a major role in the capture of the city of Neghelli as Italy annexed the country to the Kingdom of Italy.

Commended by Benito Mussolini, the Fascist leader who was by then ruling Italy as a dictator, he was then sent to Spain as the head of an infantry division of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, an expeditionary force sent to support Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour by Mussolini for leading the capture of Santander on behalf of Franco’s nationalists. 

Further promoted to Major General and then Lieutenant General, Bergonzoli, he was put in charge of the XXIII Italian Army Corps as an Italian invasion of Egypt was attempted in World War Two, in which the British were now his enemies.

He fared less well this time. He was commander of the Italian garrison in Bardia, a strongly defended seaport in the east of Libya, close to the border with Egypt, that fell in January 1941 following an assault by a combined force of British and Australian troops.

The captive Bergonzoli with other Italian officers
after disembarking at Cairo in February, 1941

It was a serious defeat for the Italians, who lost almost 5,500 personnel killed or wounded, with a further 30,000 taken prisoner along with a considerable quantity of armaments and vehicles. Bergonzoli managed to avoid being captured and escaped with other soldiers to Tobruk, crossing some 120km of desert on foot.

As the Allies advanced into Libya, he left Tobruk before the town was captured, retreating further to the west, but as the Italians prepared to evacuate they were engaged again at Beda Fomm on the Gulf of Sirte. This time, Bergonzoli was taken prisoner by Australian troops among 25,000 more Italian personnel. 

As a prisoner of war, Bergonzoli was taken first to Yol, a British camp in India, in the far north of the country towards the Himalayan mountain range, and then transferred to the United States, to be held first in Monticello, Arkansas and later Hereford, Texas.

After the Italian surrender and the armistice of September 1943, Bergonzoli refused any form of collaboration with the Anglo-Americans, who in turn refused to allow him to return to Italy, declaring him mad and holding him for a further two and a half years in the psychiatric ward of the Long Island military hospital, New York.

Finally released in March 1946, he was reinstated to the army of the new Italian Republic and given the rank of lieutenant general in 1947 before being permanently discharged later that year at the age of 62.

In retirement, Bergonzoli returned to live in Cannobio until his death in May, 1973. He is buried in a modest tomb at the town’s cemetery.

Cannobio is a pretty town on the western shore
of Lago Maggiore, not far from the Swiss border

Travel tip:

Cannobio, where Bergonzoli was born and died, can be found on the western shore of Lago Maggiore towards the northern end of the lake, only a few kilometres from the border between Italy and Switzerland. It is regarded as one of the prettiest towns on the western side of the lake, with a long waterfront, the centrepiece of which is the lakeside Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, which was refurbished in 2004 and completely relaid in cobblestones and granite slabs.  In history, the people of Cannobio are remembered for their bravery in repelling an Austrian attack in 1859, while fighting on the side of Giuseppe Garibaldi during the struggle for unification, and for rising up against the Nazi and Fascist regime in 1944.

The Baroque 17th century Ducal Palace, which
dominates the skyline of the city of Modena

Travel tip:

The military academy where Bergonzoli enrolled as a young would-be soldier is today Italy's national military academy. It is housed within Modena’s huge, Baroque Ducal Palace, the prominent feature of the city’s skyline, which was built in the 17th century by the architect Luigi Bartolomeo Avanzini on behalf of Francesco I on the site of a former castle in 1635. Modena, on the south side of the Po Valley in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, is known for its car industry - Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati have all been located there - and for producing balsamic vinegar. Operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti and soprano Mirella Freni were both born in Modena.

Also on this day:

1512: The first public viewing of Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel

1546: The death of painter and architect Giulio Romano

1596: The birth of painter and architect Pietro da Cortona

1757: The birth of sculptor Antonio Canova

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Carlo Scorza - politician and journalist

Blackshirt who was last party secretary of Mussolini’s Fascists 

Carlo Scorza was a prominent figure
in Mussolini's notorious Blackshirts

Carlo Scorza, who rose to prominence with the Fascist paramilitary group known as the Blackshirts and was the last party secretary of Benito Mussolini’s regime, was born on this day in 1897 in Paolo, a seaside town in Calabria.

Scorza fought with the Italian Army’s Bersaglieri corps during World War One. After the war he became a member of Mussolini’s fasci italiani di combattimento, the organisation that was the forerunner of the National Fascist Party.

Such was his loyalty to Mussolini even as the course of the Second World War turned against Italy that the dictator appointed him secretary of the party in April 1943, although the position ceased to exist when the party was dissolved in July of that year after Mussolini was deposed as leader and arrested.

After growing up on his father’s small farm in Calabria, Scorza moved with his family to Lucca in Tuscany, where ultimately he studied to be an accountant. He supported Italy’s involvement in the First World War and after joining the Bersaglieri, a highly mobile infantry corps, he rose to the rank of tenente (Lieutenant).

When the conflict ended, Scorza returned to the Lucca area. He joined Mussolini’s party and became involved in acts of violence against communists and socialists in Lucca even before the notorious Voluntary Militia for National Security, commonly known as the Blackshirts, was officially formed in 1923.

After taking part in Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, when Blackshirt paramilitaries entered Rome and effectively forced the king, Victor Emmanuel III, to remove the Liberal prime minister Luigi Facta and appoint Mussolini in his place, Scorza worked as a journalist for a while before being made a chief provincial party officer for Lucca and its province. 

Scorza's loyalty to Mussolini helped land
him the job as Fascist part secretary

In 1930, Scorza was put in charge of the Fascist youth organisation Gruppo Universitario Fascista and appointed the first editor of Gioventù Fascista, the Fascist Youth magazine. He also founded the Fascist newspaper Il popolo Toscano. The following year he was named as a member of the National Fascist Party’s governing body, the direttorio.

Differences with other members about the direction of the party led to him being dismissed. He left Italy to participate in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and went to Spain to fight on the side of General Franco’s Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. 

But he returned to Italy in 1940 and remained fiercely loyal to Mussolini and Italy’s participation on the side of Germany in World War Two. In April 1943, with Italy’s continued involvement in the war beginning to be questioned, Mussolini saw Scorza as the hardliner he needed to galvanise support and made him party secretary, replacing Aldo Vidussoni, who was regarded as a weak figure.

Scorza could not turn the party’s fortunes round, however, and by the summer, with parts of the country reeling from repeated Allied bombing raids, many figures in Mussolini’s government wanted to see the end of Italy’s participation in the conflict rather than suffer the consequences of a full-scale invasion.

When Mussolini convened a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on July 24 to discuss how to respond to Allied landings on Sicily, he was instead confronted with a vote to hand back full constitutional powers to the king, which was carried by 19 to eight. Mussolini was arrested the following day.

Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the former
ally who helped depose Mussolini

Scorza, who had been one of the eight to oppose the motion, was himself arrested but released soon afterwards. He wrote to Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the former Fascist and ex-Chief of Staff of Mussolini’s army who had been appointed interim prime minister, seeking to become part of the new administration. His offer was not taken up and, fearing he would be re-arrested, Scorza sought refuge for a while in the Monastery of San Francesco in Assisi. 

Eventually, he made his way north, only to be arrested again in Verona, this time by the police of the newly-formed Italian Social Republic, the Fascist state established by the Germans in northern Italy, of which Hitler placed Mussolini in charge following the daring Gran Sasso raid that freed the deposed dictator from his captivity in the mountains of Abruzzo.

He was charged with treason on account of his letter to Badoglio and spared the death penalty only on the intervention of Mussolini himself, who remembered his loyalty, and commuted the sentence to house arrest at Scorza’s home in Cortina d’Ampezzo, in mountainous northern Veneto.

What happened to him subsequently is unclear. It was thought at one point that he had been among the group shot dead by partisans along with Mussolini in 1945 after the former dictator’s attempt to flee to Switzerland was intercepted on the shore of Lake Como.

Later it emerged that Scorza had himself fled to Argentina, where he assumed a different name and worked as a journalist. In his absence, he was tried for his role in a Fascist gang's murder of the socialist politician Giovanni Amendola in 1926 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

He was granted an amnesty in 1955 and subsequently returned to Italy, living a low-profile existence near Florence, where he died in 1988 at the age of 91.

The waterfront at Paolo, captured in a photo
taken on a summer's evening

Travel tip:

The coastal town of Paola, where Carlo Scorza was born, is about 36km (22 miles) west of the city of Cozenza in Calabria, linked by the spectacularly mountainous Strada Statale 107. Paolo combines a modern seaside resort with a medieval centre. It is the birthplace of San Francesco di Paola, the 15th century founder of the Minims, the strictest order of the Franciscans. The Santuario di San Francesco, a monastery with an adjacent basilica, sits above the town.  Paola was the target of air raids in World War Two, largely because of its connection with Scorza, and many citizens sought refuge in the sanctuary. One night, a 80 kg (176 lb) bomb smashed through the roof but did not explode, which was widely regarded as a miracle.

The Corso Italia in Cortina d'Ampezzo, looking towards
 the bell tower of Santi Filippo e Giacomo Apostoli

Travel tip:

Cortina d'Ampezzo, often called simply Cortina, is a town in the southern Dolomites in the Veneto region. Situated in the valley of the Boite river, it was once known as the Queen of the Dolomites. It is a winter sport resort known for its skiing trails, scenery, accommodation, shops and après-ski scene and remains popular with celebrities and European aristocracy. In its heyday in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Sophia Loren, Clark Gable, David Niven, Ingrid Bergman, Brigitte Bardot, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and Alberto Sordi were regular visitors.  Austrian territory until 1918, it was traditionally a regional craft centre, making handmade products appreciated by early British and German holidaymakers as tourism emerged in the late 19th century. Today, the local economy thrives on tourism, particularly during the winter season, when the population of the town typically increases from about 7,000 to 40,000.  

Also on this day:

1479: The birth of Lisa del Giocondo, the subject of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa

1801: The birth of philosopher and political writer Carlo Cattaneo

1927: The birth of comic strip cartoonist Hugo Pratt

(Picture credits: Paola by Alfonso Minervino; Cortina d'Ampezzo by Tiia Monto via Wikimedia commons)

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The Balvano Disaster

Italy’s worst but little known train tragedy

One of several graphic images from the Balvano Disaster
shows the bodies of victims laid out on the station platform

The Italian railway network suffered its worst accident on this day in 1944 when more than 600 passengers died from carbon monoxide poisoning after a train stopped in a tunnel just outside the small town of Balvano, on the border of Basilicata and Campania about 90km (56 miles) east of Salerno.

Yet, despite the death toll being perhaps nine times that of the country’s worst peacetime rail disaster, few Italians were aware that it had happened until author and historian Gianluca Barneschi wrote a book about it in 2014.

Because the tragedy took place during the final stages of the Second World War, when much of southern Italy was a battleground between German and Allied forces, it resonated as a news story for only a short time, the victims essentially added to Italy’s overall count of civilian casualties during the conflict, which is put at more than 150,000.

However, there was no military involvement in the disaster, which was purely an accident, albeit one that was in part caused by the circumstances of the time.

Bodies were loaded on to trucks and taken
away to be buried in mass graves

Barneschi discovered details in classified documents at Britain’s National Archives office in Kew, London, and the story was picked up by an Italian television documentary maker.  Witnesses and survivors helped put together an account of what happened.

Although the train, which originated in Naples, consisted only of goods wagons, it was packed with civilians travelling to the countryside in search of food, with many in the heavily bombed urban areas around Naples almost at the point of starving because of shortages.

Official reports classed these passengers as stowaways, although some accounts suggest that it was so common at the time for civilians to board freight trains in large numbers that there was a black market in unofficial tickets, and that most would have paid a fare.

The train left Naples on the afternoon of 2 March. It travelled at a low speed and made frequent stops as the line followed the coastline of the Bay of Naples, a heavily populated area, passing through Ercolano, Torre del Greco and Torre Annunziata before going inland through Pompei, Nocera Inferiore and the historic town of Cava de’ Terreni, rejoining the coast near Salerno, en route to the city of Potenza in Basilicata.

Until Salerno, the train had been pulled by an electric locomotive, but at that point the electrified line ran out. This meant that the remaining 100km or so of the journey, through increasingly mountainous terrain and frequent tunnels, would have to be completed under steam power.  

Upon leaving Balvano-Ricigliano, trains go straight into a
tunnel, although the disaster occurred in another tunnel

Running coal-fired steam trains through poorly ventilated tunnels was inherently risky at the best of times and the weight of the train required two steam locomotives, producing double the volume of smoke. All was well until the train left the station at the Balvano-Ricigliano station, situated in a steep-sided gorge below Balvano, at about 12.50am on 3 March.  

Entering the Delle Armi tunnel, which is almost 2km long and has a gradient of 1.3%, the train’s wheels began to slip on rails wet from humidity and stalled.  By the time it halted, about 800km into the tunnel, all but the last two wagons were in the tunnel.

Attempting to restart the train inside the tunnel would have been hazardous in any circumstances because of the amount of smoke generated but the problems for the crew were compounded by the fact that, because of shortages, they were reliant on a low-grade coal substitute that produced less power, but more carbon monoxide.

Bodies of the victims were laid to rest in the
local cemetery of Balvano

In addition, there was no communication between the crews of the two locomotives, which meant that as the front locomotive tried to reverse, the second was still attempting to move forward. At the rear, meanwhile, the brakeman in the final wagon, fearing that the train was sliding backwards out of control, applied the brake. The result was that, as the air in the tunnel became more and more toxic and the train failed to move, the crew members lost consciousness. Most of the passengers were asleep and simply never woke up; others who had tried to escape passed out at trackside in the tunnel.

The brakeman was one of only two crew to survive. He eventually walked back the 1.8km to the station, where the alarm was finally raised at 5.10am. By the time rescuers arrived, it was too late for many of the victims to be saved.

Although the tragedy was reported in Italian newspapers it was soon overtaken by other news.  Barneschi believes that the Allies were keen that the event did not receive much attention anyway, fearful that stories of a liberated but starving local population would not reflect well on them.  The Italians, meanwhile, embarrassed that their freight trains were carrying huge numbers of illegal passengers, may have similarly been happy for the incident to be forgotten.

There was an inquiry but no authority or individual was held responsible and no prosecutions resulted.  Of the victims, only the railway employees were given proper funerals. The passengers were buried in four mass graves at the cemetery in Balvano, with no religious ceremony.

The exact death toll has never been established.  The official tally, recorded in the minutes of the inquiry, was put at 517; Barneschi’s research, however, found that when the recovered bodies were laid out on the station platform at Bavano-Ricigliano, they numbered 626.

Salerno in Campania has a pleasant waterfront yet
is often overlooked by visitors to the area

Travel tip:

Salerno, situated some 55km (34 miles) south of Naples with a population of about 133,000, is a city with a reputation as an industrial port and is often overlooked by visitors to Campania, who tend to flock to Naples, Sorrento, the Amalfi coast and the Cilento. Yet it has an attractive waterfront and a quaint old town, at the heart of which is the Duomo, originally built in the 11th century, which houses in its crypt is the tomb of one of the twelve apostles of Christ, Saint Matthew the Evangelist. It is also a good base for excursions both to the Amalfi coast, just a few kilometres to the north, and the Cilento, which can be found at the southern end of the Gulf of Salerno. Hotels are also cheaper than at the more fashionable resorts.

Some of the ancient cave-dwellings for which the
city of Matera has become famous 

Travel tip:

Although Basilicata, of which the city of Potenza is the regional capital, is not among Italy’s major tourist attractions, it has some dramatic scenery and a couple of gems in Matera and Maratea. Declared a European Capital of Culture in 2019, the city of Matera is famous for an area called the Sassi di Matera, made up of former cave-dwellings carved into an ancient river canyon. The area became associated with extreme poverty in the last century and was evacuated in 1952, lying abandoned until the 1980s, when a gradual process of regeneration began. Now, the area contains restaurants, hotels and museums and is an increasingly popular destination for visitors.  Basilicata has two coastlines, one on the Ionian Sea, in the ‘arch’, so to speak, between the heel and toe of the Italian peninsula, the other on the Tyrrhenian Sea, south of the Cilento area of Campania, which is where visitors will find Maratea, a town built on a wooded hillside presiding over around 32km (20 miles) of rocky coastline and more than 20 beaches. 

Also on this day:

1455: The birth of Borgia ally Cardinal Ascanio Sforza

1585: The inauguration of Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico

1768: The birth of composer Nicola Porpora

1882: The birth of fraudster Charles Ponzi

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The Cervi brothers - partisans

Anti-Fascists murdered by Nazi firing squad

The Cervi family - Alcide and his wife Genoeffa
had two daughters as well as seven sons

Seven brothers belonging to a single family from the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia were shot dead by a firing squad on this day in 1943 in a massacre that has since become a symbol of Italian resistance to authoritarian rule and the overthrow of Fascism.

The Fratelli Cervi - Cervi brothers - the seven sons of a militant Communist tenant farmer called Alcide Cervi, had been in prison for more than a month on suspicion of anti-Fascist activity following a raid on the family farm at Praticello di Gattatico, a village about 15km (nine miles) northwest of Reggio Emilia.

They were taken at dawn on 28 December to the city’s shooting range, where soldiers loyal to Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic lined them up against a wall and shot them dead, it is thought in reprisal for the murder of two Fascist officials.

Their father, who had been held in a different part of the St Thomas prison in Reggio Emilia, did not learn of the fate of his sons until January of the following year, after damage to the prison in an air raid allowed him to escape.

Alcide Cervi was a committed
supporter of communism

Alcide - who came to be known to Italians as Papa Cervi - was a successful tenant farmer who had helped introduce modern farming techniques, such as crop rotation, to the Po Valley.  He was the first in his area to acquire a tractor.

But he was also staunchly pro-Communist and anti-Fascist, partly as a result of being imprisoned for alleged insubordination during his military service. He instilled anti-Fascist values in his children, who grew up to fight against Mussolini’s rule.

From their modest farmhouse, they printed and distributed anti-Mussolini propaganda, while the farm became a centre for clandestine dissent against Fascism.

Alcide and his sons - Gelindo, Antenore, Aldo, Ferdinando, Augustine, Ovidio and Ettore - organised themselves as the Banda Cervi, a resistance group. This led both Gelindo and Ferdinando to be arrested on a number of occasions, suspected of anti-Fascist activity.

In July 1943, when news spread that Mussolini’s Fascist government had collapsed following the Allied invasion of southern Italy and the self-proclaimed Duce arrested, crowds poured on to the streets to celebrate and the Cervi family joined the festivities, cooking a pasta dish to serve to the local population. 

However, it was not the end of Fascism. Freed from captivity at a supposedly secret location in the mountains of Abruzzo, Mussolini had been installed as the leader of the Italian Social Republic, effectively a Nazi satellite state, in the German-occupied north of the country. 

A 1968 film about the Cervi
brothers starred Gian Maria Volontè

The Cervi brothers were forced to leave their farm and retreat to the Apennine mountains to the south of the Po Valley, where they organised partisan units to fight the Fascist army and their German backers.

Their arrest and subsequent execution followed a series of incidents in which power lines were sabotaged and police stations attacked.  They had also attempted to kidnap a Fascist official in Reggio Emilia. They were captured on 24 November, 1943, during a visit to their parents at the family home.  Fascist patrols of the National Republican Guard (Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, or GNR), a paramilitary force of the Italian Social Republic, swooped on the farm and though a gunfight ensued, the brothers eventually ran out of ammunition and had to surrender.

After Italy was finally liberated from Nazi rule in 1945, the Cervi brothers’ story became part of the nation’s legacy of anti-Fascism. The family farmhouse at Campirossi, to the southeast of Praticello, has been turned into a museum incorporating the Alcide Cervi Institute, which promotes democratic values.  Politicians have regularly visited the farmhouse to pay homage to the family.

The Cervi brothers’ story has been immortalised in books, poetry, songs and films, including the 1968 movie I sette fratelli Cervi, directed by Gianni Puccini and starring the celebrated Italian actor Gian Maria Volontè in the role of Aldo Cervi.  Many Italian towns have a street named Via Cervi in their honour.

Adelmo Cervi is a leading voice
against fascism in modern Italy

All seven brothers were posthumously awarded the Silver Medal for Military Valor by the Italian state.  When Alcide died in 1970, an estimated 200,000 people packed the streets for his funeral in Reggio Emilia.

Today, the family’s name is recalled each July when Italy’s National Association of Partisans and other anti-fascist groups stage a pasta dinner in honour of the meal the Cervi brothers served to local people in 1943.

Meanwhile, Adelmo Cervi - Alcide’s grandson, the son of Aldo Cervi and a baby of only four months at the time of the massacre - had become a writer and prominent campaigner against the rise of far-right political groups in Italy, regularly addressing crowds at political rallies. He has been an outspoken opponent in particular of the Lega Nord leader Matteo Salvini.

The Basilica di San Prospero is one of the 
attractions of Reggio Emilia

Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia, a city in the Po Valley 28km (17 miles) southeast of Parma and 32km (20 miles) northwest of Modena, is believed to have given Italy its tricolore national flag. There are historical records that suggest that a short-lived 18th century republic, the Repubblica Cispadana, had a flag of red, white and green that was decreed in Reggio Emilia in 1797.  The city today lacks the cultural wealth of neighbouring Parma and is consequently less visited but it has an attractive historic centre with a number of notable buildings, including the Basilica della Ghiara and the 10th century Basilica di San Prospero, which overlooks the elegant Piazza of the same name.  Italy's world famous hard cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano - known in English as Parmesan - is thought to have originated in nearby Bibbiano, about 15km (9 miles) to the southeast.

The Via Aemilia is a Roman road linking
Piacenza with Rimini

Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia is one of a string of important northern Italian cities connected by the ancient Roman road Via Aemilia, a 260km (162 miles) highway linking modern Piacenza (Piacentia) in the province of Emilia-Romagna with Rimini (Ariminum) on the Adriatic coast, which was completed in 187BC. While the road was being constructed, Roman colonies formed along its route at Bononia (Bologna), Mutina (Modena), Regium (Reggio Emilia) and Parma.  The Via Aemilia was named after the Roman consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Other towns and cities along the route, which runs along the southern edge of the Pianura Padana (the Po Plain) within sights of the northern foothills of the Apennine mountains, include Forlì, Faenza, Imola and Cesena. 

More reading:

Nazis free captive Mussolini

Mussolini's last stand: Deposed dictator proclaims Republic of Salò

Tina Anselmi: the former partisan who became Italy’s first female cabinet minister

Also on this day: 

1503: The death of Piero the Unfortunate, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent

1850: The birth of tenor Francesco Tamagno

1908: The Messina earthquake

1943: The Battle of Ortona

1947: The death of King Victor Emmanuel III

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Liliana Segre - Holocaust survivor

Schoolgirl who was spared after family killed

Liliana Segre did not begin to share
her memories until in her 60s

Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre, who was one of only a small number of Italian children to return home after being deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War, was born on this day in 1930 in Milan.

Now a life member of the Italian Senate, Segre was shipped to the notorious camp in Nazi-occupied Poland when she was 13 years old, one of 776 Italians aged 14 and under to be sent to Auschwitz. Only 35 survived.

Forced to work in a munitions factory, she was twice moved to other camps during her time as a prisoner before being freed in May 1945, shortly after the Nazis surrendered to the Allies.

Born in to a successful Jewish family involved in the textile and leather goods industry, Liliana grew up in an apartment in Corso Magenta in the centre of Milan, not far from the Castello Sforzesco, to which her father, Alberto, had moved with his parents following the death of her mother, Lucia, from cancer when Liliana was still a baby.

She was unaware of being Jewish until the Fascist government introduced racial segregation laws in 1938, at which point she was expelled from her primary school.  

Liliana as a child with her father, Alberto,
at home in Milan in the 1930s

As the persecution of Jews intensified, the family home and other assets were confiscated. Liliana’s father hid his daughter with friends until, in 1943, the family attempted to flee to Switzerland. However, she and her father were arrested near the Swiss border and imprisoned, at first near Varese and later in Milan.

In January 1944, she and her father were taken to Milano Centrale railway station and taken to the underground platform - platform 21 - normally used by mail trains and herded into cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz. On arrival at the camp seven days later, Segre was immediately separated from her father, whom she never saw again. Records show that he was killed in April of that year. 

The following month, her paternal grandparents, who had found refuge in the town of Inverigo, north of Milan, were arrested and similarly deported to Auschwitz, where they also died soon after arrival.

Segre lost four other family members who were deported by the Fascist government from Italy yet herself survived, having been moved to two different camps in northern Germany before she was liberated.

After the war, she lived with her maternal grandparents, who had escaped capture by hiding in a convent in Rome, in the Marche region before being adopted by her father’s brother, Amedeo, who began another textile business that eventually became successful.

One of the last family pictures of
Liliana before she was deported in 1943

Segre became involved with the business but after marrying another Holocaust survivor, the lawyer Alfredo Belli Paci, in 1948, lived a quiet life. They raised three children, who in turn gave them three grandchildren. Her daughter, Federica, became the fourth generation of the family to play a role in the business.

She recalled her experiences only privately until the early 1990s, when she decided the time was right to begin to share her memories with wider audiences, at first addressing schools and universities, later larger conferences.

She has collaborated with many books, films and TV documentaries and her contribution to Italy’s understanding of what happened to her among an estimated 7,600 Italian Jews who died at Auschwitz and associated camps was recognised on 19 January 2018, the 80th anniversary of the Italian Racial Laws, when the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, appointed her as a Senator for Life.

Liliana Segre is the fourth woman to hold such a position, after Camilla Ravera, Rita Levi-Montalcini and Elena Cattaneo.  In her role, she has been instrumental in setting up a parliamentary commission on racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred and violence. 

Regrettably, after receiving numerous threats to her personal safety, she had to be assigned a bodyguard in 2019 but has continued to have a high public profile. Earlier this year, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 29 January, she spoke before the European Parliament, where she was given an ovation by the full assembly.

The Castello Sforzesco is
one of Milan's major sights

Travel tip:

The Castello Sforzesco, which is close to where Liliana Segre grew up and where she lives now, is one of the main sights for visitors to Milan, situated to the northwest of the city centre, with the Parco Sempione behind it. Francesco Sforza built it on the site of the Castello di Porta Giovia, which had been the main residence in the city of the Visconti family, from which Francesco was descended. The Viscontis ruled Milan for 170 years. Renovated and enlarged a number of times in subsequent centuries, it became one of the largest citadels in Europe and now houses several museums and art collections.

Milan's Naviglio Grande is lined with bars
and restaurants that make it popular at night

Travel tip:

The textile factory in which Liliana’s grandfather, Giuseppe, worked as a young man in the late 1890s was in the Navigli district, an area to the southwest of central Milan that originally consisted of five canals used for commercial transport in the city that date back to the Middle Ages. Their importance declined in the last century and only two - Naviglio Grande and Naviglio Pavese - still exist.  Once a poor neighbourhood, the Navigli is now very popular for the restaurants and bars that line the two waterways and is often thronged with young Milanese in the evenings.

Also on this day:

1887: The birth of Giovanni Gronchi, Italy’s third president

1890: The birth of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli 

1960: At the Rome Olympics, Abebe Bikila becomes the first sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal

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Cesare Bianchi - head chef

From shores of Lake Como to London’s Café Royal

The Art Deco memorial in Hampstead Cemetery,
built by Bianchi for his widow, Martha

Cesare Bianchi, who rose from humble beginnings to become head chef at London’s prestigious Café Royal in the 1930s, was born on this day in 1897 in Cernobbio, a village on Lake Como in northern Italy.

He moved to England when he was only 16, hoping to build a career in catering and soon found work doing odd jobs in a London kitchen. However, he had been in the city barely a year when the outbreak of the First World War meant he had to return to his homeland for national service.  In his case, it was with the Alpini, Italy’s mountain brigades, with whom he was an interpreter.

Eager to resume his career in England, once the war was over Cesare took a job at the Palace Hotel in Aberdeen.  It was there he met Martha Gall, the woman who would become his wife.

They were married in 1921 and Martha soon gave birth to their daughter, Patricia.  Ambitious, Cesare persuaded his wife to leave Scotland behind so that he could make another attempt to establish himself in London.

His culinary talents took him a long way as he worked his way up from modest beginnings to land a place in the kitchen at the Café Royal in Regent Street, which at the turn of the century had become one of the capital’s most fashionable restaurants, the place to be seen for society figures.

The Café Royal had a heady reputation but Bianchi was quite at home, soon winning many compliments for his culinary skills.  Ultimately, he was promoted to head chef. He and Martha and their daughter set up home in Hampstead, in Lawn Road.

Cesare Bianchi's position counted for
nothing when he was declared an alien

However, his life was turned upside down in 1936 when Martha died giving birth to their second child.  The baby, a boy given the name Robert, survived.  Martha was buried in Hampstead Cemetery, where Bianchi commissioned an enormous monument, an Art Deco extravagance topped with a Futurist angel, arms outstretched, between two columns and standing on a plinth bearing the name of Bianchi.

The grave, which now has Grade II listed status, is set in a triangular plot. Either side of the angel are two reliefs, one showing Cesare with Martha, who is cradling the baby she never lived to see, sitting on a park bench.  He had hoped one day that he would be buried alongside her.

Martha’s sister, Mary, helped Cesare bring up his children and he was able to return to work in Regent Street.

When peace in Europe was shattered again in 1939, Bianchi’s life took another unwelcome turn.  Although he had been resident in England for much of his adult life and had fought on the side of the Allies when Italy opposed the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) in World War I, Bianchi found himself classed as an alien in World War II after Italy entered an alliance with Germany.

His status in London counted for nothing. He, along with many other Italians and Germans, were taken to Liverpool, set to board the Arandora Star, a ship that would take them to internment in Newfoundland in Canada.

Smithfield Market, where Bianchi worked, was
destroyed by a German V2 flying bomb

The boat set sail on 2 July, 1940 with 1,300 prisoners on board but had barely hit the open sea of the Atlantic beyond Ireland when it was spotted by a German U-boat.  The enemy submarine was on its way back to base to reload its weapons batteries but had one torpedo left, which its commander  fired at the Arandora Star.

The device hit the side of the Arandora Star. The resulting explosion killed everyone in the ship’s engine room and caused the ship to start sinking rapidly. Bianchi was one of more than 700 Italian prisoners being contained in cramped dormitories - along with almost 600 Germans. Two thirds of the Italians drowned but Bianchi somehow survived and was picked up by a rescue ship.

He was still interned as planned but instead of Canada - or Australia, where others were shipped - was taken to a camp much closer to home on the Isle of Man, where he would remain until the end of 1942. At that point it was considered safe for him to return to London, even though it was not until the autumn of the following year that Italy signed an armistice with the Allies and itself declared war on Germany.

Bianchi rejoined Mary Gall and his children in Hampstead and found a new job in Smithfield Market, with which he hoped to rebuild his career.

The winged angel that sits above the grave of
Martha Gall-Bianchi in Hampstead Cemetery

After his ordeal on the Arandora Star, he might have hoped that the war would hold no more drama for him but, tragically, that was not the case.

On 8 March, 1945, in one of the last attacks that Germany would launch against Britain, Smithfield Market was struck by a V2, one of the second generation of flying bombs used by the Nazis and the forerunner of the inter-continental ballistic missile.

The explosion caused by the rocket destroyed the market and killed 110 people who were inside at the time, including both Cesare Bianchi and Mary Gall, whose presence there may have been because she was one of a large number of women shopping on that day.

In the circumstances, it was not possible for Bianchi to be buried alongside Martha. Along with the other victims of the bomb, he was laid to rest at the London Cemetery in Manor Park in the borough of Newham in the east of the city.

The Villa d'Este on the shores of Lake Como near
Cernobbio, where Cesare Bianchi was born

Travel tip:

Bianchi’s hometown of Cernobbio is notable for the Villa d’Este, the vast complex built as a 16th century summer residence for the Cardinal of Como, and one of many fine villas fronting the water. The town once attracted large crowds hoping to catch a sight of movie star George Clooney, who had a house at nearby Laglio and would occasionally be spotted at a cafe in Cernobbio. Scenes from the movie Ocean’s 12, in which Clooney starred, were filmed locally. The town generally has more locals than tourists. On summer evenings and weekends when the main piazza is full of families and couples.

The 15th century facade of the Duomo
in the centre of the lakeside town of Como

Travel tip:

Cernobbio is just a few kilometres from Como, the town at the southern tip of the eastern branch of Lake Como. It is a pleasant town with an impressive cathedral in the historical centre, the construction of which spanned almost 350 years, which is why it combines features from different architectural areas, including Gothic and Renaissance. The façade was built in 1457, its characteristic rose window and a portal flanked by Renaissance statues of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, both of whom were from Como. This Duomo replaced the earlier 10th-century cathedral, San Fedele.

Also on this day:

1912: The birth of singer-songwriter and actor Renato Rascel

1937: The death of Communist leader Antonio Gramsci

1942: The birth of disgraced entrepreneur Vittorio Cecchi Gori

2014: Popes John XXIII and John Paul II made saints


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Battle of Ortona

Adriatic port liberated by Canadians at huge cost

The Battle of Ortona was characterised by close-quarter
fighting among the ruins of destroyed buildings

Canadian troops fighting with the Allies liberated the Adriatic port of Ortona from the Germans on this day in 1943 after one of the bloodiest battles of the Italian Campaign.

The Battle of Ortona and other confrontations close to the nearby Moro river, which encompassed the whole Christmas period, claimed almost 2,400 lives.  It was characterised by brutal close-quarters fighting and is sometimes known as “the Italian Stalingrad”, partly because of the high number of casualties but also because of the backcloth of destroyed buildings and rubble.

Although the battalions of German paratroopers holding the strategic port were defeated, casualties on the Canadian side were greater, with 1,375 soldiers from the Canadian 1st Infantry Division killed and 964 wounded, against 867 Germans killed.  In addition, more than 1,300 civilians died.

The Canadian deaths amounted to more than a quarter of their entire losses in the whole of the Italian Campaign, which spanned 22 months as Allied forces fought their way up the peninsula.

Ortona, in the Abruzzo region, had some strategic importance as one of the few usable deep water ports on the Adriatic coast and its capture would enable the Allies to dock supply ships as they sought to detain Adolf Hitler’s forces in a long campaign while preparations were under way for the D-Day invasion of the following year.

Fighting among the rubble
lasted for eight days

From the German point of view the town was a key position in the Gustav Line, part of a network of defensive lines stretching coast to coast across the peninsula, designed to halt Allied progress.

When the initial attack on the town took place near the Moro river south of Ortona on December 20, Allied commanders under Major General Chris Vokes are said to have expected it to be a relatively minor battle.

But Hitler had ordered his troops to defend Ortona with their lives and they prepared by blocking all but the main street of the town with piles of rubble, among which they set booby traps and placed machine-gun and anti-tank emplacements in concealed positions.   It meant that progress for the invading infantry and armoured vehicles was extremely difficult.

As a response, the Canadians deployed a tactic that became known as “mouse-holing”, by which they advanced through entire blocks of buildings by blowing holes in external and internal walls, clearing their path with machine gun fire and grenades.

Although the tactic sometimes resulted in heavy Canadian casualties, it worked inasmuch as they were able to drive the enemy back through the town without exposing themselves to ambush on the open streets.

Soldiers enjoyed a Christmas dinner in the courtyard
of the ruined church of Santa Maria di Constantinopoli

Christmas celebrations still took place even amid the carnage of battle.  On December 25, groups of soldiers from the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada apparently took turns to go the bombed-out church at Santa Maria di Constantinopoli, several blocks away from the fighting, for Christmas dinner. Thanks to their own supplies and the help of local people, they were somehow able to feast on roast pork, apple sauce, cauliflower, mashed potatoes and gravy, washed down with wine and beer, followed by chocolate, oranges, nuts, and cigarettes, as an organist played Silent Night.

For some, it would be a last meal.  The following day, in particular, would be a bloody one, with 22 Canadians killed in one incident when a German booby trap caused a building to collapse, although the Canadians responded by killing around 50 Germans in a near-identical revenge attack.

On the evening of December 27, aware that the Allied forces on the ground were to be joined by airborne support the day after, the German commanders were ordered to save their remaining troops and withdraw.  The Canadian soldiers claimed control of the town the following morning.

Although the operation was a success, as part of a month that would be remembered as "Bloody December" by Canadian forces it has been judged in history as a victory achieved at a heavy cost. Some historians minimise the significance of the battle because it could not be said to have been a major factor in winning the war.

The Price of Peace memorial in the Piazza
Plebiscito in the centre of Ortona

In 1999, a monument entitled The Price of Peace was unveiled in Piazza Plebiscito in Ortona. The memorial had been commissioned by a group of Canadian Veterans following a reunion in the town in 1998. It was designed by the Canadian artist Rob Surette.

In November 2000, the Canadian government erected a plaque in the same location in recognition of the battle as a National Historic Event of Canada that "symbolised the efforts of the Canadian Army in the Italian Campaign during World War II" and praised the “extraordinary courage” of the soldiers who took part.

The restored Castello Aragonese is one of the main
sights in the Adriatic port of Ortona

Travel tip:

Ortona, which can be found about 22km (14 miles) south of Pescara along the Adriatic coast and about 26km (16 miles) east of the provincial capital Chieti, is dominated by a huge 15th century Aragonese castle, a legacy of another major battle when Ortona came under heavy attack by the Venetian navy in 1447. The castle has been renovated and visitors can reach it by walking along the Passegiatta Orientale, which looks out over the coastline. Ortona’s Cathedral of Saint Thomas contains remains of Saint Thomas the Apostle, which were brought to Ortona by sea in the 13th century more than 1,200 years after his death in India.  The town also has a museum dedicated to the 1943 battle.

The Moro River Canadian War Cemetery contains the graves
of 1,615 soldiers, mainly killed in the Battle of Ortona

Travel tip:

The Moro River Canadian War Cemetery can be found at San Donato, about 5km (3 miles) south of Ortona.  The site was selected by the Canadian corps of the Allied forces in January 1944, in the weeks following the bloody Battle of Ortona, intending that it would contain the graves of those who died during the Ortona battle and in the fighting in the vicinity in the weeks before and after. Of the 1,615 graves in the cemetery, more than 50 are unidentified.

Also on this day:

1503: The death of Medici ruler Piero the Unfortunate

1850: The birth of operatic tenor Francesco Tamagno

1908: Messina and Reggio Calabria hit by Italy's worst earthquake

1947: The death of King Victor Emmanuel III


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Filippo Illuminato - partisan

Teenager who gave his life for his city

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travel tip:

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

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

Travel tip:

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


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