The Blessed Vincent Romano

Priest who devoted himself to helping the poor

The Blessed Vincent Romano came
from a poor family

The Blessed Vincent Romano, a priest from Torre del Greco on the Bay of Naples who became known for his tireless devotion to helping the poor, was born on this day in 1751.

Admired for his simple way of life and his efforts in particular to look after the wellbeing of orphaned children, he was nicknamed “the worker priest” by the local community. His commitment to helping poor people extended across the whole Neapolitan region.

He would demonstrate his willingness to roll up his sleeves in a different way in 1794 after his church – now the Basilica of Santa Croce – was all but destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius.

Not only did Romano devote many hours to organising the rebuilding he actually cleared a good deal of rubble with his own hands.

He was born Vincenzo Domenico Romano to poor parents in Naples. He developed a strong faith as a child and began to study for the priesthood in Naples at the age of 14.

He was ordained as a priest in 1775 and assigned to Torre del Greco, where he led a simple and austere life.

Camillo de Vito's painting shows Torre del Greco
engulfed by fire after the 1794 eruption

The eruption of Vesuvius in June 1794 destroyed most of Torre del Greco as a lava flow swept down to the sea, bringing down and the church and part of the bell tower.

Romano, then assistant pastor and treasurer of the church, promoted its reconstruction. The rebuilding began in 1795 and continued over many years, ending with the consecration of the new structure in 1827.

Miraculous events seemed to accompany the reconstruction, including the arrival of a ship from Libya loaded with timber, which was offered as a gift for the construction of roof trusses. No one could explain this act of generosity nor knew who had commissioned it.

The new church was designed by Ignazio di Nardo, who was also responsible for the urban plan for the reconstructed city.

After the death of the incumbent parish priest in 1799, Romano became the provost of the parish, part of his mission being to promote the better education of children. He welcomed all people into his church.

Pope Paul VI, who beatified Romano in 1963

Romano died in December 1831 after a long period of ill health. His remains are housed in the Basilica.

The beatification process began under Pope Gregory XVI in 1843 when Romano given the title of Servant of God. In 1895 he was declared to be Venerable after Pope Leo XIII recognized that Romano had lived a life of heroic virtue.

He was beatified by Pope Paul VI in November 1963 after the necessary two miracles received papal approval.

The first was the healing of Maria Carmela Restucci in December 1891 from an aggressive breast tumour after she had invoked the patronage of Romano, her recovery confirmed by her doctor as something unexplained by science and medicine.

The second was the healing of Maria Carmela Cozzolino in 1940 from an ailment diagnosed by her doctor as throat cancer but which miraculously disappeared when she appeared to be nearing death after she invoked the intercession of Romano. Again, the cure could not be explained.

Travel tip:

Torre del Greco was once part of Magna Graecia – Great Greece – in the eighth and seventh centuries BC but its name is thought to originated in the 11^th century AD when a Greek hermit was said to have occupied an eight-sided costal watch tower called Turris Octava. From the 16^th century it became popular with wealthy families and even Italian nobility, who built elaborate summer palaces there. In the 19^th century and early 20^th century Torre del Greco enjoyed its peak years as a resort to which wealthy Italians flocked, both to enjoy the sea air and as a point from which to scale Vesuvius via a funicular railway. A thriving café scene developed, and the art nouveau Gran Caffè Palumbo became famous across the country.  Since the 17^th century it has been a major producer of coral jewellery.

The rebuilt Basilica of Santa Croce in Torre del Greco

Travel tip:

Built originally at the beginning of the 16^th century, the Basilica of Santa Croce is the religious heart of Torre del Greco and houses the remains of the Blessed Vincent Romano. It was rebuilt after the Vesuvius eruption in 1794 and now overlooks Piazza Santa Croce in the historic centre of the town. Other buildings of note include the 18^th century Palazzo Vallelonga and the Camaldoli alla Torre monastery.

The death of Giuseppe Garibaldi

Unification hero spent last days on his island off Sardinia

The revolutionary general Giuseppe Garibaldi

The Italian revolutionary and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi died on this day in 1882 on the Sardinian island of Caprera.

The 74-year-old former military general and left-wing politician, whose Expedition of the Thousand was a major factor in completing the unification of Italy, had spent much of the last 27 years of his life on the island.

Increasingly confined to bed because of crippling arthritis, he was living on his farm with his third wife, Francesca Armosino, when he passed away.

Knowing he was fading, in the days before his death Garibaldi had asked for his bed to be moved close to a window, from which he could gaze at the emerald and sapphire sea.

He has asked for a simple funeral and cremation, and had even nominated the place on the island where he wished his body to be burned, in an open coffin, with his face to the sun.

He had hoped his ashes would be handed over to ordinary Italians, to be mixed with the earth in a place where a garden might grow as a symbol of the new Italy.

Garibaldi with his third wife, Francesca

But his wishes were ignored. His body at first remained in his four-poster bed, guarded by a soldier and a sailor, while a succession of people filed past to pay their respects.

Garibaldi’s body was then placed in a tomb in the gardens of his farmhouse, although his great-granddaughter Anita Garibaldi, named after Giuseppe’s Brazilian first wife, believes his body may have later been removed by supporters eager to honour his wishes and have it cremated.

His association with the island of Caprera goes back to what is thought to have been his first visit in 1849. In 1855 he bought half the island using his legacy from his brother, Angelo.

After the Expedition of the Thousand concluded with his handing over of Sicily and Naples to Victor Emmanuel II in November, 1860, he retired there, although his military campaigning was not over and he made two further attempts to capture Rome for the new Italy.

A depiction of Garibaldi's body after his death

On both occasions, however, in 1862 and 1867, the French support for the Papal army proved too much.  On the second occasion he was arrested and held prisoner and his release was effectively conditional on him going into exile on Caprera.

Garibaldi remains an Italian hero and statues of him stand in many Italian squares and around the world. There is a bust of him directly outside the old Supreme Court Chamber in the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

He is even commemorated in Nottingham, England, in the colours worn by the football club Nottingham Forest, whose red shirts were based on the uniform worn by Garibaldi’s followers. Indeed, one of the club’s nicknames is the Garibaldi Reds.

Garibaldi's house is now a museum dedicated to his memory

Travel tip:

The island of Caprera, off the northern tip of the much larger island of Sardinia, was populated in the early days of the Western Roman Empire, as was evidenced by the discovery of the remains of Roman cargo ships there. It was unoccupied for centuries thereafter and the pinewoods that cover the island today began with trees planted by Garibaldi. Today it is a natural reserve for the royal seagull, the cormorant and the peregrine falcon. Garibaldi’s house nowadays is open to the public as a museum.

The harbour at La Maddalena

Travel tip:

The island of La Maddalena, which is connected to Caprera by a causeway, is renowned for its beaches and attracts many wealthy tourists to anchor their yachts in the harbour.  Like Caprera it was deserted for many centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but began to develop in the late 18^th century when a town of the same name was established under the occupation of the Savoy-Piedmontese kingdom.  The road linking the town’s port area with the central Piazza Umberto is named Via Garibaldi.

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Francesco Scipione – playwright

Erudite marquis revitalised Italian drama

An 18th century portrait of Scipione by
an unknown artist

Dramatist Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei, was born on this day in 1675 in Verona.

His most famous work was his verse tragedy, Merope, which attempted to introduce Greek and French classical simplicity into Italian drama. This prepared the way for the dramatic tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri and the librettos of Pietro Metastasio later in the 18th century.

After studying at Jesuit colleges in Parma and Rome, Scipione went to fight on the side of Bavaria in the War of the Spanish Succession. He saw action in 1704 at the Battle of Schellenberg, near Donauworth, when his brother, Alessandro, was second in command at the battle.

In 1710, Scipione was one of the founders of an influential literary journal, Giornale dei letterati, a vehicle for his ideas about reforming Italian drama. He founded a later periodical, Osservazioni letterarie, to promote the same cause.

Scipione spent time studying the manuscripts in the Royal Library at Turin and arranged the collection of objects of art which Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy had brought from Rome. He also travelled extensively in France, England, the Netherlands and Germany and received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.

The Scipione statue in Piazza dei
Signori in Verona

When Scipione’s verse tragedy, Merope, was first performed in 1713, it met with astonishing success. It was based on Greek mythology and the French neoclassical period, signalling the way for the later reform of Italian tragedy. It was popular with the audience because of its rapid action and the elimination of the prologue and the chorus.

In addition to Merope, Scipione wrote other plays, scholarly works and poetry, and he also translated the epic poems, the Iliad and Aeneid.

Another of his major works is a valuable account of the history and antiquities of his native city - Verona illustrata: A Compleat History of the Ancient Amphitheatres and in particular that of Verona.

Scipione built a museum in Verona to house his art and archaeological collection, which he bequeathed to his native city. He died there at the age of 79 in 1755.  A statue to him was later erected in Piazza dei Signori in Verona.

Travel tip:

The secondary school, Liceo Maffei, is named in Scipione’s honour in the town of his birth, Verona. The city in the Veneto is famous as the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as well as for its Roman amphitheatre, L’Arena di Verona in Piazza Bra, where opera and music concerts are now regularly performed.

The Biblioteca Reale is housed inside the Royal Palace
in Turin's Piazzetta Reale

Travel tip:

The Royal Library, Biblioteca Reale, in Turin, where Scipione studied the manuscripts, is on the ground floor of the Royal Palace in Piazzetta Reale. It was originally established to hold the rare manuscripts collected by members of the House of Savoy.

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Angelo Moriondo - espresso machine pioneer

Bar and hotel owner invented way to make coffee faster

Angelo Moriondo owned a hotel and a prestigious
bar in the centre of Turin

Angelo Moriondo, the man credited with inventing the world’s first espresso coffee machine, died on this day in 1914 in Marentino, a town in Piedmont, about 20km (12 miles) east of Turin.

Moriondo, who was 62 when he passed away, was the owner of the Grand-Hotel Ligure in Turin’s Piazza Carlo Felice and the American Bar in the former Galleria Nazionale on Via Roma.

He came up with the idea of a coffee machine essentially in the hope of gaining an edge over his competition at a time when coffee was a hugely popular beverage across Europe and in Italy in particular, but which still depended on brewing methods that required the customer to wait five minutes or more to be able to raise a cup to his mouth.

Moriondo figured that if he could find a way to make multiple cups of coffee simultaneously he would be able to serve more customers more quickly. He hoped that word would then get round in Turin’s commercial district that his bars were the ones to go if the pressures of business did not allow time for leisurely breaks.

The design for his machine for which Moriondo
was granted a patent in 1884

He never contemplated industrial-scale production of his invention, his ambitions never extending beyond the needs of his own businesses and, unlike later espresso machines, his device was not designed for making individual cups.

But experts say that his invention was undoubtedly the first to use water and pressurised steam to accelerate the coffee-making process and it was therefore reasonable to declare it to be the world’s first espresso machine.

Moriondo was delighted with it but missed a fantastic opportunity to become the person whose name is synonymous with coffee machines.

He presented his invention at the General Expo of Turin in 1884, where it was awarded the bronze medal.  It was awarded a patent for a period of six years on May 16, 1884 under the title of "New steam machinery for the economic and instantaneous confection of coffee beverage, method ‘A. Moriondo’."

The machine consisted of a large boiler that pushed heated water through a large bed of coffee grounds, with a second boiler producing steam that would flash the bed of coffee and complete the brew.

One of Desiderio Pavoni's early espresso machines

Conceiving and creating this matchine was an unprecedented achievement. Yet Moriondo did nothing to commercialise the idea and it was left to two others, the Milanese duo Luigi Bezzerra and Desiderio Pavoni, to tweak his method and repackage it for the market place.

Moriondo limited himself to the construction of a few hand-built, machines which he jealously kept under lock and key at one house or another, convinced that advertising them was a bad idea.

Within a couple of years, Bezzerra and Pavoni had developed a machine that could produce up to 1,000 cups an hour, brewing an individual shot of espresso.

Moriondo made a comfortable living from his business ventures, following in the family’s footsteps as an entrepreneur, but could have been both wealthier and more famous had he seen the potential in what he had created.

The Via Roma in modern Turin

Travel tip:

Turin was once the capital of Italy and its shopping streets reflect its former prestige, with 18km (11 miles) of arcades. A key shopping area is around Via Roma.  As well as the high street names, shops feature specialists in chocolate, fashion, and antiquarian books and records.

Travel tip:

The small town of Marentino really consists of three ancient villages – Marentino, Avuglione and Vernone. It is well known for its locally produced honey.  Marentino is built on a hill with the church of Maria Vergine, which has a baroque façade and a substantial bell tower, at its pinnacle. An interesting feature of the town is the number of houses whose walls are decorated with colourful murals, the result of a project in 2005 involving 20 artists from all over Italy.

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