Vesuvius erupts

Terrible toll of Europe's worst volcanic catastrophe 

A nightmarish vision of the AD 79 eruption is conveyed in
this painting by the 19th century British artist, John Martin

Mount Vesuvius erupted on this day in AD 79, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae and causing the deaths of thousands of people.

An eyewitness account of the eruption, in which tons of stones, ash and fumes were ejected from the volcano, has been left behind for posterity by a Roman administrator and poet, Pliny the Younger, who described the event in his letters to the historian Tacitus.

Although there were at least three large eruptions of Vesuvius before AD 79 and there have been many since, the disaster in August AD 79 is considered the most catastrophic volcanic eruption in European history.

Mount Vesuvius had thrown out ash the day before and many people had left the area. But in the early hours of the morning of August 25, pyroclastic flows of hot gas and rock began to sweep down the mountain.

The flows were fast moving and knocked down all the structures in their path, incinerating or suffocating the people who had remained. Pliny noted there were also earth tremors and a tsunami in the Bay of Naples.

The remains of about 1500 people have been found at Pompeii and Herculaneum (Ercolano) but it is not known what percentage this represents of the overall death toll.

The crater of Vesuvius as it is today

Pompeii dates back to at least the seventh century BC and came under Roman rule around 200 BC. The city was almost completely covered after the eruption but the upper floors of some of the buildings stuck out from the rubble. These were looted by local people over the centuries until eventually the city was forgotten. Engineers rediscovered it while digging an aqueduct in the 17th century. The first organised excavations began in 1748 and the site soon became an attraction for wealthy Europeans on the Grand Tour.

After AD 79, eruptions occurred at a rate of one or two every century, culminating in a very busy period between 900 and 1073 in which there are records of eight eruptions.  After 1150, the volcano became relatively quiet for almost 500 years, with activity so infrequent that vineyards and shrubbery covered the whole mountain.

But in 1631 the peace was shattered by a major eruption, burying several villages under lava flows and resulting in many casualties. After that, Vesuvius continued to erupt every few years.

A dramatic image of the 1944 eruption, taken from
a US military aircraft

More recently, an eruption in March 1944 destroyed three villages and about 80 planes belonging to the US Army Air Forces, which were based at an airfield close by. American military personnel took photographs of the eruption, which have been useful for experts to analyse.

Since 1944 Vesuvius has been uncharacteristically quiet, although it is constantly monitored for activity and an evacuation plan is in place. Experts believe seismic activity would give them between 14 and 20 days notice of an impending eruption.

The volcano remains a concern because of the same geological factors that make the Italian peninsula so prone to earthquakes, as has been confirmed so tragically this week in the Apennine mountains north of Rome, with the destruction of the town of Amatrice and other communities.

Travel tip:

Tourists can visit the volcano inside Mount Vesuvius National Park, which was created in 1955. The crater is accessible to visitors and there is a road to within 200 metres of it, but after that the ascent is on foot only.  The crater is about 200 metres deep and has a maximum diameter of about 600 metres. The climb is said to be well worth it because the view takes in the entire coastline from the Gulf of Gaeta, some 84 kilometres to the north, to the Sorrento peninsula. Visitors can take the Naples-Sorrento line of the Circumvesuviana railway and get off at Ercolano station, from where a shuttle bus runs to the park. There is an observatory, a museum, a visitor centre, a restaurant and a shop where you can buy Lacrima Christi del Vesuvio, the wine made from the grapes grown on the volcano. You have to sign up for a guided tour to actually get close to the crater.

The ruins of Pompeii, with Vesuvius in the distance as a
constant reminder of the Roman city's history

Travel tip:

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, gli scavi - the excavated ruins of Pompeii - show us what daily life was like in a Roman city, even down to what was sold in the shops and how people decorated their homes. A large number of important artefacts have been unearthed on the site in the last 250 years since excavations began properly. To get there take the Circumvesuviana railway and get off at Pompeii Scavi-Villa dei Misteri station. It is a short walk to the main entrance of the site in Piazza Porta Marina. From there walk along Via Marina to il Foro Civile (the forum) where orators addressed public meetings and law courts were held. Along Via del Mercurio there are interesting houses, including Casa dei Vettii, where there are well preserved wall paintings. Along Via dell’Abbondanza are the remains of shops, a tavern and even a brothel. At the end of the street you will find the main anfiteatro (ampitheatre). There is a self service bar and restaurant near the Tempio di Giove.  The excavations are open daily from 8.30 to 19.30 during the summer and 8.30 to 17.00 between November and April.

More reading:

Vesuvius - the 1944 eruption

(Photo of Vesuvius crater by S J Pinkney CC BY 2.0)

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Carlo Gambino - Mafia Don

Sicilian thought to be model for Mario Puzo's Godfather

Carlo Gambino, pictured in a mug shot that the New
 York police had on file in the 1930s

Carlo Gambino, who would become one of the most powerful Mafia Dons in the history of organised crime, was born on this day in 1902 in Palermo, Sicily.  

For almost two decades up to his death in 1976, he was head of the Gambino Crime Family, one of the so-called Five Families that have sought to control organised crime in New York under one banner or another for more than a century.

He is thought to have been the real-life Don that author Mario Puzo identified as the model for Vito Corleone, the fictional Don created for the best-selling novel, The Godfather.

During Gambino's peak years, the family's criminal activities realised revenues of an estimated $500 million per year.  Yet Gambino, who kept a modest house in Brooklyn and a holiday home on Long Island, claimed to make a living as a partner in a company that advised on labour relations.

Despite coming under intensive surveillance by the FBI, he managed to avoid prison during a life spent almost exclusively in crime.  Everything he did was planned meticulously to avoid detection, even down to communicating with associates through coded messages.

Gambino was born into a Sicilian family who were part of the so-called Honoured Society and moved to the United States in December 1921, by which time though still only 19 he was already able to call himself a 'Made Man' in Mafia parlance, having carried out a number of murders in the Palermo area.

He reached America as a stowaway on a ship that docked in Norfolk, Virginia, having survived allegedly on a diet of anchovies and wine.  From Virginia he travelled to New York, staying with cousins from the Castellano family.

Gambino was introduced to a crime family run by another Sicilian, Salvatore 'Toto' D'Aquila, and became part of a gang of young Jewish and Italian mobsters known as the Young Turks that included Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, also Sicilian.  Gambino soon became a prominent figure in the New York underworld but it would take him more than 35 years to establish himself as the city's most powerful Mafia boss.

Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, Gambino's rival and sometimes
ally, who established the Mafia Commission

Along the way he was involved in the elimination of a series of rivals, although he was content to bide his time in his quest for power, spending 20 years as third in command of the former D'Aquila empire after Vincent Mangano took control.

Although he had ambitions of his own, he was also motivated by the knowledge that a Mafia not at war with itself would generate much greater profits for all concerned, hence he always respected Luciano, later a rival, but who set up The Commission as a Mafia governing body designed to settle disputes.

He moved up one place in the pecking order in 1951, when Mangano disappeared, presumed murdered, and Albert Anastasia, the notorious head of the execution squad known as Murder Incorporated, took charge.

The chance to grab control himself came in 1957 when Anastasia, prone to irrational outbursts, broke a Mafia rule that forbade the murder of outsiders, a code of conduct that had nothing to do with morals but which simply sought to prevent unwanted scrutiny from the authorities.

Gambino, reasoning that Anastasia was now discredited, teamed up with another mobster with designs on power and arranged to Anastasia to be killed, clearing the way for Gambino to seize control of Mangano's former empire and rename it after himself.

Gambino's coffin arrives at his funeral

By the 1960s, Gambino effectively ran all crime in Manhattan, while the infiltration of the New York Longshoremen union gave him control of 90 per cent of the city's ports.  He retained power, seeing off a number of attempts to unseat him, until 1976, when he died of a heart attack at his holiday home.

His funeral at a church in a quiet residential area of Brooklyn was a ticket-only affair attended by 2000 people, including prominent members of all the Five Families, as well as numerous plain clothes detectives and FBI agents, who witnessed Gambino's body being buried in a $7,000 dollar bronze coffin.

Travel tip:

Despite its unfortunate associations with the history of organised crime, Palermo is well worth visiting. The capital of Sicily, it is a vibrant city with a wealth of beautiful architecture bearing testament to its rich history. It has examples of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches and palaces, while the Palazzo dei Normanni, the seat of the Sicilian Regional Assembly, is a marvellous example of Norman architecture.

The magnificent Teatro Massimo in Palermo

Travel tip:

Palermo's Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, opened in 1897, is the largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna. It was originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, although today there is a limit of 1,350.  There are also seven tiers of boxes. Enrico Caruso sang in a performance of La Gioconda during the opening season, returning to perform in Rigoletto at the end of his career. The theatre was closed for renovation for more than 20 years but reopened in 1997.   The final scenes of the third part of The Godfather Trilogy, based in Puzo's novel, was filmed there.

More reading:

Nino Rota - more to his music than just The Godfather

(Photo of Teatro Massimo by Bernhard J. Scheuvens CC BY-SA 2.5)

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Rita Pavone - teenage singing star

Precocious talent who conquered America

Rita Pavone pictured in 1965

Rita Pavone, who was one of Europe's biggest teenage singing stars in the 1960s and was still performing live concerts as recently as 2014, celebrates her 71st birthday today.

The Turin-born singer had her first hit single when she was just 17 years old and enjoyed success at home and in America during a career that spanned more than five decades, going on to become an accomplished actress on television and in the theatre.

She announced she was quitting show business in 2006 but came out of retirement in 2013 to record two studio albums as a tribute to the stars who had influenced her in throughout her career, then embarking on a series of live concerts in Italy in 2014 and performing in Toronto, Canada exactly 50 years after her first appearance there.

Earlier this year she appeared in Ballando Con le Stelle - the Italian equivalent of the US show Dancing With the Stars and Britain's Strictly Come Dancing - and finished third with partner Simone de Pasquale, reaching the final despite being the oldest competitor.

Pavone was born on August 23, 1945 and spent her early years living in a two-room apartment in Turin.  She was the third of four children yet it was not until 1959 that the family was able to move somewhere bigger, in the Mirafiori district, when a scheme run by the FIAT factory where her father worked enabled employees to obtain a family home at low rent.

Rita Pavone in 1973, after returning
to Italy to embark on an acting career

Her father, Giovanni, was a fan of American musicals, and it was when she began singing along to his record collection, largely featuring Al Jolson, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, that he realised she had talent.  Rita left school at just 11 years old to take a job as an ironer in a shirt factory but Giovanni encouraged her interest in singing, finding the money to pay for lessons and, on bank holidays, taking her to schools and village halls on the back of his scooter, so she could sing at children's parties and local festivities.

In 1959, Pavone made her public debut as a singer, impersonating Al Jolson in a children's talent contest.  Her big break came in 1962, when she won first prize in La Festa Degli Sconosciuti - Festival of the Unknown - a nationwide talent search launched by a record producer and singer from Trieste, born Ferruccio Merk-Ricordi but who went under the professional name of Teddy Reno.

The prize was a management contract with Reno - the man she would later marry - and a record deal with RCA Italiana, Her first single - La Partita di Pallone  -The Football Match - sold more than a million copies, earning Pavone a regular slot on a popular Italian television variety series, Studio One. 

More hits followed yet Reno was not content with success merely in Italy.  After scoring chart hits in Spain and Germany, he set his sights on the United States. In May 1964, Pavone's American debut album, The International Teenage Sensation, was released, and the single Remember Me became a hit.

When Pavone made her first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the most popular variety show on American television, in 1964, it could be acknowledged that she had cracked the US market, a rarity for an Italian performer.  Soon she was appearing alongside Diana Ross and The Supremes, Ella Fitzgerald, Tom Jones, Duke Ellington and Paul Anka, meeting Elvis Presley and recording a duet with Barbra Streisand.

Pavone returned to Italy to develop her interest in acting, appearing in several films and television dramas.

Rita Pavone with dance partner Simone di Pasquale in
a publicity shot for the TV show Ballando Con le Stelle

Her popularity was such that when she was admitted to hospital in 1964, suffering from appendicitis, she received get-well cards from 13 million fans.

Pavone risked her reputation when she and Reno decided to marry in Switzerland in 1968.  Italy at the time did not recognise divorce and Reno had been married previously in Mexico. He was thus regarded as a bigamist. However, Italy's marriage laws changed in 1971 and they renewed their vows.

Teddy Reno turned 90 last July. The couple remain together, living in Ticino, Switzerland. They have two sons, Alessandro and Giorgio, the former a political reporter on Swiss television, the latter a rock singer performing under the name of George Merk.

Travel tip:

Mirafiori, where Rita Pavone's family lived at the start of her musical career, is a district of Turin that owes its identity to the car manufacturer FIAT, where her father worked.  FIAT opened a massive factory there in 1936 when demand for the company's cars exceeded the production capacity of the nearby Lingotto plant. Large numbers of apartment buildings were built to house the workers. A strike there in 1943 that grew to include 100,000 workers, and spread to involve industrial areas all over northern Italy, is said to have marked the beginning of the end for the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. Today it is the site of the Mirafiori Motor Village, the largest exhibition centre in Europe devoted to the cars.

The Piazza Unità d'Italia in Trieste

Travel tip:

Trieste, where Teddy Reno was born, is the main city of the region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and lies close to the Slovenian border.  It was once the main seaport of the Austro-Hungarian empire, of which there are still echoes in the coffee houses and restaurants that blend in with the more recognisably Italian.  There is much Austrian influence in the architecture too, dating from the era of Habsburg domination.

More reading:

The enduring talent of 60s pop star Patty Pravo

Pier Angeli - Hollywood star from Sardinia who dated James Dean



(Photo of Rita Pavone in 1965 by Joop van Bilsen CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi – bishop

Progressive priest who shaped the destiny of a future Pope

Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, the
Bishop of Bergamo

Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, who was a mentor for the future Pope John XXIII, died on this day in 1914 in Bergamo.

He was Bishop of the Diocese of Bergamo from 1905 until his death and is remembered with respect because of his strong involvement in social issues at the beginning of the 20th century when he sought to understand the problems of working class Italians.

Radini-Tedeschi was born in 1857 into a wealthy, noble family living in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.

He was ordained as a priest in 1879 and then became professor of Church Law in the seminary of Piacenza.

In 1890 he joined the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and was sent on a number of diplomatic missions.

In 1905 he was named Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bergamo by Pope Pius X and was consecrated by him in the Sistine Chapel.

Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII

Radini-Tedeschi was a strong supporter of Catholic trade unions and backed the workers at a textile plant in Ranica, a district of Bergamo Province, during a labour dispute.

Working for him as his secretary at the time was a young priest named Angelo Roncalli who had been born at Sotto il Monte just outside Bergamo into a large farming family.

Roncalli went on to become Pope John XXIII in 1958 but never forgot the values Radini-Tedeschi had taught him.

The Bishop became ill with cancer and died at the age of 57 just after the outbreak of the First World War. His last words are reputed to have been: ‘Angelo, pray for peace.’

Travel tip:

Piacenza, where Radini-Tedeschi was born, is on the western edge of Emilia-Romagna and is in a strategic position between the River Po and the Appenines, situated between Bologna and Milan. It has many fine churches and old palaces with splendid gardens to explore. Piacenza Cathedral was built in 1122 and is a good example of northern Italian Romanesque architecture.

The Church of Santa Maria Immacolata
delle Grazia in Bergamo's lower town

Travel tip:

A landmark in Bergamo’s lower town is the church of Santa Maria Immacolata delle Grazie in Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII, one of the main thoroughfares. The huge church on the corner of Porta Nuova has a 19th century green cupola topped with a golden statue with an early 20th century campanile next to it. But the origins of the church date back to 1422 when a convent was built on the site dedicated to Santa Maria delle Grazie. The beautiful cloisters have been preserved within the church buildings although the convent was suppressed at the beginning of the 19th century. The neoclassical design for the new church was created by architect Antonio Preda. In 1907 the main altar was consecrated in the presence of the bishop, Giacomo Radini- Tedeschi, accompanied by his 26-year-old secretary, Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII.

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