Victor Emmanuel I - King of Sardinia

The first Victor Emmanuel ruled only part of Italy

Italian painter Luigi Bernero's 
portrait of Victor Emmanual I

King Victor Emmanuel, who was Duke of Savoy and ruler of the Savoy states in northern Italy, and King of the island of Sardinia, died on this day in 1824 in Turin. 

His namesake in Italian history, who was to become Victor Emmanuel II, the first King of Italy, was the son of one of his distant cousins.

When Victor Emmanuel I died, he left no heir. His surviving daughters were unable to inherit because of a law excluding women and their descendants from the line of succession. He was succeeded as King of Sardinia by his brother, Charles Felix in 1821. His brother also left no successors and he was in turn succeeded to the titles by his cousin, Charles Albert in 1831.

After Charles Albert died in 1849, his son, Victor Emmanuel, became King of Sardinia and took the title of King Victor Emmanuel II. Therefore, when Victor Emmanuel became King of the newly united Italy in 1861, he continued to style himself as King Victor Emmanuel II.

Some Italians may have preferred his title to have been King Victor Emmanuel I, marking a new start for the united country, but their first monarch chose to continue with the same title because of his Savoy ancestor, who had the same name.

This may have given the impression that the country was being taken over by Sardinia and Piedmont and caused resentment in the south of Italy, but to many Italians it was regarded as logical because this was their new king’s existing title.

Victor Emmanuel I had been born in 1759 at the royal palace in Turin. As the second son of King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia, he was known from birth as the Duke of Aosta. 

When his father died in 1796, Victor Emmanuel’s older brother became Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia.  

Charles Emmanuel was immediately faced with the threat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s French army occupying his territory and he withdrew with his wife to Sardinia. He took little interest in the running of Sardinia and subsequently lived with his wife in Naples and Rome. They were childless and so he abdicated in favour of Victor Emmanuel after his wife’s death in 1802.

Victor Emmanuel I ruled from Cagliari
after Napoleon's army occupied Piedmont

Victor Emmanuel I ruled Sardinia from Cagliari for the next 12 years. He founded the Carabinieri, which still exists as one of Italy’s main law and order agencies to this day alongside the Polizia di Stato and the Guardia di Finanza. 

After Napoleon was defeated, he was able to return to Turin and he abolished many of the freedoms that had been granted to the people while under French rule, restoring a stricter regime, refusing to grant a liberal constitution, and entrusting education to the church.

In 1821, when revolutionary fever was threatening to sweep through Italy, Victor Emmanuel I was still unwilling to grant a liberal constitution to the people and so he abdicated in favour of his brother, Charles Felix. 

Because his brother was in Modena at the time, Victor Emmanuel I made Charles Albert, who was second in line to the throne, the Regent of the Kingdom.

In 1824, he went to live in the Castle of Moncalieri, where he died. He was buried in the Basilica of Superga in Turin.

As a descendant of Princess Henrietta, the youngest child of King Charles I of England, Victor Emmanuel I carried the Jacobite claim to the thrones of England and Scotland during his lifetime.

The colourful port city of Cagliari is the
capital of the island of Sardinia

Travel tip:

Sardinia is a large island off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea. It has sandy beaches and a mountainous landscape. The southern city of Cagliari, from where Victor Emmanuel I ruled, has a medieval quarter called Castello, which has narrow streets, palaces and a 13th century Cathedral.  It came under Savoy control as part of the settlement following the War of the Spanish Succession, which became a battle for power in Europe between 1701 and 1714.  Victor Amadeus II, who was the Duke of Savoy and ruler of Piedmont, was originally given Sicily, but was persuaded by the victorious Allies - Britain, France, Austria and the Dutch Republic - to accept Sardinia instead, which appealed to the Savoys because, as a Spanish kingdom, it came with a crown. Thus, the Duchy of Savoy and the Principality of Piedmont effectively merged with the island to form the new Kingdom of Sardinia, although ruled from the Piedmont capital, Turin.

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The Castello di Moncalieri, the Savoy palace
where Victor Emmanuel I spent his last days

Travel tip:

Moncalieri, where Victor Emmanuel I spent his final days living in the castle originally built by his ancestor, Thomas I of Savoy, in 1100, is a town with a population of almost 58,000 people situated about 8km (5 miles) south of Turin, within the city’s metropolitan area. At one time principally a summer resort for the Savoy family, Moncalieri is now essentially a suburb of Turin, and home to many technology companies.  The castle, which Thomas I constructed on a hill as a fortress to command the main southern access to Turin, evolved in the mid-15th century as a pleasure residence at the behest of Yolanda of Valois, wife of Duke Amadeus IX, who employed the architect Carlo di Castellamonte to enlarge and redesign it. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the castle became a favourite residence of King Victor Emmanuel II and subsequently his daughter, Maria Clotilde. Today it houses a prestigious training college for the Carabinieri, Italy’s quasi-military police force, founded by Victor Emmanuel I.

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More reading: 

The ruler nicknamed “iron head” who made Turin the capital of Savoy

Victor Emmanuel II proclaimed first King of Italy

The founding of the Carabinieri

Also on this day:

49BC: Julius Caesar leads army across the Rubicon river, sparking civil war

987: The death of Venetian Doge Pietro Orseolo

1834: The birth in Naples of historian and politician Lord Acton

1890: The birth of silent movie star Pina Menichelli

1903: The birth of car designer Flaminio Bertoni

1922: The birth of footballer Aldo Ballarin

1959: The birth of football manager Maurizio Sarri

2009: The death of publisher Giorgio Mondadori

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Roberto Boninsegna - footballer

Prolific striker who helped Italy reach 1970 World Cup final

Roberto Boninsegna in the colours of Inter Milan, 
the club he dreamed of playing for as a child

The footballer Roberto Boninsegna, a prolific striker who scored 171 goals  in 14 years in Italy’s Serie A, was born on this day in 1943 in Mantua in Lombardy.

Boninsegna, whose relentlessly tenacious attacking style made him a fan favourite despite his relatively small physical stature, was at his peak during a seven-season spell with Inter Milan from 1969 to 1976, during which he scored 113 goals in 197 Serie A appearances.

He was also a prominent member of the Italy national team at the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, scoring the opening goal for the azzurri in their epic 4-3 extra-time victory over West Germany in the semi-final. 

Boninsegna was also responsible for Italy’s first-half equaliser against Pele's Brazil in the final, before the South Americans, universally acclaimed as one of the finest teams in international football history, overwhelmed them in the second half, winning 4-1.

His aerial prowess, which saw him regularly outjump taller defenders to ensure his head was first to the ball, earned him the nickname Bonimba from the celebrated football writer Gianni Brera. It stuck with fans, even though the player himself did not care for it because it drew on an obsolete word used to describe circus dwarfs.

Boninsegna is said to have entered the world during adversity, his mother, Elsa, giving birth during an Allied bombing raid on Mantua during World War Two.

Always an Inter Milan fan - he wore the blue and black nerazzurri shirt under his club colours while playing youth football for his local team - Boninsegna suffered the heartbreak of rejection when he joined Inter’s youth programme only to be discarded at an early stage in his development.

The Tuscan club Prato eventually gave him his start in the professional game in 1963. His next move took many miles from home to Basilicata, spending a season with Potenza before returning north to join Varese, where he made his Serie A debut in 1965. 

Boninsegna's reputation soared after he
teamed up with Luigi Riva at Cagliari

His breakthrough came after he joined Cagliari in 1966. Forming a deadly partnership with the azzurri great, Luigi Riva, he scored 23 goals in 83 appearances for the Sardinian team, showcasing his knack for finding space and converting chances. Cagliari finished runners-up in Serie A in 1968-69.

Boninsegna missed out on Cagliari’s great triumph of the following campaign, when they lifted the scudetto for the only time in the club’s history, having achieved the dream previously dashed when Inter signed him in 1969 for a fee of 600 million lire, equivalent roughly to €13.7 million today and a colossal sum in terms of football transfers at the time.

With Inter, Boninsegna enjoyed considerable success, helping the nerazzurri win the scudetto in 1970-71, a season in which he was Serie A’s capocannoniere - top scorer - with 24 goals. In total, across his time at San Siro, he made 281 appearances (197 in Serie A , 55 in the Coppa Italia and 29 in Europe) and delivered 171 goals (113 in Serie A, 36 in the Coppa Italia and 22 in Europe).

Yet his spell with Inter also included controversy after his part in what would be dubbed La partita della lattina - the Match of the Can.  This was the first leg of the European Cup round-of-16 match between Inter Milan and Borussia Mönchengladbach in Germany.

In the 29th minute, with Inter trailing 2–1, Boninsegna was about to take a throw-in when he collapsed to the ground after appearing to be hit on the head by a Coca-Cola can thrown from the stands. 

Boninsegna was stretchered off. Inter officials demanded the match be abandoned but the Dutch referee, Jef Dorpmans, allowed play to continue. However, the Inter team effectively refused to compete, and Mönchengladbach went on to thrash them 7–1, a result that shocked European football.

Boningsegna helped Italy reach the
final of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico

When Inter lodged a formal protest with UEFA, arguing that the incident had unfairly disrupted the match and endangered player safety, a furious row developed, with some German fans and even club officials claiming that Boninsegna had exaggerated the extent to which he was hurt. 

There was also confusion over whether the can that hit Boninsegna was full, as the Italian team’s officials said, or empty, which some on the German side believed.  With no TV cameras capturing the incident on film, it was not possible to review what had happened.

Inter’s vice-president, lawyer Giuseppe Prisco, failed in his argument that the match should be awarded to Inter, UEFA deciding instead that it be replayed. However, in another controversial twist, the European governing body allowed the scheduled second leg in Milan to go ahead before the first leg was replayed. Inter won it 4-2. 

When the sides met again on neutral ground at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Inter simply had to protect their lead to progress to the quarter-finals and the contest ended goalless. Inter went on to reach the final but were beaten 2-0 by Ajax, for whom Johann Cruyff scored both goals.

Boninsegna’s Inter career ended with a transfer to Juventus in 1976 in a deal that saw Juventus striker Pietro Anastasi switch to San Siro. Inter judged that, at nearly 34, Boninsegna had his best years behind him, yet he went on to enjoy a renaissance in Turin, helping his new club win Serie A twice, a Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup - the famous club’s first European trophy - before ending his professional career with Verona.

For the Italian national team, he won 22 caps between 1967 and 1974, scoring nine goals.

After retiring as a player in 1981, Boninsegna had a number of coaching roles, including at his home town club, Mantua, where he also served as technical director and vice-president. However, his post-playing career never reached the heights he touched as a player. 

Nonetheless, his legacy as a player remains intact. He is remembered not only for his goals but for his resilience, having risen from wartime hardship to become a symbol of Italian footballing excellence.

Boninsegna, now 82, still lives in Mantua. Even decades after his retirement, his name evokes memories of powerful strikes, dramatic goals, and unwavering determination.

Mantua's Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the city's
powerful Gonzaga family for almost 400 years

Travel tip:

Mantua, where Roberto Boninsegna was born and still lives, is an atmospheric and historic city in Lombardy, just over 130km (81 miles) southeast of Milan. In the Renaissance heart of the city is Piazza Mantegna, where the 15th century Basilica of Sant’Andrea houses the tomb of the artist, Andrea Mantegna, arguably the city’s most famous son, although the Roman poet Virgil was born in what is now Pietole, just a few kilometres outside the city. The basilica was originally built to accommodate the large number of pilgrims who came to Mantua to see a precious relic, an ampoule containing what were believed to be drops of Christ’s blood mixed with earth. This was claimed to have been collected at the site of his crucifixion by a Roman soldier.  Mantua was also the seat between 1328 and 1707 of the powerful Gonzaga family, who significantly expanded the city’s Palazzo Ducale, transforming it into their official residence and one of the largest palatial complexes in Europe.  The palace’s Camera degli Sposi is decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna, depicting the life of Eleonora’s ancestor, Ludovico Gonzaga, and his family in the 15th century. The beautiful backgrounds of imaginary cities and ruins reflect Mantegna’s love of classical architecture.

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Milan's famous Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in the
San Siro district is earmarked for demolition

Travel tip:

During his Inter Milan career, Roberto Boninsegna became one of the many legendary players to have graced the colossal Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, in the San Siro district of northwest Milan. The stadium, which can accommodate almost 80,000 spectators, was completed in its original form in 1926. A number of extensive renovations, the last of which was completed ahead of the 1990 World Cup finals, gave the stadium its distinctive appearance, with its top tier supported by 11 cylindrical towers which incorporate spiral walkways. Giuseppe Meazza, from whom the stadium takes its name, spent 14 years as a player and three terms as manager at Inter.  Since 1947, Inter and their city rivals AC Milan have shared the stadium but its days are numbered in its present iconic form. The two Milan clubs have jointly purchased the stadium and surrounding land from the Municipality of Milan for €197 million, ending nearly 80 years of public ownership. The clubs plan to demolish most of the existing stadium to make way for a new, state-of-the-art arena with a capacity of 71,500 seats. It is planned that the new venue will be ready in time for the 2032 European Championships finals, which Italy will host jointly with Turkey. 

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More reading:

Giuseppe Meazza, the Inter striker who gave his name to the San Siro stadium

Luigi Riva, Italy's record goalscorer and hero of Cagliari

Sandro Mazzola, the Inter great whose father perished in the Superga disaster

Also on this day:

1868: The death of composer Gioachino Rossini

1894: The death of Sister Agostina Livia Pietrantoni, a nurse murdered by a patient later made a saint

1907: The birth of Princess Giovanna of Italy - Tsaritsa of Bulgaria

1914: The birth of film director Alberto Lattuada

1936: The birth of novelist and short story writer Dacia Maraini

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Giuseppe Ravizza - inventor

His writing machine was forerunner of typewriter

Ravizza used piano keys in his prototype
design for his Cembalo Scrivano

The 19th century inventor Giuseppe Ravizza, whose Cembalo Scrivano machine could be seen as the world’s first typewriter, died on this day in 1885 in Livorno, on the Tuscan coast, about 25km (16 miles) south of Pisa.

Ravizza created the first working prototype for his writing machine in 1846 and was granted patent in 1855. Yet, although he hailed from a wealthy Piedmontese family in Novara, he did not have the opportunity in pre-unification Italy to manufacture the device on a commercial scale.

As a result, the invention of the typewriter is most commonly credited to Christopher Latham Sholes, an American inventor whose design was not patented until 1868, yet had many of the characteristics of Ravizza’s Cembalo Scrivano.

Produced with the help of Sholes's fellow designers Carlos Glidden and Samuel Souley, the American machine was eventually manufactured at scale by E Remington and Sons in 1873, marking the beginning of the typewriter's widespread use.

Born in Novara in 1811, Ravizza’s education was aimed at him becoming a lawyer and though he graduated he rarely practised. He was much more interested in engineering, specifically in producing a machine that could replicate the art of writing.

He was not the first to have envisaged such a machine. In the early 19th century, an Italian nobleman, Pellegrino Turri, designed a device he hoped would help a blind friend be able to write letters. It did not progress beyond a prototype, although it was Turri who is credited with inventing carbon paper as a means to make an imprint on the page. Another machine is said to have been designed by an American, William Austin Burt, in around 1829.

Ravizza came from a wealthy
background in Novara

Ravizza’s Cembalo Scrivano - literally ‘writing harpsichord’ - was so-called because the typing keys resembled those of a harpsichord. They were, in fact, recycled piano keys. Although it was not a qwerty keyboard, which is definitively thought to be a Sholes invention, the letters were arranged in what Ravizza felt was a logical order, with the aim that the user would be able to employ all 10 fingers in the writing process.

The upstroke mechanism that would be characteristic of the later American-produced version was also present in Ravizza’s machine, which also allowed the user to type both upper and lower case letters, an advancement not seen in the first Remington models.

His keyboard layout was almost certainly inspired by musical instruments, reflecting his belief that writing should be fluid and expressive. His ultimate vision was of a mechanised device that could put words on paper almost at the speed of thought.

Historians have noted the striking similarities between the Sholes typewriter and Ravizza’s design, and while no direct evidence of plagiarism has been uncovered it is possible that American designers will have been aware of Ravizza’s work. 

The Cembalo Scrivano was shown to the public at the Industrial Exhibition in Turin in 1856, where Ravizza sold a small number at 200 lire each, and at a similar exhibition in Novara, where it was awarded a gold medal.  The Cembalo Scrivano was also exhibited in London. 

Ravizza spent almost 40 years refining his typewriter
but it was never produced on a commercial scale

In total, Ravizza spent nearly 40 years refining his machine. Despite producing at least 16 models of his Cembalo Scrivano between 1847 and the early 1880s, his inventions never reached mass production or commercial viability. 

Italy in the mid-19th century lacked the industrial infrastructure to support such innovation, and Ravizza himself was more an inventor than a businessman, with no particular motivation to make financial gains.

Having been born into a moneyed background, in 1886 he married Alessandrina Massini, an Italian philanthropist sometimes described as a forerunner of the feminist movement. Their home became a popular bourgeois salon.

Today, he is remembered as a visionary precursor to the typewriter revolution, if not the inventor. His machines are preserved in museums and private collections, including the Civic Museum of the Broletto in Novara, which has a Cembalo Scrivano donated in 1940 by the Mayor of Ivrea on behalf of the Olivetti Society.

The towering dome of the Basilica of San Gaudenzio
dominates the landscape of Novara in Piedmont

Travel tip:

Novara, where Ravizza was born, is around 65km (40 miles) west of Milan and 100km (62 miles) northeast of Turin. With a population of just over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the Piedmont region, after Turin. Founded by the Romans, it was later ruled by the Visconti and Sforza families. In the 18th century it was ruled by the House of Savoy. In the 1849 Battle of Novara, the Sardinian army was defeated by the Austrian army, who occupied the city. This led to the abdication of Charles Albert of Sardinia and is seen as the beginning of the Italian unification movement.  Among the fine, historic buildings in Novara, which include the Basilica of San Gaudenzio - notable for its towering campanile, topped by Alessandro Antonelli's 75m cupola - and the Broletto, a complex that was at the civic heart of many medieval Italian cities, is the Novara Pyramid, which is also called the Ossuary of Bicocca. It was built to hold the ashes of fallen soldiers after the 19th century Battle of Novara.

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The busy port of Livorno on Italy's west coast
is the second largest city in Tuscany

Travel tip:

The port of Livorno is the second largest city in Tuscany after Florence, with a population of almost 160,000. It is the region’s principal seaport, a dynamic gateway to the Tyrrhenian Sea and a vital hub for both cargo and cruise traffic. The port spans over 2.5 million square meters, with 21 km of docks and around 90 berths. It handles over 35 million tonnes of goods and more than 3.5 million passengers, including 800,000 cruise passengers, each year. Positioned on Italy’s west coast, it is about 90km (56 miles) from Florence. Although it is a large commercial port with much related industry, it has many attractions, including an elegant sea front – the Terrazza Mascagni - an historic centre – the Venetian quarter – with canals, and a tradition of serving excellent seafood.  The Terrazza Mascagni is named after the composer Pietro Mascagni, who was born in Livorno. 

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More reading:

Camillo Olivetti - the founder of Italy’s first typewriter factory

The Italian engineer behind the world’s first personal computer

The priest and physicist who created the first ‘fax machine’

Also on this day:

1459: The death of humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini

1877: The birth of businesswoman Luisa Spagnoli

1893: The birth of bodybuilder Charles Atlas

1896: The birth of conductor Antonino Votto

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Edmondo De Amicis - writer and journalist

Author whose most famous work became a staple text in Italian schools

Edmondo De Amicis's first writing
drew on his service in the Italian Army

The writer, journalist and former soldier Edmondo De Amicis, famous as the author of Cuore, his imagined diary of a schoolboy in Turin, was born on this day in 1846 in Oneglia, now part of modern Imperia in Liguria.

Through its daily diary entries by the book’s central character, Enrico, interspersed with uplifting stories told by one of his teachers, Cuore - published for the first time in 1886 - came to be seen as something of a moral compass for young people growing up in post-unification Italy.

At a time when the newly-formed Italian State was keen to impose its authority over a Catholic Church that had vehemently opposed unification and still refused to recognise the new Kingdom of Italy, Cuore’s emphasis on values such as patriotism, compassion, diligence, and respect for authority, resonated deeply with the new secular government, reflecting exactly the moral and civic ideals it wished to be at the heart of society.

It became a staple in Italian public schools, remaining so for the best part of a century. Moreover, its appeal extended well beyond the borders of the fledgling Italian nation and was adapted and translated into at least 25 languages, earning De Amicis international acclaim.

Although Cuore - Heart - was by some way the biggest success of his literary career, De Amicis also won praise for the travel books he wrote while working as a foreign correspondent for the Rome newspaper La Nazione. 

One of these - Constantinople (1877) - was seen as the best description of the Turkish city now known as Istanbul to be published in the 19th century. A new edition of the book was published in 2005.

In addition to Cuore, De Amicis, who was a member of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies for the Italian Socialist Party between 1906 and his death in 1908, wrote a number of later novels that reflected his interest in such matters as social reform, education, and workers’ rights.

De Amicis himself had been born into a wealthy family. His father, Francescso, was a royal banker in the salt and tobacco sector. His original home in Oneglia and the one to which the family moved in Cuneo, Piedmont, when he was two years old, were both spacious and elegant properties.

Cuore became staple reading for
generations of Italian schoolchildren

Growing up in Cuneo, he initially looked destined for a military career. After studying at the Candellero military college in Turin, he enrolled at the Military Academy of Modena at age 16, graduating with the rank of second lieutenant.

This experience, shaped as it was by Italy’s turbulent path towards unification, profoundly influenced his destiny. As an officer in the Royal Italian Army, he participated in the Third War of Independence and fought in the Battle of Custoza in 1866. Italy’s defeat by Austria left De Amicis deeply disillusioned, leading him to resign from military service and turn to writing.

At first, it was as a military journalist, moving to Florence to edit L'Italia militare, the official publication, for whom he wrote military sketches, later collected in a book entitled La vita militare - Military Life. His vivid portrayals of army life were well received and became the launch pad for his new career. 

De Amicis soon became a news journalist and travel writer, journeying across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. Travel books such as Spagna (1873), Olanda (1874), and the aforementioned Costantinopoli (1878) were celebrated for their rich descriptions and cultural insights, blending reportage with literary flair.

It was Cuore, however, that was the turning point of his literary life. Its themes promoted a strong sense of national identity, emphasising loyalty to Italy, respect for its institutions and admiration for its heroes, especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield. 

The stories told by young Enrico’s teacher, meanwhile, taught virtues such as honesty, courage, humility and compassion, while often featuring children from different regions of Italy, reinforcing unity through shared values.

De Amicis entered Italian politics
towards the end of his life

The book caused some controversy, too, by making no reference to religion. The nuns, priests or other religious mentors that featured in other moral tales were conspicuous by their absence. This upset the Catholic Church, already reeling from the capture of the Papal States and Rome in 1870, which completed unification and reduced the pope to a mere spiritual leader, having previously been effectively the monarch of his domain.

De Amicis ultimately returned to Piedmont, with homes in Turin and Pinerolo. It was the school life of his sons Furio and Ugo, students at the Boncompagni Elementary School in Turin, that inspired him to write Cuore. 

His last years were overshadowed by sadness, at the death of his mother, his fractious relationship with his wife and ultimately the suicide of Furio, his eldest son. It prompted him to leave Turin soon after the turn of the century, thereafter leading a nomadic existence that included time in Florence and Catania, in Sicily.

He died during a stay in Bordighera, in Liguria, where he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage while resident at the then Hotel Regina, which he had chosen as his base because George MacDonald, a Scottish poet he admired, had lived there a few years earlier. The building, at Via Vittorio Veneto 34, has commemorative plaques to them both. 

De Amicis was laid to rest in the family tomb, in the monumental cemetery of Turin.

Piazza Dante is a the central square in the part 
of Imperia that makes up the former Oneglia

Travel tip:

Oneglia, where De Amicis was born, was a town about 120km (75 miles) from Genoa along the western coast of Liguria. It was joined to Porto Maurizio in 1923 by Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini to form the municipality known as Imperia. The area has become well known for cultivating flowers and olives and there is a Museum of the Olive in the part of the city that used to be Oneglia. One of Italy’s most famous olive oil producers and connoisseurs, Filippo Berio, was born in Oneglia in 1829.  The Porto Maurizio area is characterised by steep, narrow streets and loggias with an elevated position offering views across the Ligurian Sea, while the Oneglia part of Imperia is on the whole a modern town, one exception being the streets behind the Calata Cuneo in the port area. Today, Imperia is part industrial port and part tourist resort.  What used to be Oneglia is at the eastern end of Imperia, around Piazza Dante, which is at the centre of a long shopping street, Via Aurelia.

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Picturesque side streets are part
of the charm of Bordighera

Travel tip:

Bordighera, where De Amicis died, is a small, picturesque town on Italy’s western Riviera, just 20km (12 miles) from Italy’s border with France. It is famous for its flower industry and was a popular holiday destination for the British during Queen Victoria’s reign. Being situated where the Maritime Alps meet the sea, it enjoys the benefit of a climate that invariably produces mild winters. It was the first town in Europe to grow date palms. Its seafront road, the Lungomare Argentina - named in honour of a visit to the town by Evita Peron in 1947 - is 2.3km (1.4 miles) long and is said to be the longest promenade on the Italian Riviera. Queen Margherita of Savoy - wife of Umberto I - had a winter palace, Villa Margherita, in the town.  Bordighera was the scene of a meeting in 1941 between Italy’s Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and his Spanish counterpart, Francisco Franco, to discuss Spain’s entry to World War Two on the side of Italy and Germany, although in the end Spain remained nominally neutral.

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More reading:

Maria Montessori and the launch of what became a worldwide network of schools

How the first free public school in Europe opened in Frascati, just outside Rome

A soldier-turned-writer who fought alongside unification hero Garibaldi

Also on this day:

1581: The birth of Baroque master Domenichino 

1898: The birth of Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta

1928: The birth of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, inspiration for Dario Fo play

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Nicola Abbagnano - philosopher

Thinker who championed ‘positive existentialism’ 

Nicola Abbagnano rejected the
negative tenets of existentialism

The philosopher Nicola Abbagnano, best known for his advancement of what he defined as positive existentialism, was born on this day in 1901 in Salerno in Campania.

Abbagnano, who spent much of his adult life in Turin, Milan and the Ligurian resort town of Santa Margherita Ligure, developed a philosophy that emphasised human possibility and freedom, rejecting more traditional existentialist discussions that focussed on how the struggle to create purpose in an inherently meaningless world can engender feelings of anguish and despair.

Many years on from his death in 1990, Abbagnano’s legacy of intellectual optimism continues to inspire philosophers who seek a balanced, pragmatic approach to existential questions, while his emphasis on ethical responsibility resonates in contemporary debates on human behaviour.

Abbagnano was born into a middle-class professional family in Salerno, where his father was a practising lawyer. He obtained a degree in philosophy in Naples, where his thesis became the subject of his first book Le sorgenti irrazionali del pensiero - The Irrational Sources of Thought, published in 1923. 

He subsequently taught philosophy and history at the Liceo Umberto I, in Naples, and from 1917 to 1936 he was the professor of philosophy and pedagogy in the Istituto di Magistero Suor Orsola Benincasa. 

From 1936 to 1976 he was based at the University of Turin, where he was appointed a full professor, first of the history of philosophy at the Faculty of Education, and from 1939 at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy.

The inner courtyard of the Palazzo dell'Università
in Turin, where Abbagnano was based for 40 years

As a scholar of philosophy, Abbagnano introduced into the national discourse his knowledge of the French and German existentialist trends, of which Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre were leading exponents.

His 1939 work, La struttura dell'esistenza - The Structure of Existence - is seen as a manifesto of the evolution of his thought, in which he proposed an alternative to the German existentialism of Heidegger and Jaspers.

He defined his philosophical vision as positive existentialism. In his work Possibilità e libertà - Possibility and Freedom - published in 1956, he clarified the meaning of his philosophy as neither pessimistic nor optimistic. He did not subscribe to the vision of man as being so hindered by uncertainty as to be prevented from achieving full potential, but accepted that fulfilment could never be certain. 

Abbagnano wrote extensively. In 1950, he was co-founder of the periodical Quaderni di sociologia - Sociology Notebooks - and in 1952 he was joint editor with the political philosopher Norberto Bobbio of the Rivista di filosofia - Philosophy Magazine. 

In 1964, he began writing for the Turin newspaper La Stampa, moving to Indro Montanelli’s Milan daily, Il Giornale, in 1972. 

Abbagnano's legacy of intellectual
optimism still inspires philosophers

Earlier, in the 1950s, he had organised a series of conventions under the banner of "New Enlightenment," bringing together academics who were interested in the main trends of the foreign philosophical thought. 

Many of his books, especially later in his career, became bestsellers, including his 1987 work La saggezza della filosofia - The Wisdom of Philosophy - and Dizionario di filosofia - Dictionary of Philosophy, published the same year.

His salary as a professor and his income from his writing enabled him to spend an increasing amount of time away from the oppressive heat of the cities on the coast of Liguria in Portofino and Santa Margherita Ligure, where he acquired a home in 1959.

He delighted in the sunsets witnessed from Portofino, which for a few minutes, depending on weather conditions, bathed the village in a subtle, blue light. He also enjoyed swimming in the sea and chatting to fishermen on his walks along the waterfront.

It was in Santa Margherita Ligure, on the beach in front of the Hotel Continental, that he met Gigliola, with whom he spent the final 18 years of his life after they married in 1972. 

Abbagnano died in 1990 in Milan, aged 89. According to his wishes, he was buried in the cemetery of Santa Margherita Ligure.

The historic part of Salerno is made
up of quaint, narrow streets

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 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. The city has a Greek and Roman heritage and was an important Lombard principality in the middle ages, when the first medical school in the world was founded there. King Victor Emmanuel III moved there in 1943, making it a provisional seat of Government for six months and it was the scene of Allied landings during the invasion of Italy in World War II.  

The 16th century Castello di Santa
Margherita sits at the sea's edge
 

Travel tip:

Santa Margherita Ligure is a seaside town nestled between Rapallo and Portofino on the Riviera di Levante, noted for its pastel-coloured buildings, palm-lined promenades and lively marina.  Once a Roman settlement called Pescino, it has been a resort town since World War Two, with pebbly but picturesque beaches. Important buildings include the Basilica di Santa Margherita d'Antiochia, a beautiful baroque church, the 17th century Villa Durazzo, and the Castello di Santa Margherita, built in the 16th-century to defend against pirates.  The former fishing village of Portofino, which has become a resort famous for its picturesque harbour and historical association with celebrity visitors, is about 5km (three miles) from Santa Margherita Ligure along a road that hugs the coastline. It began to develop as a tourist destination in the late 19th century, when British and other Northern European aristocratic tourists were enticed by its charms, despite access then being mainly by boat, or horse and cart. 

Also on this day:

1979: The birth of writer and poet Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello

1823: Fire damages Rome Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls

1850: The birth of missionary and saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

1933: The birth of cartoonist Guido Crepax

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The founding of Fiat

The investors and aristocrats who created giant of car industry

Lorenzo Delleani's painting of the founding of Fiat shows 
Bricherasio in the cream jacket, with Agnelli third from the right.

A group of nine Italian investors and aristocrats met at the Palazzo Cacherano di Bricherasio in Turin on this day in 1899 to found the automobile company Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino - Fiat, as it would become known.

The group were brought together by Emanuele Cacherano di Bricherasio, a wealthy nobleman and entrepreneur, and his fellow entrepreneur Cesare Goria Gatti, who were founder members of the Automobile Club of Italy. The two had already enjoyed some success in the fledgling world of car manufacture as part of the Ceirano GB & C partnership the previous year and saw the potential of producing vehicles on a much bigger scale.

In addition to Bricherasio and Gatti, the nine consisted of two other nobleman, Count Roberto Biscaretti di Ruffia and the Marquis Alfonso Ferrero de Gubernatis Ventimiglia, the banker and silk industrialist Michele Ceriana Mayneri, the lawyer Carlo Racca, the landowner Lodovico Scarfiotti, the stockbroker Luigi Damevino and the wax industrialist Michele Lanza.

Giovanni Agnelli, who became known as the founder of Fiat and whose descendants ensured kept the family at the heart of the business for 115 years, was not part of the original group but after Lanza dropped out was approached by Scarfiotti, his fellow landowner, to come on board.

After a number of meetings at the Caffè Burello on Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Turin, the group secured the financial support of the Banco di Sconto e Sete of Turin and met in Palazzo Bricherasio to sign the deeds drawn up by Dr Ernesto Torretta, patrimonial notary of the Royal House of Savoy.

The first Fiat off the production line at the Corso
Dante factory was the two-seater 3½ HP

The members paid a capital of 800,000 lire in return for 4,000 shares and entrusted the presidency to Ludovico Scarfiotti. 

The new company’s first outlay was to pay 30,000 lire for the Ceirano business, including all its expertise and workforce. Ceirano had already produced a small car known as the Welleyes - so called because English names had commercial appeal at the time - designed by the engineer Aristide Faccioli and handcrafted by Giovanni Battista Ceirano.

The first car built by Fiat  - the 3½ HP, a modest two-seater with a top speed of just 22mph (35kph) - was a copy of the Welleyes. Eight were built in total in 1899. The first factory was located on Corso Dante, in the southeast of the city, a short distance from the sweep of the Po river that gives the city a natural border. It opened in 1900, producing 24 cars, and remained the company’s production headquarters until the famous Lingotto plant went online in 1923.

Although Giovanni Agnelli quickly became the central figure of Fiat’s expansion and development, he was considered a junior member of the business at first, serving as secretary to the board.

But it soon became clear through his ideas that he had the strategic mindset required to build a profitable enterprise and his status was quickly elevated. By 1902, he was made managing director.

Fiat’s early years were not straightforward. There were various recapitalisations and changes in the composition of the share capital, but Agnelli steered the business through this period and by 1920, having become effectively the owner, he had risen to chairman.

By that time, Fiat had become the dominant player in Italy’s car industry with global expansion under way. Having become profitable by 1903, when it produced 135 cars, by 1906, that number had jumped to 1,149. It produced its first truck in 1903 and its first aircraft engine in 1908.  By 1910, as Italy’s largest car manufacturer, it entered the US market with a plant in New York. 

A rare picture of a young Gianni Agnelli (left) in
conversation with his grandfather, Giovanni

Giovanni Agnelli remained involved with the company until his death in 1945 at the age of 79, although for many years the man at the helm had been Vittorio Valletta, his trusted lieutenant, who had assumed control when Giovanni’s future was compromised by his close ties with the Fascist regime. 

Control would probably have passed to Giovanni’s only son, Edoardo, but he was killed in a plane crash in 1935. In the event, Valletta became president with Giovanni’s death and remained in that role until 1966, when at the age of 83 he finally handed over to Gianni Agnelli, the founder’s grandson.

The Agnelli family's direct operational control of Fiat ended in 2004, a year after the death of Gianni. The last Agnelli to lead Fiat as CEO was Umberto Agnelli, who passed away in May 2004, although the family remains involved, through John Elkann, Gianni Agnelli’s grandson.

Elkann took on a key leadership role and stayed in a prominent management position after the 2014 merger with Chrysler created Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Fiat as an independent family business ceased to be.

Fiat Chrysler evolved in 2021 into Stellantis, of which Elkann is chairman. Elkann is also CEO of Exor, the Agnelli family’s investment company, which owns major stakes in Stellantis as well as Ferrari, Juventus FC, and The Economist.

The company name still sits proudly above the
original factory in Corso Dante, which opened in 1900

Travel tip:

The original Fiat factory on Corso Dante in Turin still exists today and is open to the public as a museum, the Centro Storico Fiat, which has a large number of exhibits, including cars and aeroplanes, outlining the company’s history up to about 1970. The Fiat exhibits are part of the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile. Tickets cost €10 for adults, with opening times from 10am until 6pm. The factory opened in 1900 and was active for 22 years before the massive Lingotto plant came into use, and became associated with the Fiat Brevetti car.  The museum can be found at the junction of Corso Dante and Via Gabriele Chiabrera about 5km (3 miles) from the centre of Turin, near the southern end of the Parco del Valentino and a few streets from where the Ponte Isabella crosses the Po river.

The Palazzo Cacherano di Bicherasio, which
dates back to 1636, now houses a bank

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Cacherano di Bricherasio, located on Via Lagrange in central Turin, between Via Giovanni Giolitti and Via Cavour, was built in 1636 as a noble residence in the Contrada dei Conciai. It became the home of the now-extinct Cacherano di Bricherasio family in 1855, known for their military honours and cultural patronage. Count Emanuele Cacherano di Bricherasio, a key figure in Italy’s early automotive industry, hosted the founding meeting of Fiat in his study, making the palace a cradle of industrial history. His sister Sofia, a painter and patron, transformed the residence into a vibrant cultural salon, welcoming artists such as Lorenzo Delleani and Arturo Toscanini. After World War Two, the palace housed a school and then an exhibition venue for the Palazzo Bricherasio Foundation, following its restoration in 1994. Since 2010, it has housed Banca Patrimoni Sella & C, preserving its architectural elegance and historical significance while remaining partially open to the public for guided visits.

Also in this day:

138: Antoninus Pius becomes Roman Emperor following the death of Hadrian

1576: The murder of noblewoman Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo, wife of Don Pietro de’ Medici

1593: The death of painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo

1934: The birth of fashion designer Giorgio Armani

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Lorenzo Del Boca – journalist and writer

Author of Polentoni says north of Italy was betrayed by the Risorgimento

Lorenzo Del Boca had a long career working as
a journalist for the Turin-based daily La Stampa

The author Lorenzo Del Boca, whose books and essays about Italian history and politics have been translated into several languages, was born on this day in 1951 in Romagnano Sesia in the province of Novara in Piedmont.

Del Boca has become known outside Italy following the publication of his book Polentoni in 2011, which puts forward his opinions about how and why the north of the country was betrayed by the unification of Italy in 1861.

But he refutes the idea that Polentoni is in any way a riposte to the book Terroni, published in 2010 by the author and journalist Pino Aprile, who is from Puglia in the south of Italy and expresses the opinion that the south was betrayed by the north as a result of the Risorgimento. 

Del Boca points out on the back cover of Polentoni that in the 1990s he had already written two books that have been interpreted as ‘irreverent’ about the wealthy Savoy family.  

The first King of the united Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, was a descendant of the family, as were all the monarchs who succeeded him. Del Boca also says that he has been quoted extensively by Aprile as a bibliographic reference. 

Polentoni argues that Risorgimento was
a betrayal of the north as well as the south

The title of his book, Polentoni, is an offensive term sometimes used by people in southern Italy to describe northern Italians. It alludes to the northern Italian habit of eating polenta, which is a type of yellow or white ground cornmeal that can be served creamy, as a slice from a loaf of polenta, or fried.

After graduating in Philosophy from the University of Turin, Del Boca was involved for a time with local newspapers before going to work for La Stampa, the sixth most widely distributed Italian daily newspaper, which is based in Turin.

He became a professional journalist in 1980, working first as a court reporter and then as chief reporter at Stampa Sera. He went on to become a special correspondent at La Stampa, writing mainly about events connected with terrorism.

Del Boca has also specialised in writing about pseudo-history, about information that claims to be history, but is often based on theories that have been formed, which fall outside the rules and conventions followed by historians. 

His writing about the House of Savoy is characterised by a lack of reverence towards the famous family and he uses as sources articles and publications that do not accept the traditional version of the history of the Risorgimento.

He argues that while the south was ‘stripped, robbed and massacred’,  the Risorgimento was a shameful period in history in which there were no winners among ordinary Italians, with many northern people persuaded to fight and even die for the cause with a promise of better lives that was never delivered.

Other scholars and historians have criticised some of Del Boca’s ideas. but he has also received many awards for his writing.

Del Boca was president of the National Council of the Order of Journalists from 2001 to 2010, and was the first president to have been elected for a third consecutive term to be the head of the collective body that represents professional journalists in Italy.  

The Castello del Valentino is one of Turin's
historic former residences of the Savoy family

Travel tip:

Lorenzo Del Boca was born in Piedmont, which is the second largest region of Italy after Sicily. Piedmont, in the northwest of Italy, borders France, Switzerland and the Italian regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Val d’Aosta, and a small part of Emilia-Romagna. The territory was first acquired by Otto of Savoy in 1046 and its capital was established at Chambery, which is now in France. The Savoy territory became the Duchy of Savoy in 1416 and the seat of the Duchy was moved to Turin in 1563 by Duke Emanuele Filiberto. After Victor Amadeus II became King of Sardinia in 1720, Piedmont became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Turin grew in importance as a European capital city. Victor Emmanuel II was already the King of Sardinia-Piedmont before he was crowned King of the newly united Italy.  Much of the architecture of Turin illustrates its rich history as the home of the Savoy Kings of Italy. In the centre of the city, Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library, and Palazzo Madama, which used to be where the Italian senate met, showcases some of the finest buildings in ‘royal’ Turin. Other notable cities in Piedmont - Piemonte in Italian - include Novara, Alessandria and Asti. With a population of just over 850,000, Turin is the fourth largest city in Italy, after Rome, Milan and Naples.

The Torre del Pretorio
dates back to the 1400s

Travel tip:

Romagnano Sesia, the town and municipality where Lorenzo del Boca was born, is in the province of Novara in Piedmont. It is located about 80km (50 miles) northeast of Turin and about 25km (16 miles) northwest of Novara. Visitors to Romagnano are attracted by the Church of San Silvano and Abbazia di San Silvano, which form a complex is notable for its historical and artistic significance, including a 5th-century Paleochristian sarcophagus, the 15th century tower Torre del Pretorio, the Piazza Libertà, the town’s central square surrounded by arcades, and the remains of a medieval bridge that once spanned the Sesia river before it was diverted to protect the town from its force.  Romagnano stages a Good Friday procession, known as the Sacred Representation, which began in 1729 and has evolved into a large-scale theatrical performance. It involves more than 300 actors often drawn from the community, who dress in period costumes to recreate the scenes of Jerusalem.

Also on this day:

1859: The Battle of Solferino

1866: The Battle of Custoza

1940: The birth of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro

1963: The birth of architect Benedetta Tagliabue

1993: The birth of tenor Piero Barone, a singer with Il Volo

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