Pino Aprile – journalist

Author wrote about unification from the point of view of the South

Pino Aprile has enjoyed a long
career as a writer and journalist

Writer Pino Aprile, who became internationally famous as the author of Terroni, a book outlining 'all that has been done to ensure that the Italians of the south became Southerners', was born on this day in 1950 in Gioia del Colle, in Puglia.

Terroni was first published in 2010, a year before Italy celebrated the 150th anniversary of becoming a unified country. Over 200,000 copies were sold in Italy and an English version of Terroni, translated by Ilaria Marra Rosiglioni, was published in 2011.

With the stage set for the tricolore to fly proudly over a year of celebrations in Italy, Terroni appeared just before the party started, to provide readers with stark examples of what Aprile claims happened to people living in the south of the country when troops fighting for Victor Emmanuel II arrived in their towns and villages.

The catalogue of alleged massacres, executions, rapes, and torture that Aprile details in Terroni are hard to read about. Aprile himself says that at times he was tempted to walk away from the whole project. But he persevered because he was determined to set out the South’s version of events during the Risorgimento in Italy for readers to consider. 

At the beginning of the book there is a publisher’s note explaining that the singular noun terrone is an offensive term used by people in northern Italy to describe those from southern Italy. The word is from the term terra, meaning dirt or land, and to call someone a terrone implies that they are ignorant, uneducated, lazy, unwilling to work, rude, and of poor hygiene. 

Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose
soldiers stand accused

Italy’s Corte di Cassazione (the equivalent of a Supreme Court) has upheld the decision of a lower court that the term terrone is derogatory and offensive.

Aprile says he grew up not realising what had really happened in the area he was born in during the Risorgimento, because the history was never taught in schools. He had not realised that the people in the South who were labelled as brigands and executed were in fact Bourbon soldiers defending their homeland and that their wives and children were allegedly killed by Giuseppe Garibaldi’s soldiers just because they were considered brigands by association.

He had also never known that the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was one of the most industrialised places in the world, only just behind England and France, before it was invaded by Garibaldi and his men. 

Aprile writes: “The South has been deprived of its institutions; it has been deprived of its industries, its riches and of its ability to react. It has also been deprived of its people, with an emigration that was induced or forced…”

He says that while we think of the North of Italy today as prosperous, and the South as poor, the reverse was the case when Garibaldi set out to unify Italy. And he claims large quantities of money and valuable items were taken from the South to pay off the debts of the North. 

For the reader, references to the war crimes he says were committed during the military campaign to unify Italy are disturbing to say the least. Millions were either killed or wounded and at the very least forced to abandon their homes and land, leading to mass emigration from the south of Italy to the United States and South America.

Terroni sold more
 than 200,000 copies

But Aprile ends Terroni on a hopeful note saying: "I believe that there is no other land in Europe today that has a more promising future, and as many riches to offer than our South."

Aprile is the author of numerous other books, some of which have been translated into English. During his career as a journalist, Aprile was deputy editor of the magazine, Gente, and editor of the magazine, Oggi and he worked for Tg1, the Rai news programme, and TV7.  He also worked with Sergio Zavoli on the investigative series, Journey South.

Although he was born in Gioia del Colle and brought up in the Puglian coastal city of Taranto, Aprile spent many years living and working in Milan. He now lives in the Castelli Romani region of Lazio.

Pino Aprile is celebrating his 75th birthday today.

The well-preserved throne room inside
Gioia del Colle's historic castle

Travel tip:

Gioia del Colle, where Pino Aprile was born, is a comune of Bari in Puglia. It is situated on top of a hill between the Adriatic and Ionian seas. The town’s castle dates from the Byzantine period but it was enlarged by the Normans and Swabians, who successively dominated the area. The main church, initially dedicated to Saint Peter when it was built in the 11th century, but later renamed Madonna della Neve, contains historic frescoes. Gioia del Colle is famous for its production of mozzarella and for its Gioia del Colle Primitivo wine.

Find accommodation in Bari with Expedia

The remains of the Greek
Temple of Poseidon

Travel tip:

The coastal city of Taranto in Puglia, where Pino Aprile grew up, is an important port as well as an Italian naval base. It was founded by the Greeks in the eighth century BC and had become one of the largest cities in the world with a population of about 300,000 by 500 BC. There are several ruined Greek temples, some dating back to the sixth century BC. The old city or Città Vecchia retains the same street layout as when the Byzantines rebuilt it after it had been damaged by the Saracens in 927AD. Taranto has a Big Sea, the natural harbour where the ships are moored, which is separated from its Little Sea, which is actually a lagoon, by a cape. Taranto is famous for its mussels, which are given their distinctive flavour by the special conditions of salinity of the Little Sea. It is also said to be where the Tarantella, a frenetic dance, originated as a response to being bitten by a supposedly venomous spider.

See Hotels.com's selection of Taranto hotels

Also on this day: 

1339: The Battle of Parabiago

1549: The birth of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, last Duke of Urbino

1778: The death of groundbreaking scientist Laura Bassi

1816: Rossini’s Barber of Seville premieres in Rome

1993: The death of car maker Ferruccio Lamborghini

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Gio Ponti - architect and designer

Visionary who shaped more than 100 buildings

The 1956 Pirelli Tower in Milan is one of
Ponti's most famous buildings

Giovanni ‘Gio’ Ponti, one of the most influential architects and designers of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1891 in Milan.

During a career that spanned six decades, Ponti completed more than 100 architectural projects in Italy and abroad and also designed hundreds of pieces of furniture, decorative objects and household items.

As an architect, he made a significant impact on the appearance of his home city. The Pirelli Tower, which for 35 years was Italy’s tallest skyscraper, is the building for which Ponti is most famous, but it is only one of 46 in Milan.

He also designed the Montecatini buildings, the Torre Littoria (now known as the Torre Branca) in Parco Sempione, the San Luca Evangelista church in Via Andrea Maria Ampère, and Monument to the Fallen in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio.

Ponti’s work was by no means confined to Milan, however.  Elsewhere in Italy, he designed the Mathematics Institute at the University of Rome, the Carmelo Monastery in Sanremo, the Villa Donegani in Bordighera, the Gran Madre di Dio Concattedrale in Taranto and the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento.

Ponti designed 46 buildings in his home city alone
and many more around the world

Outside Italy, he worked on projects in 12 countries. Notable Ponti buildings around the world include the Denver Art Museum in the United States, the Ministries Building in Islamabad, Pakistan, and the the Villa Planchart in Caracas, Venezuela.

Ponti also worked for 120 different companies as a designer, creating designs for furniture and household objects that included the Superleggera chair for the furniture maker Cassina, which combined strength with ‘super light weight’.  Made from ash wood, it weighed only 1.7kg (3.75lb).

After a classical schooling in Milan, Ponti enrolled in at the Faculty of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano but his studies were interrupted by the First World War, in which he served with some distinction. Reaching the rank of captain, he received the Bronze Medal and the Italian Military Cross. He also painted watercolours of his companions in arms, and while based in the Veneto was able to observe the architecture of Palladio.

Once he finally did graduate, he married his girlfriend, Giulia Vimercati, with whom he had four children - Lisa, Giovanna, Giulio and Letizia.

Ponti's North Building at the Denver Art Museum
in Colorado had a castle-like appearance

Ponti began his architectural career in partnership with Mino Fiocchi and Emilio Lancia, at which time he was influenced by the Milanese neoclassical Novecento Italiano movement.  The first building he designed in his own right was the house in Via Giovanni Randaccio in the Sempione district of central Milan, where he also lived.

He co-founded in 1928 the magazine Domus, of which as editor he would oversee some 560 issues, in all of which he wrote at least one article.  As an academic, he delivered lectures in 24 countries.

The 1930s were years of intense activity for Ponti.  During this time, he shifted towards Modernism with the Borletti funeral chapel and houses in Via de Togni, via Letizia and via del Caravaggio that were designed for the Milanese bourgeoisie, the Torre Littoria and the Rasini Building. He designed the San Michele hotel on Capri and a building for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pavia.

In the 1950s he was involved in projects as diverse as urban planning in Milan, as the city began a period of intense redevelopment of areas bombed during the Second World War, and designing the interiors of ocean liners.

The Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio in Taranto in the
south of Italy, built in 1970

After a period working in Brazil and Venezuela, he began his acknowledged masterpiece, the Pirelli Tower in Milan, in 1956, working with another great Italian architect, Pier Luigi Nervi.  Rising to a height of 127m (417ft), it was among the first skyscrapers to abandon the customary block form, Ponti designing a futuristic slender shape with tapered sides drawing to a point at each end, which viewed from above would resemble the outline of a ship. It was hailed as a symbol of corporate success and an optimistic catalyst for economic prosperity.

In the 1960s he built the Milan churches of San Francesco and of San Carlo Borromeo, before turning his attention away from Latin America to the East he built his ministerial buildings in lslamabad and a villa for the businessman Daniel Koo in Hong Kong.

Even as he approached the age of 80, Ponti was still making his mark. He designed his Cathedral in Taranto when he was 79 and had turned 80 when he produced his iconic design for the seven-storey castle-like North Building of the the Denver Art Museum in Colorado.

Ponti died in 1979 at the age of 87 in his eighth-floor apartment in the Via Giuseppe Dezza, where he and his family had lived since 1957 and which reflected all of the ideas with regard to layout, walls, furniture and objects that he had developed during the 1950s.

The Castello Aragonese in Taranto stands guard
over the entrance to the port's harbour

Travel tip:

The city of Taranto, where Ponti’s modern cathedral is considered one of his major works, sits on the inside of the heel of southern Italy. A major naval base, it has a spectacular setting between a sweeping bay and the Mare Piccolo, an inland sea. One of the biggest cities in pre-Roman Europe, contemporary Taranto is a city of two distinct parts – a somewhat crumbling centro storico on a small island protecting the lagoon, and new city of wide avenues laid out in a formal grid. In the 1930s Mussolini had a quarter of the ancient centre demolished to build apartment blocks, and it was badly bombed in the Second World War. The old city - the Città Vecchia - contains a castle built by Ferdinand of Aragon in 1492, behind which are the ruins of an ancient sixth century BC Doric temple. The city’s original cathedral, which dates from 1070, has been remodelled with a Baroque façade.

The beautiful green space of the Parco Sempione in
Milan, looking towards the Arch of Peace

Travel tip:

Parco Sempione is a large park in Milan, with an overall area of 38.6 hectares (95 acres), located in the historic centre of the city. The adjacent to the gardens of the Sforza Castle and to the Arch of Peace, two of the main landmarks of Milan. A third prominent monument of Parco Sempione is the Palazzo dell'Arte, built in 1933 and designed by Giovanni Muzio. Also in the park are the Arena Civica, the public aquarium, and the Torre Branca tower, which used to be known as the Torre Littoria, a 108.6m (356ft) metal structure with a viewing platform at the top.

More reading:

From football stadiums to churches: The work of Pier Luigi Nervi

How Marco Zanuso put Italy at the forefront of contemporary style

The brilliance of Renzo Piano, designer of the Pompidou Centre and the Shard

Also on this day:

1626: The consecration of St Peter's Basilica in Rome

1630: The birth of Holy Roman Empress Eleonora Gonzaga

1804: The birth of soldier and former Italian PM Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora


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Giovanni Paisiello - composer

Audience favourite with a jealous streak

Giovanni Paisiello was one of the most
popular Italian composers in the 18th century

The composer Giovanni Paisiello, who wrote more than 90 operas and much other music and was enormously popular in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1740 in Taranto.

Paisiello was talented, versatile and had a big influence on other composers of his day and later, yet he was jealous of the success of rivals and is remembered today primarily as the composer whose passionate fans wrecked the premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s opera Almaviva, which was based on the same French play as Paisiello’s Il barbiere di siviglia, which was regarded as his masterpiece.

Rossini’s opera would eventually be more commonly known as Il barbiere di siviglia, but not until after Paisiello had died.

Nonetheless, Paisiello’s supporters still felt Rossini was attempting to steal their favourite’s thunder and many of them infiltrated the audience at Almaviva’s opening night in Rome and disrupted the performance with constant jeers and catcalls.

History has shown that perhaps they were right to be worried: today, Rossini’s Barber of Seville is one of the world’s most popular operas, yet Paisiello’s is rarely performed.

Paisiello was educated at a Jesuit school in Taranto. His father wanted his son to become a lawyer but noted the beauty of his singing voice and enrolled him at the Conservatory of San Onofrio at Naples.

A poster advertising the premiere
of Paisiello's opera Nina

There he displayed a talent for composing too, and the quality of some intermezzi he wrote for the conservatory’s theatre led to him being invited to write his first operas, La Pupilla and Il Marchese Tulissano. These brought him instant recognition and he settled in Naples, producing a series of successful operas, popular for being simple, dramatic, and always fast moving.

He set himself up in rivalry with the established giants of the Neapolitan school, Niccolò Piccinni, Domenico Cimarosa and Pietro Guglielmi. He was known for being bitterly outspoken when one or another of the trio staged a work that received public acclaim, but he enjoyed his own triumphs, in particular with his 1767 comic opera L'ldolo cinese. 

Paisiello left Naples only when he was invited in 1776 by the Russian empress Catherine II to St. Petersburg, where he remained for eight years. It was there that he produced Il barbiere di siviglia, with a libretto by Giuseppe Petrosellini, based on the play by Pierre Beaumarchais.

Il barbiere premiered in St Petersburg in 1782 and its fame spread quickly around Europe. Among those influenced by the artistry of his score and the beauty of the melodies was Mozart, whose Marriage of Figaro made its debut four years later as a sequel to Paisiello’s Barbiere.

Paisiello left Russia in 1784, initially going to Vienna before returning to Naples to enter the service of King Ferdinand IV, where he enjoyed more success, composing what many regard as his best operas, including Nina and La Molinara, the latter featuring perhaps the best-known tune that Paisiello wrote in his lifetime, the duet Nel cor più non mi sento, which inspired works by Beethoven, Paganini and many others.

Domenico Cimarosa was a target for
Paisiello's outspoken comments

His decline began after he was invited to Paris in 1802 by Napoleon, for whom he had composed a march for the funeral of General Hoche. This time his rivals were Luigi Cherubini and Etienne Méhul, towards whom he displayed similar jealousy to that he once aimed at Cimarosa, Guglielmi and Piccinni.

However, the Parisian public was unimpressed and in 1803 he obtained permission to return to Italy, citing his wife's ill health. He kept his job in Naples even after the fall of Ferdinand IV, who was replaced as king by Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, and in turn by Joachim Murat.

But by then he was beginning to lose his touch and his fortunes declined just as the power of the Bonapartes was collapsing. His wife died in 1815 and his own health failed quickly thereafter. He died in 1816 at the age of 76.

In addition to his operas, Paisiello wrote a good deal of church music and instrumental works that include symphonies, harp and piano concerti, string quartets, sonatas for harp, violin and cello.

The 20th century saw his Barbiere and La Molinara revived along with a number of other operas and instrumental pieces.

The Castello Aragonese is a landmark in Taranto

Travel tip:

Taranto, situated at the top of the inside of the ‘heel’ of Italy, where Paisiello was born, is a large city - population in excess of 200,000 - of two distinct sections, divided by a swing bridge. The bridge links the small island containing the Città Vecchia, the old city, guarded by the imposing 15th century Castello Aragonese castle, which protects an area of Greek origins which has not been overdeveloped and has an authentic atmosphere of old southern Italy.  On the southern side of the bridge is the modern, new city, full of wide boulevards and carrying a much more prosperous air.  The city is heavily industrialised with a huge steel industry and a large naval base but its National Museum contains one of the most important collections of Greek and Roman artefacts in Italy.

The Conservatorio of San Onofrio

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio of San Onofrio a Porta Capuana was one of the four original Naples conservatories, founded in 1588 and developed first as an orphanage. Almost one fifth of the students at the Conservatory of San Onofrio were castrati, which gave it a different identity.  Its popularity declined during the Napoleonic period, and only 30 students remained when the conservatory merged with that of Santa Maria di Loreto in 1797.

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