Torquato Tasso – poet

Troubled Renaissance writer came back to Sorrento

Torquato Tasso, as depicted by a
German magazine in 1905

Torquato Tasso, who has come to be regarded as the greatest Italian poet of the Renaissance, was born on this day in 1544 in Sorrento.

Tasso’s most famous work was his epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) in which he gives an imaginative account of the battles between Christians and Muslims at the end of the first crusade during the siege of Jerusalem.

He was one of the most widely read poets in Europe and his work was later to prove inspirational for other writers who followed him, in particular the English poets Spencer and Byron. 

The house where Tasso was born on 11 March, 1544 is in Sorrento’s historic centre, a few streets away from the main square, Piazza Tasso, in Via Vittorio Veneto.

It now forms part of the Imperial Hotel Tramontano, where the words for the beautiful song, Torna a Surriento, were written by Giambattista De Curtis while he was sitting on its terrace in 1902.

Tasso travelled about in Italy constantly during his 51 years but came back to Sorrento towards the end of his life to visit his beloved sister Cornelia, at a time when he was deeply troubled with mental health problems.

The statue of Torquato Tasso
in Bergamo's Piazza Vecchia

The poet is also immortalised in the northern city of Bergamo in Lombardy by a large statue that stands in front of Palazzo della Ragione in Piazza Vecchia in the upper town.

Tasso was the son of a Bergamo nobleman, Bernardo Tasso, who was also a poet. He spent two periods only in his father’s native city, but is known to have written about Bergamo with affection.

While his father was resident poet at the Ducal Palace in Urbino, Torquato studied alongside Francesco Maria della Rovere, the heir to the Duke. He was later sent to study law in Padua but chose to write poetry instead.

Tasso was to spend many years in Ferrara at the Castle owned by the Este family where he fell in love with a lady in waiting and wrote love sonnets to her.

He suffered from the jealous behaviour of the other courtiers, which led to him developing a persecution mania and suspecting he was going to be poisoned. Eventually he escaped and made his way to Sorrento to visit his sister in her house in the historic centre between the main street and the sea.

After some further difficult years during which Tasso was confined to a madhouse by his patron, the Duke of Urbino, and later wandered from city to city without settling, he was invited to Rome by the Pope.

Tasso died in Rome in 1595 when he was just about to be crowned poet laureate by Pope Clement VIII.

Sorrento's Piazza Tasso

Travel tip:

Although Tasso travelled all over Italy during his life, he was born in Sorrento and the main square has been named after him. Piazza Tasso is right at the hub of Sorrento, in the middle of the main shopping street, Corso Italia, and looking out over Marina Piccola, Sorrento’s port. Surrounded by bars and restaurants, the square has stops for the local buses and a taxi rank. It is also the resting place for the horses that pull the carriages that can be hired for sightseeing.

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The Caffè del Tasso in Bergamo was
renamed in honour of the poet

Travel tip:

Nearly 100 years after Tasso’s death, a statue of him was erected in a corner of Piazza Vecchia in Bergamo’s historic upper town. The bar next to it subsequently changed its name to Caffè del Tasso. Dating back to at least 1476, the bar would have been known during Tasso’s life as Locanda delle Due Spade (Two Swords Inn.) In 1681 when the statue of the poet was erected, the bar’s name was changed to Al Torquato Tasso Caffè e Bottiglieria (Torquato Tasso Café and Wine Shop).

More reading:

Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy

Petrarch - the poet who inspired the Italian language

How Giambattista De Curtis was captivated with beauty of Sorrento

Also on this day: 

1847: The birth of wartime politician Sidney Sonnino


1851: Verdi's Rigoletto performed for first time

1924: The birth of mental health pioneer Franco Basaglia

Selected books:

Gerusalemme Liberata, full English translation


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Giuseppe Mazzini - hero of the Risorgimento

Revolutionary was ideological inspiration for Italian unification

A photographic portrait of
Giuseppe Mazzini

Giuseppe Mazzini, the journalist and revolutionary who was one of the driving forces behind the Risorgimento, the political and social movement aimed at unifying Italy in the 19th century, died on this day in 1872 in Pisa.

Mazzini is considered to be one of the heroes of the Risorgimento, whose memory is preserved in the names of streets and squares all over Italy.

Where Giuseppe Garibaldi was the conquering soldier, Vittorio Emanuele the unifying king and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour the statesman who would become Italy's first prime minister, Mazzini is perhaps best described as the movement's ideological inspiration.

Born in 1807, the son of a university professor in Genoa, Mazzini spent large parts of his life in exile and some of it in prison.  His mission was to free Italy of oppressive foreign powers, to which end he organised numerous uprisings that were invariably crushed. At the time of his death he considered himself to have failed, because the unified Italy was not the democratic republic he had envisaged, but a monarchy.

Yet an estimated 100,000 people turned out for his funeral in Genoa and he is seen now to have played a vital role in the Risorgimento. His aims were seen by many as noble and just and his commitment to founding and supporting revolutionary groups meant the possibility of violent insurrection would never go away until Italy became one country.

Mazzini as a young man, a drawing
dated at around 1830

Intellectually precocious, Mazzini entered university at the age of only 14 and graduated with a law degree before he was 21.

Soon after graduating, he joined a secret political movement known as the Carbonari, the goal of which was Italian independence through revolution.  This led to his arrest in Genoa - then part of the French-controlled Ligurian Republic - and imprisonment. He was released after six months on the condition that he lived in a small hamlet, effectively under house arrest.

Mazzini chose instead to live in exile, first in Switzerland, then in Marseille, where he met Giuditta Bellerio Sidoli, a beautiful widow originally from Modena, with whom he had a son.  He continued his political activity, forming another secret society called La Giovine Italia (Young Italy), which at its peak had 60,000 members, among them Garibaldi.

Two attempted uprisings in areas of Savoy and Piedmont were put down, with many participants killed.  Mazzini was tried in his absence by the authorities in Genoa and sentenced to death but he was undeterred in his ambitions.  Moving back to Switzerland, he dreamed not only of a democratic republic uniting Italy but of a unified Europe and encouraged the development of groups similar to Young Italy in Poland and Germany.

Arrested again, he was exiled from Switzerland, returning to Paris to be imprisoned again, securing his release only after promising to move to England, where he lived from January 1837, at several addresses in London.  He continued to plot, his links with revolutionaries in other parts of Europe bringing him to the attention of the British government, who took to intercepting his mail and are thought to have foiled a planned uprising in Bologna by tipping off the occupying Austrians.

A plaque commemorates a property in Gower Street, one of
a number of addresses in London where Mazzini lived

He returned to Italy to be part of a short-lived Italian government in Rome in 1849 but was forced to retreat to London after the exiled Pope enlisted the support of the French to overthrow the fledgling republic.

Ultimately, the unification process was completed with Mazzini more spectator than participant, the lead role taken by the Savoyan King of Sardinia, Victor Emanuel II, with the support of Garibaldi's Mille expedition.

The new Kingdom of Italy was created in 1861 under the Savoy monarchy. But Mazzini, although he previously encouraged Victor Emanuel to employ his military resources in the cause of unification, remained fervently republican and refused a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in the new government.

He continued to be politically active and in 1870 tried to start a rebellion in Sicily, following which he was arrested and imprisoned.  He was freed after an amnesty was declared.

After more time spent in London, he was in Pisa in Tuscany when he suffered a bout of pleurisy from which he did not recover. The house in which he died in Pisa is now known as Domus Mazziniana and is home to a museum commemorating his life.

The house in Genoa in which Mazzini was
born is now a museum.

Travel tip:

The house in Genoa in which Giuseppe Mazzini was born forms part of the Istituto Mazziniano. Together with the archives and historical library, it contains documents and relics related to Mazzini and the Risorgimento, such as signatures, weapons, uniforms and flags.  The museum itinerary covers over 120 years of history, including Mazzini's Young Italy movement and Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand. For more information, visit the museum's own website.

The Mazzini mausoleum at the Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa

Travel tip:

Mazzini's final house in Pisa, the Domus Mazziniana, was badly damaged during the bombardment of the city in 1943, with all of the original furniture destroyed.  The structure survived, however, and is now open to the public, who can look at a vast library of writings and studies by Giuseppe Mazzini as well as various relics and remains from the Risorgimento. Although he died in Pisa, Mazzini's body was interred in his home town of Genoa. For more information on the museum in Pisa, visit www.domusmazziniana.it



More reading:

The novel that became a symbol of the Risorgimento

How a Verdi chorus became the Risorgimento's anthem

Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand

Also on this day:

1749: The birth of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist

1900: The birth of architectural sculptor Corrado Parnucci, most famous for his work in the US state of Michigan

Selected books: 

A Cosmopolitanism of Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini's Writings on Democracy, Nation Building, and International Relations

Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State, by Lucy Riall

(Picture credits: Plaque by Edwardx; Mazzini house in Genoa and Mausoleum by Twice25; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Internazionale - football superpower

Famous club that broke away from rivals AC Milan

Internazionale's famous logo, designed
by club founder Giorgio Muggiani

Internazionale, one of Italy's most successful football clubs, came into being on this day in 1908.

The winner 18 times of lo scudetto - the Italian championship - the club known often as Inter or Inter-Milan was born after a split within the membership of the Milan Cricket and Football Club, forerunner of the club known now as A C Milan.

The original club was established by expatriate British football enthusiasts with a membership restricted to Italian and British players. It was after a dispute over whether foreign players should be signed that a breakaway group formed.

Plans for a new club were drawn up at a meeting at the Ristorante L'Orologio in Via Giuseppe Mengoni in Milan, a short distance from the opera house, Teatro alla Scala.  It was a restaurant popular with theatregoers and artists, among them Giorgio Muggiani, a painter who would become renowned for his work in advertising, where he designed iconic posters for such clients as Pirelli, Cinzano, Martini and Moto Guzzi.

Muggiani, who had developed an enthusiasm for football while studying in Switzerland, was the driving force behind the new club and it was he who designed the club's famous logo, featuring the colours blue, black and gold.  He was appointed the club's first secretary.

A statement issued to announce the birth of the new club romantically proclaimed:

Giorgio Muggiani (second left) pictured in 1912 with
some of his fellow founding members of Internazionale

"This wonderful night will give us the colours for our crest: black and blue against a backdrop of gold stars. It will be called Internazionale because we are brothers of the world."

The new club had to wait only two years to win their first scudetto in 1910.  Their total of 18 titles is the same as that of the city rivals from whom they broke free and with whom they share the colossal Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, which holds 80,000 spectators.  Only Juventus (31 titles) have been champions more often.

Also known as San Siro, after the district of Milan in which it is situated, the stadium was named in honour of Giuseppe Meazza, the inside forward who is Internazionale's all-time record goalscorer with 241 league goals and who was captain of the Italian national team that won the World Cup in 1934 and 1938.

Inter's history features two peaks of dominance in Italian football, the first in the 1960s, when they won three Serie A titles in four years as well as two consecutive European Cups, and the years between 2005 and 2010, when a record-equalling run of five consecutive titles culminated in an unprecedented treble in 2010. They are also the only Italian club that has never been relegated from the top division.

The inside forward Giuseppe Meazza
scored 241 league goals for Inter

The Argentine coach Hellenio Herrera, famous for his belief in the catenaccio tactical system, with its strong emphasis on defence, was behind the first golden era.

The more recent one was started by the current manager, Roberto Mancini, after he was appointed for the first time in 2004, and continued by Jose Mourinho, who steered the team to a domestic double of Serie A and Coppa Italia in 2010 as well as winning the European Cup for Inter for the first time in 45 years.

Inter benefited during that period from the penalties imposed on Juventus and AC Milan following the calciopoli corruption scandal.  They were given the 2005-06 title by default, having actually finished third, and by the time their two rivals recovered -- Juventus were punished with relegation to Serie B, AC Milan with a points deduction -- they had developed a winning momentum that remained with them until Mourinho left, bound for Real Madrid.

Inter's fortunes have dipped in more recent times, failing to qualify for the Champions League for four seasons in a row.  With Mancini back in charge they have improved this year but having led the Serie A table in the first week of January they have slipped back to fifth, 13 points behind current leaders Juventus.

The Arena Civica in Milan as it originally looked

Travel tip:

For many years, Internazionale's home ground was the Arena Civica, in the heart of Milan. Opened in 1807 in the city's Parco Semp-ione, behind the Castello Sforzesco, the arena is one of Milan's main examples of neoclassical architecture, an elliptical amphitheatre commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte soon after he became King of Italy in 1805.  Napoleon wanted it to be Milan's equivalent of the Colosseum in Rome, although there are Greek influences too.  The structure was built using stone reclaimed from the destruction of the Spanish fortifications at the Castello Sforzesco and from the castle at Trezzo sull'Adda. The first event to be staged there, fittingly, was a chariot race.  It was adapted for football in the early part of the 20th century and was Inter's permanent home until the move to San Siro in 1947, although they continued to play some matches there until 1958.

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Milan's Piazza del Duomo is near Via Giuseppe Mengoni,
where Inter's founders met in a restaurant

Travel tip:

Although the Ristorante L'Orologio in Via Giuseppe Mengoni no longer exists, the street is at the centre of Milan, running parallel with the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and opening out into the cathedral square Piazza del Duomo.  The Castello Sforzesco and Parco Sempione are a 15-minute walk or two stops on Metro Linea 1 from the Duomo.

More reading

Roberto Mancini, skilful player turned successful coach

Giuseppe Meazza, Italian football's first superstar

Genoa Football and Cricket Club - where it all began

Also on this day:

1454: The birth of explorer Amerigo Vespucci

1809: The birth of politician and winemaker Bettino Ricasoli

1948: The birth of radical politician Emma Bonino

(Picture credits: Piazza del Duomo by Katia Gutkowska)

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La Festa della Donna – Women’s Day

Bright fragrant mimosa signals respect 

Mimosa flowers are the traditional
gift to mark La Festa della Donna

La Festa della Donna - Women’s Day - is celebrated in Italy on this day every year and is an occasion for men to show their appreciation for the women in their lives.

All over Italy today men will be seen carrying bunches of prettily wrapped mimosa to give to women who are special to them.

The flowers might be for their wives, girlfriends, mothers, friends or even employees and are meant as a sign of respect for womanhood.

The custom of men giving mimosa to their ladies began in the 1940s after the date 8 March was chosen as the Festa della Donna (Festival of the Woman) in Italy.

The date, which coincides with International Women's Day, has a political significance for campaigners for women's rights in Italy, marking the anniversary of a strike by female textile workers in New York in 1857 and the so-called 'bread and peace' strike by women in Russia in 1917, but has more recently become a celebration similar to Mothering Sunday or St Valentine's Day.

Yellow mimosa was chosen as the flower to give because it is in bloom at the beginning of March, it is relatively inexpensive,and the scent of it in the atmosphere is a sign that primavera (spring) is just round the corner.

Continuing with the theme of mimosa, you might see on restaurant menus at this time of the year variations of dishes such as risotto mimosa, or pasta mimosa (made with finely scrambled eggs). Many restaurants will have a special menu just for today to celebrate the occasion.

And some cake shops will have Torta Mimosa in their windows, a concoction made with sugar, orange juice, whipped cream and orange liqueur.

Buona Festa!

Ristorante La Ciotola in Bergamo has a special
menu to celebrate La Festa della Donna

Travel tip:

In Bergamo in Lombardy a special menu to celebrate La Festa della Donna has been devised by Ristorante Pizzeria La Ciotola in the lower town. The restaurant in Via Papa Giovanni XXIII invites people wishing to celebrate the occasion to share 'a peaceful and relaxing evening with friends’ and enjoy some Bergamo specialities, such as casoncelli alla bergamasca and polenta taragna.

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The Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, built in the 1780s, was
renamed in 1897 to mark the centenery of the composer's birth

Travel tip:

After enjoying a special meal to celebrate La Festa della Donna in Bergamo, why not enjoy a walk along Via Sentierone in the lower town, past Teatro Donizetti, to the monument to Bergamo’s celebrated composer. It was erected in 1897 in Piazza Cavour, off the Sentierone, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Donizetti’s birth. An imposing structure in white marble, it depicts the composer sitting on a bench gazing at the figure of a female playing the lyre. Set in the middle of a pond and surrounded by plants and trees, the monument is inscribed simply ‘A Gaetano Donizetti’. You could almost imagine the prolific composer of operas is looking longingly past the mythical musician in the direction of the nearby theatre, which was renamed Teatro Donizetti in 1897.

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More reading:

The Festa di Santa Lucia

The Festa della Liberazione

The poor beginnings of composer Gaetano Donizetti

Also on this day:

1566: The birth of composer - and wife killer - Carlo Gesualdo

1949: The birth of evergreen singer-songwriter Antonello Venditti


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