27 June

Gianluigi Aponte - shipping magnate

Billionaire started with one cargo vessel

Gianluigi Aponte, the billionaire founder of the Mediterranean Shipping Company, which owns the second largest container fleet in the world and a string of luxury cruise liners, was born on this day in 1940 in Sant’Agnello, the seaside resort that neighbours Sorrento in Campania.  He and his wife, Rafaela, a partner in the business, have an estimated net worth of $11.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.  The Mediterranean Shipping Company has more than 510 container ships, making it the second largest such business in the world. Only the Danish company Maersk is bigger.  MSC Cruises, meanwhile, has grown into the fourth largest cruise company in the world and the largest in entirely private ownership. With offices in 45 countries, it employs 23,500 people, with a fleet of 17 luxury cruise liners.  Aponte has been able to trace his seafaring ancestry back to the 17th century. His family’s roots are on the Sorrentine Peninsula. Read more…

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Giorgio Vasari - the first art historian

Artist and architect who chronicled lives of Old Masters

Giorgio Vasari, whose 16th century book on the lives of Renaissance artists led to him being described as the world's first art historian, died on this day in 1574 in Florence.  Born in Arezzo in 1511, Vasari was a brilliant artist and architect who worked for the Medici family in Florence and Rome and amassed a considerable fortune in his career.  But he is remembered as much for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, a collection of biographies of all the great artists of his lifetime.  The six-part work is remembered as the first important book on art history.  Had it not been written, much less would be known of the lives of Cimabue, Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, Da Vinci,  Giorgione, Raphael, Boccaccio and Michelangelo among many others from the generation known as the Old Masters.  Vasari is believed to have been the first to describe the period of his lifetime as the Renaissance. Read more…

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The Ustica Massacre

Mystery plane crash blamed on missile strike

An Italian commercial flight crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea between Ponza and Ustica, killing everyone on board on this day in 1980.  The aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC9-15 in the service of Itavia Airlines was en route from Bologna to Palermo, flight number IH870. All 77 passengers and the four members of the crew were killed, making this the deadliest aviation incident involving a DC9-15 or 10-15 series.  The disaster became known in the Italian media as the Ustica massacre - Strage di Ustica - because Ustica, off the coast of Sicily, was a small island near the site of the crash.  Many investigations, legal actions and accusations resulted from the tragedy, which continues to be a source of speculation in Italy.  In 2013, Italy’s top criminal court in Rome ruled that there was clear evidence the flight was brought down by a missile and upheld a ruling made by a court in Palermo in 2011 that Italian radar systems had failed adequately to protect the skies, and therefore Italy must compensate the victims' families.  Read more…

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Giorgio Almirante – politician

Leader who tried to make Fascism more mainstream

Giorgio Almirante, the founder and leader of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, was born on this day in 1914 at Salsomaggiore Terme in Emilia Romagna.  He led his political party for long periods from 1946 until he handed over to his protégé, Gianfranco Fini, in 1987.  Almirante graduated in Literature and trained as a schoolteacher but went to work for the Fascist journal Il Tevere in Rome.  In 1944, he was appointed Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Culture to the Italian Social Republic, the short-lived German puppet state of which Benito Mussolini was the head after he was thrown out of office as Italy’s prime minister.  After the Fascists were defeated, Almirante was indicted on charges that he had ordered the shooting of partisans, but these were lifted as part of a general amnesty.  He set up his own fascist group in 1946, which was soon absorbed into the Italian Social Movement (MSI).  Read more…


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Gianluigi Aponte - shipping magnate

Billionaire started with one cargo vessel

Gianluigi Aponti launched his MSC
company in 1970 with one ship

Gianluigi Aponte, the billionaire founder of the Mediterranean Shipping Company, which owns the second largest container fleet in the world and a string of luxury cruise liners, was born on this day in 1940 in Sant’Agnello, the seaside resort that neighbours Sorrento in Campania.

He and his wife, Rafaela, a partner in the business, have an estimated net worth of $11.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

The Mediterranean Shipping Company has more than 510 container ships, making it the second largest such business in the world. Only the Danish company Maersk is bigger.

MSC Cruises, meanwhile, has grown into the fourth largest cruise company in the world and the largest in entirely private ownership. With offices in 45 countries, it employs 23,500 people, with a fleet of 17 luxury cruise liners.

Overall, the Mediterranean Shipping Company, which Aponte began in 1970 with one cargo vessel, has more than 60,000 staff in 150 countries.

Aponte has been able to trace his seafaring ancestry back to the 17th century. His family’s roots are on the Sorrentine Peninsula and there are records of his family’s boats ferrying goods between Naples and Castellammare di Stabia, just along the coast.

His own involvement after the death of his father, who had left Italy to open a hotel in Somalia. Gianlugi returned to his homeland and enrolled at the nautical institute in Naples. He joined the company of the Naples shipping entrepreneur, Achille Lauro, and was employed on the Naples-to-Capri ferry fleet. Eventually, he became a captain.

The MSC logo can be seen on all
of the company's cruise ships

He met his wife, Swiss-born Rafaela Diamant Pinas, when she was a passenger on one of his boats and the couple moved to Geneva.

Aponte for a while worked in banking but craved a return to the maritime industry. He raised $280,000 to buy Patricia, a German freighter, and in 1970 established the Mediterranean Shipping Company. Another cargo ship, which he named Rafaela after his wife, followed a year later.

Operating largely between Europe and Africa, Aponte's fleet had expanded to 20 cargo ships by the 1980s, which the billionaire sold to move into container shipping.

He diversified into cruise lines after buying his mentor Achille Lauro's cruise fleet in 1987, initially under the name Starlauro. The company was renamed MSC Cruises in 1995.

Among the company’s first ships was the ill-fated passenger ship named Achille Lauro, which in 1985 was hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front off the coast of Egypt and in 1994 caught fire and sank off Somalia in the Indian Ocean.

The MSC Opera, one of the Lirica class vessels that marked
the start of the company's investment in modern ships

MSC Cruises became a serious player in the cruise market in the early 2000s, when a €5.5 billion investment programme was launched to build the world’s most modern cruise fleet.

This began with the purchase or commission of four Lirica class vessels, each with the capacity to carry more than 2,000 passengers. Each subsequent generation of cruise ships bearing the company’s distinctive star logo has been bigger than the previous one.

The latest is the Meraviglia class, which comprises two enormous boats, each with 15 passenger decks and which can carry 4,500 guests in addition to more than 1,500 crew. The Meraviglia is the fourth largest cruise ship in service anywhere in the world.

Another massive investment programme was launched in 2014, which included refurbishment of the original Lirica vessels in addition to plans for new boats. Between 2014 and 2026, this investment is expected to total $11.6 million, with an even bigger Meraviglia on the horizon, with capacity for 6,334 guests and powered by Liquefied Natural Gas.

MSC Cruises already has the honour of being the first cruise company in the world to be awarded the coveted ‘6 Golden Pearls’ for its outstanding standards in environmental protection, health and safety.

Aponte has been decorated with many awards, including in 2009 a prize for "Neapolitan Excellence in the World". Alongside the footballer Fabio Cannavaro, who captained the Italy team that won the World Cup in 2006, and the ballerina Ambra Vallo, he was presented with the award at a ceremony at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples by the then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Something of a recluse, Aponte makes few public appearances, largely limited to the christenings of new MSC cruise ships. He lives with his wife in Geneva. His children, Diego and Alexa, both work at MSC, as chief executive and chief financial officer respectively.

A clifftop hotel in Sant'Agnello with Vesuvius in the
background, across of the Gulf of Naples

Travel tip:

Aponte’s birthplace of Sant’Agnello is a small town of just over 9,000 inhabitants which neighbours Sorrento and Piano di Sorrento, which along with another small town, Meta di Sorrento, enjoy a clifftop location overlooking the Gulf of Sorrento, a picturesque bay that forms part of the larger Gulf of Naples.  Like the bigger and better-known Sorrento, Sant’Agnello’s economy relies heavily on the tourist industry and has plenty of hotels and restaurants.

The medieval castle from which the resort of Castellammare
di Stabia, built above a buried Roman city, takes its name

Travel tip:

Castellammare di Stabia, a one-time thriving resort now more often associated with shipyards, was built over the ruins of the ancient Stabiae, a Roman village destroyed in 79 AD by the violent eruption of the Vesuvius volcano, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum.  Some of the ruins are being excavated.  The name of the town is said to derive from the medieval castle that overlooks the Gulf of Naples, which can be found alongside the road from Castellammare to Sorrento, Castello a Mare meaning Castle on the Sea.  The town was the birthplace of Pliny the Elder, who was a philosopher and author as well as a military commander of the early Roman empire.

More reading:

Sophia Loren, Neapolitan siren of the silver screen

Achille Vianelli, the artist who captured the character of Naples

How Cannavaro led Italy to a fourth World Cup

Also on this day:

1574: The death of Giorgio Vasari, painter and architect who was art's first historian

1914: The birth of politician Giorgio Almirante

1980: The plane crash known as the Ustica Massacre


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26 June

San Marino is bombed by Britain

British believed the Germans were using rail facilities

The British Royal Air Force bombed the tiny Republic of San Marino on this day in 1944 as a result of receiving incorrect information.  It was recorded at the time that 63 people were killed as a result of the bombing, which was aimed at rail facilities. The British mistakenly believed that the Germans were using the San Marino rail network to transport weapons.  San Marino had been ruled by Fascists since the 1920s but had managed to remain neutral during the war.  After the bombing, San Marino’s government declared that no military installations or equipment were located on its territory and no belligerent forces had been allowed to enter.  However, by September of the same year San Marino was briefly occupied by German forces, but they were defeated by the Allied forces in the Battle of San Marino.  Read more…

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Paolo Maldini - football great

Milan defender's record-breaking career spanned 25 years

Paolo Maldini, the AC Milan defender who won the European Cup and Champions League more times than any other player in the modern era, was born on this day in 1968 in Milan.  A Milan player for the whole of his 25-year professional career - plus six years as a youth player before that - Maldini won Europe's biggest club prize five times. Only Francisco Gento, a member of the all-conquering Real Madrid side of the 1950s and 60s, has more winner's medals.  Maldini also won seven Serie A championships plus one Coppa Italia and five Supercoppa Italiana titles in domestic competition, as well as five European Super Cups, two Intercontinental Cups and a World Club Cup.  Only in international football did trophies elude him, although he played on the losing side in the finals of both the World Cup, in 1994, and the European Championships, in 2000.  His European Cup/Champions League triumphs came under the management of Arrigo Sacchi (1989 and 1990), Fabio Capello (1994) and Carlo Ancelotti (2003 and 2007).  The 1994 victory by 4-0 against Barcelona was described as one of the greatest team performances of all time.  Read more…

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Alberto Rabagliati - singer and actor

Performer found fame through radio

The singer and movie actor Alberto Rabagliati, who became one of the stars of Italian radio in the 1930s and 40s, was born on this day in 1906 in Milan.  His movie career reached a peak in the post-War years, when he had roles in the Humphrey Bogart-Ava Gardner hit Barefoot Contessa and in Montecarlo, starring Marlene Dietrich.  The son of parents who had moved to Milan from the village of Casorzo, near Asti, in Piedmont, Rabagliati’s career in the entertainment business began when he entered a competition in 1927 to find a Rudolph Valentino lookalike.  To his astonishment he won.  The prize was to be taken to Hollywood to audition, so his life changed overnight.  He lived in America for the next four years but never achieved more than modest success and decided to return to Italy. During his time in America, however, he took the opportunity to get to know some new musical genres such as jazz, swing, and ‘scat’ singing. Read more…

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25 June

Elena Cornaro Piscopia – philosopher

First woman to graduate from a university

Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to receive an academic degree from a university on this day in 1678, it is thought, in Padua.  She was awarded her degree in philosophy at a special ceremony in the Duomo in Padua in the presence of dignitaries from the University of Padua and guests from other Italian universities.  Piscopia was born in a palazzo in Venice in 1646. Her father had an important post at St Mark’s and he was entitled to accommodation in St Mark’s Square.  On the advice of a priest who was a family friend, she was taught Latin and Greek when she was a young child. She was proficient in both languages by the time she was seven. She then went on to master other languages as well as mathematics, philosophy and theology.  Her tutor wanted her to study for a degree in theology at Padua University but the Bishop of Padua refused to allow it because she was female, although he allowed her to study philosophy instead.  Read more…

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Aldo Serena - footballer

Azzurri striker left field in tears after penalty miss

Aldo Serena, one of the two Italian players who most felt the agony of defeat after the Azzurri suffered the pain of losing at the semi-final stage when the football World Cup last took place on home soil, was born on this day in 1960 in Montebelluna, a town in the Veneto.  The match that ended the host nation's participation in the Italia '90 tournament took place in Naples against an Argentina side that included the local hero, Diego Maradona. It was decided on penalties after finishing 1-1 over 120 minutes. Italy converted their opening three penalties, as did Argentina.  Then Roberto Donadoni’s shot was saved by the Argentina goalkeeper, Sergio Goycochea.  Up stepped Maradona, who scored, to the delight of many in the crowd who had divided loyalties.  Suddenly, everything was down to Aldo Serena, who could not afford to miss if Italy were to stay alive in a tournament in which they had played football at times that deserved to win.  Read more…

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Marta Abba - actress

Aspiring star who became Pirandello’s muse

Marta Abba, who as a young actress became the stimulus for the creativity of the great playwright Luigi Pirandello, was born on this day in 1900 in Milan.  The two met in 1925 when Pirandello, whose most famous works included the plays Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) and Henry IV (1922), asked her to see him, having read an enthusiastic appreciation of her acting talents by Marco Praga, a prominent theatre critic of the day.  Abba had made her stage debut in Milan in 1922 in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull and was noted for the exuberance and passion of her performances. Pirandello was impressed with her and immediately hired her as first actress for his Teatro d’Arte company in Rome.  Over the next nine years until Pirandello’s death in 1936, Abba would become not only his inspiration but his confidante. When Abba was not working with him but was on stage in some other city or country, they would correspond in writing, exchanging hundreds of letters.  Read more…

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