Alberto Marvelli - Rimini's Good Samaritan

Heroic deeds helped victims of bombing raids

Alberto Marvelli devoted his life to
serving his community

Alberto Marvelli, who came to be seen as a modern day Good Samaritan after risking his life repeatedly to help the victims of devastating air raids in the Second World War, was born on this day in 1918 in Ferrara.

He died in 1946 at the age of only 28 when he was struck by a truck while riding his bicycle but in his short life identified himself to many as a true hero.

He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004.

Marvelli's acts of heroism occurred mainly in Rimini, his adopted home town, which suffered heavy bombing from the Allies due to its proximity to the Gothic or Green Line, a wide belt of German defensive fortifications that ran across the whole peninsula from La Spezia to the Adriatic coast.

As well as giving aid and comfort to the wounded and dying and to those whose homes and possessions had been destroyed, Marvelli also rescued many Rimini citizens from trains destined for concentration camps.

Alberto was the second of six children born to Luigi Marvelli and Maria Mayr. Growing up, he was set a powerful example by his mother, who always kept open house for the poor and regularly gave away food intended for her own family.

In June 1930 the Marvellis moved to Rimini on the Adriatic coast and Alberto, having already embraced the strong values instilled in him by his devoutly Catholic parents, began to attend the Salesian Oratory and Catholic Action group.

Alberto Marvelli was a prominent member of the group
Catholic Action, becoming president at the age of 18

He had a wide social circle - his friends included Federico Fellini, who would go on to become famous as a film director - and enjoyed sport, in particular cycling. Yet he also maintained a strict observance of the rituals of his faith, which included Mass every morning, Holy Communion, and 30 minutes each of meditation and spiritual reading every day.

He was held in such high esteem that he was elected president of Catholic Action for the whole of Italy at the age of just 18.

Marvelli attended Bologna University and graduated in engineering in 1941.  He moved to Turin, where he began working for Fiat, but left after only a few weeks to do military service in Trieste.  In the event, he returned to Rimini after only a few months after he was exempted on account of three of his brothers being already in service

By then he was effectively head of the family following the unexpected death of his father and took a teaching job at a local high school, devoting his spare time to helping the sick and poor on behalf of Catholic Action.

When the bombing of Rimini began in earnest in 1944, ahead of the Battle of Rimini in which the Allies achieved a decisive victory, the Marvelli family moved inland to the village of Vergiano.

German soldiers in Rimini in 1944 before being driven
out by the Allies at the Battle of Rimini

With each report of new air raids, however, Alberto would insist on taking his bicycle and riding the 8km into Rimini to lend assistance to the clear-up operations, giving no thought to his own safety, often arriving with bombs still dropping.

He bought food, clothing, mattresses and blankets with his own money or money he had collected, using his bicycle to distribute it to those in need. Many times, it is said, he would return to Vergiano having given away his bicycle and even the shoes on his feet.

During the German occupation, he made repeated journeys from Vergiano to the nearby village of Santarcangelo, sneaking past security at the railway station and breaking open the doors of carriages into which Jews and others had been herded for deportation to the concentration camps, saving many lives in the process, at grave risk of his own.

He helped many refugees reach the safety of San Marino by arranging transportation to the nearby republic, which remained neutral during the conflict.  When he was beatified in 2004, San Marino issued some stamps commemorating his life.

Once the war was over, the interim authorities entrusted Marvelli with the allocation of housing. Within a few months, he was appointed to Rimini's town council as an alderman and was put in charge of civil engineering as the city began to rebuild.

He also opened a soup kitchen for the poor and, as co-founder of Italian Workers' Catholic Action, formed a cooperative for construction workers.

Marvelli had not expressed a strong interest in politics previously but he became convinced he could make a difference and joined the Christian Democrats.

San Marino commemorated Marvelli with a set of stamps

He planned to stand in local elections and appeared to have considerable support and respect, even from the Communists, whose ideology he openly criticized. He was seen by all sides as an honest candidate dedicated to the well-being of the community.

Sadly, Marvelli never had the chance to serve.  Cycling to a party meeting on a poorly lit road on the evening of October 5, 1946, the day before polling, he was run over by an army truck and died a few hours later without regaining consciousness.

Voting was under way as news of his death spread throughout the city. Many citizens still voted for him, to express their faith in him and respect for him, and he was posthumously elected. Afterwards, his mother agreed to serve in his place.

He was buried in the Church of Sant' Agostino in Rimini.  The Catholic Church has honoured him by marking October 5 as a feast day in his name.

A square at the end of Viale Tripoli has been renamed Piazza Alberto Marvelli in his honour, while the Alberto Marvelli Foundation set up in his name helps fund projects dedicated to the community including the Alberto Marvelli Institute, a comprehensive school in Rimini.

The Grand Hotel on the seafront at Rimini

Travel tip:

Rimini's history as a tourist resort began in the mid-19th century with the construction of the Kursaal, a seafront bathing establishment that doubled as a prestigious venue for social events.  It became the symbol of Rimini's Belle Époque, the period of European history before the First World War, which also saw the town's first major hotel, the Grand Hotel, built near the beach.  Its major development as a resort came after the Second World War and the city now has a population close to 150,000.

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Travel tip:

Ferrara, the city of Marvelli's birth, is notable for being a combination of Medieval and Renaissance architecture, its history bound up with that of the d'Este family, whose castle has dominated the centre of the city since the late 14th century.  The most significant legacy of the city's thriving status in the Middle Ages is the Cattedrale di San Giorgio, built in the 1100s, which has a facade that blends Romanesque style in the lower section with Gothic in the upper.

More reading:

Agostina Livia Pietrantoni - nurse whose death brought Rome to a standstill

Saint Giustina - the girl from Padua slain for preaching Christianity

Pope John Paul II - first non-Italian to hold office for 455 years

Also on this day:

1858: The death of Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello - Nun who battled for educational rights for girls


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Fulco di Verdura - jeweller

Exclusive brand favoured by stars and royalty

Fulco di Verdura, pictured in around 1939 at the time
of launching the Verdura business in New York

The man behind the exclusive jewellery brand Verdura was born Fulco Santostefano della Cerda, Duke of Verdura, on this day in 1898 in Palermo.

Usually known as Fulco di Verdura, he founded the Verdura company in 1939, when he opened a shop on Fifth Avenue in New York and became one of the premier jewellery designers of the 20th century.

Well connected through his own heritage and through his friendship with the songwriter Cole Porter, Verdura found favour with royalty and with movie stars.

Among his clients were the Duchess of Windsor - the former socialite Wallis Simpson - and stars such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn, Paulette Goddard, Millicent Rogers and Marlene Dietrich.

Although Verdura died in 1978, the company lives on and continues to specialise in using large, brightly coloured gemstones.

The Oppenheimer Blue, the most expensive
diamond ever sold at auction

The most expensive gemstone ever sold at auction, the so-called Oppenheimer Blue diamond, was set in a ring designed by Verdura. It changed hands at Christie's in Geneva for $50.6 million (£34.7 million) in May 2016.

The last to bear the now defunct Sicilian title of Duke of Verdura, Fulco grew up in aristocratic surroundings largely unchanged since the 18th century.  The novel The Leopard, written by his cousin, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, is said to depict his eccentric and artistic family.

However, his family were not so wealthy that he could live a life of leisure and it became clear he would need to find a profession appropriate to his stature in society and lucrative enough to fund the lifestyle he wished to maintain.

He wanted to be an artist but his destiny was shaped by meeting Linda and Cole Porter in Palermo in 1919.  They became friends and it was through the Porters that Di Ventura met Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in Venice in 1925, when they were both guests at a party hosted by the American couple.

Chanel invited him to Paris, initially as a textile designer, but then asked him to update the settings of jewellery she had been given by a number of former lovers and it became clear where his talents lay. They began an eight-year collaboration when Chanel made him head designer of Chanel jewellery.

Cole Porter became a friend and financial
backer of Fulco di Verdura

It was not long after Fulco started working for Chanel that he designed the Maltese Cross Cuffs that are now considered the hallmark of the Verdura brand.

Fulco left Chanel in 1934 and moved to the United States, where Diana Vreeland, a Chanel client based in New York, introduced him to the jeweller Paul Flato, with whom he opened a boutique in Hollywood.

He set up on his own in 1939, opening a small salon called Verdura in New York at 712 Fifth Avenue, with the financial backing of Cole Porter and Vincent Astor. His designs were influenced by both his love of nature as a child in Sicily and his admiration for the art of the Renaissance.

His long list of celebrity clients prompted the New York Times to dub him "America's Crown Jeweller".

In 1941, Di Verdura collaborated with Salvador Dalí on a collection of jewellery designs and in the same year designed “Night and Day” cufflinks for Cole Porter, inspired by the lyrics of the hit song.

He continued to work in the United States until 1973, when he sold his stake in the Verdura business to Joseph Alfano, his business partner, and moved to London, where he would focus on painting. He died there five years later at the age of 80.

In 1985, Alfano sold the company to Ward Landrigan, a former head of Sotheby's American jewellery department. Landrigan decided to preserve the Verdura aesthetic and made jewellery the same way Fulco had, using many of the same jewellers Fulco used.

Landrigan's son, Nico Landrigan, joined Verdura in 2003, becoming President of the company in 2009.

Today, Verdura continues to appear on the pages of the top fashion magazines and celebrity clients include Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Anne Hathaway and Cameron Diaz.

Most of Fulco's designs were from individual commissions, yet he produced an estimated 5,000 items of jewellery during his lifetime.

Travel tip:

If there is one attraction in Palermo that most visitors would describe as a must-see it is the Palatine Chapel, the royal chapel of the Norman kings of Sicily situated on the ground floor of the Palazzo Reale.  The mosaics of the chapel are of unrivalled elegance, noted for subtle changes in colour and luminance. The mosaics of the transept, dating from the 1140s and attributed to Byzantine artists and include an illustrated scene, along the north wall, of St. John in the desert. The rest of the mosaics, dated to the 1160s or the 1170s, feature Latin rather than Greek inscriptions.

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The Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi in Palermo

Travel tip:

Fulco di Verdura was a cousin of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of the novel The Leopard, much of which is set in Palermo.  The director Luchino Visconti, who made a film of the book, chose for the magnificent ball at the end of the book the Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi in Piazza Croce dei Vespri, a palace designed in Baroque style.

More reading:

Guccio Gucci - the lift boy who went from carrying bags to designing them for the rich and famous

Miuccia Prada's journey from the Communist Party to head of family fashion empire

Gianfranco Ferré's quest to make clothes for real women

Also on this day:

1934: The birth of Italy's 1990 World Cup coach Azeglio Vicini

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Benito Jacovitti - cartoonist

Multiple comic characters loved by generations 

Benito Jacovitti

Benito Jacovitti, who would become Italy's most famous cartoonist, was born on this day in 1923 in the Adriatic coastal town of Termoli.

Jacovitti drew for a number of satirical magazines and several newspapers but also produced much work aimed at children and young adults.

His characters became the constant companions of generations of schoolchildren for more than 30 years via the pages of Diario Vitt, the school diary produced by the publishers of the Catholic comic magazine Il Vittorioso, which had a huge readership among teenagers and young adults, and for which Jacovitti drew from 1939 until it closed in 1969.

Jacovitti gave life to such characters as "the three Ps" - Pippo, Pertica and Pallo - as well as Chicchiriccì and Jack Mandolino via their cartoon adventures in Il Vittorioso, introduced Zorry Kid, a parody of Zorro, through a later association with children's journal Il Corriere del Picoli, and the cowboy Cocco Bill, who emerged during his 10-year stint as cartoonist for the daily newspaper, Il Giorno.

Cocco Bill, the character Jacovitti created
during his years working for Il Giorno

Born Benito Franco Iacovitti, he was the son of a railway worker.  Both his parents had Albanian origins. His first names stemmed from his father's fascination with the powerful political figures of the time.

Benito showed the first evidence of his artistic talent as a small child. He would draw comic stories on pavements in Termoli at the age of six.  The family moved to Macerata in Marche, where Jacovitti attended art school from the age of 11, and then to Florence, where he enrolled at the Art Institute as a 16-year-old.

It was there that he acquired the nickname lisca di pesce (fishbone) on account of his rather scrawny physique. He adopted the nickname as his signature.

He launched his career with the Florentine satirical magazine Il Brivido, where he decided he preferred his second name to begin with a 'J' rather than an 'I'.  The work with Il Vittorioso came soon afterwards and made him a household name.

Notable for his sense of the absurd, Jacovitti drew figures that inevitably had huge noses and gigantic feet and were sometimes quite grotesque. He has cited Elzie Crisler Segar, creator of Popeye, as one of his influences.

Though he became known for the characters and storylines he invented for his young audience, Jacovitti continued to maintain his skills as a satirist, drawing for the magazine Il Travaso for much of the 1950s under the signature of 'Franz'.

The Pippo cartoons with Il Vittorioso
established Jacovitti's popularity

During his time with Il Travaso, he collaborated with the film director Federico Fellini on an anti-communist strip that was very popular.

Controversially, he also worked on Kamasultra, a comic book parody of the Hindu adult text the Kamasutra, which in some eyes somewhat tarnished Jacovitti's reputation.

He began to draw for newspapers in the 1950s, first for Quotidiano and, from 1956 to 1966, for Il Giorno, the national daily based in Milan.

Jacovitti's work was published in many other periodicals in Italy and abroad and he had commercial companies queuing up to use his characters in advertising for their products. They appeared in commercials for Eldorado ice cream, Fiorucci salami, Teodoro oils and Fiat cars among others.

During his career, Jacovitti created more than 60 characters and produced around 150 books, making him one of the most prolific and original artists in comic book history.

He was a great admirer of Carlo Collodi, the creator of Pinocchio, and illustrated a number of editions of the famous story during his career.

Awarded the title of Knight Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the President, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, in 1994, he died in Rome in 1997 at the age of 74.

Travel tip:

Termoli, once primarily a fishing port but now a popular tourist resort, particularly with Italian families who flock to its sandy beaches, is notable for the Borgo Antico, an historic old town that sits on a promontory surrounded by walls which, on one side, drop into the sea.  An 11th century castle stands guard at the entrance and many of the houses are painted in pastel colours.  The Cathedral of St Mary of the Purification, built in the 12th and 13th centuries, is an example of Apulian Romanesque design. Contained within are the remains of the town's two patron saints, Bassus of Lucera and Timothy.

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Macerata hosts the Sferisterio Opera Festival every summer

Travel tip:

The walled city of Macerata in Marche is not among Italy's mainstream tourist destinations yet offers much to charm the visitor with its hill-town characteristics and maze of cobbled streets.  At the heart of the city, in the pretty Piazza della Libertà, is the Loggia dei Mercanti with its two-tier arcades, dating from the Renaissance. There are several beautiful palaces and a university that is among the oldest it Italy, established in 1290.  Each July and August the city hosts the Sferisterio Opera Festival, one of the most important dates on the Italian opera calendar, which is held in the 2,500 seat open-air Arena Sferisterio, a huge neoclassical arena built in the 1820s. Most of the world's great opera singers have performed there, attracted by its perfect acoustics, and it has been credited with staging some of the finest productions in the history of numerous regularly performed works, including Ken Russell's direction of Puccini's La Bohème in 1984.

More reading:

How Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio stories carried hidden meanings

Giacomo Puccini - the opera genius who inherited Verdi's baton

Giovanni Guareschi - satirical magazine editor who created Don Camillo

Also on this day:

1943: The birth of Mario Monti, the technocrat prime minister known as 'Super Mario'

(Picture credit: Sferisterio Festival by Florian Prischl via Wikimedia Commons)




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The Five Days of Milan

Citizens rebel to drive out ruling Austrians

A painting by an unknown artist that shows fighting between
Austrian troops and Milanese citizens 

The Five Days of Milan, one of the most significant episodes of the Risorgimento, began on this day in 1848 as the citizens of Milan rebelled against Austrian rule. 

More than 400 Milanese citizens were killed and a further 600 wounded but after five days of street battles the Austrian commander, Marshal Josef Radetzky, withdrew his 13,000 troops from the city.

The 'Cinque Giornate' uprising sparked the First Italian War of Independence between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Empire.

Much of northern Italy was under Austrian rule in the early part of the 19th century and they maintained a harsh regime. Elsewhere, governments were introducing social reform, especially in Rome but also in Sicily, Salerno and Naples after riots against the Bourbon King Ferdinand II.

Ferdinand, ruler of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and Charles Albert (Carlo Alberto) of Savoy, in the Kingdom of Sardinia, adopted a new constitution, limiting the power of the monarchy, and Pope Pius IX in the Papal States followed suit a little later.

Marshall Josef Radetzky and his troops
were driven out of Milan

The response of the Austrians was to seek a still tighter grip on their territories in Lombardy-Venetia, where they imposed tax increases on the citizens and sent out tax collectors, supported by the army, to ensure that everybody paid.

There was a warning of what lay ahead in January 1848, when Milanese rebels organised a boycott of gambling and of tobacco, which were government monopolies and a major source of revenue.

Fighting broke out between rebels and Austrian soldiers, who ultimately quelled the trouble by charging the crowd with swords and bayonets.

Peace was restored but trouble exploded again in March, when news reached Italy that riots in Vienna were threatening to overthrow the Austrian prime minister, Klemens von Metternich.  An anti-Austrian movement quickly spread through the city and gained widespread support.  The Austrian garrison mobilised in response under the vastly experienced Radetzky, whose tactical astuteness had not diminished, even though he was in his 81st year.

Yet such was the fierce passion among the local people to rid themselves of Austrian rule, with even priests joining the street battles and farmers from the surrounding countryside arriving in numbers to give their support, that the Austrians, weakened after Radetzky had been forced to send some of his troops to Vienna, sought an armistice.

When it was rejected, Radetsky felt obliged to act to minimise his own losses and at the end of the five days, on the evening of March 22, he began a withdrawal to the Quadrilatero, the a four-cornered area between Milan and Venice guarded by fortresses at Verona, Legnano, Mantua and Peschiera del Garda.

There is a statue of Carlo Cattaneo on Via
Santa Margherita in central Milan

A provisional government of Milan was formed and presided over by the podestà (mayor), Gabrio Casati, and a council of war under the political writer, Carlo Cattaneo.

The following day, March 23, Charles Albert of Savoy declared war on Austria, launching what became known and the First War of Italian Independence.

As a memorial to the victory of the rebels, the official newspaper of Cattaneo's temporary government was given the name Il 22 marzo (March 22). A monument to the uprising by the sculptor Giuseppe Grandi was built at what is now Porta Vittoria.

Soon after the Milan riots, an insurrection in Venice led by Daniele Manin, a lawyer, also succeeded in ejecting Austrian forces and a new Republic of San Marco was proclaimed.

However, the First War of Italian Independence, which lasted a year, ended in victory for the Austrians, who won decisive battles at Custoza and Novara, resulting in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia being returned to Austrian control.

Piazza Cinque Giornate at Porta Vittoria commemorates
the Milan uprising of 1848 in which  400 citizens died

Travel tip:

Formerly known as Porta Tosa, the eastern gate in the old Spanish Walls of Milan, Porta Vittoria was the first strategic position to be taken by the Milanese rebels during the Five Days. It was renamed Porta Vittoria in 1861, when Italian unification was completed. The gate was demolished in the late 19th century and an obelisk designed by Giuseppe Grandi erected in its place and inaugurated on March 18, 1895. The square is now called Piazza Cinque Giornate. Nearby streets and squares are named after heroes and prominent events of the Risorgimento and the Five Days.

Travel tip:

The significance of Carlo Cattaneo in the history of Milan is commemorated in the Carlo Cattaneo Institute of Higher Education in Piazza Vetra in the historic Corrobbio district, which has Roman origins, to the south-west of the city.  Cattaneo, strongly republican in his politics, was a philosopher and writer and a former member of Carbonari, a network of secret revolutionary groups.  There is a statue of Cattaneo in Via Santa Margherita in central Milan, close to the Duomo and the Galleria.

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More reading:

Why Giuseppe Mazzini was the ideological inspiration for Italian unification

The end of the Venetian Republic

Victor Emmanuel II - first king of the new Kingdom of Italy

Also on this day: 

1944: The last time Vesuvius erupted


(Picture credits: Carlo Cattaneo monument by Giovanni Dall'Orto; Piazza Cinque Giornate by Arbalete; via Wikimedia Commons)




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