The Cervi brothers - partisans

Anti-Fascists murdered by Nazi firing squad

The Cervi family - Alcide and his wife Genoeffa
had two daughters as well as seven sons

Seven brothers belonging to a single family from the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia were shot dead by a firing squad on this day in 1943 in a massacre that has since become a symbol of Italian resistance to authoritarian rule and the overthrow of Fascism.

The Fratelli Cervi - Cervi brothers - the seven sons of a militant Communist tenant farmer called Alcide Cervi, had been in prison for more than a month on suspicion of anti-Fascist activity following a raid on the family farm at Praticello di Gattatico, a village about 15km (nine miles) northwest of Reggio Emilia.

They were taken at dawn on 28 December to the city’s shooting range, where soldiers loyal to Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic lined them up against a wall and shot them dead, it is thought in reprisal for the murder of two Fascist officials.

Their father, who had been held in a different part of the St Thomas prison in Reggio Emilia, did not learn of the fate of his sons until January of the following year, after damage to the prison in an air raid allowed him to escape.

Alcide Cervi was a committed
supporter of communism

Alcide - who came to be known to Italians as Papa Cervi - was a successful tenant farmer who had helped introduce modern farming techniques, such as crop rotation, to the Po Valley.  He was the first in his area to acquire a tractor.

But he was also staunchly pro-Communist and anti-Fascist, partly as a result of being imprisoned for alleged insubordination during his military service. He instilled anti-Fascist values in his children, who grew up to fight against Mussolini’s rule.

From their modest farmhouse, they printed and distributed anti-Mussolini propaganda, while the farm became a centre for clandestine dissent against Fascism.

Alcide and his sons - Gelindo, Antenore, Aldo, Ferdinando, Augustine, Ovidio and Ettore - organised themselves as the Banda Cervi, a resistance group. This led both Gelindo and Ferdinando to be arrested on a number of occasions, suspected of anti-Fascist activity.

In July 1943, when news spread that Mussolini’s Fascist government had collapsed following the Allied invasion of southern Italy and the self-proclaimed Duce arrested, crowds poured on to the streets to celebrate and the Cervi family joined the festivities, cooking a pasta dish to serve to the local population. 

However, it was not the end of Fascism. Freed from captivity at a supposedly secret location in the mountains of Abruzzo, Mussolini had been installed as the leader of the Italian Social Republic, effectively a Nazi satellite state, in the German-occupied north of the country. 

A 1968 film about the Cervi
brothers starred Gian Maria Volontè

The Cervi brothers were forced to leave their farm and retreat to the Apennine mountains to the south of the Po Valley, where they organised partisan units to fight the Fascist army and their German backers.

Their arrest and subsequent execution followed a series of incidents in which power lines were sabotaged and police stations attacked.  They had also attempted to kidnap a Fascist official in Reggio Emilia. They were captured on 24 November, 1943, during a visit to their parents at the family home.  Fascist patrols of the National Republican Guard (Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, or GNR), a paramilitary force of the Italian Social Republic, swooped on the farm and though a gunfight ensued, the brothers eventually ran out of ammunition and had to surrender.

After Italy was finally liberated from Nazi rule in 1945, the Cervi brothers’ story became part of the nation’s legacy of anti-Fascism. The family farmhouse at Campirossi, to the southeast of Praticello, has been turned into a museum incorporating the Alcide Cervi Institute, which promotes democratic values.  Politicians have regularly visited the farmhouse to pay homage to the family.

The Cervi brothers’ story has been immortalised in books, poetry, songs and films, including the 1968 movie I sette fratelli Cervi, directed by Gianni Puccini and starring the celebrated Italian actor Gian Maria Volontè in the role of Aldo Cervi.  Many Italian towns have a street named Via Cervi in their honour.

Adelmo Cervi is a leading voice
against fascism in modern Italy

All seven brothers were posthumously awarded the Silver Medal for Military Valor by the Italian state.  When Alcide died in 1970, an estimated 200,000 people packed the streets for his funeral in Reggio Emilia.

Today, the family’s name is recalled each July when Italy’s National Association of Partisans and other anti-fascist groups stage a pasta dinner in honour of the meal the Cervi brothers served to local people in 1943.

Meanwhile, Adelmo Cervi - Alcide’s grandson, the son of Aldo Cervi and a baby of only four months at the time of the massacre - had become a writer and prominent campaigner against the rise of far-right political groups in Italy, regularly addressing crowds at political rallies. He has been an outspoken opponent in particular of the Lega Nord leader Matteo Salvini.

The Basilica di San Prospero is one of the 
attractions of Reggio Emilia

Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia, a city in the Po Valley 28km (17 miles) southeast of Parma and 32km (20 miles) northwest of Modena, is believed to have given Italy its tricolore national flag. There are historical records that suggest that a short-lived 18th century republic, the Repubblica Cispadana, had a flag of red, white and green that was decreed in Reggio Emilia in 1797.  The city today lacks the cultural wealth of neighbouring Parma and is consequently less visited but it has an attractive historic centre with a number of notable buildings, including the Basilica della Ghiara and the 10th century Basilica di San Prospero, which overlooks the elegant Piazza of the same name.  Italy's world famous hard cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano - known in English as Parmesan - is thought to have originated in nearby Bibbiano, about 15km (9 miles) to the southeast.

The Via Aemilia is a Roman road linking
Piacenza with Rimini

Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia is one of a string of important northern Italian cities connected by the ancient Roman road Via Aemilia, a 260km (162 miles) highway linking modern Piacenza (Piacentia) in the province of Emilia-Romagna with Rimini (Ariminum) on the Adriatic coast, which was completed in 187BC. While the road was being constructed, Roman colonies formed along its route at Bononia (Bologna), Mutina (Modena), Regium (Reggio Emilia) and Parma.  The Via Aemilia was named after the Roman consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Other towns and cities along the route, which runs along the southern edge of the Pianura Padana (the Po Plain) within sights of the northern foothills of the Apennine mountains, include Forlì, Faenza, Imola and Cesena. 

More reading:

Nazis free captive Mussolini

Mussolini's last stand: Deposed dictator proclaims Republic of Salò

Tina Anselmi: the former partisan who became Italy’s first female cabinet minister

Also on this day: 

1503: The death of Piero the Unfortunate, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent

1850: The birth of tenor Francesco Tamagno

1908: The Messina earthquake

1943: The Battle of Ortona

1947: The death of King Victor Emmanuel III

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27 December

Terrorist attack at Fiumicino

Horrifying end to Christmas celebrations

The peace of Italy's festive celebrations was shattered by a devastating terrorist attack on this day in 1985 when Arab gunmen opened fire in the main departure hall at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport.  The attack, which claimed the lives of 16 people, took place shortly after 9.05am, when the four perpetrators approached the check-in desks of Israel's El Al Airline and the United States carrier Trans World Airlines.  Israeli secret services were aware that an attempt either to hijack a plane or stage an attack on the ground was being planned between December 25 and 31 in Rome and an Israeli security officer became suspicious of the quartet as he watched their movements in the departure hall.  However, when he stepped forward to challenge them, they produced assault rifles and began firing, at the same time throwing grenades.  The Israeli officer was killed and in the ensuing gunfight, involving more Israeli security staff and Italian police, some 12 passengers were fatally wounded.  They included Americans, Mexicans, Greeks, Italians and at least one Algerian.  Three of the gunmen were shot dead and a fourth, 18-year-old Ibrahim Khaled, was captured by police.  Read more…

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Pope John Paul II’s prison visit

Pope came face to face with his would-be killer

Pope John Paul II visited Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome on this day in 1983 to forgive formally the man who had tried to assassinate him.  Two years previously the Pope had been shot and critically wounded in St Peter’s Square by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish member of a fascist group known as Grey Wolves.  John Paul II had been rushed unconscious to hospital with bullet wounds to the abdomen, colon and small intestine and had to have five hours of surgery to repair the damage.  Agca was caught and restrained by bystanders until the police arrived. He was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.  John Paul II visited Agca on 27 December 1983 in prison in Rebibbia, a suburb on the northeastern edge of Rome.  They spoke privately for about 20 minutes and afterwards the Pope said he had pardoned his would-be killer.  Agca had previously escaped from a Turkish prison where he had been serving a sentence for murdering a journalist. He was deported to Turkey at the end of his jail sentence in Italy and went on to serve another ten years in prison.  On 27 December 2014, 33 years after the shooting, Agca came to the Vatican in Rome to lay white roses on Pope John Paul II’s tomb.  Read more…

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Tito Schipa – operatic tenor

Star on two continents whose voice divided opinions

Tito Schipa, one of the most popular opera singers in the first half of the 20th century who sang to packed houses in the United States and South America as well as in Italy, was born on this day in 1888 in Lecce.  The tenor, whose repertoire included Verdi and Puccini roles in the early part of his career and later encompassed works by Donizetti, Cilea and Massanet, rose from modest beginnings to find fame with the Chicago and New York Metropolitan opera companies in America.  He also appeared regularly in Buenos Aires in Argentina and later in his career starred regularly at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Rome Opera.  Some critics said his voice lacked power and had too narrow a range for him to be considered a genuinely great tenor, yet he overcame his perceived limitations to become extremely popular with the public wherever he performed.  Schipa was born Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa in the Le Scalze district of Lecce, a fairly working class neighbourhood in the Puglian city.  His family were of Albanian heritage. His father was a customs officer.  His talent was first noted by a primary school teacher in Lecce.  Read more…

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Saint Veronica Giuliani

Life of compassionate nun is still inspiring others

Nun and mystic Veronica Giuliani was born on this day in 1660 in Mercatello sul Metauro in the Duchy of Urbino.  After she had spent her whole life devoted to Christ, the marks of the crown of thorns appeared on her forehead and the signs of his five wounds on her body. She was subjected to a rigorous testing of her experience by her bishop but, after he decided the phenomena were authentic, he allowed her to return to normal convent life.  The nun was made a saint by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839, more than 100 years after her death.  Veronica was born Orsola Giuliani, the youngest of seven sisters. By the time she was three years old she was demonstrating compassion for the poor, often giving away her own food and clothes.  When her father decided she was old enough to marry, she pleaded with him to be allowed to choose a different way of life and, at the age of 17, in 1677 she was received into the monastery of the Capuchin Poor Clares in Città di Castello in Umbria.  She took the name of Veronica and lived as a sister in the convent for the next 50 years.  Sister Veronica was made a novice mistress at the age of 34.  Read more…

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26 December

Renato Guttuso - artist and illustrator

Creator of works representing the victims of Fascist repression

The painter Renato Guttuso, whose illustrations for Elizabeth David’s classic cookery book, Italian Food, gave him international fame, was born on this day in 1912 in Bagheria near Palermo in Sicily.  A fierce anti-Fascist, he painted powerful pictures, which he said represented the many people who, because of their ideas, endured outrage, imprisonment and torment.  Guttuso’s father, Gioacchino, was a land surveyor who painted water colours and Renato started painting as a child, signing and dating his art works from the age of 13. He was educated in Palermo and then went on to Palermo University.  He painted nature scenes featuring flowers, lemon trees and Saracen olive trees, which brought him recognition as a talented Sicilian painter when they were exhibited. He opened a studio with another painter and two sculptors in Palermo.  Guttuso became a member of an artistic movement that stood for free and open attitudes and was opposed to Fascism during the years of the Spanish Civil War.  He moved to Milan, where his morals and political commitment became even more visible in his paintings.  Read more…

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Beppe Severgnini - journalist and author

Books observing national mores have been best sellers

The author and journalist Giuseppe Severgnini was born on this day in 1956 in Crema in northern Italy.  Better known as Beppe Severgnini, he is a respected commentator on politics and social affairs, about which he has written for some of the most influential journals and newspapers in Italy and the wider world.  Severgnini is equally well known for his humorous writing, in particular his gently satirical observations of the English and the Americans as well as Italians, about whom he has written many books.  His biggest selling titles include An Italian in America, which has also been published as Hello America. He has also enjoyed success with La Bella Figura: An Insider's Guide to the Italian Mind, Mamma Mia! Berlusconi's Italy Explained for Posterity and Friends Abroad, and An Italian in Britain.  Severgnini is currently a columnist for Corriere della Sera in Italy and the International New York Times in the United States.  A former correspondent for the British journal The Economist, he writes in both Italian and English, having spent a number of years living in London, Washington and New York.  The son of a notary in Crema, Severgnini graduated in law at the University of Pavia.  Read more…

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Piergiorgio Welby - euthanasia campaigner

Muscular dystrophy sufferer who fought for right to die

The poet, painter and muscular dystrophy sufferer Piergiorgio Welby, whose wish to be given help to die after nine years being kept alive artificially sparked a huge legal, political and religious debate, was born on this day in 1945 in Rome.  Welby, the son of an AS Roma footballer with Scottish ancestry, developed MS when he was 17 years old.  Throughout the 1960s and 70s his lifestyle helped keep the disease under control. He lived as an artist and writer, following the hippie movement but also hunting and fishing. His use of recreational drugs dulled the symptoms of the disease and he was able to travel extensively in Europe.  During this period he met his future wife, Wilhelmine - later known as Mina - who was from Bolzano province in Trentino-Alto Adige but encountered Welby in Rome.  Welby decided in the 1980s to wean himself off drugs by embarking on methadone therapy, but the disease then progressed rapidly and he was soon paralysed from the waist down.  In 1997, he suffered severe respiratory problems and from that point onwards was dependent on a breathing tube.  Read more…

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Santo Stefano - Boxing Day

Feast of Santo Stefano in Italy

Italians enjoy another day relaxing with their families on the Feast of Santo Stefano, which is a public holiday in Italy.  It is traditional to visit loved ones and friends that you didn't see the day before to take presents and gifts of food.  Lunch will be less formal but still consist of several courses and each area of Italy will have its own specialities.  The day remembers Santo Stefano, traditionally thought of as the first Christian martyr, who lived during the first century  BC.  He aroused enmity with his Christian teachings in Jerusalem. Accused of blasphemy, he was tried and sentenced to death. Eventually he was stoned to death by an angry crowd.  The day is celebrated in different ways across Italy.  In some towns there are processions, in others there are re-enactments of the nativity. It is also a tradition in some areas to visit nativity scenes in local churches and leave donations.  The Sicilian town of Ragusa stages an annual presepe vivente (live nativity scene) on the feast of Santo Stefano, which attracts many visitors. Ragusa is one of the island's most picturesque towns, with spectacular views.  It has become a location regularly used for Sicilian detective drama Il Commissario Montalbano (Inspector Montalbano).  Read more…

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Natale – Christmas Day

Celebrating Christmas the Italian way

A Christmas tree in Piazza Vecchia in the historic 
northern Italian city of Bergamo

Christmas Day in Italy is the culmination of a celebration that - officially, at least - begins on 8 December with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, at which point towns light up their Christmas illuminations and trees are erected in public squares.

It also sees nativity scenes - called presepi in Italian - unveiled in many towns and cities, a tradition that goes back to 1223, when St Francis of Assisi, inspired by being shown the birthplace of Jesus on a trip to the Holy Land, ordered the creation of a scene representing the birth as a focal point for worship. A local cave was the setting, with straw spread on the floor, a crib placed in the corner and a live donkey, ox and a dozen peasants representing the principles in the scene. 

Although living participants have been replaced by model figures for the most part, the stable scene remains at the heart of the idea.  Specialist model-makers have made an industry out of creating presepi figurines, with Naples a notable centre.

Just as in many other countries, Christmas itself is celebrated around food.

Large nativity scenes go on display in town
and city centres across Italy

La Vigilia di Natale - Christmas Eve - is marked by Cenone di Natale, a Christmas supper usually comprising several fish courses followed by a dessert of panettone, the Italian Christmas bread, or perhaps cannoli, which are pastries consisting of a tube of fried dough stuffed with a sweet, creamy made from ricotta cheese.  After the meal, many adults walk to the local church to welcome in Christmas at midnight mass. 

Likewise, Christmas Day itself is one of feasting, based around a lunchtime meal. While the children open their presents, the adults savour a glass of good Prosecco or uncork a special vintage bottle while they prepare the festive table.

Friends and relatives who drop in with presents or to exchange good wishes will be offered a glass of wine and nuts, biscuits or torrone (a type of nougat from Cremona).

Antipasti is likely to include Parma ham or bresaola, served with preserved mushrooms, olives or pickled vegetables.

Stuffed pasta is usually served as a first course, either in the shape of ravioli or tortellini, which are said to have been offered as Christmas gifts to priests and monks during the 12th century. In the south a baked pasta dish is often served.

For the main course, turkey or capon is likely to be served in the north of Italy, with potatoes and vegetables as side dishes. Veal, beef and chicken might be served in the south.

The traditional end to the meal is almost always panettone, served warm accompanied by a glass of sparkling wine or Prosecco. 

Salute e Buon Natale from Italy On This Day!

Torrone, the nougat made in Cremona

Travel tip:

Cremona in Lombardia is famous for producing confectionery. Negozio Sperlari in Via Solferino specialises in the city’s famous torrone (nougat). The concoction of almonds, honey and egg whites was created in the city to mark the marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza in 1441, when Cremona was given to the bride as part of her dowry.

Panettone is believed to have
originated in Milan

Travel tip:

Milan, the main city in Lombardia, is believed to be where panettone originated.  It is said to have been concoted by a Milanese baker, Antonio (Toni), to impress his girlfriend at Christmas time in the 15th century. The result was so successful that ‘Pane de Toni’ has become a regular feature of the Christmas season all over Italy and now even abroad.

On this day:

800: Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor

1874: The birth of soprano Lina Cavalieri

1988: The birth of singer-songwriter Marco Mengoni

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