Norberto Bobbio - political philosopher

Intellectual regarded as foremost 20th century commentator

Norberto Bobbio was a university professor
and a forthright political commentator

Norberto Bobbio, a philosopher of law and political sciences who came to be seen as one of Italy’s most respected political commentators in the 20th century, died on this day in 2004 in Turin, the city of his birth.

He was 94 and had been in hospital suffering from respiratory problems. His funeral was attended by political and cultural leaders including the then-president of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.  He had been writing essays well into his 90s, despite for much of his life suffering from bouts of what was described as “fatigue and melancholy”.

His extensive catalogue of work spanned almost seven decades of Italian political life and societal change from the rise of Fascism in the 1930s to the second premiership of Silvio Berlusconi, of whom he was an outspoken critic.

For much of his career, Bobbio was a professor at the University of Turin, where he was chair of philosophy of law from 1948 and, from 1972, of the faculties of legal and political philosophy and political science.

He was made a Life Senator in 1984, although he stayed away from playing an active role in Italian politics after failing to gain election to the parliament of the new Republic in 1946, standing on a liberal-socialist ticket.  Later he confessed that he was much relieved when a move to make him President in the 1990s did not succeed.

Bobbio was part of a famous group of Turin
intellectuals who opposed Fascism in the 1930s

Many of his books and collections of essays are regarded as seminal works, but among them The Future of Democracy: A Defence Of The Rules Of The Game (1984), State, Government and Society (1985), The Age of Rights (1990) and Right and Left (1994) are considered to have particular importance.

Right and Left was an analysis of left-right political distinctions, in which he argued that the incompatibility of the two poles boiled down to the Left's belief in attempting to eradicate social inequality, set against the Right regarding most social inequality to be the result of inherent natural inequalities, and seeing attempts to enforce social equality as utopian or authoritarian.

Bobbio was born into a middle-class Turin family, the son of a doctor  whose attitude to Fascism was that, set against Bolshevism, which was gathering pace in Italy at the time, it was the lesser of two evils.

His own political thinking was influenced by the group of friends he made at the Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio in Turin, where he became part of the intellectual movement that included the novelists Cesare Pavese and Carlo Levi, his future publisher Giulio Einaudi, the critic Leone Ginsburg and the radical politician Vittorio Foa. 

Bobbio argued in favour of the 'historic compromise' between
the Communists and the Christian Democrats in the 1970s

They were all involved with the anti-Fascist magazine Riforma Sociale - Social Reform - published by Einaudi’s father, Luigi, a future President of Italy - that Mussolini had closed down and spent several weeks in jail as a result.

He was imprisoned again in 1943, this time by the Germans, after the illegal political party of which he was a member, the Partito d’Azione - the Action Party - became involved in resistance activity. Arrested in Padua, he was released after three months.

The party - for a while the main non-Communist opposition group - lacked popular support, however, and Bobbio failed in his bid for election to the assembly of the new Republic in 1946, after which he devoted himself to his academic life, taking positions at various universities teaching the philosophy of law.

Throughout his intellectual life, he was a strong advocate of the rule of law, and although by nature a socialist, he was opposed to what he perceived as the anti-democratic, authoritarian elements in most of Marxism. He was a strong supporter of the so-called 'historic compromise' - the proposed coalition of the Italian Communist Party and the Christian Democrats in the strife-torn 1970s - and a fierce critic of Silvio Berlusconi, whom he accused of presiding over a moribund political system that lacked idealism and hope.

Turin is famous for its beautiful royal palaces

Travel tip:

Turin was once the capital of Italy. It has a wealth of elegant streets and beautiful architecture, yet over the years has tended to be promoted less as a tourist attraction than cities such as Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice, possibly because of its long association with the Savoy family and subsequently the Italian royal family, who were expelled from Italy in disgrace when Italy became a republic at the end of the Second World War, their long-term unpopularity with some sections of Italian society compounded by their collaboration with Mussolini’s Fascists. Yet there is much to like about a stay in Turin. Aside from the splendour of the royal palaces, it has an historic café culture, 12 miles of arcaded streets and some of the finest restaurants in northern Italy.

Rivalta di Torino, looking towards the castle

Travel tip:

Norberto Bobbio was laid to rest at the cemetery in Rivalta di Torino, a small town in Piedmont, located about 14km (9 miles) southwest of Turin in the Sangone valley.  It is home to a medieval castle, which formed the heart of what was then a village in the 11th century. The castle and the village were owned by the Orsini family - long-standing Italian nobility dating back to medieval times - until 1823. In 1836, the French writer Honoré de Balzac was guest at the castle of its new owner, Count Cesare Benevello, as is recorded in an inscription on the wall.


More reading:

How Cesare Pavese introduced Italian readers to the great American novelists

Why the murder of Aldo Moro ended hopes for a 'historic compromise'

Giulio Einaudi - the publisher who defied Mussolini

Also on this day:

1878: The death of King Victor Emmanuel II

1878: Umberto I succeeds Victor Emmanuel II

1944: The birth of architect Massimiliano Fuksas


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Mara Carfagna - politician

Former glamour model now important voice in Italian parliament

Mara Carfagna has defied detractors to
become a powerful politician

The politician Mara Carfagna, a one-time glamour model and TV hostess who is now vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian parliament, was born on this day in 1975 in Salerno.

Originally named Maria Rosaria Carfagna, she left high school to study dance at the school of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, obtaining a diploma before going on to study acting and the piano.

In 1997 she won a beauty contest as Miss 1997 and participated in the finals of Miss Italia. She had her first experience in television as one of the co-presenters during the 1997-98 season of the Rai variety show, Domenica In, with Fabrizio Frizzi.

Carfagna found herself in demand as a model and posed for some magazine and calendar shoots, but at the same time was studying law at the University of Salerno, graduating with honours in 2001.

More television work came her ways as a glamourous co-presenter of the Mediaset show La domenica del villaggio alongside Davide Mengacci, moving on to present another entertainment show Piazza grande together with Giancarlo Magalli.

Former premier Silvio Berlusconi
made Mara Carfagna a minister

At the same time she was developing a career in politics. She began to take an interest in women’s rights issues and in 2004 joined Forza Italia, the party led by the then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

In 2006 she was nominated as a candidate in Campania and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. She soon attracted the attention of Berlusconi, who was also owner of the Mediaset TV channels for which she worked, who made a tongue-in-cheek but demeaning suggestion that his party should practise the ancient law of primae noctis, which allowed feudal lords to select any female subject of his choice for his sexual gratification.

Carfagna ignored the comment and gained a reputation as a hard-working parliamentarian.  Berlusconi lost his position as prime minister at the 2006 election but won it back two years later.

When the controversial leader named Carfagna in his new cabinet as Minister for Equal Opportunity, she attracted a new wave of publicity.

The magazine Maxim, for whom she had appeared as a cover model, ran some of her pictures again, ranking her at No 1 in a feature entitled “World’s hottest politicians.”

Carfagna (right) greets former president Giorgio Napolitano
on the occasion of International Women's Day in 2009

It was also recalled that a year before winning back power, Berlusconi had said of Carfagna: "If I was not already married I would have married her immediately".  The comment led Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, to demand an apology, although Carfagna dismissed it as "gallant and harmless."

As a minister, she has been an outspoken campaigner in a number of areas, from the level of crime in her home city of Salerno to the management of waste disposal in Campania, as well as prostitution, homophobia and violence against women.

In 2008, a few months after taking office, she attracted some ironic comments from political writers and opposition politicians when she proposed a law making street prostitution a crime, with fines for both clients and prostitutes, over and above existing laws forbidding the exploitation of prostitutes by pimps. The bill was her first major initiative as a minister.

Carfagna has clashed with Italy's controversial
deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini

Her remarks condemning “women who sell their bodies for money” was seized upon in particular by the Italian Committee for the Rights of Prostitutes, who claimed to represent an estimated 70,000 prostitutes working in the country.  But Catholic charities praised her.

In 2009 she became the first political promoter of the law against stalking, later included in the penal code thanks to the Maroni decree.

Also in 2009 she launched the first campaign against homophobia and against violence based on sexual orientation to be carried out by an Italian government.

Carfagna has continued to build her reputation as a politician determined to bring about change and in March this year was elected vice president of the Chamber of Deputies as a reflection of the respect she has gained.  Recently, she has been an outspoken critic of Italy's controversial current deputy prime minister, the Lega politician Matteo Salvini.

Via Botteghelle, typical of the narrow streets
to be found in Salerno's historic old town

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.

Hotels in Salerno by TripAdvisor

Amalfi occupies a spectacularly beautiful setting on the
Campania coast between Naples and Salerno

Travel tip:

Amalfi, just 25km (16 miles) along the coast from Salerno, occupies a dramatic natural setting at the foot of steep cliffs along the stretch of spectacular Campania coastline that takes its name from the town and is one of Italy’s best-known tourist attractions. The town itself attracts huge numbers of visitors each year.  Its ninth-century Duomo dominates the town's central piazza, sitting at the top of a wide flight of steps. The cloister (Chiostro del Paradiso) and museum close by house sculptures, mosaics and other relics.  Radiating away from the cathedral, narrow streets offer many souvenir shops and cafes for visitors.  Amalfi is accessible by bus from Sorrento and Salerno and there are boat services that run along the coast.

More reading:

Silvio Berlusconi - the entrepreneur who became Italy's most controversial prime minister

How Irene Pavetti swapped political office for television

The political campaigner Emma Bonino

Also on this day:

1737: The death of violin maker Antonio Stradivari

1957: The death of entrepreneur Camillo Castiglioni

1966: The birth of record-breaking goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca


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Pino Rauti – politician and journalist

Writer chronicled the story of Fascism in Italy

Pino Rauti was a prominent figure in
far-right Italian politics for 64 years

Pino Rauti, leader of the neo-fascist Social Idea Movement, was born Giuseppe Umberto Rauti on this day in 1926 in Cardinale in Calabria.

Rauti was to become a leading figure on the far right of Italian politics from 1948 until his death in 2012.

As a young man he had volunteered for the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana of Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic and he then went on to join the Spanish Foreign Legion.

After his return to Italy, Rauti joined the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). He became associated with Julius Evola, a leading fascist philosopher, and became editor of his journal, Imperium.

Rauti joined the staff of the Rome-based daily Il Tempo in 1953 and later became the Italian correspondent for the Aginter Press, a fake press agency set up in Portugal in 1966 to combat communism.

In 1954 he established his own group within MSI, the Ordine Nuovo, but he became disillusioned with MSI and his group separated from the party two years later.

Rauti worked as a journalist on the
Rome newspaper Il Tempo

Rauti’s name was linked with a number of terror attacks, including the Piazza Fontana bombing. He was brought to trial in 1972 over this atrocity at a Milan bank, which caused 17 deaths, but he was acquitted through lack of evidence.

There were other claims linking him with terrorist activities but he was never convicted of any offences.

Rauti returned to MSI and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1972. In the 1980s, he became a leading figure in the European Parliament.

He went up against Gianfranco Fini for leadership of MSI in 1987 but Fini’s more moderate policies won him the biggest share of the vote.  In 1990, he did replace Fini as leader, but the party’s performance in the next regional elections was the worst in its history and he was removed from the leadership in 1991, with Fini taking charge again.

When Fini founded the Alleanza Nazionale in place of MSI, Rauti led a group of militants to form the Fiamma Tricolore, which he saw as continuing the path of Fascism.

Pino Rauti with Gianfranco Fini (left), whom he replaced as
leader of the MSI party in 1990

Rauti stood down as leader in 2002 in favour of Luca Romagnoli, who then sought to work with Silvio Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms coalition. Rauti became a strong critic of Romagnoli and was eventually expelled from the party he had founded.  It was then that he established his own party, the Social Idea Movement.

Between 1966 and 1990, Rauti wrote a number of books about the history of Fascism and the policies of Mussolini.

Rauti died in Rome in November 2012, aged 85.

His daughter, Isabella, who also became a journalist, is now a member of Fratelli Italia, a conservative nationalist party formed by former members of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party. She was elected as Senator for Mantua earlier this year. She is the ex-wife of a former Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno.

A view over the rooftops of Cardinale in Calabria

Travel tip:

Cardinale in Calabria, where Pino Rauti was born, is a comune in the province of Catanzaro, the capital city of the region. Cardinale was proved to be a Neolithic site in the 19th century, when work was being carried out to reinforce an old iron bridge and axes made from stone were found, establishing the presence of man there as far back as the stone age. These axes can now be seen in the Archaeological Museum in Crotone.

The Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome, seat
of the Chamber of Deputies

Travel tip:

The Camera dei Deputati - the Chamber of Deputies -  is one of Italy’s houses of parliament, the other being the Senate of the Republic. The Camera dei Deputati meets at Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome, a palace originally designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and completed by Carlo Fontana in 1697, which is to the north of the Pantheon.

More reading:

How Giorgio Almirante tried to make MSI acceptable in mainstream Italian politics

Fini's move away from Fascism

The Piazza Fontana bombing

Also on this day:

1877: The birth of Giuseppe Volpi, founder of the Venice Film Festival

1893: The birth of Giuseppe Curreri, better known as the boxer Johnny Dundee

1907: The birth of Luigi Beccali, winner of Italy's first track gold at the Olympics


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Marina Berlusconi - businesswoman

Tycoon’s daughter who heads two of his companies

Marina Berlusconi has been president of her
father's Fininvest company since 2005

Marina Berlusconi, the oldest of business tycoon and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s five children, was born on this day in 1966 in Milan.

Since 2003 she has been chair of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Italy’s largest publishing company, and since 2005 president of Fininvest, the Berlusconi holding company that is also Mondadori’s parent company.

She is or at times has been a director of several other Berlusconi companies, including Mediaset, Medusa Film, Mediolanum and Mediobanca.  Forbes magazine once described her as the most powerful woman in Italy and one of the 50 most powerful women in the world.

Born Maria Elvira Berlusconi, her mother is Carla Elvira Lucia Dall’Oglio, a woman the businessman met for the first time at a tram stop outside Milan Centrale railway station in 1964 and married the following year, at a time when he was an enterprising but relatively obscure real estate broker.

They were divorced in 1985, much to the disappointment of Marina and her brother, Piersilvio, after their father had begun a relationship with the actress Veronica Lario, who would become his second wife and the mother of his third, fourth and fifth children.

Marina Berlusconi has acquired the reputation
of a hard-nosed businesswoman

After Silvio Berlusconi had made his fortune from Milano Due, a vast residential area built on cheaply-acquired redundant farmland near the city’s Linate airport, Marina was brought up in the family’s palatial 18th century home, the Villa San Martino, in the town of Arcore, about 25km (16 miles) northeast of Milan.

Educated at Leo Dehon high school in Monza, where she obtained her baccalaureate, Marina began studying law and then political science at university but left without completing her degree and instead began to work in her father’s companies.

She was appointed a vice-president of Fininvest at the age of 29 and was said to be closely involved in the development of financial and economic strategies and in the management of the group. At a time when female figures in Italian boardrooms were rare, she began to gain a reputation as a hard-nosed businesswoman not afraid to back her own instincts.

In 1998, working with her brother Piersilvio, she resisted an attempt by Rupert Murdoch to buy a controlling interest in her father’s TV company Mediaset, the Australian-born media tycoon dropping out after failing to negotiate a reduction in the price she felt the company was worth, when it was thought her father might soften.

In October 2005, she was appointed Fininvest president and chair, having already been given control of Arnoldo Mondadori publishing house following the death of Leonardo Mondadori, the grandson of the company’s founder.

Berlusconi addressing a shareholders'
meeting at Mondadori

According to Forbes, in 2008 she was the ninth richest heiress in the world, in line to inherit a fortune of 9.4 billion dollars.

In the same year, she married her long-time partner, the former first dancer at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, Maurizio Vanadia. They already had two children, Gabriele and Silvio, born respectively in 2002 and 2004.

Marina had been taken with Maurizio after watching him perform in Swan Lake and they met again when he was being treated for an injury by the physiotherapist at her father’s football club, AC Milan.

They were married in a small ceremony in a private chapel within the grounds of the family home at Villa San Martino.

Since 2013, when her father, who has been prime minister of four Italian governments, was barred from public office, there have been several periods of speculation that Marina would move into politics, taking control of her father’s Forza Italia party.

However, she has always denied that she has any political ambitions, despite describing her father as the victim of a witchhunt. In 2017 she said: "I think that the leadership in politics can not be transmitted by investiture or by dynastic succession".

In 2009 the Mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti - a former Berlusconi minister -  awarded her the Gold Medal of the Municipality of Milan as "an example of Milanese excellence in the world and the ability to reconcile professional commitment and family life"

An 18th century painting of the Villa Borromeo-d'Adda

Travel tip:

The town of Arcore in the province of Monza and Brianza probably has Roman origins and two monasteries were established in the area in the Middle Ages. It was not until the 16th century that the town began to develop, when several noble Lombard families, such as the Casati, Durini, Giulini, Vismara, D'Adda, Barbò families, began building villas in the area’s attractive countryside, including the Villa Borromeo-d'Adda, the Villa la Cazzola and the Villa San Martino, which became the Berlusconi family residence. The town’s industrial base developed after Italian unification in 1861 when two railway companies opened stations.

Silvio Berlusconi's palatial home at Arcore, the Villa San
Martino, which he bought in 1974

Travel tip:

The Villa San Martino, on the site of a former Benedictine monastery, was restored as a manor house by the Counts Giulini and substantially rebuilt by the wealthy Casati Stampa family in the 18th century, one of a group of grand farm houses or hunting lodges known as the ville delizie.  It was acquired by Silvio Berlusconi in 1974 when the last Casati owner, having fallen on hard times, decided to sell up and emigrate to Brazil. The 3,500m² villa, complete with art gallery, a library of ten thousand volumes, furniture and a park with stables, was valued at 1.7 billion lire but was reportedly bought by Berlusconi for only 500m lire.

More reading:

The rise of Silvio Berlusconi in business and politics

How Letizia Moratti became the first woman to be head of Rai

The day Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi left office for the last time

Also on this day:

1535: The death of Ippolito de' Medici

2012: The death of Carlo Rambaldi, creator of E.T.

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Luigi de Magistris - politician

Popular and progressive Mayor of Naples

Luigi de Magistris has been Mayor
of Naples since 2011

Luigi de Magistris, who was Mayor of Naples for 10 years following a shock win in the 2011 local elections, was born on this day in 1967.

A former public prosecutor with a reputation for standing up against corruption and organised crime, De Magistris was the Member of the European Parliament for Southern Italy between 2009 and 2011, when he ran for Italy of Values, the centre-left party founded by another former magistrate, Antonio di Pietro.

He stood in the 2011 mayoral elections in Naples with the support of minor parties on the left and the right and won in the second round of voting with 65 per cent of the vote, defeating Gianni Lettieri, the candidate for a centre right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party.

In office, De Magistris faced difficult times because of the city’s precarious financial situation, which at times saw local transport suspended because fuel bills were not paid and rubbish piling up in the streets because of continuing problems with the disposal of domestic refuse that had reached a peak in 2008.

A strong advocate of public ownership of essential services and the managing of natural and cultural resources for collective benefit rather than profit, De Magistris claims year-on-year improvements in refuse collection as one of his success stories.

Others include the taking into public ownership of the previously privately-owned Naples Water Company, the purchase of new vehicles for the city transport network, including 10 new Metro trains, the pedestrianisation of the waterfront and the reopening of suspended restoration projects on a number of monuments and historic buildings.

De Magistris is an advocate of bringing essential
services and resources into public ownership

By cracking down on tax evasion, De Magistris was able to introduce a minimum monthly income of approximately €600 for residents of Naples of working age with an income below the poverty threshold, provided that they agree to work or take part in socially useful activities.

He has also campaigned for powers to be granted to city mayors to direct the police force, following the model adopted by many cities in the United States, believing it to be the best way to reduce crime. Naples, of course, is the home of the Mafia-style Camorra organisation.

One commentator wrote about De Magistris, who won a second mayoral election in 2016, as a figure seen by many citizens as a last chance “to save whatever is left of the glorious capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies”, adding that “Neapolitan disenchantment with politics and total distrust of politicians started with the unification of Italy and has basically persisted to this day.”

Born in Naples, De Magistris attended the Adolfo Pansini High School in the Vomero district of Naples before going on to study law at the University of Naples. In 1993 he began a career as a magistrate, following in the footsteps of his father, his grandfather and great-grandfather.

From 1998 to 2002 he worked at the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples and then moved to be Deputy Public Prosecutor to the Court of Catanzaro.

He presided over a number of high-profile corruption investigations involving business and politics, although he was controversially removed from a couple of cases over “procedural irregularities” after the names of top politicians began to emerge.

De Magistris has clashed with the Rome
government over immigration and refugees

De Magistris had a period of suspension imposed on him during his office as mayor, although he resisted calls for him to resign and the suspension was subsequently annulled and he was acquitted. He has since written about “obstacles placed in my way and attacks on me and my profession” by his political opponents.

A fiercely outspoken advocate of Italy giving refuge to immigrants from Africa and the Middle East fleeing war and persecution, he clashed with Matteo Salvini, the anti-immigration politician who was Italy’s Minister of the Interior, over his refusal to allow the Aquarius, carrying 600 refugees, to dock at an Italian port.

In 2017, De Magistris was given the Valarioti-Impastato Award for "having fought crime and corruption for more than 20 years as magistrate and politician, for breaking the relationship between the mafia and politics in the political-administrative management of the city of Naples and for having contributed to the moral redemption of Naples and removed the Camorra breaking the system of waste and eco-mafia".

A fervent fan of SSC Napoli, the city's Serie A football club, De Magistris is also the author of several books, the most recent of which is La città ribelle: il caso di Napoli (Naples: Rebel City).

(This article was updated in June 2022)

Vomero's lofty position offers spectacular views over Naples

Travel tip:

Close to centre of Naples, Vomero is a hilly residential area popular with the wealthy middle class. It has grown rapidly since the beginning of the 20th century with numerous houses and apartment built around Villa Floridiana, Castel Sant'Elmo and San Martino, including villas in the late Art Nouveau style and large apartment houses. The oldest and most popular neighbourhood in Vomero is Antignano, in which can be found some historic buildings as well as plush apartments and gated villas, such as the Villa del Pontano and an old building of the Bourbon customs office.

The City Hall of Naples overlooks Piazza Municipio

Travel tip:

Naples City Hall, where Luigi de Magistris has his office, is located on Piazza Municipio, not far from the medieval Castel Nuovo, a 13th-century castle known to locals as the Maschio Angioino (Angevin Keep). The castle is home to fragments of frescoes by Giotto and Roman ruins under the glass-floored Sala dell'Armeria (Armoury Hall). The castle's upper floors house a collection of mostly 17th- to early-20th-century Neapolitan paintings.

More reading:

Antonio di Pietro - former policeman who led mani pulite corruption probe

How the fiery Lega Nord leader Umberto Bossi laid foundations to move right-wing politics into Italy's mainstream

Why Veneto politician Luca Zaia is tipped as a future prime minister

Also on this day:

1891: The birth of Neapolitan opera soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi

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Propaganda Due suspects named

Italy horrified as list reveals alleged members of ‘secret state’ 

Licio Gelli's home was raided
by investigators

Ordinary Italians were stunned and the country’s elite rocked to the core on this day in 1981 when a list was made public of alleged members of Propaganda Due, a secret Masonic lodge which sought to run the country as a ‘state within the state’.

A staggering 962 names were on the list, including 44 members of parliament, three of whom were cabinet ministers, 49 bankers, numerous industrialists, a number of newspaper editors and other high-profile journalists, the heads of all three of Italy’s secret services and more than 200 military and police officers, including 12 generals of the Carabinieri, five of the Guardia di Finanza, 22 of the army and four from the air force.

The existence of the illegal, underground lodge, known as P2 had been rumoured for several years but there had been little concrete evidence until magistrates investigating the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in Milan raided the home in Tuscany of Licio Gelli, the former Fascist financier who turned out to be the Grandmaster.

The list of alleged members, which was made public by Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani on the advice of the prosecuting team, was found among paperwork seized in the raid.

Arnaldo Forlani's government collapsed
in the wake of the P2 scandal

The names included Roberto Calvi, the former head of the Banco Ambrosiano who would be found dead in London the following year, Admiral Giovanni Torrisi, the Chief of the Defence Staff of Italy, and the future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who had yet to enter politics but was already on his way to becoming Italy’s most powerful media tycoon.

The lodge was headed by Gelli, who had the title "Maestro venerabile".

Another major name on the list was Adolfo Sarti, the Minister of Justice, who resigned a couple of days after the list was published, triggering the collapse of Forlani’s ruling coalition and their resignation en masse.

The prosecuting magistrates told Forlani there was evidence that Gelli had constructed “a very real state within the state,'' using blackmail, favours, promises of advancement and bribes.

Their report described P2 as “a secret sect that has combined business and politics with the intention of destroying the constitutional order of the country and of transforming the parliamentary system into a presidential system.”

Banker Roberto Calvi, a member of P2, was found
hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London

It added that Gelli's strategy had been “to bring under his control a large number of powerful and highly-placed persons and thus to break down, for the first time in Italian history, the separation between political, administrative, military and economic spheres.''

Exactly how much power P2 wielded has been debated in all the years since it was exposed, although one undeniable coup was achieved when Gelli took control of Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s leading newspapers.

The paper, edited by Piero Ottone, had run into financial trouble and was finding it difficult to obtain loans because the banks were not impressed by Ottone’s outspoken opposition to the powerful Christian Democratic Party, the dominant force in Italian politics. Gelli stepped in to arrange a cash injection from the Vatican Bank. Ottone was fired, P2 member Franco Di Bella was appointed in his place and the paper's editorial line shifted to the right.

In 1980 the paper published a long interview with Gelli conducted by the television talk show host Maurizio Costanzo, another whose name was on the list.  Gelli told Costanzo he was in favour of rewriting the Italian constitution towards a Gaullist presidential system.

In the same year, there were suspicions that P2 members were involved in the bombing of Bologna railway station and the spreading of false stories seeking to undermine the Italian Communist Party in one of its biggest strongholds. In fact, Gelli and the deputy director of Italy's military intelligence service, SISMI, Pietro Musumeci were arrested for attempting to mislead the police investigation into the massacre, which killed 85 people, wounded more than 200 and was eventually blamed on a far-right terrorist group.

P2 members were certainly involved in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, one of Milan's principal banks - owned in part by the Vatican Bank, and of the Franklin National Bank in New York, owned by a Calvi associate and P2 member, Michele Sindona, who was suspected of facilitating a Mafia money-laundering network involving the Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank.

Calvi, convicted of illegal money exports in 1980 but released from prison pending an appeal, was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. Sindona, who was tried and found guilty of organising the murder of one of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal investigators, died in prison after being poisoned.

Arezzo's beautiful Piazza Grande is at the heart of the
major Tuscan city

Travel tip:

Arezzo, where Licio Gelli lived, is one of the wealthiest cities in Tuscany. Situated at the confluence of four valleys - Tiberina, Casentino, Valdarno and Valdichiana – its medieval centre suffered massive damage during the Second World War but still has enough monuments, churches and museums to be a worthwhile stopover on tourist itineraries. In addition to the Basilica di San Francesco and the Piero della Francesca fresco cycle, sights to take in include central square Piazza Grande, with its sloping pavement in red brick, the Medici Fortress, the Cathedral of San Donato and a Roman amphitheatre.

The neoclassical main grandstand at the Arena Civica
sports stadium in central Milan

Travel tip:

One of Milan’s often overlooked attractions is the Arena Civica, which was opened in 1807 in the city's Parco Sempione, behind the Castello Sforzesco. It is one of Milan's main examples of neoclassical architecture, an elliptical amphitheatre commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte soon after he became King of Italy in 1805.  Napoleon wanted it to be Milan's equivalent of the Colosseum in Rome, although there are Greek influences too. The first event to be staged there, fittingly, was a chariot race.  It was adapted for football in the early part of the 20th century and was the home of Internazionale until the move to San Siro in 1947. Nowadays it is renamed Arena Gianni Brera in honour of one of Italy's most influential sports journalists.

More reading:

How Roberto Calvi, the financier known as 'God's Banker', met a mysterious death

Michele Sindona - shady banker with links to Mafia and P2

Maurizio Costanzo - record-breaking broadcaster

Also on this day:

1910: The birth in Sicily of Philadelphia gang boss Angelo Bruno

1972: Attacker damages Michelangelo masterpiece


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Vittorio Cecchi Gori - entrepreneur

Ex-president of Fiorentina who produced two of Italy’s greatest films

Former Fiorentina owner and film
producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori

Vittorio Cecchi Gori, whose chequered career in business saw him produce more than 300 films and own Fiorentina’s football club but also saw him jailed for fraudulent bankruptcy, was born on this day in 1942 in Florence.

The son of Mario Cecchi Gori, whose production company he inherited, he provided the financial muscle behind two of Italy’s greatest films of recent years, Il Postino (1994), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997), which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film.

He was also involved with the 1992 Oscar winner Mediterraneo, directed by Gabriele Salvatores, which also won in the Best Foreign Language film category.

Vittorio’s legacy from his father also included Fiorentina football club, of which he was president from 1993 to 2002.

Cecchi Gori with his late father Mario

With Cecchi Gori’s backing, while his involvement with the movie business was generating such huge profits, Fiorentina enjoyed great times.  He invested heavily in new players and persuaded the club’s icon, the Argentine forward Gabriel Batistuta, to stay after the viola were relegated in 1993.

With Claudio Ranieri as coach, they won the Coppa Italia in 1996, their first trophy in 20 years, following it up by winning the Super Cup later the same year and another Coppa Italia in 2001. In the 1999-2000 season they had played in the Champions League for the first time.

Yet the impetuous entrepreneur was to run into serious financial difficulties in subsequent years and went from revered to reviled in Florence after his own business collapse became Fiorentina’s collapse also.

His problems began in 1995, when he mounted an ambitious challenge against Italy’s television duopoly, held by the public broadcaster RAI and Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest.

Cecchi Gori with the Fiorentina star Gabriel Batistuta

Cecchi Gori bought up some small TV companies used their infrastructure to create a new channel, La7, and formulating an ambitious plan to acquire the rights to televise Serie A, the top division of the Italian Football League. He failed to secure them, however, ratings hit an all-time low and the new channel was sold for a huge loss.

An expensive divorce did not help, plunging him into huge personal debt, and in 2001 it was revealed that Fiorentina had debts equating to $50 million.  Their fortunes on the field were in decline also and things came to a head at the end of the 2001-02 season, when they were relegated from Serie A and promptly entered judicially-controlled administration, a form of bankruptcy.  Because of this, they were refused a place in Serie B for the following season and had to start again in Serie C, the third division, after effectively winding up the historic club and starting a new one.

At the same time, Cecchi Gori’s business empire was collapsing.   Prized assets such as his luxurious apartment in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, the Multisala Adriano, his Rome cinema complex, and his film library were sold to raise funds, but to no avail.

Police investigations into his affairs dogged him for years.  In 2006 he was found guilty of illegally redirecting millions of dollars from Fiorentina into other businesses and in 2013 received a six-year jail term in connection with the bankruptcy of his production company, Safin Cinematografica.

Until his business problems, Cecchi Gori served as a member of the Italian Senate between 1994 and 2001, having been elected as a member of the centre-right Partito Popolare Italiano.

Florence's Stadio Artemio Franchi

Travel tip:

In a city best known for its magnificent Renaissance architecture, the Stadio Artemio Franchi, the home stadium of Fiorentina, is notable as a classic of early 20th century design. Opened in 1931, it was designed by the renowned architect and structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi and constructed entirely of reinforced concrete with a 70m (230 ft) tower that bears the stadium's flagstaff. Originally called Stadio Giovanni Berta, after a local Fascist, it was changed to Stadio Comunale before taking the name of Franchi, then Italian Football Federation president, in 1991.

The narrow rear facade of the Palazzo
Borghese overlooks the Tiber

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Borghese, where Cecchi Gori had an apartment valued at almost €10 million, is a palace in Rome that was originally the home of the powerful Borghese family, who settled in Rome in the 16th century and also owned the Villa Borghese and surrounding gardens. The palace was nicknamed il Cembalo - the harpsichord - due to its unusual trapezoid shape, with its narrowest rear facade facing the Tiber river. The front facade - the keyboard of the harpsichord - opening on to the Fontanella di Borghese. The first floor has housed the Spanish Embassy since 1947.

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Luca Zaia - politician

Popular president of Veneto tipped as future PM

The politician Luca Zaia has been president of the
 Veneto region since 2010

The politician Luca Zaia, who was spoken of as a possible candidate to be Italy’s prime minister following the recent elections, was born on this day in 1968 in Conegliano, in the Veneto.

Zaia, who has been president of the Veneto region for almost eight years, only in the last few days received an approval rating of 56 per cent in a poll to find the most popular regional governor, the highest rating of any of Italy’s regional presidents.

A member of the Lega party, formerly Lega Nord (Northern League), he was suggested by some commentators as a dark horse for the position of President of the Council of Ministers - the official title of Italy’s prime minister - after the March 1 poll produced no overall winner.

Before successfully standing to be Veneto’s president in 2010 he had served in national government as Minister of Agriculture under Silvio Berlusconi.

Zaia is popular with voters in the Veneto

At this year’s election, the populist Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement) won the biggest proportion of the vote at just over 32 per cent and the Lega achieved its highest share at just under 18 per cent, almost as many as the Democratic Party, and there has been speculation that Cinque Stelle and the Lega were the likeliest to form a working coalition.

The Lega, whose traditional position was to campaign for an independent northern Italy, have been branded far-right because of the anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetoric of some of their leading figures, although the current head of the party, Matteo Salvini, is a former communist and the party’s policies in general position it more on the centre-right.

Although he has spoken out over the issue of illegal immigrants that was a major debating point during the election, Zaia’s biggest priorities are achieving fiscal autonomy for the regions and introducing a flat rate of tax, as well as implementing policies that encourage the employment of young people, among who unemployment in Italy is the highest, up to 60 per cent in some areas in the south.

He has the support of many prominent business leaders in the wealthy Veneto region, including such as Luxottica founder and owner Leonardo Del Vecchio and the Benetton patriarchs, Luciano and Gilberto.

Zaia supported a plebiscite on independence for the Veneto as recently as 2014, comparing Veneto’s status within Italy to that of Crimea within Ukraine.

Zaia (right), pictured with former Italian president Giorgio
Napolitano, has been a member of the Lega since the 1990s

A graduate of the University of Udine, Zaia joined Lega Veneta–Lega Nord in the early 1990s, was first elected to public office in 1993, when he became municipal councillor of Godega di Sant'Urbano, not far from his home town of Conegliano. 

Two years later, he became a provincial councillor, then provincial minister of agriculture for Treviso and, in 1998, provincial president.  In 2002 he was re-elected with a landslide 68.9% of the vote.

In 2005, he was appointed vice-president of Veneto and regional minister of agriculture and tourism, before leaving in 2008 to become federal Minister of Agriculture in Berlusconi’s People of Freedom  federation.  During his term as vice-president, he made headlines when he saved the life of an Albanian man by dragging him from a burning car, in which he had become trapped.

Nominated by Lega Veneta, in March 2010, Zaia was elected President of Veneto in a landslide, winning 60.2% of the vote against 29.1% of his nearest challenger, the Democratic Party’s Giuseppe Bortolussi.  Zaia’s proportion of votes was the highest since direct election was introduced in 1995. He was re-elected in May 2015.

UPDATE: In the 2020 regional election Zaia was re-elected for a third consecutive term with 76.8% of the vote, becoming the most voted regional president in Italian history.

The area of Italy that it was once proposed would
form a breakaway nation of Padania

Travel tip:

Lega Nord’s popularity grew around former leader Umberto Bossi’s symbolic ‘declaration of independence’ for Padania at a rally of supporters in Venice in 1996, yet the ‘country’ of Padania has never existed. It was historically used as a term to describe the area that encompasses Val Padana – the Po Valley.  The Lega Nord tended to define Padania as a broad area of northern Italy consisting of Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria.

Conegliano's castle stands guard over
the town near Treviso

Travel tip:

Conegliano is a town of almost 35,000 people in the Veneto, about 30km (19 miles) north of Treviso.  The remains of a 10th century castle, once owned by the Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, stands on a hill that dominates the town.  Conegliano is at the centre of a wine-producing region and is famous in particular for Prosecco, the popular sparkling wine made from the glera grape.  As well as Zaia, the town is the birthplace of Renaissance painter Giambattista Cima, film director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the World Cup-winning footballer Alessandro del Piero among others.




More reading:

Beppe Grillo and the rise of Cinque Stelle

Umberto Bossi - the fiery former leader of Lega Nord

Paolo Gentiloni - Italy's outgoing prime minister

Also on this day:

1799: The birth of Alessandro la Marmora, founder of the Italian army's famed Bersaglieri corps

1969: The birth of Gianluigi Lentini, once the world's most expensive footballer


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