The murder of Pellegrino Rossi

Political assassination opened way to creation of Roman Republic

A magazine illustration depicting the murder of
Pellegrino Rossi at the Palazzo della Cancelleria

One of the key events during the revolutionary upheaval of 1848 in Italy took place on this day in that year when the politician Count Pellegrino Rossi was murdered at the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the seat of the government of the Papal States in Rome.

The event precipitated turmoil in Rome and led eventually to the formation of the short-lived Roman Republic.

Rossi was the Minister of the Interior in the government of Pope Pius IX and as such was responsible for a programme of unpopular reforms, underpinned by his conservative liberal stance, which gave only the well-off the right to vote and did nothing to address the economic and social disruption created by industrialisation.

Street violence, stirred up by secret societies such as Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy movement, had been going on for weeks in Rome and Rossi had been declared an enemy of the people in meetings as far away as Turin and Florence.

Rossi's reforms had failed to address the social
and economic problems besetting Rome

There was also anger in Rome at Pius IX’s decision to withdraw the support of the Papal Army from the First Italian War of Independence, being fought between the the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont) and the Austrian Empire.

On November 15, 1848, Rossi arrived at the Palazzo della Cancelleria to present his plan for a new constitutional order to the legislative assembly. He was warned ahead of the meeting that an attempt would be made on his life but he defied the threat with the words: “I defend the cause of the pope, and the cause of the pope is the cause of God. I must and will go.”

However, as he climbed the stairs leading to the assembly hall, an individual stepped forward and struck him with a cane. Rossi turned towards his attacker and as he did so was set upon by another assailant, who drove a dagger into his neck.

The murderer was said to be Luigi Brunetti, the elder son of Angelo Brunetti, a fervent democrat, acting on the instigation of Pietro Sterbini, a journalist and revolutionary who was a friend of Mazzini. Though members of the Civic Guard were in the courtyard when the attack took place, no one attempted to arrest the count’s killer and when crowds gathered later at the house of Rossi's widow, they chanted ‘Blessed is the hand that stabbed Rossi’.

Giuseppe Mazzini was one of the
leaders of the Roman Republic

The murder spurred the secret societies to foment an uprising against the papal government. The following day, Pius IX was besieged inside the Palazzo del Quirinale by an unruly mob. The pope’s Swiss Guard was able to hold back the mob for a time but when it seemed the crowd was about to disperse, up to 1,000 members of the Civic Guard, the police, and other soldiers marched into the palace’s piazza and opened fire on the palace, including with cannons. Knowing resistance was useless, Pius IX agreed to negotiate with revolutionaries.

Demands were made for a democratic government, social reforms and a declaration of war against the Empire of Austria.  Pius IX had little option but to appoint a liberal ministry, but he refused to abdicate and forbade the government to pass any laws in his name.

In the event, on the evening of November 24, with the help of close allies and his personal attendant, Pius IX escaped from the Palazzo del Quirinale disguised as an ordinary priest, slipping through one of the gates of the city and boarding a carriage that was to take him to Gaeta, a city 120km (75 miles) south of Rome, where the King of the Two Sicilies had promised him a refuge.

Rossi was commemorated with a statue
in his native Carrara in Tuscany

It meant that, for the first time in history, Rome was without a government. Into the void stepped Mazzini, his supporter Aurelio Saffi and the popular Roman activist Carlo Armellini, who formed a triumvirate at the head of a Roman Republic, which was declared officially on February 9, 1849.

The republic put forward some progressive ideas, including religious tolerance and an end to capital punishment, but in the event it was a short-lived revolution. Ironically, it was crushed by a former ally, Napoleon III of France, who had once participated in an uprising against the Papal States but who now, under pressure from the Catholic Church in France, felt compelled to send an army to restore Pius XI to power.

The Romans put up a fight, aided by a Republican army led by Garibaldi, but the city fell in late June and with it the Republic.

The Palazzo della Cancelleria, built between 1489 and
1513, is thought to be the oldest Renaissance palace in Rome

Travel tip:

The Palazzo della Cancelleria, which is situated between Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and the Campo de' Fiori, is a Renaissance palace, probably the earliest Renaissance palace to be built in Rome. It is the work of the architect Donato Bramante between 1489 and 1513, initially as a residence for Cardinal Raffaele Riario, who was the Camerlengo - treasurer - of the Holy Roman Church under Pope Sixtus V. It evolved as the seat of the Chancellery of the Papal States.  The Roman Republic used it as their parliament building.

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The Palazzo del Quirinale has been the residence in Rome
of 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents

Travel tip:

The Palazzo del Quirinale was built in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII as a summer residence and served both as a papal residence and the offices responsible for the civil government of the Papal States until 1870. When, in 1871, Rome became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy, the palace became the official residence of the kings of Italy, although some monarchs, notably King Victor Emmanuel III (1900–1946), lived in a private residence elsewhere. When the monarchy was abolished in 1946, the Palazzo del Quirinale became the official residence and workplace for the presidents of the Italian Republic. So far, it has housed 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents.

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More reading:

Why Mazzini was seen as the hero of the Risorgimento

Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand

How Aurelio Saffi became Mazzini's trusted ally

Also on this day:

1905: The birth of band leader Mantovani

1922: The birth of neorealist film director Francesco Rosi

1940: The birth of fashion designer Roberto Cavalli



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Carlo Emilio Gadda - writer and novelist

Author who drew comparisons with Levi and Joyce

Carlo Emilio Gadda was an engineer
before he became a full-time writer

The essayist and novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda, whose work has been compared with the writings of Primo Levi, James Joyce and Marcel Proust, was born on this day in 1893 in Milan.

His novels and short stories were considered outstanding for his original and innovative style, moving away from the rather staid language of Italian literature in the early 20th century, adding elements of dialect, technical jargon and wordplay.

It has been said that Gadda opted for his experimental style because he thought that only through the use of a fragmentary, incoherent language could he adequately portray what he considered a disintegrated world.

Born into an upper middle-class family living on Via Manzoni in the centre of Milan, Gadda lost his father when he was only a child, after which his mother had to bring up the family on limited means, although she refused to compromise with her lifestyle. His father’s business ineptitude and his mother’s obsession with keeping up appearances would figure strongly in his 1963 novel, La cognizione del dolore, published in English as Acquainted with Grief.

Gadda fought in the First World War as a volunteer with the Alpini and was captured at the Battle of Caporetto, in which the Italians suffered a catastrophic defeat. His younger brother Enrico, an aviator, was killed. A fervent nationalist at the time of Italy’s entry into the conflict, he was deeply humiliated by the months he had to spend as a German prisoner of war.

Gadda's most famous work is
available in English

During the 1920s he worked as an electrical engineer, often abroad. He spent several years in Argentina, although at home he was credited with the construction, as engineer, of the Vatican Power Station for Pope Pius XI.

He began writing in the 1930s after moving to Florence and joining a literary group around the Florentine review Solaria. He wrote a number of essays and short stories, from the beginning demonstrating a fascination with linguistic experimentation as well as a gift for psychological and sociological analysis. His first works were collected in I sogni e la folgore (1955; The Dreams and the Lightning).

Gadda became a full-time writer in 1940, although between 1950 and 1955 he worked for RAI, the Italian radio and television network. He lived in Rome, alone, in a cheap apartment in Via Blumenstihl.

At one time an admirer of Mussolini, he later satirised the dictator in Eros e Priapo (1945), in which he analysed the collective phenomena that favoured the rise of Italian Fascism, arguing that Fascism was essentially a bourgeois movement.  Refused publication initially for its allegedly obscene content, it was not until 2013 that the work was published in fully unexpurgated form.

Gadda's birthplace in Milan is marked with a plaque

Gadda’s best-known and most successful novel, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (1957; That Awful Mess on Via Merulana), is a story of a murder and burglary in Fascist Rome and of the subsequent investigation, which features characters from many levels of Roman life, written in a pastiche of literary Italian mixed with passages of Roman dialect, dotted with puns, technical jargon, foreign words, invented words and classical allusions.

At once a sociological, comic and political novel, as well as an extraordinary feat of wordplay, at the end of which nothing has been established or proven in relation to the crime, it was described as 'the great modern Italian novel' by Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alberto Moravia. 

Gadda died in Rome in 1973, at the age of 79.

The Stadio Olimpico is the home of Rome's two soccer clubs

Travel tip:

Via Bernardo Blumenstihl, where Gadda lived in Rome, may have been a modest address in the 1940s but today is in a quiet, upmarket residential area in which many of the apartment complexes have swimming pools and tennis courts and communal gardens.  Situated to the northwest of the city centre, it is not far from the Stadio Olimpico, home of the AS Roma and SS Lazio football clubs.

The Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome

Travel tip:

Via Merulana is a street in Rome, to the southeast of the centre, linking the magnificent Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, with its imposing 18th century Baroque facade by Alessandro Galilei, and the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore, famous for its Roman mosaics and gilded ceiling. The name derives from family that owned the land in medieval times.  It forms part of the Rione Monti, near the Oppian Hill.

More reading:

How Alberto Moravia likened Fascism to a childhood illness

Novelist whose books exposed political links with the Mafia

The Auschwitz survivor who became one of Italy's greatest writers

Also on this day:

1812: The birth of Maria Cristina of Savoy

1812: The birth of poet Aleardo Aleardi

1897: The death of soprano Giuseppina Strepponi


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Giovanna of Italy - Tsaritsa of Bulgaria

Daughter of King of Italy who married Tsar Boris III

Princess Giovanna of Savoy, who
became Ioanna, Tsarista of Bulgaria

The girl who would grow up to be Ioanna, Tsarista of Bulgaria, was born Princess Giovanna Elisabetta Antonia Romana Maria of Savoy on this day in 1907 in Rome.

Giovanna’s father was King Victor Emmanuel III, who was Italy’s monarch through two world wars from 1900 until he abdicated in 1946 just as Italy was about to become a republic.  Her mother was Queen Elena of Montenegro.

At the age of 22, Princess Giovanna became Tsarista Ioanna - the last Tsarista - after marrying the Tsar of Bulgaria, Boris III, in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.  It was the hope of the Italian royal family that the marriage would strengthen their relationship with the Balkan states.

The marriage lasted until Boris’s death in 1943 at the age of just 49. The Tsar had fallen ill during a trip to Germany to discuss Bulgaria’s role in the Second World War as a member of the Axis bloc and there were suspicions that he was poisoned on the orders of Hitler.

Bulgaria had agreed to join the Axis under the threat of invasion by the Germans, who wanted to use their territory to launch an attack on Greece, but the Tsar was said to be appalled at Hitler's massacres of Jews. On two occasions he refused orders to deport Bulgarian Jews. Queen Ioanna herself intervened to obtain transit visas to enable a number of Jews to escape to Argentina.

Boris III died at the age of only 49 amid
suspicions he was poisoned by Hitler

Princess Giovanna had been brought up in Rome at Villa Savoia, the former and present Villa Ada, set in a large area of parkland to the northeast of the city centre.

A bright, intelligent girl with a love of music, she was given an education in literature, history and Latin. She learned to play the piano and the cello and spoke English and French.

It was always her destiny to marry into a foreign royal family, which has been a tradition in the House of Savoy, going back to the former Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.  Indeed, Boris’ father, Tsar Ferdinand, had married a princess of the former royal houses of Parma and the Two-Sicilies.

When she reached the age at which speculation over her future husband began, Princess Giovanna was linked with a number of foreign princes, although for a while she was seen in the company of the Marquis de Pinedo, a daring Italian aviator, with whom the princess led off two court balls of the 1927 season. He was also her guest in the royal box at the Davis Cup tennis matches later that year.

She had met Tsar Boris III for the first time in 1927 when he was touring Europe with his brother Prince Kyril. Romance blossomed later, after they attended the wedding in January 1930 of Princess Maria Jose of Belgium to Princess Giovanna’s brother Prince Umberto. It was after that meeting that plans were laid for them to be married.

Umberto II, Italy's exiled king, was
joined by Giovanna in Portugal

As with Tsar Ferdinand’s marriage, the match could only happen with an accommodation between the Eastern Orthodox Church of Bulgaria and the Roman Catholic Church of Italy. Negotiations were so difficult that at one point talks broke off entirely with Boris III declaring that he would remain a bachelor if he could not marry Princess Giovanna and the Princess vowing to enter a convent if she could not marry the Tsar.

Eventually, Boris III promised that any future children be raised in the Catholic faith and Pope Pius XI granted approval. In the final negotiations, it had helped that Giovanna knew the Pope's Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII.

The Tsar and the Princess were married in Assisi on October 25, 1930.  After the wedding breakfast, the couple travelled by train and yacht to Sofia, where the newlyweds stepped out on to a railway platform strewn with chrysanthemums. From there they proceeded to the city's cathedral for an Orthodox ceremony.

Despite the agreements reached before the wedding in Italy, the couple's two children, Marie-Louise, born in 1933, and Simeon, born in 1937, were baptized in the Eastern Orthodox church. Yet Giovanna was spared excommunication.

After Boris’s death, Simeon became the new Tsar and a regency was established, led by his uncle Prince Kyril.

Giovanna was welcomed back by the Bulgarian
people when she returned to Sofia in 1993

Towards the end of the Second World War, however, Bulgaria was invaded by the Soviet Union. Prince Kyril was tried by a ‘people's court’ and subsequently executed. Giovanna and her son Simeon remained under house arrest until 1946, when the new Communist government gave them 48 hours to leave the country.

They fled first to Alexandria in the Egypt, to join her father, Victor Emmanuel III, before moving on to Madrid. After Simeon married in 1962, Giovanna moved to Estoril, on the Portuguese Riviera, where would live for the rest of her life, close to the home of her brother, the exiled Italian king, Umberto II.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she returned to Bulgaria in 1993, visiting the site of Boris's grave, which had been destroyed by the Communists, and attending the reburial of his heart, which had been found in the gardens of the former royal palace.  Thousands of people turned out on the streets to greet her.

Giovanna died in 2000. She is buried in the Communal Cemetery of Assisi, Italy.

Simeon - who as Simeon II was the last Tsar of Bulgaria, albeit at the age of six - is now a businessman in Madrid. Giovanna’s daughter, Marie-Louise, lives in New Jersey.

The Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, where Princess
Giovanna and King Boris III were married in 1930

Travel tip:

The Papal Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, where Tsarista Ioanna was married and is buried, is the mother church of the Franciscan Order. It can be found in Piazza Inferiore di San Francesco in Assisi. Built into the side of a hill, it consists of two churches, a lower Basilica and an upper Basilica, and a crypt that contains the remains of St Francis. The Basilica is one of the most important places of Christian pilgrimage in Italy and has been designated a Unesco World Heritage site since 2000.

The Villa Ada-Savoia, former royal residence, now home
of the Egyptian Embassy in Rome

Travel tip:

The Villa Ada - formerly the Villa Savoia -  is a 450 acres (1.8 km2) park in Rome, the second largest in the city after Villa Doria Pamphili, located in the northeastern part of the city.  The park was bought in 1872 by King Victor Emmanuel II, who expanded and improved the main house, but his successor Umberto I preferred the Palazzo Quirinale as the royal residence and the villa was sold to Count Telfener, who named it to his wife Ada. Victor Emmanuel III bought it back in 1904 and the villa became a royal residence, with a change of name to Villa Savoia, until 1946.  Nowadays, it houses the Egyptian Embassy. The various buildings in the park included the Villa Polissena, the Royal Stables, the Casino Pallavicini and the Temple of Flora. Victor Emmanuel III had a bunker built in the grounds as an air raid shelter, recently restored by the non-profit organisation, Roma Sotteranea, who organise tours.

More reading:

The abdication of King Victor Emmanuel III

Umberto II - the last King of Italy

The quiet life of a banished princess

Also on this day:

1868: The death of composer Gioachino Rossini

1894: The death of Saint Agostina Pietrantoni

1914: The birth of film director Alberto Lattuada


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Giulio Lega – First World War hero

Flying ace survived war to look after health of Italy’s politicians

Giulio Lega with the Hanriot HD.1 in which
he scored his five aerial successes

Credited with five aerial victories during the First World War, the pilot Giulio Lega was born on this day in 1892 in Florence.

After the war he completed his medical studies and embarked on a long career as physician to Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.

Lega had been a medical student when he was accepted by the Italian army for officer training in 1915.

Because he was unusually tall, he became an ‘extended infantryman’ in the Grenadiers. He made his mark with them at the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo, for which he was awarded the War Merit Cross for valour. The following year he won a Bronze Medal for Military Valour in close-quarters combat, which was awarded to him on the battlefield.

Lega volunteered to train as a pilot in 1916 and was sent to Malpensa near Milan. After gaining his licence he was sent on reconnaissance duty during which he earned a Silver Medal for Military Valour. After completing fighter pilot training he joined 76a Squadriglia and went on to fly 46 combat sorties with them.

Silvio Scaroni was a colleague of Lega in the
76a Squadriglia of the Italian air force

His first two victories in the air, near Col d’Asiago and over Montello, were shared with two other Italian pilots. During the last Austro-Hungarian offensive he downed a Hansa-Brandenburg C1 over Passagno single-handedly. His last two triumphs were downing an unidentified enemy over Mareno di Piave and an Albatros D111, both with pilots Silvio Scaroni and Romolo Ticconi.

His final three victories earned him another Silver Medal for valour. He continued to serve as a pilot until the end of the war when he was presented with the War Cross.

He then finished his medical studies, graduating from the University of Bologna in 1920 but remained in the Air Force Reserves, rising to the rank of tenente colonello.

In 1931 he was appointed head of the medical service for Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, a post he held until his retirement in 1957.

During World War II he was assigned to the headquarters of the Servizi Aerei Speciali.

Lega was still serving as a medical consultant to the Italian parliament when he died in 1973.

The Ponte Vecchio is one of the most famous of
many famous landmarks in Florence

Travel tip:

Giulio Lega is only one of many famous people born in Florence, a city so rich in history and artistic and architectural treasures that for visitors it feels like walking around an outdoor museum. In Piazza della Signoria, an L-shaped square in the centre of the city, the 14th century Palazzo Vecchio was the seat of government. Citizens gathered in the square for public meetings and the religious leader, Girolamo Savonarola, was burned at the stake there in 1498. The piazza is filled with statues, some of them copies, commemorating major events in the city’s history. Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia has become famous as the home of Michelangelo’s statue of David and is the second most visited museum in Italy, after the Uffizi, which is the main art gallery in Florence.

Milan's Malpensa airport is the second busiest in Italy
in terms of passenger numbers

Travel tip:

Malpensa airport started up in 1909 at Cascina Malpensa, an old farm to the northwest of Milan, where the land was used to test aircraft prototypes. During World War I it was established as a flying school for training pilots such as Giulio Lega. As an airfield used by the Germans in World War II, Malpensa was heavily bombed by the Allies, but in the 1940s the runway was repaired and flights to Brussels began. Today, Malpensa is the second busiest airport in Italy in terms of passengers, after Rome Fiumicino.

More reading:

Silvio Scaroni - the World War One pilot who shot down 26 enemy aircraft

How Italy's most famous World War One flying ace was killed in action

The aerial duellist who claimed 19 victories

Also on this day:

1920: Italy signs treaty with Balkan States

1948: The death of composer Umberto Giordano

2011: Silvio Berlusconi resigns as prime minister


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