Antonio da Sangallo the Younger - Architect

Talented Florentine was commissioned by the Popes

The Church of Santa Maria de Loreto in
Rome was Sangallo's first major commission

Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who left his mark on Rome during the Renaissance, died on this day in 1546 in Terni in Umbria.

Sangallo was the chief architect on St Peter’s Basilica from 1520 onwards and built many other beautiful churches and palaces in the city and throughout the Papal States.

He was born Antonio Cordiani in Florence in 1484. His grandfather had been a woodworker and his uncles, Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo, were architects.

The young man followed his uncles to Rome to pursue a career in architecture and ended up taking the name Sangallo himself.

He became an assistant to Donato Bramante and started by preparing sketches for his master.

Recognising his talent, Bramante gave Sangallo projects to complete with no more than an outline of the design and motifs.

Sangallo’s first major commission was for the Church of Santa Maria di Loreto in 1507.

He came to the attention of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who later became Pope Paul III, and was commissioned to design the Farnese Palace in Piazza Farnese and a palace and church in the Cardinal’s home town of Gradoli.

Sangallo designed the Palazzo Farnese
on behalf of the future Pope Paul III

Sangallo designed the Palazzo Baldassini for Melchiore Baldassini and was responsible for the final design of the Villa Madama for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici.

Having acquired a reputation in Rome as a master architect, he was appointed by Pope Leo X to oversee the construction of St Peter’s Basilica.

He was also responsible for some inspired engineering feats, such as building the foundations for the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini on the banks of the Tiber, following Jacopo Sansovino’s design, which called for the church to extend into the river.

He shored up the foundations for the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto and did similar work on the Vatican loggias. His reinforcements are still standing today.

His last engineering project was the draining of the Rieti Valley. Because of the marshy environment he was working in, Sangallo contracted malaria and died before finishing the task.

When Cardinal Farnese became Pope Paul III in 1534 he asked for the Palazzo Farnese design to be expanded. In 1546 during the construction he became dissatisfied with Sangallo’s original design for the cornice and held a competition for a new design, which was won by Michelangelo.

At the time it was said that Sangallo had died from shame soon afterwards, but his biographer, Giorgio Vasari, later wrote that he was an excellent architect whose achievements deserved to be celebrated. Antonio Sangallo the Younger was buried in St Peter’s Basilica.

Sangallo's construction of St Patrick's Well in Orvieto is
considered one of his most accomplished engineering feats

Travel tip:

One of Sangallo’s amazing engineering feats was St Patrick’s Well in Orvieto, built for Pope Clement VII. Ramps around a central open shaft allowed oxen carrying water to do down one of the ramps and up the other without having to turn round. Despite the depth of the well, the ramps were well lit through windows cut into the centre section.

The Scala Regia was built by Sangallo and later restored
by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Travel tip:

Sangallo was capomaestro in charge of the day-to-day construction of St Peter’s Basilica from 1513 until about 1536. A wooden model of his design for the basilica is still in existence. He also worked on the Vatican apartments, building the Pauline Chapel and the Scala Regia, the main staircase to the Apostolic Chapel. Therefore it was fitting that the architect was allowed to be buried in St Peter’s.

More reading:

The Renaissance pope who turned Rome into the cultural heart of Europe

How Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted Rome

The story of La Pietà - Michelangelo's ultimate masterpiece

Also on this day:

1486: The birth of Imperia Cognati - courtesan

1778: Milan's Teatro alla Scala opens for business

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Bologna railway station bombed

Biggest terrorist atrocity in Italy's history killed 85

The scene outside Bologna railway station in the aftermath
of the explosion on August 2, 1980

Italy suffered the most devastating terrorist outrage in its history on this day in 1980 with the bombing of Bologna's main railway station.

A massive 23kg (51lbs) of explosive packed into a suitcase left in a crowded waiting room was detonated at 10.25am, creating a blast that destroyed much of the main building of the station and badly damaged a train on one of the platforms.

Many people, locals and tourists, Italians and foreign nationals, were caught up in the explosion. Some were killed instantly, others died as a result of the roof of the waiting room collapsing on to the victims. There were 85 deaths and more than 200 other people were wounded.

The bomb was clearly placed to cause mass casualties. It was the first Saturday in the traditional August holiday period, one of the busiest days of the year for rail travel, and the explosive-laden suitcase was left in a room with air conditioning, then still relatively rare in Italy. On a hot day, the room was naturally full of people.

The station clock is now permanently set at the exact time
the bomb exploded on that fateful Saturday morning

The attack was the deadliest of several during a bleak period of 10-12 years in Italian history that became known as the Years of Lead, when the ideological struggle between the left and right in Italian politics was at its height.

It began with the killing of a Milan policeman in a far-left demonstration in November 1969 followed a few weeks later by a number of bomb attacks in Rome and Milan, the biggest of which killed 17 people in a bank in Piazza Fontana, not far from the Milan cathedral.

There were several more bombings in the years that followed and countless assassinations of policemen, military personnel, government officials and other prominent public figures, the most high profile of which was the kidnap and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. In all, it has been calculated that the Years of Lead claimed the lives of 428 people.

Although the killings continued after the Bologna Massacre, they happened with much less frequency after 1980 than in the three years leading up to the bombing, which has led some commentators to regard the August 2 attack as effectively bringing to an end the darkest period in Italian history since Fascism.

The tangled remains of the waiting
room roof after the blast

As is almost always the case in Italy, the process of identifying the perpetrators and bringing justice was a long and torturous process.

Although the Ansa news agency received a call within minutes of the bomb going off, purporting to claim responsibility on behalf of a right-wing terrorist group known as Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Corps), it was seven years before anyone was brought to trial and 10 more years before a series of trials, appeals, acquittals and retrials finally resulted in the confirmed conviction for murder of two NAR members, Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro.

Even now, conspiracy theories still persist over who else might have been involved with the planning and execution of the massacre.

In an era when the Italian Communists were as close to winning power, or a share of power, in the government of the country as they have been at any stage in their history, most of the outrages carried out during the Years of Lead were attributed either to extreme left-wing groups such as the Red Brigades and Prima Linea or to far-right organisations such as Ordine Nuovo, Terza Posizione and NAR.

The attack in Bologna was seen as symbolic because it targeted a city with a history of of left-wing politics along with a strong civic culture and a tradition of supporting the Partisans and rejecting Fascism.

Valerio Fioravanti, pictured in police custody, was one of two
terrorists eventually jailed for carrying out the attack

But many commentators have theorised that behind the NAR, darker forces many have been at work, possibly involving the Italian government and its secret services via the secret movement known as Operation Gladio, or even the subversive Masonic organisation labelled Propaganda Due, of which countless civil servants, military personnel, policemen and politicians were secretly members.

It was even suggested that the Israeli secret services might have supported the attack to punish Italy for a perceived sympathetic stance towards the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The finger of suspicion was pointed at Gladio because of revelations years after the bombing that this was an organisation, in effect a shadow army, that had been put in place at the end of the Second World War, with the tacit backing of the United States, to act initially as a force primed to react to any invasion by forces from the Eastern Bloc, which Italy bordered, but later to prevent, by any means, the Italian Communist Party from forming a government, which it was feared would turn Italy into a de facto Soviet satellite.

None of these theories was ever proven, although three figures connected with Italy’s military intelligence service SISMI, along with P2 grand master Licio Gelli, were convicted during the course of the trials of supplying false information likely to mislead the investigation.

The memorial at Bologna station to the
victims of the 1980 bombing

Travel tip:

Memorial services at which to remember the 85 victims of the Bologna Massacre are held each year, with a march and a concert in Piazza Maggiore, right at the centre of the city.  There is a plaque carrying the names of all the victims, who ranged from three years old to 86, while the clock inside the station has been stopped at 10.25am as a mark of respect for those killed. The reconstructed wall to which the plaque is attached has a jagged-edged gap left in it.

The beautiful Piazza Maggiore in Bologna

Travel tip:

The history of Bologna, one of Italy's most historic cities, can be traced back to 1,000BC or possibly earlier, with a settlement that was developed into an urban area by the Etruscans, the Celts and the Romans.  The University of Bologna, the oldest in the world, was founded in 1088.  Bologna's city centre, which has undergone substantial restoration since the 1970s, is one of the largest and best preserved historical centres in Italy, characterised by 38km (24 miles) of walkways protected by porticoes.  At the heart of the city is the beautiful Piazza Maggiore, dominated by the Gothic Basilica of San Petronio, which at 132m long, 66m wide and with a facade that touches 51m at its tallest, is the 10th largest church in the world and the largest built in brick.

More reading:

December 12, 1969: The Piazza Fontana bombing

How magistrate Felice Casson revealed the existence of Operation Gladio

The kidnapping of ex-prime minister Aldo Moro

Also on this day:

1854: The birth of author Francis Marion Crawford

1945: The death of opera composer Pietro Mascagni

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Antonio Cotogni – baritone

Singer who moved the composer Verdi to tears

Antonio Cotogni's voice was admired
by the composer Giuseppe Verdi

Antonio ‘Toto’ Cotogni, who achieved international recognition as one of the greatest male opera singers of the 19th century, was born on this day in 1831 in Rome.

Cotogni’s fine baritone voice was particularly admired by the composer Giuseppe Verdi and music journalists wrote reviews full of superlatives after his performances.

Cotogni studied music theory and singing from an early age and began singing in churches and at summer music festivals outside the city.

He made his opera debut in 1852 at Rome’s Teatro Metastasio as Belcore in Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore.

After that he did not sing in public for a while, concentrating instead on building up his repertoire.

After singing in various Italian cities outside Rome he was signed up to sing at Rome’s Teatro Argentina in 1857 in Lucia di Lammermoor and Gemma di Vergy, also by Donizetti. Later that year he performed in Verdi's I due Foscari and Sanelli's Luisa Strozzi at Teatro Rossini in Turin. He met the soprano Maria Ballerini there and married her the following year.

His major breakthrough came in 1858 when he was asked to take the place of the famous baritone Felice Varesi in Nice.

Varesi’s fans felt that Cotogni, who was virtually unknown, should not have been chosen to replace the popular singer.

Cotogni in the role of Enrico in
Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor

He was engaged to sing Antonio in Donizetti’s Linda di Chamonix but was greeted with noises and whistling before he had sung a word.

The audience fell silent as he sang his opening aria and gave him thunderous applause afterwards demanding an encore. His performance revealed him to be a master of his art and Antonio became one of his signature roles.

Cotogni made his debut at La Scala in Milan in 1860 and after overcoming his initial nerves, he won over the notoriously critical audience.

He appeared at the leading opera houses in Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Moscow and Saint Petersburg and became particularly popular with London audiences, performing at the Royal Opera House regularly from 1867 to 1889.

The famous baritone gave his last operatic stage performance in 1894 in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale in Saint Petersburg.

Cotogni became a celebrated vocal teacher in retirement, teaching first at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and then at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

He taught dozens of celebrated singers during his retirement between 1894 and 1918, the year in which he died in Rome just before the armistice ended World War I.

Cotogni sang most of the major Verdi baritone roles and the composer himself praised the beauty and strength of his voice. Verdi heard him privately in several of the key pieces from Don Carlo and was moved to tears by his singing of Rodrigo’s death scene. Verdi had his own nickname for Cotogni, calling him mio ignoratino - my little ignoramus - which he used not in an insulting way but in teasing the singer for his unfailing modesty, humility and deference.

Cotogni was an exceptional teacher and was able to pass on to his pupils what Verdi had said to him about the arias and elements of the operas that had been changed in rehearsal.

Cotogni (second row, middle) with his class at the St Cecilia
Academy. Beniamino Gigli is on the right at the back.

Working with him was the young Luigi Ricci who would later become a vocal coach. Ricci took meticulous notes on information that Cotogni passed on to his pupils about things that had been changed in rehearsal but had never been officially recorded, as well as traditions begun by singers from the previous century.

Ricci eventually compiled a four-part collection, Variazioni-cadenze tradizioni per canto, which recorded this information for posterity.

At the age of 77 Cotogni recorded a duet with a much younger tenor for the gramophone. Although his voice was not the same as when it had moved Verdi to tears, it is a permanent reminder of the singer who had entranced audience throughout Europe for 40 years. It is also the oldest voice ever recorded for the gramophone as Cotogni had been born in 1831.

Via dei Genovesi in Trastevere

Travel tip:

Antonio Cotogni was born at number 13 Via dei Genovesi in the Trastevere district of Rome and there is a commemorative plaque on the house. Trastevere, once a working-class part of the city, is now one of Rome's most fashionable neighbourhoods, certainly among young professionals, who are attracted by its pretty cobbled streets and the wealth of inexpensive but chic restaurants.

The Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Via dei
Greci is part of the Academy

Travel tip:

The St Cecilia Academy - Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - where Cotogni taught singing, is one of the oldest musical academies in the world. It was founded in Rome by Pope Sixtus V in 1585 at the Church of Santa Maria ad Martires, better known as the Pantheon. Over the centuries, many famous composers and musicians have been members of the Academy, which lists opera singers Beniamino Gigli and Cecilia Bartoli among its alumni. Since 2005 the Academy’s headquarters have been at the Parco della Musica in Rome, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano.

More reading:

The death of Giuseppe Verdi - how Italy mourned the loss of a national icon

The brief but sparkling career of 19th century soprano Marietta Piccolomini

Antonio Scotti - the Neapolitan baritone who sang for 35 seasons at The Met

Also on this day:

1464: The death of Cosimo de' Medici, founder of a dynasty

1776: The birth of Francesca Scanagatta, the girl who pretended to be a man to join the Austrian army


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Salvatore Maranzano - crime boss

Sicilian ‘Little Caesar’ who established New York’s Five Families

Salvatore Maranzano had a
mission to kill rival boss

The criminal boss Salvatore Maranzano, who became the head of organised crime in New York City after the so-called Castellammarese War of 1930-31, was born on this day in 1886 in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily.

Maranzano’s position as ‘capo di tutti capi’ - boss of all bosses - in the city lasted only a few months before he was killed, but during that time he came up with the idea of organising criminal activity in New York along the lines of the military chain of command established in ancient Rome by his hero, Julius Caesar.

His fascination with and deep knowledge of the Roman general and politician led to him being nicknamed 'Little Caesar' by his Mafia contemporaries in New York.

Installing himself and four other survivors of the Castellammarese War as bosses, he established the principle of replacing the unstructured gang rivalry in New York with five areas of strictly demarcated territory to be controlled by criminal networks known as the Five Families.

Originally the Maranzano, Profaci, Mangano, Luciano and Gagliano families, they are now known by different names - Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese to be precise - but are essentially based on the same structure.

Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, pictured at the exclusive
Excelsior Hotel in Rome in 1948

Maranzano, perversely, had originally set out to be a priest in his homeland and even undertook the necessary studies to become one. Somehow, his path changed and he found himself drawn into the criminal underworld and became a respected figure in the Sicilian Mafia.

He decided to emigrate to the United States shortly after the end of the First World War. He opened a business as a real estate broker in Brooklyn, while simultaneously growing a bootlegging business, eager to cash in on the restrictions of the Prohibition Era. In time, his activity extended to prostitution and the illegal smuggling of narcotics. He became acquainted with a young mobster called Joseph Bonanno, whom he groomed for power.

Maranzano’s true purpose in going to the United States, however, was not simply for his own personal gains. He had been despatched there by Don Vito Ferro, a powerful Sicilian mafioso who had designs on seizing control of Mafia operations in the US from Giuseppe ‘Joe the Boss’ Masseria, another Sicilian but one from the Agrigento province on the south coast of the island.

Joseph Bonanno was groomed
for high office in the Mafia

From his base in Castellammare del Golfo, not far from Palermo on the north coast, Ferro sent Maranzano specifically to eliminate Masseria, a mission he accomplished but only at the end of the 14 months of the Castellammarese War.

Masseria was shot dead in April 1931 while playing cards at a restaurant on Coney Island. The hit had been arranged by Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, the former Masseria lieutenant who had defected to Maranzano’s side along with Vito Genovese, Frank Costello and others on the understanding that Masseria’s death would result in Maranzano calling off the conflict, which was impacting heavily on gang profits.

Maranzano kept his side of the bargain and Luciano was rewarded with a position of power within the Five Families structure.

However, Luciano was uneasy about Maranzano declaring himself ‘boss of all bosses’ and it was not long before he concluded that his new boss was no more forward thinking about Mafia activity than his predecessor.  There were major ideological differences between the two. While Maranzano, like Masseria, trusted only fellow Sicilians, Luciano had partnerships with Jewish gangsters, of which Maranzano strongly disapproved.

Luciano decided that to leave Maranzano in charge would not be in the best interests of progress and began plotting his downfall almost immediately. In fact, Maranzano had been boss for only five months when four men, including Luciano’s Jewish associates Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel and Samuel ‘Red’ Levine, entered his office in what is now the Helmsley Building in Manhattan, posing as tax officials, and murdered him.

It left Luciano as the most powerful boss in New York City. He did nothing to change the Five Families structure Maranzano had established but, in a further measure aimed at reducing conflict between rival groups, not only in New York but across the United States, by establishing The Commission, a kind of board of directors of the American Mafia, consisting of the heads of the Five Families and the leaders of the Chicago and Buffalo crime families, who would oversee and coordinate Mafia activities across the US and mediate in disputes.

The attractive port area at Castellammare del Golfo

Travel tip:

Castellammare del Golfo is a resort and fishing town overlooking a large bay in the northwest corner of Sicily, midway between Trapani and Palermo.  It has an attractive setting, guarding over a broad sweep of water and with steep lanes of houses climbing the hillside from the harbour towards the elevated Piazza Petrolo.  A popular backdrop for TV dramas, including some episodes of the Inspector Montalbano series, it has the remains of a castle probably built at the time of the ninth-century Arab occupation of the town, and a good selection of bars and restaurants. It is the birthplace of many American Mafia figures, including Sebastiano DiGaetano, Stefano Magaddino, Vito Bonventre, John Tartamella and Joseph Bonanno, as well as Maranzano.

The Tempio di Giunone in the Valley of the Temples

Travel tip:

Agrigento, the home town of Maranzano’s rival boss Joe Masseria, is on the southern coast of Sicily and is built on the site of an ancient Greek city. Its most famous sight is the Valley of the Temples (Valle dei Templi) a large sacred area where seven monumental Greek temples were constructed during the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Situated on a ridge rather than in a valley, It is one of the most outstanding examples of Greater Greece art and architecture anywhere and at 1,300 hectares the the largest archaeological site in the world.

More reading:

How Lucky Luciano brought order among warring Mafia clans

Was Carlo Gambino the model for The Godfather?

Joe Petrosino - the Italian immigrant who fought against the mob

Also on this day:

1598: The birth of sculptor Alessandro Algardi

1969: The birth of football coach Antonio Conte

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Michelangelo Antonioni - film director

Enigmatic artist often remembered for 1966 movie Blowup

Michelangelo Antonioni was described
as one of Italian cinema's 'last greats'

The movie director Michelangelo Antonioni, sometimes described as “the last great” of Italian cinema’s post-war golden era, died on this day in 2007 at his home in Rome.

Antonioni, who was 94 years old when he passed away, was a contemporary of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.

Remarkably, three of that trio’s most acclaimed works - Fellini’s La dolce vita, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Antonioni’s L’avventura - appeared within a few months of one another.

Antonioni’s genius lay in the way he challenged traditional approaches to storytelling and drama and the way people viewed the world in general.

His characters were often intentionally vague, his most favoured themes being social alienation and bourgeois ennui, reflecting his view that life left many people emotionally adrift and unable to find their bearings.  His movies often had no strong plot in a conventional sense, were dotted with unfinished conversations and seemingly disconnected incidents. His style was seen as a rejection of neorealism, his films more a metaphor for human experience, rather than a record of it.

He divided opinions. At the Cannes Film Festival in 1960, when L’avventura was shown, half the audience booed and jeered. But Antonioni’s fellow director Roberto Rossellini sprang to his defence, hailing the movie, about a young woman's disappearance during a boating trip and how her lover and her best friend join forces to search for her but eventually begin having an affair, as a work of genius.

The actress Monica Vitti in a scene from L'eclisse (1962)

L’avventura (1960) was the first of three films, with Le notte (1961) and L’eclisse (1962), that were described as his “trilogy on modernity and its discontents”. All starred a young Roman actress called Monica Vitti, who was at the time Antonioni’s lover.  Some critics argue that the exquisite, mysterious qualities that Vitti brought to her acting were the key to the trilogy’s success and Antonioni’s breakthrough with large international audiences. His first film in colour, The Red Desert (1964) explored similar themes.

He and Vitti stayed together for 10 years, their relationship falling between his two marriages. His third wife, Enrica Fico, was also a director.

Antonioni made a number of films in English, the most famous of which were Zabriskie Point (1970) and The Passenger (1975) and, above all, Blowup (1966), a movie starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave that was shocking at the time for its sex scenes, which was loosely based on the life of David Bailey, the photographer who captured the Swinging Sixties with more style and impact than any of his contemporaries.

Antonioni was honoured with numerous
awards for his films

Born in Ferrara, in the Po valley, Antonioni came from a family that enjoyed largely self-made prosperity thanks to his father’s efforts, though taking evening classes alongside his day job, to establish a career that was paid well enough for him to rise above his working-class roots.

Growing up, Antonioni loved music and drawing, with a fascination for architecture, and had he not fallen in love with the cinema he might have been an accomplished violinist. He went to university in Bologna, where he obtained a degree in economics, before beginning work for Il Corriere Padano, a newspaper based in Ferrara, where he wrote film reviews.

In his 20s he played tennis, winning amateur championships in northern Italy, and moved to Rome. During the Second World War he fought against the Fascists as a member of the Italian Resistance.

In 1942, Antonioni ventured into film-making for the first time, co-writing A Pilot Returns with Roberto Rossellini. He made his own debut with Gente del Po (1943), a short film about poor fishermen in the Po valley. His earliest feature films, many of which were lost after Rome was liberated by the Allies, were neorealist in style, before he broke away from that genre in the 1950s to make films with the theme of social alienation that would become common in his work.

Antonioni received numerous film festival awards and nominations throughout his career. He is one of only three directors to have won the Palme d'Or (Cannes), the Golden Lion (Venice) and the Golden Bear (Berlin), and the only director to have won these three and the Golden Leopard (Locarno). He received an honorary Academy Award in 1995.

The Este Castle dominates the centre of Ferrara

Travel tip:

The city of Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna is about 50km (31 miles) northeast of Bologna. It was ruled by the Este family between 1240 and 1598. Building work on the magnificent Este Castle in the centre of the city began in 1385 and it was added to and improved by successive rulers of Ferrara until the end of the Este line. Apart from the castle, the city has other architectural gems, including many the striking Renaissance building Palazzo dei Diamanti, so-called because the stone blocks of its facade are cut into the shape of diamonds.

The Archiginnasio is the oldest part of Bologna University

Travel tip:

Bologna University, where Antonioni studied, was founded in 1088 and is the oldest university in the world. The oldest surviving building, the Archiginnasio, is now a library and is open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 7 pm, and on Saturdays from 9 am to 2 pm. It is a short walk away from Piazza Maggiore and the Basilica di San Petronio in the centre of the city.

More reading:

Fellini's legacy to Italian cinema

Luchino Visconti - the aristocrat of Italian cinema

Why Roberto Rossellini is known as the 'father of neorealism'

Also on this day:

1626: The Naples earthquake that killed 70,000 people

1909: The birth of chemist Vittorio Erspamer, the scientist who discovered serotonin



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Teresa Noce - activist and partisan

Anti-Fascist who became union leader and parliamentary deputy

Teresa Noce, who became one of the most important female campaigners for workers’ rights in 20th century Italy, was born on this day in 1900.

Teresa Noce led a partisan unit in France before
returning to Italian politics in 1945

A trade union activist as young as 12 years old, Noce spent almost 20 years in exile after the Fascists outlawed her political activity, during which time she became involved with the labour movement in Paris and subsequently led a French partisan unit under the code name Estella.

After she returned to Italy in 1945 she was elected to the Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies) as a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

Working with the Unione Donne Italiane (Italian Women’s Union), she secured changes to the law to protect working mothers and provide paid maternity leave.

Born in one of the poorest districts of Turin, she and her older brother were brought up in a one-parent family after her father abandoned their mother while they were both young. Because of her mother’s poor income, they were seldom able to keep the same home more than a few weeks before being evicted for non-payment of rent.

Teresa was a bright girl who taught herself to read the newspapers her mother occasionally bought but was forced to abandon her dreams of an education in order to contribute to the family income as soon as she was physically capable of work.

Luigo Longo was also a communist
activist when he married Noce in 1925

She took a job in a bakery initially and became a seamstress before she was even 10 years old. She joined a workers’ union and helped organise a strike for better pay and conditions when she was just 12. She moved to the Fiat factory in Corso Dante, employed like her brother as a turner, began writing for left-wing journals at the age of 14 and, after protesting against Italy’s entry to the First World War, became in 1919 a member of the Young Socialist movement.

Noce’s mother died in 1914 and her brother was killed on active service during the First World War. She became a founder-member of the Partito Comunista Italiano in 1921 after Antonio Gramsci and Amadeo Bordiga led a split from the socialists. Soon afterwards, despite being derided by his parents as “ugly, poor and communist”, she married another activist, Luigi Longo, with whom she organised illegal union activity after Mussolini had outlawed the PCI in 1925.

After both were arrested and imprisoned at different times, the two ultimately fled to Moscow before moving to Paris, where Noce became prominent among exiled Italians, campaigning for better working conditions and editing a number of anti-Fascists periodicals. She also travelled to Spain to support the Spanish Civil War.

After France surrendered to the Nazis she remained in Paris and became leader of a partisan unit comprising mainly Italians, adopting the nom de guerre Estella. After several brief imprisonments and other narrow escapes, she was arrested and sent to a women’s concentration camp at Ravensbruck in Germany.

Noce addressing a meeting of textile workers in 1948

Released in 1945 and allowed to return to Italy, she was elected to the central committee of the PCI and elected to the Italian Parliament.

She became general secretary of the textile workers’ union but her rise to a more senior position in the PCI hierarchy was blocked after he expressed differences with the leadership over policy and found herself shunned by others following an acrimonious split from Longo, who would eventually became the party’s general secretary.

The mother of three children, Noce died in Bologna in 1980 at the age of 79. She had written a number of books, including an autobiography entitled Rivoluzionaria professional (Professional Revolutionary).

The Fiat factory in Corso Dante in Turin

Travel tip:

The Fiat factory on Corso Dante, where Noce worked, still exists today and is open to the public as a museum, with a large number of exhibits, including cars and aeroplanes, outlining the company’s history up to about 1970. Opened in 1900, it 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.

Palazzo Maggiore in Bologna is the heart of the city

Travel tip:

The northern city of Bologna in Emilia-Romagna, where Noce spent the final years of her life, for many years was the success story of communist local government in Italy. The PCI governed the city from 1945 onwards. Between 1946 to 1956, the city council built 31 nursery schools, 896 flats and nine schools. Health care improved substantially, street lighting was installed, new drains and municipal launderettes were built and 8,000 children received subsidised school meals. The historic city centre was restored and, in 1972, the mayor, Renato Zangheri, introduced limitations for private vehicles and a renewed concentration on cheap public transport.

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San Marino’s liberation from Fascism

The day the people demonstrated against their government

The leader of San Marino's Fascists was
the wealthy Giuliano Gozi

San Marino residents celebrate the anniversary of their liberation from Fascism on this day every year.

The Sammarinese Fascist Party had been founded in 1922 by Giuliano Gozi, a veteran of the First World War who came from a rich and powerful family.

The party was modelled on the Fascist party of Italy and used violence and intimidation against its opponents.

Gozi took the roles of both foreign minister and interior minister, which gave him control over the military and the police. He continued to serve as foreign minister, leading the cabinet, until 1943.

In 1923 Gozi was elected as San Marino’s Captain Regent. The Fascists retained this post for 20 years as they banned all other political parties, although some independent politicians continued to serve in the Grand and General Council of the Republic.

But in the early 1940s a group of Socialists started up a clandestine anti-fascist movement and the opposition to the Fascist regime grew stronger in the republic.

On July 28, 1943 the Socialists held a successful political demonstration against Fascism and as a result new elections were called.

The symbol of the Sammarinese
Fascist Party

When Mussolini was freed by the Germans and Fascism was restored in Italy, the new Government of San Marino managed to negotiate a peace treaty allowing it to remain neutral between the two opposing forces.

During the war San Marino became a safe shelter for more than 100,000 refugees and many Jews were saved from being sent to concentration camps.

At the end of the Second World War, British and American troops supervised the slow return of these refugees to their homes.

A public holiday and festival is held in San Marino on July 28 every year in celebration of the day the Republic finally got rid of the Fascists.

San Marino's Fortress of Guaita is one of the republic's
most photographed spectacles

Travel tip:

San Marino, which is on the border between Emilia-Romagna and Marche, still exists as an independent state within Italy, situated on the north east side of the Apennine mountains. The republic’s romantic battlements and towers can be seen from miles away against the skyline. San Marino claims to be the oldest surviving sovereign state and constitutional republic in the world. It covers an area of just 61 square kilometres, or 24 square miles.

The Palazzo Pubblico

Travel tip:

San Marino’s official government building, the Palazzo Pubblico, is similar in design to the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence but is on a much smaller scale. It is in the heart of the Città di San Marino in Contrada del Pianello. Designed by the architect Francesco Azzurri it was built between 1884 and 1894.

More reading:

How the Allies bombed San Marino by accident

The founding of San Marino

The anarchist who tried to kill Mussolini

Also on this day:

1883: The birth of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini

1924: The birth of racing driver Luigi Musso


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