1 October

Attilio Pavesi - Olympic cycling champion

Rider from Emilia-Romagna won Italy's first road racing gold 

Attilio Pavesi, the first winner of an individual Olympic gold medal in Italian cycling history, was born on this day in 1910 in the small town of Caorso in Emilia-Romagna.  At the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932, Pavesi won the individual road race and picked up a second gold medal as a member of the Italian quartet that won the team classification in the same race.  Italy had already won gold medals for the team pursuit in track cycling - indeed, they won that title for the fourth time in a row in 1932 - but had not enjoyed success on the road before Pavesi's triumph.  Pavesi, the last of 11 children born to Angelo, a poultry farmer, and his wife Maria, was a natural all-round sportsman, excelling at running, long jump, swimming, diving, gymnastics and football as he grew up.  He was such a strong swimmer he once saved a boy from drowning in a local river by pulling him to the bank by his hair.  His interest in cycling developed after he left school at the age of 10 to take a job in a workshop, learning how to repair all modes of transport from bicycles to tractors.  He joined a cycling team and won a number of trophies and continued to compete during his national service.  Read more…

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Leonello d’Este - Marquis of Ferrara

Ruler who spent money on the arts and education

Leonello d’Este, who is remembered as a dedicated patron of the arts, literature and culture, died on this day in 1450 in Ferrara.  Leonello was Marquis of Ferrara and Duke of Modena and Reggio Emilia from 1441 to 1450.  An illegitimate son of Niccolo III d’Este, Leonello was favoured by his father as his successor ahead of his legitimate children.  As he was well educated and popular with the common people, he was considered by his father to be the most suitable heir.  During his rule over Ferrara, Leonello transformed the city and reformed the University of Ferrara, actions which influenced the political and artistic achievements of his successors.  Leonello was tutored by Guarino Veronese, who instructed him on the traits of a desirable ruler and how to govern. Veronese was later appointed as a professor at the University of Ferrara.  Because of his strong academic background, Leonello made economic, political and cultural changes to Ferrara as soon as he took over. He was responsible for the building of the first hospital in Ferrara.  Artists such as Pisanello, Bellini, Mantegna and Della Francesca worked for him in Ferrara.  Read more…

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Walter Mazzarri - football coach

Former Watford manager with outstanding record in Italy

The football coach Walter Mazzarri, whose disappointing spell in English football as Watford manager contrasts with a fine record as a coach in his native Italy, was born on this day in 1961 in San Vincenzo, a resort on the coast of Tuscany.  Mazzarri won promotion to Serie A with his local club Livorno and kept tiny Calabrian team Reggina in Serie A against the odds for three consecutive seasons, on the last occasion despite an 11-point deduction for involvement in an alleged match-fixing scandal.  He subsequently had two seasons as coach of Sampdoria, qualifying for the UEFA Cup by finishing sixth in the first of those campaigns and then reaching the final of the Coppa Italia with a team that included the potent attacking duo Antonio Cassano and Giampaolo Pazzini.  After that he returned to Napoli, where he had previously been assistant to Renzo Ulivieri, to be appointed head coach in 2009, guiding the azzurri to sixth place - their best Serie A finish for 25 years - to qualify for the Europa League in his first season in charge, and doing even better in his second season, when Napoli were third, their highest placing since the late 1980s.  Read more...


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30 September

Monica Bellucci - actress and model

Movie actress who is face of Dolce & Gabbana

The actress and model Monica Bellucci, who has appeared in more than 60 films in a career than began in 1990, was born on this day in 1964 in Città di Castello in Umbria.  Bellucci, who is associated with Dolce & Gabbana and Dior perfumes, began modelling to help fund her studies at the University of Perugia, where she was enrolled at the Faculty of Law with ambitions of a career in the legal profession.  But she was quickly brought to the attention of the major model agencies in Milan and soon realised she had the potential to follow a much different career.  Bellucci, whose father Pasquale worked for a transport company, soon began to attract big-name clients in Paris and New York as well as Italy, but decided not long into her modelling career that she would take acting lessons.  She claimed to have been inspired by watching the Italian female movie icons Claudia Cardinale and Sophia Loren and gained her first part in a TV miniseries directed by the veteran director Dino Risi in 1990.  The following year she made her big screen debut with a leading role in the film La raffa, directed by Francesco Laudadio.  Read more…

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Angelo Cerica - Carabinieri general

First job was to arrest Mussolini

General Angelo Cerica, the police commander tasked with arresting the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after he was deposed as party leader in 1943, was born on this day in 1885 in Alatri, in the Ciociaria region of Lazio, about 90km (56 miles) south of Rome.  Mussolini was arrested on July 25 as he left his regular meeting with the King, Vittorio Emanuele III, the day after the Fascist Grand Council had voted to remove him from power.  The monarch had informed him that General Pietro Badoglio, former chief of staff of the Italian army, would be replacing him as prime minister.  Cerica had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Carabinieri, Italy’s paramilitary second police force, only two days previously, succeeding General Azolino Hazon, who had been killed in a bombing raid.  He was hand-picked for the job by General Vittorio Ambrosio, who was party to secret plot among Carabinieri officers to depose Mussolini irrespective of the Grand Council vote.  They wanted a commander who would not oppose the anti-Mussolini faction and would carry out the arrest.  Cerica, in fact, shared their view of il Duce, blaming him for leading Italy into a ruinous alliance with Germany in the Second World War.  Read more…

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Girolamo Mercuriale - physician

Doctor went from hero to villain and back again

Girolamo Mercuriale, who is believed to have written the first book about sports medicine and one of the first books about the benefits of physical exercise, was born on this day in 1530 in Forlì.  He published his most famous book, De Arte Gymnastica, in 1569 in Venice, having studied Greek and Roman medical literature and learnt about the attitude of athletes in ancient times to diet, exercise and hygiene.  Girolamo was the son of a doctor, Giovanni Mercuriale, and he was sent to Bologna, Padua and Venice to study medicine. After receiving his doctorate in philosophy and medicine in 1555 in Venice he went to Rome on a political mission, where he had access to many of the important libraries housing classical manuscripts.  His book is believed to the first to explain the principles of physical therapy, now known as physiotherapy and the first to suggest that exercise can be helpful, or harmful, depending on its use, duration and intensity.  But Mercuriale’s reputation suffered badly after he was considered to have failed to identify an outbreak of plague in Venice between 1576 and 1577.  Read more…

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Pierina Legnani - ballerina

Italian dancer who conquered St Petersburg

The ballerina Pierina Legnani, considered by many ballet historians to be one of the greatest dancers in history, was born on this day in 1863 in Milan.  Legnani's legacy was the 32-turn fouetté en tournant in which the dancer essentially spins on the point of one foot for 32 revolutions while maintaining perfect balance.  No ballerina had completed 32 turns before Legnani, who is said to have tried it out at the Alhambra Theatre in London before introducing the move to the wider world in 1893 on her debut at the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg in Russia, where she was performing in the title role of Cinderella.  It came in the final act on the night of the premiere and her perfection of technique and execution caused a sensation, with many critics hailing her as the supreme ballerina of her generation.  Her feat set a new standard for future ballerinas as a yardstick of strength and technique. A sequence of 32 fouetté turns was later choreographed into the Black Swan solo in Act Three of Swan Lake, of which it continues to be a feature.  Jealous rivals criticised Legnani for what they saw as showing off. The truth was that many feared that were they challenged to match her they would fall short.  Read more…


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Girolamo Mercuriale – physician

Doctor went from hero to villain and back again

Girolamo Mercuriale was a student of
Greek and Roman medical literature

Girolamo Mercuriale, who is believed to have written the first book about sports medicine and one of the first books about the benefits of physical exercise, was born on this day in 1530 in Forlì.

He published his most famous book, De Arte Gymnastica, in 1569 in Venice, having studied Greek and Roman medical literature and learnt about the attitude of athletes in ancient times to diet, exercise and hygiene.

Girolamo was the son of a doctor, Giovanni Mercuriale, and he was sent to Bologna, Padua and Venice to study medicine. After receiving his doctorate in philosophy and medicine in 1555 in Venice he went to Rome on a political mission, where he had access to many of the important libraries housing classical manuscripts.

His book is believed to be the first to explain the principles of physical therapy, now known as physiotherapy and the first to suggest that exercise can be helpful, or harmful, depending on its use, duration and intensity.

He became famous and was offered the chair of practical medicine at Padua in 1569, where he studied the works of Hippocrates, which gave him the material to write the first scientific tracts on skin disease, and women’s and children’s diseases.

Mercuriale had to rebuild his reputation
after failing to identify a plague outbreak

In 1573 he was called to Vienna to treat the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II, who, out of gratitude, made Mercuriale an imperial count palatine. However, despite the treatment the Holy Roman Emperor received from Mercuriale, he died three years later.

On Mercuriale’s return to Italy he was made a professor at the University of Padua by the Venetian Senate.

But Mercuriale’s reputation suffered badly after he was considered to have mishandled the outbreak of plague in Venice between 1576 and 1577.

He was asked to head a team of medical professionals to advise the city about dealing with the disease. Mercuriale maintained the disease affecting Venice could not possibly be plague and argued against quarantining. He travelled between infected and safe houses treating people who were suffering, but within a month the death toll had risen sharply.

Eventually the Senate ordered Mercuriale to be quarantined himself, believing that his questionable methods were responsible for the spread of the plague, which eventually claimed the lives of 50,000 Venetians.

Mercuriale managed to salvage his reputation with the 1577 publication of De Pestilentia, his treatise about plague.

He went on to teach at the University of Bologna until he was offered a record salary of 1,800 gold crowns by Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, to move to Pisa to increase the reputation of the university there.

Mercuriale returned to live in Forlì in 1606, where he died a few months later, aged 76.

Piazza Aurelio Saffi in the northern Italian city of Forli,
where Girolamo Mercuriale was born in the northern city

Travel tip:

Forlì in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, where Girolamo Mercuriale was born and died, is a historic city with some beautiful medieval buildings. In the main square, Piazza Aurelio Saffi, there is a statue of the Italian politician the square is named after, who was an important figure in the Risorgimento movement. The Abbey of San Mercuriale and the Church of San Domenico, which overlook the square, are both well preserved medieval buildings.

The lectern at the University of Padua from which Galileo
delivered lectures during his time at the university

Travel tip:

The University of Padua, where Girolamo Mercuriale taught for many years, was established in 1222 and is one of the oldest in the world, second in Italy only to the University of Bologna. The main university building, Palazzo del Bò in Via VIII Febbraio in the centre of Padua, used to house the medical faculty. You can take a guided tour to see the lectern used by Galileo when he taught at the university between 1592 and 1610, just after Mercuriale’s time there.

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29 September

Silvio Berlusconi - entrepreneur and politician

Businessman now barred from office but still leading his party

Silvio Berlusconi, who has served as Prime Minister of Italy in four Governments, was born on this day in 1936 in Milan.  Head of a large media empire and owner of the football club AC Milan, Berlusconi was Prime Minister for a total of nine years, making him the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister and the third longest-serving since Italian unification.  Berlusconi was the eldest of three children born to a bank employee and his wife and, after completing his secondary school education, he studied Law at the Università Statale in Milan, graduating with honours in 1961.  While at University he played the double bass in a group and occasionally performed as a cruise ship crooner. In later life he was to co-write both AC Milan’s and Forza Italia’s anthems and, in collaboration with Mariano Apicella, a Neapolitan singer and musician, he wrote the lyrics for two albums of Neapolitan-style songs, which Apicella put to music.  In the late 1960s, Berlusconi’s company, Edilnord, built 4,000 residential apartments in a new 'town' he called Milano Due and he was able to use the profits to fund his future businesses.  Read more…

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Enrico Fermi – nuclear physicist

Scientist from Rome who created world’s first nuclear reactor

Enrico Fermi, who has been called the architect of the nuclear age and even the father of the atomic bomb, was born on this day in 1901 in Rome.  Fermi, who won a Nobel Prize in 1938, created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the so-called Chicago Pile-1, after he had settled in the United States, and also worked on the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the secret US research project aimed at developing nuclear weapons in the Second World War.  The third child of Alberto Fermi, an official in Italy’s Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, a school teacher, Fermi took an interest in science from an early age, inspired by a book about physics he had discovered in the local market in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, written in Latin by a Jesuit priest in about 1840.  He read avidly as he was growing up, conducting many experiments. After high school, he was granted a place at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore, part of the University of Pisa, where it became clear the depth of knowledge he had already acquired was greater than that of many of his professors. It was not long before they began asking him to organise seminars in quantum physics. Read more…

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Silvio Piola - footballer

Modest star who remains Italy’s great goalscorer

Silvio Piola, a forward whose career tally of 364 goals between 1930 and 1954 remains the most scored by any professional player in the history of football in Italy, was born on this day in 1913 in Robbio Lomellina, a small town about 50km (31 miles) southwest of Milan.  Of those goals, 274 were scored in Serie A and 30 for the Italian national team, with whom he was a World Cup winner in 1938, scoring twice in the final against Hungary.  No other player has scored so many goals in the top flight of Italian football and only two others - Gigi Riva and Giuseppe Meazza - have scored more while wearing the azzurri shirt.  Other records still held by Piola include all-time highest Serie A goalscorer for three different clubs - his hometown club Pro Vercelli, Lazio, and Novara - and one of only two players to have scored six goals in a single match.  Until recently, Piola held a unique double record of being both the youngest player to score two goals in a Serie A match and the oldest, having scored twice for Pro Vercelli in a 5-4 win away to Alessandria in 1931 when he was 17 years and 104 days and twice for Novara against Lazio in a match in 1953, at the age of 39 years and 127 days.  Read more…


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