Luciano Bianciardi - novelist and translator

Writer who brought contemporary American literature to Italian audiences

Luciano Bianciardi devoted
much of his life to literature

The journalist, novelist and translator Luciano Bianciardi, who was responsible for putting the work of most of the outstanding American authors of the 20th century into Italian, was born on this day in 1922 in Grosseto in Tuscany.

Bianciardi translated novels by such writers as Saul Bellow, Henry Miller, William Faulkner and Norman Mailer, who were read in the Italian language for the first time thanks to his understanding of the nuances of their style.

He also wrote novels of his own, the most successful of which was La vita agra (1962; published in English as It’s a Hard Life), which was made into a film, directed by Carlo Lizzani and starring Ugo Tognazzi.

Bianciardi, whose father, Atide, was a bank cashier, developed an appreciation for learning from his mother, Adele, who was an elementary school teacher.

At the same time he acquired a lifelong fascination with Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, after his father gave him a book by a local author, Giuseppe Bandi, about Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand.

Bianciardi struggled to control
his drinking late in his life

Bianciardi’s university education was interrupted by the Second World War. He witnessed the bombing of Foggia, where the army unit to which he was assigned had the grim task of tending to the wounded and recovering the bodies of the dead. It was not long afterwards that Italy negotiated the 1943 armistice with the Allies, for whom he then worked as an interpreter.

He resumed his education at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he graduated in philosophy. His circle of friends were mainly writers with liberal socialist political leanings and he was briefly a member of Il Partito d’Azione - the Action Party - until it folded in 1947. The following year he married his first wife, Adria, with whom he would have two children.

His entry into the literary world came at the invitation of the municipality of Grosseto, who asked him to reorganise their civic library, which had been badly damaged by the bombings of 1943 and the floods of the following year. Later he became the library director and a passionate promoter of cultural initiatives such as the bibliobus, a van that took books into the hamlets and and scattered farms around the town.

The cover of the Feltrinelli edition of
his most famous book, La vita agra

He began to write for newspapers and, in 1956, published his first book, The Miners of the Maremma, which followed an investigation he launched with his friend and political ally, the writer Carlo Cassola, for the newspaper L’Avanti into the harsh conditions in which the miners in this Tuscan coastal territory worked and the poverty in which their families lived, which he encountered at first hand through his bibliobus scheme.

Bianciardi over time became a prolific writer for newspapers and magazines on all manner of subjects, on political matters but also cultural topics.  He was a film and television critic, and at times wrote about sport for magazines such as Guerin Sportivo.

He forged his reputation as a translator after moving to Milan to work for the Feltrinelli publishing house, developing a relationship that continued even after the company, frustrated with his poor timekeeping and clashes over their editorial policy, decided they could no longer employ him on a permanent, formal basis.

He worked his way through most of the major American writers. Among more than 100 texts that he translated into Italian were Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley, Jack London's John Barleycorn, J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and William Faulkner's A Fable and The Mansion.

At the same time, he began to write novels of his own, his stories often having a theme of rebellion against the cultural establishment, or else the lives of ordinary Italians during the so-called ‘economic miracle’ years of the 1950s and '60s.

Ugo Tognazzi in a scene from the movie based on
Luciano Bianciardi's book, La vita agra

La vita agra is considered his finest work, published by Rizzoli in 1962.  Acclaimed by the critics, it sold 5,000 copies with a couple of weeks of its appearance in the book shops. It brought Bianciardi fame almost overnight.

His other works include Il lavoro culturale - Cultural Work; L’integrazione - Integration; La battaglia soda - The Soda-Water Battle; and Aprire il fuoco - Setting the Fire.

Bianciardi, who had a third child by Maria Jatosti, with whom he worked at Feltrinelli, bought a house at Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera in Liguria about 30km (19 miles) east of Genoa, while keeping his home in the Brera district of Milan.

A heavy drinker through much of his life, he died at the age of just 49 in 1971, suffering from liver disease.  His last book, a comprehensive biography of Garibaldi, was published posthumously in 1972.

Grosseto's Romanesque cathedral, viewed
from the Via Daniele Manin

Travel tip:

Bianciardi’s home town of Grosseto is the largest town of the Maremma region of Tuscany, with approximately 65,000 inhabitants. Located in the alluvial plain of the Ombrone river, about 14km from the Tyrrhenian sea, the town grew in importance several centuries ago because of the trade in salt, that was obtained in salt pans in the now reclaimed lagoon that covered most of the area between Grosseto and the sea.  By 1328, the silting up of the lagoon robbed Grosseto of its salt revenues, after which is became largely depopulated, vulnerable to outbreaks of malaria caused by the mosquitos that thrived in the marshy areas surrounding the town. It began to expand again in the 19th century. Tourists today are drawn to visit by the walls begun by Francesco I de Medici in 1574, and by the Romanesque cathedral, dedicated to St. Lawrence.

Search tripadvisor for a hotel in Grosseto

Rapallo's Castello sul Mare was built in 1551 to deter pirates
from attacking the Ligurian coastal town

Travel tip: 

Rapallo, while somewhat overshadowed by its exclusive neighbour Portofino, is an attractive seaside town of the eastern Italian Riviera, known as the Riviera di Levante. The town developed around a harbour guarded by a small castle – Il Castello sul Mare – built in 1551 to repel pirate attacks, which sits right on the water’s edge.  Look out also for the 12th century Basilica of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, two historic towers and a ruined monastery, along with a network of narrow streets to explore. There are boat services to Portofino, as well as Santa Margherita Ligure and Camogli, while the main Genoa to Pisa railway line passes through the town.


More reading:

How Cesare Pavesi introduced foreign writers to Fascist Italy

Why novelist Leonardo Sciascia was the scourge of corrupt politicians

The comic genius of La Cage aux Folles star Ugo Tognazzi

Also on this day:

1784: The birth of Neapolitan princess Maria Antonia

1853: The birth of anarchist Errico Malatesta

1966: The birth of racing driver Fabrizio Giovanardi


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Pope Sixtus V

Pontiff who cleaned up and rebuilt Rome and reformed church

Pope Sixtus V introduced a programme of
measures to tackle Rome's problems

Pope Sixtus V, whose five-year reign was one of the most effective of any pontiff in history, was born Felice Peretti on this day in 1521 in Grottammare, a coastal resort in the Marche region that was then part of the Papal States.

Succeeding Pope Gregory XIII in 1585, Sixtus V inherited an administration that was riddled with corruption and a city of Rome that to a large extent fallen into the hands of thieves and criminal gangs.

He responded with a series of measures that brought about profound change with far-reaching consequences for the city and the wider country, making his mark on a scale that few pontiffs had matched before or since.

As well as tackling crime with brutal ruthlessness, he introduced significant reforms in the administration of the Catholic Church and commissioned lavish building projects that changed Rome from a medieval city to a one of Baroque grandeur.

The son of a poor farm hand in Grottammare, the future pope entered a monastery when he was nine years old and joined the Order of Friars Minor three years later. His familiarity with adversity made him resourceful and strong.

After being ordained, he impressed many with his preaching and was a popular choice as pope, attaining office at the age of 64 following Gregory XIII’s death.

Pope Gregory XIII left Rome's finances in a
parlous state, while crime gripped the city

He was determined from the start to be remembered as a pope who left Rome and the Church in a much better state than the one he inherited.

The brigands and criminal gangs who held the city in their grip were his first targets, and he used the full strength of his papal forces to crush them, beginning a clampdown that would eventually see as many as 27,000 criminals and their mob bosses rounded up an executed.

As a deterrent to others, Sixtus V would regularly have the heads of executed brigands placed on top of stakes around the city.

The result was that within two years Rome was the safest city in Europe, the countryside was free of bandits and the economy prospered.

Sixtus tackled his reforms of the central administration of the church with similar zeal. By a papal bull - edict - issued in 1586,  he redefined the Sacred College of Cardinals by setting the number of cardinals at no more than 70, a limit that stayed in place until the pontificate of John XXIII (1958–63).

In 1588 he overhauled the Curia - the government of the Catholic Church - in its entirety, establishing 15 congregations - departments - in a structure that also remained substantially unchanged until the 1960s.

Pope Sixtus V had an estimated 27,000
criminals put to death in a ruthless purge

In his crackdown on waste and corruption, he introduced harsh financial policies, which included the sale of offices, the creation of new loans, regulation of prices and the imposition of new taxes.

Sixtus V was determined to refill the treasury, although he could hardly be accused of sitting on the new wealth he created.

Turning his attention to the urban plan of Rome, he ordered the creation of broad new streets that were the beginnings of how the map of the city looks today. The Porta del Popolo, where he placed an obelisk in the piazza, the Via Sistina and Via delle Quattro Fontane all owe their existence to Sixtus V.

The Cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica was completed after he ordered the architect Giacomo della Porta to finish what had been a ten-year plan of works inside 24 months.  Sixtus V also built the loggia of Sixtus in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano and the chapel of the Praesepe in Santa Maria Maggiore, as well as commissioning repairs to the Quirinal, Lateran and Vatican palaces.

He restored Rome’s four Egyptian obelisks, including that in St Peter's Square.

Sixtus V restored the aqueduct of Septimus Severus - called the Acqua Felice after his baptismal name - in addition to the Acqua Vergine, which flows into the Trevi Fountain, with the purpose of bringing clean water into a less inhabited area and encouraging people to live there. The Palazzo Barberini and the Triton fountain were later made possible thanks to Sixtus V’s aqueduct.

Sixtus V placed a statue of St Paul atop the
Column of Marcus Aurelius, built in 193AD

Not everything he did was popular. He displaced many residents by razing buildings to make way for his new streets and showed little appreciation for antiquities. He envisioned converting the Colosseum into a wool factory with homes for its workers, and turned the Column of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan’s column into pedestals for statues of St. Peter and Paul.

In his foreign policies, Sixtus V proposed the conquest of Egypt and supported King Philip II of Spain in his planned invasion of England, with ambitions to excommunicate Elizabeth I, although in the event none of those things happened.

Sixtus V died on August 27, 1590, the last pope to have used the name Sixtus.  He was disliked by many of his subjects but history has recognized him as a significant figure in the Counter Reformation, and a pope who took on great enterprises and made significant achievements. He also left five million crowns in the coffers of what had been a bankrupt treasury.

The remains of the 16th century fortress stand over the
coastal resort of Grottammare, where Pope Sixtus V was born

Travel tip:

Grottammare is one of the beach resorts that make up the Marche region’s Riviera delle Palme, a stretch of coastline around the larger town of San Benedetto del Tronto. It is notable for a fine, sandy beach but also for the well preserved remains of a fortress overlooking the town that was built following the sacking of Grottammare by the Montenegran Princes of Dulcigno in 1525.  The centre of the older part of the town is Piazza Peretti, a square enclosed by the Church of San Giovanni Battista, the Town Hall, Municipal Tower and Teatro dell'Arancio.  Grottammare takes pleasure in celebrating its geographical position on the 43º parallel, the line of latitude that also passes through the cities of Assisi (Italy), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Lourdes (France), Medjugorje (Bosnia), Vladivostok (Russia), Sapporo (Japan), Buffalo and Milwaukee (United States).

The Fountain of Moses at the end of the Aqua
Felice aqueduct into Rome

Travel tip:

The Aqua Felice was the first aqueduct built during the Roman Renaissance, more than 1,000 years after the ancient aqueducts in Rome had been cut by invading Goths. Sixtus V commissioned his favourite architect, Domenico Fontana, who came up with the Fountain of Moses which also serves as the terminus of the Aqua Felice. Although the fountain, sometimes known as ‘Fat Moses’, has never been particularly well-liked, it is seen as representative of the great urban renewal that took place in Rome during the Renaissance, particularly under Sixtus V.


More reading:

Urban VIII, the pope whose extravagance led to disgrace

Pius V, the pope for excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy

The kidnapping of Pope Boniface VIII

Also on this day:

The Festa di Santa Lucia

1466: The death of Renaissance sculptor Donatello

1720: The birth of playwright Carlo Gozzi


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Susanna Tamaro - bestselling author

Writer’s third published novel was international hit

Susanna Tamaro's novel is one of the biggest selling
fiction titles in Italian literary history

The writer Susanna Tamaro, whose novel Va' dove ti porta il cuore - published in English as Follow your Heart - was one of the biggest selling Italian novels of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1957 in Trieste.

Va' dove ti porta il cuore - in which the main character, an elderly woman, reflects on her life while writing a long letter to her estranged granddaughter - has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide since it was published in 1994.

Only Umberto Eco’s historical novel Il Nome della Rosa  - The Name of the Rose - has enjoyed bigger sales among books by Italian authors written in the 20th century.

Tamaro has gone on to write more than 25 novels, winning several awards, as well as contributing a column for a number of years in the weekly magazine Famiglia Cristiana and even co-writing a song that reached the final of the Sanremo Music Festival.

Born into a middle-class family in Trieste, Tamaro is a distant relative of the writer Italo Svevo on her mother’s side. Her great-grandfather was the historian Attilio Tamaro.

Margherita Buy and Virna Lisi in a scene from Cristina
Comencini's 1996 movie version of Va' dove ti porta il cuore

In 1976, after obtaining a teaching diploma, Tamaro received a scholarship to study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the Italian school of cinema in Rome.

She was awarded a diploma in direction after making a short animation film entitled The Origin of Day and Night, taken from an Incas myth. After returning briefly to Trieste to work as assistant director on a feature film, she settled in Rome, where she would from time to time work for the Italian state television network, Rai. 

She completed her first novel, Illmitz, in 1981 but it was rejected by every publisher she approached (it was eventually published in 2014) and it was not until 1989, when the Marsilio publishing house began a project aimed at launching a series of young unpublished writers, that she managed to make her literary debut with La testa tra le nuvole - Head in the Clouds.

The novel won two awards - the Italo Calvino Award and the Elsa Morante Award - which encouraged Tamaro to keep up her writing.

Susanna Tamaro is related through her mother
to the Trieste-born novelist Italo Svevo

Her second novel Per voce sola - For Solo Voice - published in 1991 won the PEN International prize and was praised by film director Federico Fellini and the novelist Alberto Moravia, although sales were not spectacular.

However, when Va' dove ti porta il cuore appeared in 1994, Tamaro became the toast of the Italian literary world, hailed as “a unique voice” whose story, while rooted in her native Italy, displayed “an understanding of human lives that is universal”.

The book was turned into a film in 1996, directed by Cristina Comencini and starring Virna Lisi and Margherita Buy. At the Turin Book Fair of 2011, it was named as one of the 150 most important books in the history of Italian literature. It has been translated into more than 35 languages.

Subsequently, Tamaro has written several bestsellers, including Anima Mundi, Rispondimi (Answer Me), Ascolta la mia voce (Listen to My Voice), Fuori (Outside) and her memoir, Verso Casa (Towards Home), many of which have been published in English.

In 1997 she collaborated with the songwriter Ron (artistic name of Rosalino Cellamare) to write a Sanremo entry for the singer Tiziana Tosca Donati.

Tamaro revealed recently that she suffered from Asperger
Syndrome, a form of autism, as a child

She directed her first film, Nel mio amore (In My Love) in 2005, based on one of the stories in Rispondimi.

Since 1988 Tamaro has lived with the crime novelist Roberta Mazzoni, who invited her to stay in her home in Orvieto after she suffered a bout of asthmatic bronchitis, exacerbated by the smog and pollution of Rome.  The two subsequently shared a cottage in Porano, a nearby village. Tamaro has insisted that their relationship has always been platonic, describing it as “a loving friendship.” Tamaro recently revealed that she suffered from Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism, as a child.

Tamaro’s novels have often conveyed her political views, including her opposition to abortion, surrogacy and euthanasia, but she declined an invitation to stand in the 2008 Italian elections on an anti-abortion ticket.

The Canal Grande is one of the attractions of Trieste, a
port city with a great literary tradition

Travel tip:

The coastal city of Trieste, where Tamaro was born, is the main town of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. Officially, it became part of the Italian Republic only in 1954, having been disputed territory for thousands of years. It was granted to Italy in 1920 after the First World War, after which thousands of the resident Slovenians left. The final border with Yugoslavia was settled in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo. The area today is one of the most prosperous in Italy and Trieste is a lively, cosmopolitan city and a major centre for trade and ship building. It has a strong literary tradition, having been the home of the Irish author James Joyce for more than a decade, during which he wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, most of Dubliners and the outline of Ulysses.  Joyce’s close friend, Italo Svevo, was one of several prominent writers born in the city, including the poet Umberto Saba and the essayist Claudio Magris.  The 19th century French writer Stendhal and the English novelist DH Lawrence also spent time there.

Orvieto's beautiful Duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria
Assunta - is one of the finest cathedrals in Italy

Travel tip:

The small city of Orvieto in Umbria, with a population of only 20,000, has a dramatic appearance, built on the top of a cliff of volcanic tuff stone, its elevated position further emphasised by the defensive walls built by the Etruscans. Situated about 120km (75 miles) north of Rome, it boasts one of Italy’s finest cathedrals in Italy - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta - with a stunningly beautiful Romanesque Gothic facade inlaid with gold mosaics fronting a building constructed from alternate layers of black and white marble.  The city’s medieval streets are a cultural paradise - busy with cafés and restaurants, bookshops, artisans' workshops and antique emporia.


More reading:

Why Alberto Moravia is recognised as a major figure in 20th century literature

The broad intellectual talents of Umberto Eco

How screen siren Virna Lisi turned back on glamour roles

Also on this day:

1685: The birth of composer Lodovico Giustini

1901: Marconi receives first transatlantic radio signal

1969: The Piazza Fontana bombing


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Fabrizio Ravanelli - footballer

Juventus star who became a favourite at Middlesbrough

Fabrizio Ravanelli won five trophies
in four years with Juventus

The footballer Fabrizio Ravanelli, who won five trophies with Juventus between 1992 and 1996 before stunning the football world by joining unfashionable Middlesbrough in the English Premier League, was born on this day in 1968 in Perugia.

Playing alongside Gianluca Vialli and Alessandro Del Piero in the Juventus forward line, Ravanelli scored in the 1996 Champions League final as the Turin side beat Ajax in Rome before signing for Middlesbrough just six weeks later.

The ambitious club from the northeast of England paid £7 million (€8.5m) for Ravanelli, a club record fee and at the time the third largest sum paid for any player by an English club.

It was part of a huge spending spree by Middlesbrough, managed by former England captain Bryan Robson, that brought a string of high-profile signings to the club's Riverside Stadium including the Brazilian playmaker Juninho and England international Nick Barmby and another Italian, the Inter defender Gianluca Festa.

Ravanelli made an immediate impact, scoring a hat-trick on his Premier League debut against Liverpool, and ended the season with 31 goals in league and cup matches.

He also helped Middlesbrough reach both domestic cup finals, although it was a disappointing season for the club, who were runners-up on both occasions and were relegated from the Premier League.

Fabrizio Ravanelli, back row, second from right, lines up with
the Juventus team before the 1996 Champions League final

Ravanelli, whose position as a fans’ favourite was somewhat diminished by his outspoken comments about the club’s facilities and the town of Middlesbrough itself, had a further season in England when he joined Derby County for the 2001-02 campaign, but also suffered relegation there.

Although he finished second in the French Ligue 1 with Marseille, Ravanelli’s successes were all won it his native Italy.

A prolific scorer for his hometown club Perugia in Serie C and Serie B football at the start of his career, he had spells with Avellino, Casertana and Reggiana before joining Juventus in 1992, where he had to compete for a place in the forward line with not only Vialli and Del Piero but Roberto Baggio, Paolo Di Canio, Pierluigi Casiraghi and Andreas Möller.

After initially struggling to obtain a starting spot under coach Giovanni Trapattoni, due to this fierce competition, he worked hard to improve his skill level and eventually managed to hold down a place.

Ravanelli was a club record £7 million signing
when he joined Middlesbrough in July 1996

During the 1994–95 season, under Marcello Lippi, he played a key role as the club claimed a domestic double of Serie A and Coppa Italia, playing in a three-man attack alongside Vialli, and either Baggio or Del Piero.

The Supercoppa Italia and the Champions League came the following season, to go with the medal he had won in 1993 as part of Trapattoni’s UEFA Cup-winning team.

Returning to Italy after his time with Middlesbrough and Marseille, Ravanelli was a double-winner again as Sven-Göran Eriksson’s Lazio team took the Serie A and Coppa Italia titles in 2000-01, adding his second Supercoppa Italia medal the following year.

A dynamic, physically strong left-footed striker known for his strong work ethic and determined temperament, as well as his eye for goal, Ravanelli earned the nickname 'The White Feather' because of his prematurely grey hair. In addition to his club success, he won 22 caps for the Italian national team, scoring eight goals.

He finished his playing career where it began, with Perugia, in 2005, before starting a coaching career that has not yet brought him success.  After two years as a youth coach at Juventus, he was appointed head coach of French Ligue 1 club AJ Ajaccio in the summer of 2013, but was sacked after just five months with only one win from 12 games.

A regular football pundit for Sky Italia, Fox Sports, and Mediaset, Ravanelli signed a contract in June this year to coach the Ukrainian Premier League club Arsenal Kyiv but resigned in September after only three months in charge.

A plaque placed in Piazza della Libertà to commemorate
the 100th anniversary in 2000 of the founding of SS Lazio

Travel tip:

Although they have played their home games at the Stadio Olimpico, the ground in the north of Rome that they share with city rivals AS Roma, the SS Lazio football club used to play in the Prati district, now a chic neighbourhood known for its wide, sweeping avenues, elegant architecture and affluent residents. SS Lazio was formed in 1900 by a group of young men at a meeting near the Piazza della Libertà on the banks of the Tiber.  Prati is also the home of the vast Palazzo di Giustizia in Piazza Cavour that houses the Supreme Court.

Hotels in Rome from TripAdvisor

Perugia's Piazza IV Novembre is one of the city's main
squares, home to the city's cathedral

Travel tip:

Perugia, where Fabrizio Ravanelli was born, is a city of around 170,000 inhabitants built on a hill in Umbria, of which it is the regional capital.  Established in the Etruscan period, it remained an important city, always a target for invading armies because of its strategic value.  Nowadays, it is home to some 34,000 students at the University of Perugia and is a notable centre for culture and the arts, hosting the world-renowned Umbria Jazz Festival each July. It also hosts a chocolate festival – Perugia being the home of the Perugina chocolate company, famous for Baci.  The artist Pietro Vannucci, commonly known as Perugino, lived in nearby Città della Pieve and was the teacher of Raphael.


More reading:

Marcello Lippi, Italy's third World Cup-winning coach

How Roberto Baggio became a football icon

The seven titles that put Giuseppe Trapattoni out on his own

Also on this day:

1475: The birth of Pope Leo X

1912: The birth of movie producer Carlo Ponti

1944: The birth of singing star Gianni Morandi


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