25 November

Stefano Boeri - architect

Milan urban planner famous for Vertical Forest

The architect Stefano Boeri, a specialist in environmentally sustainable developments and best known for his Bosco Verticale - Vertical Forest - project in Milan, was born on this day in 1956 in Milan.  The Bosco Verticale consists of two residential tower blocks in the Isola neighbourhood in the north of the city, just beyond the Porta Garibaldi railway station.  The two towers, one of 111m (364 ft), the other of 76m (249 ft), incorporate 8,900 sqm (96,000 sq ft) of terraces that are home to approximately 800 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 11,000 perennial plants.  The vegetation - the equivalent of what might be found in three hectares of woodland but with a footprint of just 3,000 sqm - mitigates against urban pollution, absorbing dust and carbon dioxide while producing oxygen. The trees also provide natural climate control for the inhabitants, shading the interior from sun in the summer and blocking cold winds in the winter.  Boeri incorporated other features to make the building self-sufficient, generating energy from solar panels and using filtered wastewater to irrigate the plants.  Construction of the towers began in late 2009 and the project was completed in 2014.  Read more…

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Rosanna Schiaffino – actress

Dramatic life of Italian screen goddess

Film star Rosanna Schiaffino, who for more than 20 years, between the 1950s and the 1970s, starred opposite the most famous actors of the period, was born on this day in 1939 in Genoa in Liguria.  Schiaffino worked for some of Italian cinema’s greatest directors, but in the 1980s turned her back on the cinema world to marry the playboy and steel industry heir, Giorgio Falck, entering a relationship that descended into acrimony after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Born into a wealthy family, Schiaffino was encouraged in her acting ambitions by her mother, who paid for her to go to a drama school.  She entered beauty contests and won the title of Miss Liguria when she was just 14.  She also took some modelling jobs and her photograph appeared in many magazines. She was spotted by the film producer Franco Cristaldi, who paired her with Marcello Mastroianni in Un ettaro di cielo (Piece of the Sky) in 1959.  Schiaffino made her name in her second film for Cristaldi, La Sfida (The Challenge), directed by Francesco Rosi, in which she gave a powerful, but sensitive performance as a Neapolitan girl, inspired by the real life character of Pupetta Maresca, a former beauty queen who became a famous Camorra figure.  Read more…

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Giorgio Faletti – writer and entertainer

Comedian who became best-selling novelist

Giorgio Faletti, who became a best-selling thriller writer, was born on this day in 1950 in Asti in Piedmont.  He was a successful actor, comedian, and singer-songwriter before he turned his hand to writing fiction. His first thriller, I Kill (Io uccido), sold more than four million copies.  Faletti’s books have now been published in 25 languages throughout Europe, South America, China, Japan, Russia and the US.  Faletti graduated from law school but then began a career as a comedian at the Milanese Club ‘Derby’.  In 1983 he made his debut on local television before appearing alongside the popular hostess and former actress, Raffaella Carrà, on RAI’s daytime game show, Pronto, Raffaella? He was cast as a comedian in the popular variety show, Drive In, which was followed by other television successes.  He wrote the soundtrack for a TV series in which he was one of the main actors and then released an album of his songs.  In 1992 he took part in the Sanremo Music Festival with Orietta Berti with the song Rumba di tango.  In 1994, performing his own song, Signor tenente, he came second at Sanremo.  Read more…

Bruno Tonioli - dance show judge

Dancer and choreographer who starred in Strictly Come Dancing

Dancer, choreographer and television dance show judge Bruno Tonioli was born on this day in 1955 in Ferrara in north-east Italy.  Tonioli was one of the judging panel of Strictly Come Dancing on British TV and on its US equivalent Dancing With the Stars, which required him to divide his time between London and New York when seasons overlap.  He began his show business career in the 1980s as a member of the Paris-based dance company La Grande Eugène before moving into the music industry as a choreographer.  Among the artists he has worked with are Tina Turner, Sting, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Freddie Mercury, Sinitta, Boy George, Dead or Alive, and Duran Duran.  Tonioli has also worked on numerous films and television shows including Little Voice, The Gathering Storm, Dancin' thru the Dark and Enigma.  He also has a number of acting credits, including the role of Peppino, manservant to Michael Gambon's Oscar Wilde in the BBC production Oscar.  Tonioli appeared as himself in the movie version of the BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous.  Renowned for his flamboyantly wild gestures and amusingly extravagant comments, Tonioli became a member of the Strictly Come Dancing team on the show's launch in 2004.  Read more…

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Amalfi destroyed by tsunami

Quake beneath Tyrrhenian Sea sparked killer wave

The former maritime republic of Amalfi, which once had a population of 70,000 people, was effectively wiped out when a massive earthquake that occurred under the Tyrrhenian Sea on this day in 1343 sparked a devastating tsunami along the coast of southern Italy.  The tremor itself caused deaths but not on the scale of the tsunami that followed, as a stretch of coastline from north of Naples to south of the Cilento National Park bore the brunt of a huge killer wave.  The towns of Bussanto and Blanda, near the present-day resorts of Sapri and Maratea, were among communities that disappeared completely, while Amalfi and Minori on what we know now as the Amalfi Coast were decimated.  Amalfi’s harbour and all the boats in it were destroyed, while the lower town fell into the sea. Where there had once been a thriving city, only a village remained, the population of which has never grown much beyond about 6,000 people. Its days as a significant maritime power were over.  Salerno and Naples suffered considerable damage, although the death toll was never recorded, it can be assumed it ran into tens of thousands.  Read more…

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Pope John XXIII

Farmer’s son went on to become ‘the Good Pope’

Pope John XXIII was born on this day in 1881 at Sotto il Monte near Bergamo.  He was originally named Angelo Roncalli and was part of a large farming family but he went on to become a much loved Pope and respected world leader.  Angelo was tutored by a local priest before entering the Seminary in Bergamo at the age of 12. He went on to study theology in Rome and rose to become Cardinal Patriarch of Venice before being elected Pope in 1958.  His religious studies had been interrupted by a spell in the Italian army, but he was ordained in 1904. He served as secretary to the Bishop of Bergamo for nine years before becoming an army chaplain in World War One.  After the war he worked in Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece on behalf of the church helping to locate and repatriate prisoners of war.  In 1944 he was appointed nuncio to Paris to help with the post war effort in France. He became a Cardinal in 1953 and expected to spend his last years serving the church in Venice.  But when he was elected Pope by his fellow cardinals in the conclave of 20 October 1958, it was a turning point in the church’s history.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Green Obsession: Trees Towards Cities, Humans Towards Forests, by Stefano Boeri

Green Obsession traces the long path that architect Stefano Boeri and his studio - Stefano Boeri Architetti - have followed in the last 15 years of practice, aiming at the redefinition of the relationship between city and nature. The book follows a discursive thread, alternating dialogues and scientific essays by some of the main protagonists who have contributed to widening the perspective on this subject, helping to raise awareness while protecting the world and its biodiversity.  Cities have contributed for centuries to the promotion of some of humanity's greatest ideas and must now be seen as among the principal players in the environmental debate, at the forefront of any policy tackling and countering - possibly reversing - climate change. Even today one of the most significant technologies capable of absorbing carbon dioxide and restoring our environment is photosynthesis. Planting trees, in addition to protecting existing natural areas and biodiversity, together with de-carbonization, renewable energies, digitalization, smart mobility and the circular economy could be the set of strategies necessary to tackle climate change. Green Obsession offers a path to be taken, a hard but still necessary paradigm shift - even for architecture and urbanism - that aims to give a voice to this much needed ecological transition. Now more than ever, it is essential to act together as separate individuals and professionals, joining the cause as members of the global community with a shared environmental strategy. We all have to open the era of a new alliance between nature and the city.

Architect and urban planner Stefano Boeri has been a professor at the Politecnico in Milan and visiting professor at several international universities, including Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and the Strelka Institute in Moscow. The author of several books and publications, he was Councilor for Culture in Milan from 2011 to 2013.

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24 November

Carlo Collodi - journalist and writer

Satirical journalist created Pinocchio to express his own views 

Carlo Collodi, in real life Carlo Lorenzini, was born on this day in 1826 in Florence.  Although he was a satirical journalist who supported the cause of the Risorgimento, Collodi is best remembered for his stories for children about the character, Pinocchio.  The writer was brought up in the small town of Collodi where his mother had been born and he adopted the name of her birthplace as a pen name.  After becoming interested in politics he started the satirical newspaper, Il Lampione, in 1848. This was censored by order of the Grand Duke of Tuscany so in 1854 he started Lo Scaramuccia, which was also controversial.  In 1856 he wrote his first play for the theatre and, after Italian unification in 1861, he turned his attention to writing for children.  Collodi’s stories about his first main character, Giannettino, were a way of expressing his own political ideas through allegory.  He began writing Storia di un Burattino (The Story of a Marionette), in 1880. He went on to contribute regular stories about his character, who he later called Pinocchio, to a newspaper for children.  Pinocchio was created out of wood by a woodcarver, Geppetto, but he became a mischievous boy whose nose grew when he told a lie.  Read more…

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Pietro Torrigiano – sculptor

Achievements overshadowed by assault on Michelangelo

Pietro Torrigiano, the sculptor credited with introducing Renaissance art to England in the early years of the 16th century but who is best remembered for breaking the nose of Michelangelo in a fight, was born on this day in 1472 in Florence.  The incident with the man who would become the greatest artist of their generation came when both were teenagers, studying in Florence under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici.  Torrigiano was older than Michelangelo by two and a half years and confessed some years later that he found his young rival to be somewhat irritating, especially since it was his habit to peer over the shoulders of his fellow students and make disparaging comments about the quality of their work. On the occasion they clashed, when Michelangelo was said to be about 15, he was with Torrigiano and some others in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, studying frescoes by Masaccio.  Looking at a sketch Torrigiano was making, the younger boy made some slighting remark and Torrigiano lashed out.  He caught him such a blow that Michelangelo, who was knocked out cold at the time, suffered a broken nose and a disfigurement he would carry for life.  Read more…

Vittorio Miele - artist

Painter scarred by Battle of Monte Cassino

The 20th century artist Vittorio Miele, who found a way to express himself in art after losing his family in the Battle of Monte Cassino, was born in Cassino on this day in 1926.  Miele was a teenager when his hometown and the mountain-top Benedictine monastery witnessed one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War as Allied armies attempted to break the Gustav Line of the Axis forces.  Over a three-month period, the Allies made four assaults, each backed up by heavy bombing, and though the objective was eventually achieved it was at a very high price. There were at least 80,000 soldiers killed or wounded, as well as countless civilians caught in the crossfire.  Miele lost his father, mother and sister. He survived but left the area as soon as he was able, settling 400km (249 miles) north in Urbino in the Marche. It was there, from the age of 19, that he took courses in painting and became part of the city’s artistic life, developing a talent that in his mature years saw him once described as “the poet of silence”.  In the following decades his work began to reach further afield.  Read more…

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Lucky Luciano - Mafia boss

Sicilian who brought order among warring clans

Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, the mobster best known for shaping the structure of Italian-dominated organised crime in the United States, was born Salvatore Lucania on this day in 1897 in Lercara Friddi, a town about 70km (44 miles) south-east of the Sicilian capital, Palermo.  Raised in New York's Lower East Side after his family emigrated in 1906, it was Luciano who famously put the New York underworld into the control of the so-called Five Families and also set up The Commission, which served as a governing body for organised crime nationwide.  After he was jailed in 1936 on extortion and prostitution charges, Luciano is said to have struck a deal with the American authorities to use his criminal connections to help the Allies in their invasion of Sicily, a vital first step in driving the German forces and their supporters out of the Italian peninsula.  In return he was given parole and allowed to return to Sicily at the end of the Second World War.  Luciano, whose father, Antonio, had worked in a sulphur mine in Lercara Friddi, began his life in crime as a teenager, when he set up his own gang and became friends with Jewish gang members Meyer Lansky and his associate Benjamin "Bugsy'' Siegel.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Adventures of Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi. Translated by Ann Lawson Lucas

The story of the wooden puppet who learns goodness and becomes a real boy is famous the world over, and has been familiar in English for over a century. From the moment Joseph the carpenter carves a puppet that can walk and talk, this wildly inventive fantasy takes Pinocchio through countless adventures, in the course of which his nose grows whenever he tells a lie, he is turned into a donkey, and is swallowed by a dogfish, before he gains real happiness. This new translation of The Adventures of Pinocchio does full justice to the vibrancy and wit of Collodi's original. Far more sophisticated, funny, and hard-hitting than the many abridged versions (and the sentimentalised film) of the story would suggest, Ann Lawson Lucas's translation captures the complexity of Collodi's word-play, slapstick humour, and immediacy of dialogue. An adult reader will recognize social and political satire, and the invaluable introduction and notes illuminate the cultural traditions on which Collodi drew.

Carlo Collodi was an Italian author, humorist and journalist. Ann Lawson Lucas taught Italian language and literature at the Universities of Southampton and Hull, where she also introduced the study of Italian literature for the young.  She publishes in English and Italian and is a Fellow of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature.

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23 November

NEW - Irpinia earthquake

A day that saw whole towns reduced to rubble in southern Italy

An earthquake that has been described as ‘the worst catastrophe in the history of the Italian republic’ shook Campania and parts of Basilicata and Puglia on this day in 1980.  The earthquake, which takes its name from the geographical area of Campania known as Irpinia, had a moment magnitude of 6.9 and left 2483 people dead, about 7,700 injured, and more than 250,000 homeless. The first shock lasted for a little more than a minute, but it was to change the lives forever of the residents in the worst hit towns in the region.  The earthquake struck at 18:34 local time and after 70 seconds of shaking there were many aftershocks. Waves from it were felt as far away as Sicily and the Po Valley.  The village of Castelnuovo di Conza, in the province of Salerno, was at the centre of the blast and was virtually destroyed. Of the 1,500 inhabitants, about 500 died or were injured after being trapped in the rubble of their homes, including both local policemen. About 80 per cent of the buildings were either destroyed, or partially collapsed, leaving many people homeless.  It was left to the local children and old people to dig for any survivors and the Mayor of the village later said they had been forced to wait for three days for help to arrive from outside the area.  Read more…

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Ludovico Einaudi – composer

Musician world famous for his unique blend of sounds

Pianist and film music composer Ludovico Maria Enrico Einaudi was born on this day in 1955 in Turin.  Einaudi has composed the music for films such as The Intouchables and I’m Still Here and has released many solo albums for piano and orchestra.  His distinctive music, which mixes classical with contemporary rhythms of rock and electronic, is now played all over the world and has been used as background music and in television commercials.  Einaudi’s mother, Renata Aldrovandi, played the piano to him as a child and her father, Waldo Aldrovandi, was a pianist, opera conductor and composer, who went to live in Australia after the Second World War.  His father, Giulio Einaudi, was a publisher, who worked with authors Italo Calvino and Primo Levi, and his grandfather, Luigi Einaudi, was President of Italy between 1948 and 1955.  Einaudi started composing his own music and playing it on a folk guitar when he was a teenager.  He began his musical training at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, obtaining a diploma in composition in 1982. He took an orchestration class with the composer Luciano Berio, in which, according to Einaudi himself, he learnt to have a very open way of thinking about music.  Read more…

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Prospero Alpini - botanist

How coffee was first introduced to Europe

Physician and botanist Prospero Alpini was born on this day in 1553 in Marostica near Vicenza.  He is credited with being the first person in Europe to observe and write about the coffee plant.  Alpini went to study medicine in Padua in 1574 and after taking his degree settled down to work as a doctor in nearby Campo San Pietro.  He was very interested in botany and so to extend his knowledge of exotic plants he travelled to Egypt in 1580 as physician to George Emo, the Venetian consul in Cairo.  While in Egypt he studied date trees which helped him to work out that there were gender differences between plants. He wrote that: “the female date trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together, or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers.”  In 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at Padua University and, after he died in 1617, he was succeeded in the role by his son, Alpino Alpini.  His botanical work De Medicina Aegyptiorum is believed to contain the first report on the coffee plant ever published in the western world.  Read more…

Franco Nero – actor

The film Camelot sparked long love affair with English actress

Francesco Clemente Giuseppe Sparanero, better known by his stage name Franco Nero, was born on this day in 1941 in San Prospero Parmense.  Nero became well-known for playing the title role in Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti Western film Django in 1966 and then reprising the role in Nello Rossati’s film Django Strikes Again in 1987.  The actor has had a long-standing relationship with British actress Vanessa Redgrave, which began in the 1960s during the filming of the musical comedy-drama Camelot. They had a son, Carlo Gabriel Redgrave Sparanero in 1969. Now known as Carlo Gabriel Nero, their son is a screenwriter and director. Franco Nero was the son of a Carabinieri officer, who was originally from San Severo, a city in the province of Foggia in Apulia.  He grew up in Bedonia in Emilia-Romagna and then in Milan, where he studied briefly at the Economy and Trade Faculty of the University. He left there to study at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan.  Nero’s first film role was a small part in Giuseppe Fina's Pelle Viva in 1962. After his success in Django, he played the part of Lancelot in Camelot, opposite Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere, in 1967.  Read more…

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Fred Buscaglione - singer and actor

Fifties sensation who died tragically young

The singer and actor Fred Buscaglione, a nightclub singer who became a huge star of the pop world in 1950s Italy, was born on this day in 1921 in Turin.  Buscaglione’s style - he portrayed himself tongue-in-cheek as a sharp-suited gangster with a taste for whiskey and women - caught the imagination of an Italian public desperate to be entertained after the austerity of Fascism, when all ‘foreign’ music was banned.  He formed a partnership with the writer Leo Chiosso after their first collaboration, on a song called Che bambola (What a Babe!), which resulted in more than one million record sales, catapulting Buscaglione to fame.  They had several more hits, including Love in Portofino, which was covered by Andrea Bocelli in 2013 as the title track from an album.  Born Ferdinando Buscaglione, he was from a creative family. His father was a painter and his mother a piano teacher. They enrolled their son at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin at the age of 11 but by his teens Buscaglione had adopted jazz as his passion.  His career as a singer and musician was going well and Chiosso was one of the friends he had made through his appearances in nightclubs around Turin.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Fault Lines: Earthquakes and Urbanism in Modern Italy, by Giacomo Parrinello

Earth's fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, this book explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between "rural" and "urban," "backwardness" and "development," and "before" and "after," shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats. John Foot, the author and Professor of Modern Italian History at the University of Bristol, described Fault Lines: Earthquakes and Urbanism in Modern Italy as "an extremely interesting and well-written book, which takes two major Italian disasters in detail and uses them to tell a series of stories about urban change, the state, national identity, and other issues... The author is passionate about the subject matter he is dealing with-and the material itself is red hot". The volume forms part of a series entitled Environment in History: International Perspectives.

Giacomo Parrinello is a Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University and the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna.

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Irpinia earthquake

A day that saw whole towns reduced to rubble in southern Italy

Aerial pictures show the remains of 
the village of Castelnuovo di Conza

An earthquake that has been described as ‘the worst catastrophe in the history of the Italian republic’ shook Campania and parts of Basilicata and Puglia on this day in 1980.

The earthquake, which takes its name from the geographical area of Campania known as Irpinia, had a moment magnitude of 6.9 and left 2,483 people dead, about 7,700 injured, and more than 250,000 homeless. The first shock lasted for a little more than a minute, but it was to change the lives forever of the residents in the worst hit towns and villages in the region.

The earthquake struck at 18:34 local time and after 70 seconds of shaking there were many aftershocks. Waves from it were felt as far away as Sicily and the Po Valley.

The village of Castelnuovo di Conza, in the province of Salerno, was at the centre of the blast and was virtually destroyed. Of the 1500 inhabitants, about 500 died or were injured after being trapped in the rubble of their homes, including both local policemen. About 80 per cent of the buildings were either destroyed, or partially collapsed, leaving many people homeless.

It was left to the local children and old people to dig for any survivors and the Mayor of the village later said they had been forced to wait for three days for help to arrive from outside the area. 

In nearby Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi, in the province of Avellino, 300 people were killed, including 27 children in an orphanage. Many historical buildings were left in ruins and some of them were never rebuilt. 

Scenes of devastation were witnessed in many
towns and villages across the Irpinia area

In Naples, a ten-storey apartment building collapsed as a result of the tremor. Many buildings suffered extensive structural damage and had to be propped up to make them safe afterwards, leading to years of disruption to the lives of the people living there.

In Balvano in the province of Potenza in Basilicata, 100 people were killed when a mediaeval church collapsed during a service. Many of them were children and teenagers and the disaster effectively wiped out an entire generation of the local people.

The University of Basilicata was later built in Potenza on a site that had been flattened by the earthquake. It was seen as an attempt to persuade young people to stay in the area rather than moving north or emigrating to another country.  

Many landslides were triggered and rail traffic throughout Italy came to a complete standstill. The terrible situation was made worse by people trying to leave the affected areas in such large numbers that the roads became blocked.

On November 26, Italian president Sandro Pertini addressed the nation in a televised broadcast. He condemned the delays in rescuing people from the ruins after the earthquake and the failures that had been revealed in state intervention in the worst affected areas.

President Sandro Pertini, second 
left, on a visit to the affected zone

As a result, Extraordinary Commissioner Giuseppe Zamberletti was appointed to coordinate rescue efforts and to communicate with the local mayors. In 1982, Zamberletti was appointed Minister for Civil Protection Co-ordination and a few months later the Department of Civil Protection was established in Italy.

When the 40th anniversary of the earthquake disaster was commemorated in Italy in 2020, some of the reconstruction work in the worst affected areas had still not been finished.

Although the Italian Government were said to have spent 59 trillion lire, and West Germany sent 32 million dollars and the US 70 million dollars to help, it is believed subsequently that some of the funds were misappropriated by Italian politicians and by the Camorra, who subsequently became involved in the construction industry.

On average, a significant earthquake happens every four years in Italy. The most recent was an earthquake of 5.1 moment magnitude in 2023 in Tuscany, when one person died and there was severe damage in some areas.

In 1976, more than 900 people died after an earthquake of 6.5 moment magnitude in Friuli, and in 1857, 10,000 people died after an earthquake of 7.0 moment magnitude in Basilicata.

If the Irpinia earthquake is the worst since the Republic of Italy was established in 1946, the most devastating in Italy’s history, at least in terms of reliable estimates of deaths, occurred in 1908 with its epicentre below the Straits of Messina. It caused catastrophic damage to the cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria with at least 75,000 and perhaps as many as 200,000 killed, the larger figure based on comparison of census data collected before and after the disaster.

The Benedictine Abbey of San Guglielmo
al Goleto is just outside Sant'Angelo

Travel tip:

Sant’ Angelo dei Lombardi is a town in the province of Avellino in Campania. It is situated on a hilltop and has a cathedral and a Lombard castle. The Benedictine Abbey of San Guglielmo al Goleto is nearby. A famous former resident of the town is the Italian-American actor and businessman Charles A Gargano, who was born in the town in 1934. He was the US Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush. After the earthquake the Lombard castle was restored to its original mediaeval structure and is today home to an archive and museum.

Avellino's duomo, the Cattedrale
di Santa Maria Assunta

Travel tip:

The town of Avellino is the capital of the province of Avellino and an important centre on the road from Salerno to Benevento in Campania. It has its origins in the ancient Roman settlement, Abellinum, although the present town was founded by the Lombards and ruled at different times by the Byzantines, Normans, Swabians, Angevin, Aragonese, the Viceroy of Spain, the Austrians and the Bourbons. The 1980 Irpinia earthquake represented a turning point for the town and province because afterwards money flowed in for investment in the infrastructure. There are now many businesses in the area, such as FMA, who produce Fiat engines for car manufacturers. But the production of tobacco, wine and hazelnuts is still important to the local economy. Avellino has a cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, that was built in the 12th century with a neoclassical facade added in 1891.

Also on this day:

1553: The birth of botanist Prospero Alpini

1921: The birth of singer and actor Fred Buscaglione

1941: The birth of actor Franco Nero

1955: The birth of composer Ludovico Einaudi

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