Guglielmo Marconi – inventor and electrical engineer

Message received meant a scientific breakthrough

Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal using equipment he had invented himself on this day in 1901 in Newfoundland.

Marconi was credited with the invention of radio as a result and shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 with another scientist, Karl Ferdinand Braun.

Bologna where Marconi was born and went to University

The message Marconi received, which was regarded as a great scientific advance, was the letter ‘S’ in Morse Code. It had been sent from a transmission station Marconi had set up in Cornwall, 2,200 miles away.

The inventor was born in Bologna in 1874. His father, Giuseppe Marconi, was a nobleman and landowner from Porretta Terme and his mother was of Scottish and Irish descent.

Marconi was brought up in Bedford in England as a young child but after moving back to Italy he was educated privately and then went to study at the University of Bologna.

While living in the Villa Griffone at Pontecchio near Bologna he began to conduct experiments to create wireless telegraphy.

He went to England to continue his work and by 1897 had transmitted a Morse code signal over a distance of six kilometres. He then sent the world’s first wireless communication over open sea.

Guglielmo Marconi

But it was the message he received in 1901 in Newfoundland that is now known to have laid the foundations for modern communications.
Marconi died in Rome in 1937 at the age of 63 and was given a state funeral.

All BBC and Post Office transmitters in Britain observed a two minute silence at the start of his funeral.

Travel tip:

Villa Griffone at Pontecchio, where Marconi conducted his experiments, is about 15 kilometres from Bologna. It is now the seat of the Guglielmo Marconi Foundation and the Marconi Musum dedicated to the origins and development of radio communications. Marconi’s remains lie there in a mausoleum designed by Marcello Piacentini. Visit www.fgm.it for more details.

Travel tip:

Porretta Terme, where Marconi’s father, Giuseppe, owned land, is a spa town south of Bologna in Emilia Romagna near the region's border with Tuscany, known since Roman times for the therapeutic quality of its thermal springs.

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Carlo Ponti – film producer

The man who married Sophia Loren twice

Carlo Ponti started his career in film
as a lawyer negotiating contracts

Carlo Ponti, the producer of many iconic Italian films, was born on this day in 1912 in Magenta near Milan.

He studied law at Milan University and, after joining his father’s law firm in Milan, became involved in the film business through negotiating contracts.

His production of Mario Soldati’s Piccolo Mondo Antico about the Italian struggle against the Austrian occupation was his first success in 1940. But he was briefly jailed for allegedly undermining relations with Nazi Germany.

He went on to produce many of the popular and financially successful films of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Vittorio de Sica's Marriage Italian Style, David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.

But Ponti also became famous for his love affair and two marriages to the film star Sophia Loren, who was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in Pozzuoli near Naples.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in
Marriage Italian Style, produced by Carlo Ponti

Ponti met her while he was judging a beauty contest in which she was competing, was captivated by her looks, and subsequently turned her into a film star and changed her name.

He was already married but he obtained a Mexican divorce in order to marry Sophia, who was more than 20 years younger than him, as divorce was then forbidden in Italy.

But their first marriage was declared illegal and had to be annulled. The couple moved to France and became French citizens so that Ponti could again divorce his first wife. He married Sophia for the second time in France in 1966.

They had two sons and four grandchildren and remained together until Ponti’s death in Geneva in 2007.

Travel tip:

Magenta, the birthplace of Carlo Ponti, is a small town in Lombardy, about 30 minutes from Milan by train. It was the site of a battle in the Second War of Italian Independence in 1859.  The colour of the uniforms worn by the French troops was later described as 'magenta' after the name of the town.

The volcanic landscape of Solfatara is an attraction
for visitors to Loren's home town of Pozzuoli

Travel tip:

Pozzuoli, the birthplace of Sophia Loren, is a town near Naples that has always been affected by underground volcanic activity. The amount of tremors and seismic activity in the 1980s caused thousands of people to leave. There are many Greek and Roman remains to see there and Pozzuoli's Solfatara, a volcanic crater, became such a popular tourist sight that it was once a stop on the Grand Tour.

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Luigi Pirandello - playwright, poet and novelist

Brilliant writing was born out of ‘chaos’

Sicilian writer Luigi Pirandello died on this day in Rome in 1936.

Luigi Pirandello, pictured in 1898

Famous for his play ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’, (Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore), Pirandello was also a prolific writer of novels, short stories and poetry, some of which were written in his native Sicilian dialect.

His plays are often seen as the forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd dramas of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco.

Pirandello’s contribution to the theatre was recognised in 1934 when he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

Pirandello was literally born in Chaos. The name of the village near Agrigento in Sicily where his mother gave birth to him in 1867 is Caos, the Italian word for ‘chaos’, or in Sicilian, u Càvusu.

He was educated at home and had written his first play by the time he was 12. When his family moved to Palermo, he completed his school education and, after a spell working with his father in the sulphur industry, he registered at the University of Palermo.

He later moved to Rome to complete his studies, which gave him the chance to go to the theatre regularly, and he also studied for a while in Bonn.

His writing career took off after ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ was first presented in 1921 at Teatro Valle in Rome.

But his personal life became increasingly difficult. His wife became mentally ill, which had disturbing effects on the rest of his family and, although he tried to look after her at home for many years, she eventually had to go into an asylum. His writing often dealt with the themes of madness, illusion and isolation.

Pirandello died alone at his home in Rome. He had left instructions for a simple funeral followed by cremation, but his wishes were ignored and he was given a state funeral.

The house near Agrigento where Pirandello was born

Travel Tip:

Agrigento 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. 

Travel tip:

Rome’s Teatro Valle, where the premiere of ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ was staged, was built in 1726 near the Pantheon. At first the theatre staged a mixture of opera and drama but from the middle of the 19th century it staged only plays. Teatro Valle became the scene of real-life drama in 2011 when it was occupied by theatre workers protesting over plans to privatise the venue. 

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Carlo Azeglio Ciampi - prime minister and president

The politician who took Italy into the euro

The politician and banker, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was born on this day in 1920 in Livorno.

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
Photo: Presidency of the Italian Republic

He was the 49th Prime Minister of Italy between 1993 and 1994 and the tenth president, in office from 1999 to 2006.

Ciampi studied ancient Greek literature in Pisa, before being called up to do military duty, but in 1943 he refused to stay with the Fascists and took refuge in Abruzzo.

He managed to get to Bari, where he joined the Italian resistance movement.

After the war, he gained a doctorate in law from Pisa University and began working at the Banca d’Italia. He went on to become Governor of the bank and then President of the National Bureau de Change.

Ciampi was the first-non parliamentarian prime minister of Italy for more than 100 years, appointed by the President, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, to oversee a technical government.

Later, as the treasury minister under Romano Prodi and Massimo d’Alema, Ciampi, a staunch supporter of the EU, adopted the euro currency for Italy.

When he was elected president, he had a broad majority and was only the second president ever to be elected at the first ballot. He was held in high regard by all the political groups in parliament.

Rome's Palazzo Quirinale, official residence of
the Italian President

He was succeeded by Giorgio Napoletano and is currently a senator for life in the Italian senate.

Travel tip:

Livorno is a port on the western coast of Tuscany, which deals with thousands of cruise ship passengers. The city used to be known as Leghorn in English and there is an English cemetery in Via Giuseppe Verdi, with the graves of many former British residents, including the novelist. Tobias Smollett.

Travel tip:

Abruzzo is a region on the Adriatic coast, bordered by Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and Molise to the south. One third of its territory is made up of national parks and nature reserves that are home to protected species, such as the brown bear.

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