Gianluca Pagliuca – record-breaking goalkeeper

No one has saved more penalties in Serie A matches

Gianluca Pagliuca played for Italy
in the 1994 World Cup final

The footballer Gianluca Pagliuca, once the most expensive goalkeeper in the world, record-holder for the most appearances by a goalkeeper in the Italian soccer championship and still the stopper with the most penalty saves in Serie A, was born on this day in 1966 in Ceretolo, a small town about 10km (6 miles) from the centre of Bologna.

Pagliuca made 592 appearances in Serie A, taking the record previously held by Italy’s World Cup-winning captain Dino Zoff for the most by a goalkeeper in the top division of the Italian League. He held the record for 10 years from September 2006 until it was overtaken by another of Italy’s greatest goalkeepers, Gianluigi Buffon, in 2016.

He played for four major clubs in his career, starting with Sampdoria, with whom he won the Serie A title – the Scudetto – in 1990-91, playing in the team that included Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Mancini, Beppe Dossena, Attilio Lombardo and Ivano Bonetti.

After Sampdoria, he represented Internazionale in Milan, his home-town club Bologna and the small club Ascoli, from Ascoli Piceno in Marche.

He also made 39 appearances for the Italian national team and was chosen for three World Cup finals squads, picking up a runners-up medal in the United States in 1994, even though his participation was marred by a suspension for two matches.

Pagliuca was renowned for saving penalties

This followed his red card in Italy’s group match against Norway, when he was sent off for handling the ball outside his penalty area, in the process becoming the first goalkeeper to be dismissed in the history of the World Cup finals.

Pagliuca’s achievements with Sampdoria, where he also won a European Cup-winners’ Cup medal and a runners-up medal in the Champions League following a 1-0 defeat against Barcelona at Wembley, earned him a move to Inter in 1994 for a fee of £7 million, which at the time was the highest fee to be paid for a goalkeeper.

At Inter he played in two consecutive UEFA Cup finals, defeating Italian rivals Lazio in the second, and might have stayed in Milan longer had new coach Marcello Lippi not brought in Angelo Peruzzi from his former club, Juventus, to be first choice.

At that time, in 1999, Pagliuca had the possibility of continuing his career in England with Aston Villa, a club he had followed as a teenager when satellite TV channels first allowed Italian audiences to follow English football.

He chose instead to join Bologna, his first love as a boy growing up in the city’s outskirts, although he said that playing at Villa Park for Inter in a UEFA Cup tie in 1994 had been one of the proudest moments of his career.

Pagliuca won the Serie A title
with Sampdoria

Inter lost that tie on a penalty shoot-out, although in keeping with his reputation Pagliuca did save one of Villa’s penalties. In Serie A, his tally of 24 penalty saves has still not been beaten.

He also saved a penalty in the shoot-put that settled the 1994 World Cup final in Pasadena, although Italy were beaten by Brazil after both Franco Baresi and Roberto Baggio missed with their kicks and Daniele Massaro saw his attempt saved.

When Pagliuca announced his retirement while playing for Ascoli in 2007, he was 40 years old and had racked up an incredible 786 competitive appearances in all competitions.

Since quitting as a player, Pagliuca has combined working for Bologna as a member of the coaching staff with appearing on Sky Italia and the Mediaset subscription channels as a pundit.

Ceretolo is a popular residential area outside Bologna

Travel tip:

Ceretolo, where Pagliuca was born and played his first football with the Polisportiva Ceretolese amateur club, was for many centuries a hamlet outside the larger town of Casalecchio di Reno, a few kilometres outside Bologna in the Emilia-Romagna region.  It has an 18^th century church, dedicated to the saints Antonio and Andrea and a bell tower that survived both an earthquake in 1928 and bombing in the Second World War. In more recent years it has grown into popular residential area.

The church of San Michele in Bosco offers panoramic views
over the city of Bologna

Travel tip:

Visitors to Bologna can enjoy impressive panoramic views across the city by taking only a short trip out of the city centre into the Colli Bolognesi, the hills just to the south of the city, which itself is built on a flat plain at the southern edge of the Po Valley. One good vantage point is the church of San Michele in Bosco, which was built during the Middle Ages and refurbished by Olivetan monks in the 17^th century as part of a religious complex that included a convent. The churchyard can be reached by a 10-minute bus ride or on foot from the centre and offers a view across the whole city.

Also on this day:

1737: The death of renowned violin maker Antonio Stradivari

1957: The death of Camillo Castiglioni, once the richest man in Europe

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Rome falls to the Ostrogoths

Sacking of city in 546 left city a shadow of its former self

Francesco Salviati's portrait of the Ostrogoth
king Totila, painted in about 1549

The Ostrogoths, the Germanic tribe that took over large parts of the Italian peninsula with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, achieved a symbolic victory on this day in 546 when an army under the leadership of King Totila captured and sacked Rome following a year-long siege of the Eternal City.

The event was part of the Gothic War between the Ostrogoths, who had originated on the Black Sea in the area now known as Crimea, and the Byzantine (Eastern) Empire, between 535 and 554.

Totila led a fightback by the Ostrogoths after the fall of the Gothic capital at Ravenna in 540 signalled the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines.

He had swept south with his forces and was based at Tivoli, east of Rome, as he plotted how he would recapture the region of Latium. In 545, he laid siege to the city.

Bessas, the commander of the imperial garrison charged with protecting the city, was stubborn but cruel to the Roman citizens.  Although he had a stock of grain, he would not let it be used to feed the population unless they paid for it, while at the same time refusing requests from citizens to leave the city.  He set grain prices impossibly high and many Romans starved.

Pope Vigilius, who had taken refuge in Syracuse in Sicily, sent a flotilla of grain ships in a bid to relieve the crisis but these were intercepted by Totila’s navy at the mouth of the Tiber and never reached the city.

A historical illustration said to show the
army of Totila entering Rome

When Bessas relented and allowed citizens to leave, many were so weak with hunger they died en route to safety, either picked off by Ostrogoth soldiers or collapsing from malnutrition.

An attempt by an imperial army led by renowned general Belisarius only narrowly failed to defeat the Ostrogoth forces, its efforts hampered when Belisarius was taken ill and handed command to less-able subordinates.

Totila entered Rome on December 17, 546 after his men scaled the walls at night and opened the Asinarian Gate - the Porta Asinaria - supposedly with the help of treacherous Isaurian troops from the imperial garrison who had arranged a secret pact with the Goths.

As the Goths were advancing, not knowing what resistance they would encounter, many of Bessas’s supposed defenders of the city were making their escape through another gate, leaving only about 500 soldiers still inside the walls.

In the event, resistance was minimal, with reportedly only 26 soldiers and 60 civilians killed. Rome was plundered, but Totila, having vowed the reduce the once-great city to a sheep pasture, relented and contented himself with tearing down part of the defensive walls, before moving on in pursuit of Byzantine forces in Apulia.

Yet even with most it buildings still standing, Rome was left a barren ruin. Where it boasted more than a million inhabitants during the glory days of the Empire, its population had dwindled to only a few hundred.

The Porta Asinaria was a small entrance through which
farmers could enter Rome with their livestock

Travel tip:

The Porta Asinaria (Asinarian Gate) can be found about 1.6km (1 mile) southeast of the Colosseum along the route of the Via Appia Nuova, next to the Porta San Giovanni. When Emperor Aurelian built the walls that surround Rome, there was only a posterula - a small opening for the farmers who lived outside the walls – at this location, which explains its name Asinaria (of the donkeys). It was only after the nearby Lateran Palace became the official residence of the popes that a proper gate was built, by Emperor Honorius.

The Fountain of Neptune at the Villa d'Este

Travel tip:

Tivoli, situated in the Monti Tiburtini hills about 30km (19 miles) east of Rome. Its fresher climate made it an attractive area for moneyed Romans. Nowadays it is famous for the breathtaking gardens of the Villa d’Este, complete with its 51 fountains, designed to entertain guests of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, who had the villa built in the 16^th century.  Tivoli’s other major attraction is the enormous Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa), which is not so much a villa as a small town, incorporating an array of temples, lakes, fountains, baths and other buildings so extensive that visitors need a whole day to explore.

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Ivana Spagna – singer-songwriter

Dance track made 30 years ago still holds record

Spagna performing her 1986 hit Easy Lady

The singer and songwriter Ivana Spagna, whose single Call Me achieved the highest placing by an Italian artist in UK chart history when it reached number two in 1987, was born on this day in 1954 in the town of Valeggio sul Mincio, in the Veneto.

Often performing as simply Spagna, she has sold more than 10 million copies of her singles and albums in a career spanning 46 years, having released her first single in 1971 at the age of 16.

She began to sing professionally in the early 1980s, when she provided the vocals for a number of disco tracks lip-synched by other artists, and when she relaunched her recording career in her own right she met with immediate success.

The single Easy Lady, recorded in 1986 and which she tends to regard as her debut single as a professional artist, sold more than two million copies, as did Call Me, which was released the following year.

Spagna defied the expectations of her record company, who had misgivings about promoting an Italian singing in English under the stage name “Spain” but were pleasantly surprised by her popularity.

The cover for Spagna's UK success Call Me

Call Me topped the European singles chart and reached No 13 in the Billboard dance chart in the United States.

In 1987, her first album, featuring both successful singles under the title Dedicated To The Moon, achieved a further 500,000 sales. She followed up with a dance-rock album, You Are My Energy, and another hit in the UK chart, Every Girl and Boy.

Supported by Sony Music, Spagna moved to the US in 1990, living in Santa Monica, working on her new disco-pop album No Way Out, which was geared to the US market.

After returning to Europe in 1993, recording her last European hit, Lady Madonna, in 1995, Spagna decided it was time to start singing in her native Italian.

Her big ‘break’ in that regard was to be chosen to sing Elton John’s song Circle of Life, in Italian, for the soundtrack of the Italian version of the Disney movie The Lion King. Released as a single, it was a big hit in Italy.

Encouraged by the TV host Pippo Baudo, she took part in several Sanremo Festivals, finishing third in 1995 with Gente Come Noi (People Like Us), which was another successful single in Italy.

Ivana Spagna as she was in 1969

Her first album in Italian, Siamo in due, sold more than 350,000 copies, which made it the best-selling album by a female singer in Italy in 1995.

Throughout her early career in particular, Spagna was guided by her brother, Giorgio Theo Spagna, who gave her piano lessons and wrote songs for her.  He and Larry Pignagnoli, the promoter and producer, joined forces with Spagna in the Opera Madre group as they set out to conquer the Italo Disco scene.

Pignagnoli, who also writes songs, has worked with Spagna for most of her career.

Today, Spagna is still recording and more recently returned to creating dance tracks. She has also written a book, Sarà capitato anche a te (It will have happened to you too), describing the premonitory dreams she claims to have experienced repeatedly during her life.

Tortellini di Valeggio

Travel tip:

Spagna’s home town of Vallegio sul Mincio, which can be found about 25km (16 miles) southwest of Verona, is famous for tortellini pasta, which it claims was invented there (although Bologna also makes that claim). Vallegio’s story is that the shape of the pasta parcels was inspired by the legend of Marco, a captain in the Visconti army, who eloped with a girl he originally took to be a nymph from the Mincio river, leaving behind a knotted gold silk handkerchief as a symbol of their love. The pasta shape is supposed to represent the knotted handkerchief.

The remains of the fortified dam, the Ponte Visconteo

Travel tip:

Each year on June 18, Vallegio sul Mincio stages a festival that not only celebrates tortellini but also the 650m (710yds)-long Ponte Visconteo, a fortified dam built across the Mincio by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1393. Two huge tables of 600m (656yds) each are assembled on the 25m (27yds)-wide bridge with seats for 4,000 diners, who are served local specialities including the tortellini, which has a filling of beef, pork and chicken flavoured with celery, carrot and rosemary and is served cooked in a broth, with butter and sage and a sprinkling of cheese.

Also on this day:

1944: The birth of Santo Versace, business brain behind the Versace fashion empire

1945: The death of the FIAT founder Giovanni Agnelli

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John Paul Getty III released

Heir to world’s biggest fortune held by kidnappers for 158 days

John Paul Getty III was left severely disabled
after a stroke in 1981

A story that dominated the Italian press and newspapers around the world ended on this day in 1973 when police responding to a tip-off found a shivering, malnourished and deeply traumatised American teenager inside a disused motorway service area in a remote part of southern Italy.

John Paul Getty III, grandson of the richest man in the world, the oil tycoon John Paul Getty, had been held in captivity for more than five months by a kidnap gang who had demanded $17 million for his safe return.

The boy’s 80-year-old grandfather, whose personal fortune would equate today to almost $9 billion but who was notoriously mean, at first refused to pay a penny and stuck to that position until late November, when a letter containing a lock of hair and a human ear arrived at the offices of a daily newspaper in Rome.

After a further letter arrived containing a photograph of John Paul Getty III minus one ear, the octogenarian’s representatives made contact with the kidnappers and negotiated his release for $3 million.

Even then, John Paul Getty Senior refused to pay more than $2.2 million, which his lawyers allegedly told him was the maximum he could claim as a tax-deductible expense. The other $800,000 was paid by the boy’s father, John Paul Getty II, then usually known as John Paul Getty Junior but later as Sir Paul Getty.

The 17-year-old John Paul Getty III speaks to members
of the press following his release

The story not only shocked Italy but exposed many rather unsavoury secrets about the world’s richest family.

The early life of John Paul Getty III had been fairly unremarkable, as far as is possible for one born into wealth and privilege.  He was one of four children to emerge from John Paul Getty Jnr’s marriage to Gail Harris, a water polo champion.

Although born in Minneapolis, he spent much of his childhood in Rome, where his father was head of Getty Oil Italiana. Life began to unravel for him when his parents divorced and his father took up with a beautiful Dutch actress and model, Talitha Pol, and rejected his former life.

The couple, famously photographed in Marrakesh by the society snapper Patrick Lichfield, led a dissolute lifestyle, flitting from Rome to London to Morocco until Pol died of a heroin overdose in 1971 and her husband, an Anglophile, returned to London.

John Paul Getty Snr at first refused to
consider meeting the ransom demand

His son was left alone in Rome and his own lifestyle began to follow a similarly Bohemian path. With no senior male figure to guide him, he fell into a life of excess, partying hard and taking drugs. He was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a left-wing demonstration and reportedly expelled from no fewer than seven schools. By 1971 he had given up on the prospect of an education and decided he would make a living as an artist. He began selling his paintings to local trattorie, and made extra cash by modelling nude for life classes.

It was when his was 16 and sharing an apartment with a couple of other artists that he was seized by a gang led by members of the notorious Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta. They had clearly noted his nocturnal lifestyle and were able to snatch him fairly easily in the Piazza Farnese in central Rome at three o’clock in the morning on July 10, 1973.

He was blindfolded and chained up in a mountain hideout while the gang issued their ransom demands. At first, even his mother and father had doubts about the authenticity of the kidnap, remembering that their son had joked about faking a kidnap to extract money from his miserly grandfather.

Eventually it became clear it was not a hoax, however. When Gail Harris, the gang’s first point of contact after they had made her son write her a desperate letter, told them she had no money, they demanded that she “get it from London”, implying that her ex-husband or his father should be made to pay.

John Paul Getty III died at his father's estate, Wormsley Park,
in Buckinghamshire, which has its own cricket field

Although John Paul Getty Jnr would in time inherit a substantial share of the family’s wealth, at that moment he was still relatively poor and it fell to John Paul Getty Snr to decide his grandson’s fate.  Having first reasoned that to settle one ransom demand would simply turn his 13 other grandchildren into kidnap targets, he was finally persuaded to pay up, albeit at a much-reduced figure.  He gave John Paul Getty Jnr a loan to pay his share, charging him interest at four per cent.

Once the money was paid the teenager, who had turned 17 during his captivity, was dumped by his abductors at a motorway service area near Lauria, in the province of Potenza, more than 400km (250 miles) south of Rome.  He was in a poor state of health but while he recovered physically, with his missing ear rebuilt, he was left with deep psychological scars that never healed.

He married a German photographer, Gisela Zacher, and had a son – now an actor, Balthazar Getty - when he was only 18. They moved to New York, where he became part of Andy Warhol’s hedonistic set in Greenwich Village.

In 1981, addicted to Valium and methadone and drinking heavily, he suffered liver failure and a stroke, which left him quadriplegic, almost blind and unable to speak.  His father, who had by then become a philanthropist while battling his own drug addiction, at first refused to pay his son’s medical bills but eventually relented.

John Paul Getty III managed to survive for another 30 years, living in what were effectively his own private hospitals in California, Ireland and at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire, where his father had a building in the grounds of his mansion converted so that his son could live there.  It was at Wormsley in 2011 that he died at the age of 54, having survived his father by eight years.

The Palazzo Farnese houses the French embassy in Rome

Travel tip:

The Piazza Farnese is the square in front of the Palazzo Farnese, one of the most important High Renaissance palaces in Rome. Owned by the Italian Republic, it was given to the French government in 1936 for a period of 99 years, and currently houses the French embassy.  Built in the 16^th century for the Farnese family by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, it was extensively redesigned by Michelangelo when Alessandro Farnese became Pope Pius III. In 1900, the composer Puccini chose the Palazzo Farnese as the setting for a major scene in his opera, Tosca.

The tumbledown ruins of the Saracen castle in Lauria

Travel tip:

Lauria is a picturesque medieval walled town built on the side of a steep hill in Basilicata, about 110km (68 miles) southwest of the large city of Potenza. The main sights include the remains of a Saracen castle, once the home of a famous 13^th century admiral, Roger of Lauria. The actor and film director, Rocco Papaleo, was born in Lauria in 1958.

Also on this day:

1966: 'Spaghetti western' The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is released

1970: Birth of champion jockey Frankie Dettori

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