Fabrizio Giovanardi – racing driver

Touring car specialist has won 10 titles

Fabrizio Giovanardi has been racing
for more than 30 years

One of the most successful touring car racers in history, the former Alfa Romeo and Vauxhaul driver Fabrizio Giovanardi, was born in Sassuolo, not far from Modena, on this day in 1966.

Giovanardi has won the European Championship twice, the European Cup twice, the British Championship twice, the Italian Championship three times and the Spanish touring car title once.

His best season in the World Championship came in 2005, when he finished third behind the British driver Andy Priaulx.

At the peak of his success, Giovanardi won a title each season for six consecutive years.

Like many drivers across the motor racing spectrum, Giovanardi had his first experience of competition in karting, winning Italian and World titles in 125cc karts in 1986, before graduating to Formula Three and Formula 3000.

He was hoping from there to step up to Formula One but although he won a number of races the opportunity to drive competitively for an F1 team did not come about.

It was during the 1991 season that he tried his luck in touring cars and met with immediate success, winning five class S2 races in a Peugeot 405, prompting him to focus on touring cars in the 1992 season. He remained at class S2 level and won his first title, the Italian Superturismo Championship, finishing first in 12 races for a commanding lead of 68 points over British driver Gary Ayles.

The Vauxhall Vectra in which Giovanardi won the
2007 British Touring Car Championship

He moved into the main class of the championship with Peugeot in 1993, finishing in the top three overall twice before moving to Nordauto Engineering Alfa Romeo in 1995.

In his début season with Alfa, Giovanardi again finished in third. He continued in the Italian series in 1996 while simultaneously contesting the four-race Campeonato de España de Turismo, which would give him his second touring car title in 1997, when he was also runner-up in the Italian series.

It began a run of six titles in as many seasons for the Nordauto team, comprising consecutive Italian titles in 1998 and 1999, the European Super Touring Cup in 2000, the European Super Touring Championship in 2001 and the European title in 2002.

Giovanardi’s career stalled when Alfa Romeo decided to pull out of touring but he put himself back on track when he joined Vauxhall Racing to compete in the British Touring Car Championship.

Giovanardi finished third in the 2005 World Championship
in this Honda Accord

He finished fifth in the 2006 season in an Astra before finding that the new Vectra suited him very well, winning the 2007 title after a season-long battle with SEAT Sport’s Jason Plato.

Giovanardi successfully defended his title in 2008 and finished third in 2009, but suffered another blow when Vauxhall decided that would be their last season in touring car racing, citing the economic downturn for their withdrawal.

At 44 years old, Giovanardi had one more triumph, winning the European Touring Car Cup for Hartmann Honda Racing, but after moving from one team to another in search of the right car he effectively retired after the 2014 season.

His guest appearance at the Vallelunga round of the Italian championship in September 2017, when he drove a SEAT León for BF Motorsport and finished fourth, was his first competitive drive for three years.

Away from the track, Giovanardi is a keen pilot and has a passion for renovating houses.  He is married with one son, Luca.

The Palazzo Ducale in Sassuolo

Travel tip:

Sassuolo is a town in Emilia-Romagna, some 17km (11 miles) southwest of Modena.  With a population of just over 40,000 Sassuolo is a major centre for the production of ceramics, with more than 300 factories producing 80 per cent of all Italy’s ceramic tiles, making it one of the most important ceramic centres in the world.  At the centre of town, Piazza Garibaldi is a pleasant square and the 17^th-century Palazzo Ducale, designed by Bartolomeo Avanzini, is a handsome building. Sassuolo’s football club made history in 2013 when they were promoted to Serie A for the first time in their 93-year existence.

The Vallelunga racing circuit from the air

Travel tip:

The Vallelunga motor racing circuit – the Autodromo Vallelunga Piero Taruffi – can be found 32km (20 miles) north of Rome, close to the town of Campagnano di Roma. Owned by the Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI), the 4.1km (2.5 miles) track has held the Rome Grand Prix since 1963.  The track is used by the FIA as a test circuit for Formula One teams and has also hosted the Six Hours of Vallelunga endurance event.  In autumn of each year, Vallelunga hosts a vast flea-market specialising mainly in vintage automotive spare parts.

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La Festa di Santa Lucia

Much loved saint was immortalised in song

Fireworks over the harbour at Syracuse during
celebrations of the Festa di Santa Lucia

La festa di Santa Lucia - St Lucy’s Day - will be celebrated all over Italy today.

According to tradition, Santa Lucia comes down from the sky with a cart and a donkey and distributes gifts to all the children who have been good, while all the naughty children receive only a piece of coal.

Santa Lucia is the patron saint of the city of Syracuse in Sicily. Today, a silver statue of the saint containing her relics will be paraded through the streets before being returned to the Cathedral.

In Sicilian folklore there is a legend that a famine ended on Santa Lucia’s feast day when ships loaded with grain entered the harbour.

Santa Lucia is also popular with children in parts of northern Italy. In Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Lodi and Mantua in Lombardy, and also parts of the Veneto, Trentino, Friuli and Emilia-Romagna, the children will have been expecting the saint to arrive with presents during the night.

A silver statue of Santa Lucia is borne through the
streets of Syracuse on December 13 each year

According to tradition she arrives with her donkey and her escort, Castaldo. Children leave coffee for Santa Lucia, a carrot for the donkey and a glass of wine for Castaldo and they believe they must not watch the saint delivering her gifts.

Santa Lucia is believed to have been a third century Christian woman who took food to other Christians hiding in the catacombs in Rome. She wore a candle-lit wreath on her head to light her way in order to leave her hands free to carry as much food to them as possible. It is believed she died as a martyr on 13 December 304 AD.

An inscription dating from the fourth century was found in Syracuse mentioning the Festa di Santa Lucia. There it is believed she was a Sicilian noble woman who was killed for refusing to renounce her Christian beliefs.

Children in Bergamo leave letters for Santa Lucia
in the way British children write to Santa Claus 

Travel tip:

A pre-Christmas tradition for children in Bergamo is to visit the church of the Madonna dello Spasimo in the Città Bassa, lower town, with letters detailing what they would like to receive for Christmas. The Church of San Spasimo, in Via XX Settembre at the hub of the shopping area, is also known locally as the church of Santa Lucia because the local children lay letters containing their Christmas wish lists next to the altar containing the statue of the Blessed Virgin of Spasimo, also known as Santa Lucia. 

The Castel dell'Ovo and the harbour at Santa Lucia in Naples

Travel tip:

An area in the centre of Naples, between the Royal Palace and Borgo Marinari, the site of the Castel dell’Ovo, is known as Santa Lucia. The first settlement there was established by the Greeks, but nowadays the area is known for good hotels, fish restaurants and sailing clubs. The famous Neapolitan song, Santa Lucia, was about a boatman issuing an invitation to go out in his boat to enjoy the cool of the evening. The song made the picturesque waterfront district of Naples famous when it was recorded at the beginning of the 20th century by Enrico Caruso, an opera singer from Naples.

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Piazza Fontana bombing

Blast at Milan bank killed 17 and wounded 88

The office and counter area inside the Banca Nazionale
dell'Agricoltura in Milan after the explosion

Italy found itself the victim of an horrific terrorist attack on this day in 1969 when a bomb blast at a Milan bank left 17 people dead and a further 88 injured.

The bomb exploded at 4.37pm in the headquarters of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, just 200m away from the Duomo.  It was caused by a bomb containing about 18lbs of explosives left on the third floor, killing customers and members of staff.

At around the same time, two bombs exploded in Rome, injuring 14 people. Another device, placed in the courtyard of a bank near Teatro alla Scala in Milan, was deactivated by police.

The explosions followed one month after a policeman was killed during a riot of left-wing extremists in Milan and are generally seen as the start of a period of violent social and political unrest in Italy dubbed the Years of Lead.

Over a period of almost 20 years, the Years of Lead resulted in more than 200 deaths, many committed by the left-wing terrorist group Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades), others by far-right organisations such as Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Groups) and Ordine Nuovo (the New Order).

The plaque outside the bank commemorating
the victims of the bomb

Many of the victims died as a result of targeted assassinations, often aimed at policemen, business leaders, members of the judiciary. The highest profile individual killing was of the former prime minister, Aldo Moro, murdered after being kidnapped in Rome and held captive for 54 days.

Others were killed indiscriminately in large-scale bombings, such as Piazza Fontana and the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, which claimed the lives of 85 travellers when a huge bomb hidden in a suitcase exploded in a crowded waiting room.

Decades of investigations into the Piazza Fontana bombing led to a total of 4,000 arrests, three trials and sentences of life imprisonment for six alleged terrorists, all of which were subsequently quashed.

The acquittals of three neo-fascists in the third trial were announced in 2004, almost 35 years after the bombing took place, and meant that those who carried it out were never conclusively identified.

As a result, the conspiracy theories that surround the incident and much of the Years of Lead have persisted.

On the face of it, the Years of Lead was a struggle for supremacy between the ideologies of the left, represented in the mainstream by the Italian Communist Party, and those of the right, who did not have mainstream representation but were propagated by neo-fascist far-right organisations such as Ordine Nuovo and the Italian Social Movement.

Giuseppe Pinelli, a railway worker, who
died while being held by police

But it was suspected that forces on both sides were being manipulated by western secret service agents as part of the so-called “strategy of tension”, designed primarily to ensure that the Italian Communist Party’s growing popularity in post-War Italy went only so far, and that they were never allowed to take power.

In the case of the Piazza Fontana bombing, the theory is that Ordine Nuovo members were responsible but wanted it to appear that it was the work of left-wing extremists committed to the overthrow of the majority Christian Democratic party and were supported in this aim by agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

This theory was backed up by an investigation in 2000 by the left-leaning Olive Tree coalition, which concluded that that US intelligence agents were informed in advance of the bombing but did nothing to stop it, and that clandestine payments were made to Pino Rauti, the founder of Ordine Nuovo, via a US Embassy press officer.

Furthermore, in a newspaper interview in 2000, Paolo Emilio Taviani, the Christian Democrat co-founder of the secret NATO anti-communist force codenamed Gladio, which stayed behind in Italy after the Allies had withdrawn at the end of the Second World War, said that Italian secret services were also aware of the planned bombing in Milan but that rather than send agents to prevent it, they instead despatched another agent, whose mission was to spread stories blaming left-wing anarchists for the attack.

Indeed, in addition to a plaque on the wall of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura building that lists the names of the victims of the bomb, there are memorials in Piazza Fontana to the anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, who was arrested as part of a sweep of known anarchists in the wake of the bombing and died when he fell from a fourth floor window of Milan’s main police station, supposedly as a result of feeling faint during questioning and needing to take some air.

Pinelli’s fate inspired the satirist and playwright Dario Fo to write his famous play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

One of the memorials to Pinelli in Piazza
Fontana, placed by Milan city council

Travel tip:

Piazza Fontana is literally just a few metres from the back of Milan’s Duomo, accessed via Via Carlo Maria Martini.  There are two simple memorials mourning the death of Giuseppe Pinelli placed on a lawn opposite the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura, in front of a police building (although not the one in which he died). One was placed by students and anarchist friends of Pinelli, the other by Milan city council. Only the former refers to him being killed; the other simply says that he “died tragically.”

Travel tip:

On the other side of Piazza Fontana from the Pinelli memorials is Milan’s 16^th-century Archbishop's Palace, partly modified with neoclassical additions in the 18^th century, which is the official residence of the Archbishop of Milan. The palace owes its grandeur to archbishop Carlo Borromeo, who wanted to live permanently in the palace and commissioned Pellegrino Tibaldi to undertake a reconstruction project in 1585. The façade owes its appearance to Giuseppe Piermarini, who restored the palace in 1784.

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Gianni Morandi – actor and pop singer

Veteran entertainer has sold 50 million records 

Gianni Morandi has been in the music
business for 55 years

The singer Gianni Morandi, a Sanremo Festival winner and Eurovision Song Contest contestant who has sold more than 50 million records and had a simultaneous career as a successful TV and film actor, was born on this day in 1944 in a mountain village in Emilia-Romagna.

Morandi, whose longevity has brought comparisons with the British singer Sir Cliff Richard, is still performing today at the age of 73. In fact, he had an unlikely hit this year when he teamed up with 23-year-old rapper and web star Fabio Rovazzi.

Morandi, whose pop-ballad style still has a big following, showed his versatility and willingness to indulge in self-mocking humour this year by co-starring with Rovazzi in an electro-pop track and video called Volare that went to No 1 on iTunes Italy and attracted 2.5 million views in less than 24 hours.

He has also appeared in his 11^th TV drama series, having a few months earlier seen the release of his 18^th movie.

His birthday is being marked today with a late-evening special on Italy’s Canale 5 television station called Amore d’Autore, which celebrates the public and private life of one of Italy’s best-loved entertainers.

Morandi on stage in 2016: He still
performs regularly

Morandi was born in Monghidoro, now a village of almost 4,000 people that sits on a ridge in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines some 840m (2,750ft) above sea level, about 41km (25 miles) south of Bologna.

As a young man he sold drinks and confectionery at his local cinema and worked as an assistant in the workshop of his father, Renato, a cobbler.  Renato was an active member of the Italian Communist Party and Morandi recalls that part of his daily routine was to read aloud passages from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and reports from the party newspaper L’Unità.

But they were also a family who sang to entertain themselves and it was when his father arranged for him to sing at family festivals sponsored by L’Unità that Morandi enjoyed his first commercial success, collecting a princely 1,000 lire as his appearance fee.

In 1958, his rendition of Domenico Modugno’s Sanremo winner Nel blu dipinto di blu – more commonly known as Volare – earned him a place at a singing school in Bologna and after winning good reviews at a number of festivals he released his first single in 1962, with backing from Ennio Morricone’s orchestra.

With a recording contract from RCA, he had a juke-box hit and his first chart success later in the same year before releasing his first album in 1963. 

Throughout the 60s, he was a star of the Italian pop scene. His 1964 single In ginocchio da te (Kneeling before you) was at the top of the Italian singles charts for 17 weeks, selling more than one million copies, and was followed by several more number one successes.

Morandi performing at the Eurovision Song
Contest in Amsterdam in 1970

He courted controversy while at the early peak of his fame by recording a protest song against the Vietnam War which the television networks refused to promote yet which still reached number one in the chart.

Ironically, his career was then interrupted by compulsory national service.

When he returned to civilian life, he was chosen to participate for Italy in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest in Amsterdam, in which he finished eighth behind the young Irish singer Dana’s entry All Kinds of Everything, but thereafter his career went into a decline.

He enjoyed a revival in the 1980s, started by his success as an actor in TV dramas, and by 1987, when he won the Sanremo Festival with Si può dare di più, he was again popular and an album recorded with his friend, the singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla, was very well received.

Since then, Morandi has become something of an icon in the entertainment world in Italy. His concert tours, often marathon affairs lasting more than a year and packing in hundreds of dates, would sell out months in advance, and he has fronted many TV shows.

In 2013, his two Gianni Morandi – Live concerts at the Arena di Verona were broadcast live on Canale 5 with an average audience of 6 million.  Cher and Ennio Morricone were among the artists who made guest appearances.

Morandi (right) in one of his earliest TV dramas, in 1966

Morandi has been married twice – for the first time, from 1966 to 1979, to Laura Efrikian, the daughter of an Armenian conductor, with whom he had three children: Serena (1967), who sadly died after only a few hours, Marianna (1969) and Marco (1974). He has five grandchildren.

In November, 2004 he married Anna Dan, his partner of 10 years and the mother of his son, Pietro, and the couple moved into a renovated house in the regional park of Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi dell'Abbadessa.

Morandi owes his enduring physical fitness to a passion for marathon running. He has raced in 10 marathons, including New York (twice), Berlin, London, Paris, Milan and Bologna.

Away from the entertainment business, he is a lifelong fan of Bologna Football Club, which he helped saved from bankruptcy in 2010 before being appointed honorary president later in the same year, a position he held until the club was sold to an American consortium in 2014.

The Chiostro della Cisterna in Monghidoro

Travel tip:

Occupying a ridge between two river valleys, Monghidoro has historically been a place of strategic importance going back to the time of the Ostrogoths and Lombards in the eighth and ninth centuries and remained so in the Second World War, when it was liberated from the Germans by Allied forces in October 1944. Because of the challenging nature of nearby terrain, it was also a stopping-off place for travellers seeking a passage between the Po Valley and central Italy. Notable sights include the Chiostro della Cisterna, an elegant cloister in the centre of the village that is all that remains of a 16^th century Olivetan monastery. The cultural heart of the village, in the summer it hosts concerts, plays and exhibitions.  The elegant Piazza Armaciotto De Ramazzotti has a romantic atmosphere created by lanterns, which take the place of street lights.

Typical scenery in the Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi
dell'Abbadessa regional park near Bologna

Travel tip:

The Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi dell'Abbadessa regional park, situated just outside the city of Bologna to the southeast, is an area of striking natural beauty characterised by a series of gypsum outcrops creating a landscape of cliffs, caves, rocky hillsides, enclosed basins, chalky ridges and hidden valleys interspersed with rich greenery.  The area has been subjected to intensive mining over the centuries but all activity ceased in the 1970s and the area is now popular with walkers and caving enthusiasts.

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