Teresa Noce - activist and partisan

Anti-Fascist who became union leader and parliamentary deputy

Teresa Noce, who became one of the most important female campaigners for workers’ rights in 20th century Italy, was born on this day in 1900.

Teresa Noce led a partisan unit in France before
returning to Italian politics in 1945

A trade union activist as young as 12 years old, Noce spent almost 20 years in exile after the Fascists outlawed her political activity, during which time she became involved with the labour movement in Paris and subsequently led a French partisan unit under the code name Estella.

After she returned to Italy in 1945 she was elected to the Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies) as a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

Working with the Unione Donne Italiane (Italian Women’s Union), she secured changes to the law to protect working mothers and provide paid maternity leave.

Born in one of the poorest districts of Turin, she and her older brother were brought up in a one-parent family after her father abandoned their mother while they were both young. Because of her mother’s poor income, they were seldom able to keep the same home more than a few weeks before being evicted for non-payment of rent.

Teresa was a bright girl who taught herself to read the newspapers her mother occasionally bought but was forced to abandon her dreams of an education in order to contribute to the family income as soon as she was physically capable of work.

Luigo Longo was also a communist
activist when he married Noce in 1925

She took a job in a bakery initially and became a seamstress before she was even 10 years old. She joined a workers’ union and helped organise a strike for better pay and conditions when she was just 12. She moved to the Fiat factory in Corso Dante, employed like her brother as a turner, began writing for left-wing journals at the age of 14 and, after protesting against Italy’s entry to the First World War, became in 1919 a member of the Young Socialist movement.

Noce’s mother died in 1914 and her brother was killed on active service during the First World War. She became a founder-member of the Partito Comunista Italiano in 1921 after Antonio Gramsci and Amadeo Bordiga led a split from the socialists. Soon afterwards, despite being derided by his parents as “ugly, poor and communist”, she married another activist, Luigi Longo, with whom she organised illegal union activity after Mussolini had outlawed the PCI in 1925.

After both were arrested and imprisoned at different times, the two ultimately fled to Moscow before moving to Paris, where Noce became prominent among exiled Italians, campaigning for better working conditions and editing a number of anti-Fascists periodicals. She also travelled to Spain to support the Spanish Civil War.

After France surrendered to the Nazis she remained in Paris and became leader of a partisan unit comprising mainly Italians, adopting the nom de guerre Estella. After several brief imprisonments and other narrow escapes, she was arrested and sent to a women’s concentration camp at Ravensbruck in Germany.

Noce addressing a meeting of textile workers in 1948

Released in 1945 and allowed to return to Italy, she was elected to the central committee of the PCI and elected to the Italian Parliament.

She became general secretary of the textile workers’ union but her rise to a more senior position in the PCI hierarchy was blocked after he expressed differences with the leadership over policy and found herself shunned by others following an acrimonious split from Longo, who would eventually became the party’s general secretary.

The mother of three children, Noce died in Bologna in 1980 at the age of 79. She had written a number of books, including an autobiography entitled Rivoluzionaria professional (Professional Revolutionary).

The Fiat factory in Corso Dante in Turin

Travel tip:

The Fiat factory on Corso Dante, where Noce worked, still exists today and is open to the public as a museum, with a large number of exhibits, including cars and aeroplanes, outlining the company’s history up to about 1970. Opened in 1900, it was active for 22 years before the massive Lingotto plant came into use, and became associated with the Fiat Brevetti car.  The museum can be found at the junction of Corso Dante and Via Gabriele Chiabrera about 5km (3 miles) from the centre of Turin, near the southern end of the Parco del Valentino.

Palazzo Maggiore in Bologna is the heart of the city

Travel tip:

The northern city of Bologna in Emilia-Romagna, where Noce spent the final years of her life, for many years was the success story of communist local government in Italy. The PCI governed the city from 1945 onwards. Between 1946 to 1956, the city council built 31 nursery schools, 896 flats and nine schools. Health care improved substantially, street lighting was installed, new drains and municipal launderettes were built and 8,000 children received subsidised school meals. The historic city centre was restored and, in 1972, the mayor, Renato Zangheri, introduced limitations for private vehicles and a renewed concentration on cheap public transport.

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San Marino’s liberation from Fascism

The day the people demonstrated against their government

The leader of San Marino's Fascists was
the wealthy Giuliano Gozi

San Marino residents celebrate the anniversary of their liberation from Fascism on this day every year.

The Sammarinese Fascist Party had been founded in 1922 by Giuliano Gozi, a veteran of the First World War who came from a rich and powerful family.

The party was modelled on the Fascist party of Italy and used violence and intimidation against its opponents.

Gozi took the roles of both foreign minister and interior minister, which gave him control over the military and the police. He continued to serve as foreign minister, leading the cabinet, until 1943.

In 1923 Gozi was elected as San Marino’s Captain Regent. The Fascists retained this post for 20 years as they banned all other political parties, although some independent politicians continued to serve in the Grand and General Council of the Republic.

But in the early 1940s a group of Socialists started up a clandestine anti-fascist movement and the opposition to the Fascist regime grew stronger in the republic.

On July 28, 1943 the Socialists held a successful political demonstration against Fascism and as a result new elections were called.

The symbol of the Sammarinese
Fascist Party

When Mussolini was freed by the Germans and Fascism was restored in Italy, the new Government of San Marino managed to negotiate a peace treaty allowing it to remain neutral between the two opposing forces.

During the war San Marino became a safe shelter for more than 100,000 refugees and many Jews were saved from being sent to concentration camps.

At the end of the Second World War, British and American troops supervised the slow return of these refugees to their homes.

A public holiday and festival is held in San Marino on July 28 every year in celebration of the day the Republic finally got rid of the Fascists.

San Marino's Fortress of Guaita is one of the republic's
most photographed spectacles

Travel tip:

San Marino, which is on the border between Emilia-Romagna and Marche, still exists as an independent state within Italy, situated on the north east side of the Apennine mountains. The republic’s romantic battlements and towers can be seen from miles away against the skyline. San Marino claims to be the oldest surviving sovereign state and constitutional republic in the world. It covers an area of just 61 square kilometres, or 24 square miles.

The Palazzo Pubblico

Travel tip:

San Marino’s official government building, the Palazzo Pubblico, is similar in design to the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence but is on a much smaller scale. It is in the heart of the Città di San Marino in Contrada del Pianello. Designed by the architect Francesco Azzurri it was built between 1884 and 1894.

More reading:

How the Allies bombed San Marino by accident

The founding of San Marino

The anarchist who tried to kill Mussolini

Also on this day:

1883: The birth of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini

1924: The birth of racing driver Luigi Musso


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Adolfo Celi – actor and director

Successful career of a Sicilian who was typecast as a baddy

Adolfo Celi in his most famous role as the villain
Emilio Largo in the 1965 Bond film Thunderball

An actor who specialised in playing the role of the villain in films, Adolfo Celi, was born on this day in 1922 in Curcuraci, a hamlet in the province of Messina in Sicily.

Celi was already prominent in Italian cinema, but he became internationally famous for his portrayal of Emilio Largo, James Bond’s adversary with the eye patch, in the 1965 film Thunderball.

He had made his film debut after the Second World War in A Yank in Rome (Un americano in vacanza), in 1946.

In the 1950s he moved to Brazil, where he co-founded the Teatro Brasiliero de Comedia.  He was successful as a stage actor in Brazil and Argentina and also directed three films.

Celi’s big break came when he played the villain in Philippe de Broca’s That Man from Rio. Afterwards he was cast as the camp commandant in the escape drama, Von Ryan’s Express, in which Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard played prisoners of war.

After appearing in Thunderball, Celi was offered scores of big parts as a villain.

Celi (left) in a scene from the 1975 comedy-drama
Amici miei (My Friends), directed by Mario Monicelli

He later made a spoof of Thunderball in the film, OK Connery, in which he played opposite Sean Connery’s brother, Neil.

Despite being fluent in several languages, Celi’s heavy Sicilian accent meant he was always dubbed when he appeared in English language films.

But he was allowed to speak for himself when he appeared as the Spanish pope, Alexander VI, formerly Rodrigo Borgia, in the 1981 BBC series, The Borgias.

Celi was married three times. His son, Leonardo Celi, is a director and his daughter, Alessandra Celi, is an actress.

Celi (right) played Pope
Alexander VI in The Borgias

In his later years, Celi worked mainly in the theatre. In February 1986, when he was 64, he was in Siena directing and acting in I misteri di Pietroburgo, a theatrical version of Dostoevsky’s work, The Mysteries of St Petersburg.

He suddenly became ill and his friend, the great Italian theatre and film actor Vittorio Gassman, had to take his place on the stage for the premiere of the play on the evening of February 19.

Adolfo Celi died a few hours later in hospital after suffering a heart attack. He was buried in the Cimitero Monumentale in Messina.

The church of Santa Maria dei Bianchi
in Curcuraci was rebuilt by residents

Travel tip:

Curcuraci, where Adolfo Celi was born, is about 7km (4 miles) north of the town of Messina. The Church of Santa Maria dei Bianchi in the village had been built in a place where, according to tradition, the Madonna had appeared in 1347. The church was destroyed in an earthquake in 1908 but the local people worked together to rebuild it, completing the reconstruction by 1926. There is a statue of the patron saint of Curcuraci by the entrance gate and the residents hold a celebration for the saint every year on the first Sunday in September.

The Teatro dei Rinnovati, reopened in 1950, is the most
famous of several theatres in the city of Siena

Travel tip:

The most important theatre in Siena, the city where Celi died, is the Teatro dei Rinnovati right in the centre of the city in Piazza del Campo. Built in the 17th century to a design by the architect Carlo Fontana, the theatre opened in 1670 with a performance of the opera, L’Argia.  The theatre fell into disrepair in the early part of the 20th century and closed in 1927 but with the support of the famous Siena bank Monte dei Paschi, the municipal administration embarked on a programme of renovations designed to make it safe to use. Work was interrupted by the Second World War but the theatre was finally reopened in 1950.

More reading:

Why Mario Monicelli was called 'the father of Commedia all'Italiana'

The comic genius of Alberto Sordi

How Messina was all but destroyed in Italy's worst earthquake

Also on this day:

1835: The birth of poet and Nobel Prize winner Giosuè Carducci

1915: The birth of opera singer Mario del Monaco

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Constantino Brumidi - painter

Rome-born artist responsible for murals in US Capitol Building

Constantino Brumidi left Italy in 1852 after
being released from prison

Constantino Brumidi, an artist whose work provides the backcloth to the daily business of government in the United States Capitol Building in Washington, was born on this day in 1805 in Rome.

Brumidi’s major work is the allegorical fresco The Apotheosis of Washington, painted in 1865, which covers the interior of the dome in the Rotunda.

Encircling the base of the dome, below the windows, is the Frieze of American History, in which Brumidi painted scenes depicting significant events of American history, although the second half of the work, which he began in 1878, had to be completed by another painter, Filippo Costaggini,  as Brumidi died in 1880.

Previously, between 1855 and about 1870, Brumidi had decorated the walls of eight important rooms in the Capitol Building, including the Hall of the House of Representatives, the Senate Library and the President’s Room.

His Liberty and Union paintings are mounted near the ceiling of the White House entrance hall and the first-floor corridors of the Senate part of the Capitol Building are known as the Brumidi Corridors.

Brumidi arrived in the United States in 1852, having spent 13 months in jail in Rome following the upheaval caused by the occupation of the city by French forces and the revolution among Roman citizens that led to the formation of the short-lived Roman Republic.

A section of Brumidi's Corridor in the
Capitol Building in Washington

He was already a well-known and respected artist, whose murals adorned a theatre built at the villa of the wealthy Torlonia family. At the time of the revolution he was working for the Vatican, where he has restored some frescoes for Pope Gregory XVI and painted a portrait of Pope Pius IX, for whom he was also a captain in the civic guard set up to defend the city. At the same time, he and his family were running a coffee shop in Rome inherited from his father.

When Pius IX fled to avoid capture when the republic was declared, Brumidi took it upon himself to remove some valuable art works from the Vatican for safe keeping. When Pius IX returned, however, Brumidi was arrested, accused of theft and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

It was only after many pleas were made on his behalf that the pope decided to show mercy on Brumidi and grant him a pardon, his decision influenced by Brumidi’s intention to emigrate to the United States.

Born in Rome of a Greek father and Italian mother, and trained in painting and sculpture at the Accademia di San Luca, he applied for US citizenship as soon as he arrived in New York and began to earn a living from private commissions and and by painting murals and altarpieces in various churches.

Among his religious paintings are a fresco of the Crucifixion at Our Lady of the Scapular and St. Stephen Church on East 29th Street in Manhattan, for which he also executed a Martyrdom of St. Stephen and an Assumption of Mary.

Brumidi worked at the Capitol Building for
25 years until his death

He also executed frescoes at Taylor's Chapel, Baltimore and further examples of his work can be seen at n the Cathedral-Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, St. Ignatius Church in Baltimore, and St Aloysius Church in Washington.

When he was granted US citizenship in 1857 he was already in the employ of the US Government, earning eight dollars a day. He was so proud of his new status that a fresco he completed soon afterwards, in the Hall of the House of Representatives, he signed ‘C. Brumidi, Artist, Citizen of the U.S.’

Brumidi died in Washington and was interred at Glenwood Cemetery. His grave was unmarked and its location lost until 1952, when a document detailing where he had been buried was found and a marker was finally placed above it.

His work in the Capitol was not acknowledged for many years but in September, 2008, President George W. Bush signed a law that posthumously awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal, to be displayed in the Capitol Visitor Center, as part of an exhibit honoring him.

The Accademia di San Luca in Palazzo Carpegna

Travel tip:

The Accademia di San Luca was founded in 1577 as an association of artists in Rome with the purpose of elevating the work of "artists", which included painters, sculptors and architects, above that of mere craftsmen. The Academy was named after Saint Luke the evangelist who, legend has it, made a portrait of the Virgin Mary, and thus became the patron saint of painters' guilds.  From the late 16th century until it moved to its present location at the Palazzo Carpegna - just behind the Trevi Fountain along Via della Stamperia - the Academy was based in a building by the Roman Forum near the Academy church of Santi Luca e Martina, designed by the Baroque architect, Pietro da Cortona.

 A view over St Peter's Square at the heart of the Vatican

Travel tip:

The Vatican can be defined as the palace within the Vatican City in which the pope resides or Vatican City itself, an independent state inside Italy, policed by its own security force, the Swiss Guard. St Peter’s Basilica, built over the place where St Peter is believed to have been crucified and buried, is part of Vatican City, as are the Vatican museums where you can see the Sistine Chapel, which was decorated by Michelangelo. The Pope holds audiences in the Vatican every Wednesday and blesses the crowds in St Peter’s Square every Sunday.

More reading:

How Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was revealed for the first time

The Sienese sculptor who made his mark in Pittsburgh and Birmingham, Alabama

The Tuscan architect whose work found him fame in Detroit

Also on this day:

1471: The death of the flamboyant Pope Paul II

1928: The birth of former President of Italy Francesco Cossiga

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