Franco Lucentini – author

Writer was one half of a famous literary partnership

The novelist Franco Lucentini, who achieved success with Carlo Fruttero in a remarkable literary association, died on this day in 2002 in Turin.

A news correspondent and editor, Lucentini met Fruttero in 1953 in Paris and they started working together as journalists and translators.

But they were best known for the mystery thrillers they produced together, which they composed in a businesslike manner.

After choosing a subject they would take it in turns to write and then edit the material until a novel was complete.

Their most popular books were The Sunday Woman (La donna della domenica), which was later made into a film and The D Case (La verita sul caso D), which was based on an unfinished work by Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, in a photograph
taken for the Corriere della Sera newspaper

Lucentini fell foul of the Fascist regime while studying Philosophy at the University of Rome because of distributing anti-war messages among his fellow students and had to spend two months in prison.

But after the Second World War he was hired by the Allies to work as a junior editor for their news agency in Naples. Lucentini then went on to work in Rome for Italy's ANSA news agency.

After Fruttero and Lucentini met, they formed a successful literary team, writing, editing and translating for the Einaudi publishing house.

They produced several novels together after the success of The Sunday Woman and F& L went on to become a well known literary trademark.

But in 2002, suffering from lung cancer and having reached the age of 81, Lucentini chose to end his own life on 5 August at his home in Turin.

The campus of the University of Rome, pictured
soon after it was built in 1935

Travel tip:

The University of Rome, where Lucentini studied Philosophy during the Second World War, was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII.  Now known as the Sapienza University of Rome, it is one of the largest in Europe. The main campus, which was designed by Marcello Piacentini, is near Rome’s Termini railway station.

Travel tip:

Turin, where Lucentini lived in later life, is the capital city of the region of Piedmont in the north of Italy. It is an important business centre, particularly for the car industry, and has a rich history linked with the Savoy Kings of Italy. Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library and Palazzo Madama, which used to house the Italian senate, is at the heart of royal Turin.

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Pope Urban VII

Pope for just 12 days but introduced world's first smoking ban

Pope Urban VII banned not only smoking
but chewing tobacco and snuff 

Pope Urban VII was born Giovanni Battista Castagna on this day in 1521 in Rome.

Although his 12-day papacy was the shortest in history, he is remembered as being the first person in the world to declare a ban on smoking.

He was against the use of tobacco generally, threatening to excommunicate anyone who ‘took tobacco in the porchway of, or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe, or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose’.

The ban is thought to have been upheld for the most part until 1724, when Pope Benedict XIII, himself a smoker, repealed it.

Castagna was the son of a nobleman of Genovese origin and studied in universities all over Italy. He obtained a doctorate in civil law and canon law from the University of Bologna.

He served as a constitutional lawyer to Pope Julius III and was then ordained a priest.

He took part in the Council of Trent and then served as an apostolic nuncio in Spain for four years.

Castagna was also Governor of Bologna, apostolic nuncio to Venice and then Papal Legate to Flanders and Cologne.

The courtyard of the Archiginnasio, part of
Bologna's historic university

He is remembered for his charity to the poor, for subsidising public works throughout the papal states and for being against nepotism.

Pope Gregory XIII appointed him Cardinal-Priest of San Marcello in 1583.

After the death of Pope Sixtus V, he was elected Pope on 15 September 1590 and chose the pontifical name of Urban VII.

But his papacy ended after just 12 days when he died of malaria on 27 September 1590 in Rome. He was 69 years old.

He was buried in the Vatican but his remains were later transferred to the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome.

Travel tip:

Bologna University, where Castagna studied Law, was founded in 1088 and is the oldest in the world. The university’s oldest surviving building in the centre of the city, 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 just a short walk from Piazza Maggiore and the Basilica di San Petronio.

The tomb of Saint Catherine of Siena can be seen inside
the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome

Travel tip:

Pope Urban VII is one of several popes buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, which is in Piazza Minerva, close to the Pantheon in Rome. The Basilica is the only surviving Gothic Church structure left in Rome and has the original arched vaulting inside. A sarcophagus containing the remains of Saint Catherine of Siena can be seen behind the high altar.

(Photo of tomb of Catherine of Siena by Medol CC BY-SA 4.0)

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La Scala - opera and ballet theatre

First night at the world’s most famous opera house

La Scala opera house is located in the heart of Milan

Milan’s Teatro alla Scala was officially inaugurated on this day in 1778.

Known to Italians simply as La Scala, the theatre has become the leading opera house in the world and many famous artists have appeared there.

A fire had destroyed the Teatro Regio Ducale, which had previously been the home of opera in Milan. A group of 90 wealthy patrons, the owners of private boxes in the theatre, wrote to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este asking that a new theatre be built.

The new theatre was built on the site of the former Church of Santa Maria alla Scala, which is how the theatre got its name. The church was deconsecrated and demolished to make way for the theatre. 

With the cost of the project met by the 90 patrons, who paid in advance for boxes, the new theatre was designed by neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini and at the official opening on 3 August 1778, Antonio Salieri’s opera L’Europa Riconosciuta was premiered.

As with most theatres at the time, the main floor had no seats, with audience members standing to watch the performances. This had the effect of making the theatre a meeting place, but also a venue for business dealings, and sometimes the noise generated by the traders would bring complaints from genuine opera-lovers that their enjoyment was impaired.

Oil lamps illuminate the venue at first. Mindful of the fire hazard this posed, the theatre managers always made sure that there were hundreds of buckets of water to hand in rooms adjoining the auditorium.

The world’s finest singers have appeared at La Scala during the past 200 years and the theatre has hosted the premieres of operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini.

La Scala’s original 18th century structure was renovated in 1907 and, after bomb damage during the Second World War, it had to be rebuilt and was reopened in 1946, the occasion marked with a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini, who was twice La Scala's principal conductor, with a soprano solo by Renata Tebaldi.

The beautiful Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

Travel tip:

Teatro alla Scala is in Piazza della Scala in the centre of Milan across the road from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, an elegant arcade lined with cafes, shops and restaurants which was built to link Piazza della Scala with Piazza del Duomo, Milan’s cathedral square.

Travel tip:

La Scala has a fascinating museum that displays costumes and memorabilia from the history of opera. The entrance is in Largo Ghiringhelli, just off Piazza della Scala. It is open every day except the Italian Bank Holidays and a few days when it is closed in December. Opening hours are from 9.00 to 12.30 and 1.30 to 5.30 pm.

(Photo of Galleria by Emily Chochkova CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Francis Marion Crawford – author

Novelist found inspiration while living in Sorrento

Francis Marion Crawford

The American writer Francis Marion Crawford was born on this day in 1854 in Bagni di Lucca in Tuscany.

A prolific novelist, Crawford became known for the vividness of his characterisations and the realism of his settings, many of which were places he had visited in Italy.

He chose to settle in later life in the coastal resort of Sorrento in Campania where he even had a street named after him, Corso Marion Crawford.

Crawford was the only son of the American sculptor, Thomas Crawford. He spent his childhood going backwards and forwards between Italy and America and studied at various American and European Universities.

He spent some time in India where he found the inspiration for his first successful novel, Mr Isaacs, which was published in 1882.

In 1883 he returned to Italy to settle there permanently. He lived at the Hotel Cocumella in the village of Sant’Agnello just outside Sorrento to begin with. He then bought a nearby farmhouse, from which he developed the Villa Crawford, an impressive clifftop residence easily identifiable from the sea by the tall buttresses Crawford added as a safeguard against erosion.

The Villa Crawford, now a guesthouse, has a prime
position overlooking the Bay of Naples

He was married to Elizabeth Christophers Berdan, daughter of the American Civil War General, Hiram Berdan. They had two sons and two daughters, one of whom became a nun and lived at the Villa Crawford when it became a convent after her father's death.

The Villa, which was donated to the order of the Daughters of Maria Ausiliatrice, has recently been refurbished as a guesthouse.

Many of his later novels have Italian settings, such as Don Orsino, published in 1892, which is about the effects of social change on an Italian family.

His novels sold in thousands in the United States, gaining him fame and prestige as a writer.  He would often return to America to deliver lectures on Italian history, about which he wrote several books.

He died at the Villa Crawford after suffering a heart attack in 1909.  He was buried in the cemetery of Sant'Agnello.

Travel tip:

Bagni di Lucca, where Crawford was born, is a small town in Tuscany that became popular during the 19th century because of its thermal springs. For a while the town was the summer resort of Napoleon and his court and a casino and dance hall were built there. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, Robert Browning, spent their summers in Bagni di Lucca during their time in Italy in the 1840s and 1850s.

The entrance to the Grand Hotel Cocumella in Sant'Agnello,
where Crawford lived before buying his clifftop villa nearby

Travel tip:

The Corso Marion Crawford in the seaside resort of Sant’Agnello leads down to the sea from Corso Italia, the main road connecting Sant’Agnello with the resort of Sorrento. The historic Hotel Cocumella, where Crawford stayed during the 1880s, is in Via Cocumella, just off Corso Marion Crawford.

More reading:

Lady Blessington's Neapolitan Journals

Torquato Tasso - Sorrento's Renaissance poet


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