12 January

Revolution in Sicily

January revolt meant the beginning of the end for the Bourbons

The Sicilian uprising on this day in 1848 was to be the first of several revolutions in Italy and Europe that year.  The revolt against the Bourbon government of Ferdinand II in Sicily started in Palermo and led to Sicily becoming an independent state for 16 months.  It was the third revolution to take place on the island against Bourbon rule and signalled the end for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  Naples and Sicily had been formally reunited to become the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1815. Back in medieval times they had both been part of a single Kingdom of Sicily.  The 1848 revolt was organised in Palermo and deliberately timed to coincide with King Ferdinand’s birthday.  News of the revolt spread and peasants from the countryside arrived to join the fray and express their frustration about the hardships they were enduring.  Sicilian nobles revived the liberal constitution based on the Westminster system of parliamentary government, which had been drawn up for the island in 1812.  The Bourbon army took back full control of Sicily by force in May 1849 but the revolt proved to be only a curtain raiser for the events to come in 1860.  Read more…

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Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies

Despotic ruler presided over chaos in southern Italy

The Bourbon prince who would become the first monarch of a revived Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was born in Naples on this day in 1751.  Ferdinando, third son of King Carlos (Charles) III of Spain, was handed the separate thrones of Naples and Sicily when he was only eight years old after his father’s accession to the Spanish throne required him to abdicate his titles in Spanish-ruled southern Italy.  In a 65-year reign, he would preside over one of the most turbulent periods in the history of a region that was never far from upheaval, which would see Spanish rule repeatedly challenged by France before eventually being handed to Austria.  Too young, obviously, to take charge in his own right when his reign began officially in 1759, he continued to enjoy his privileged upbringing, alternating between the palaces his father had built at Caserta, Portici and Capodimonte.  Government was placed in the hands of Bernardo Tanucci, a Tuscan statesman from Stia, near Arezzo, in whom King Charles had complete trust.  Tanucci fully embraced the enlightened ideas that were gaining popularity with the educated classes across Europe.  Read more…

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John Singer Sargent - painter

Celebrated portraitist had lifelong love for Italy

The painter John Singer Sargent, who was hailed as the leading portraitist of his era but was also a brilliant painter of landscapes, was born on this day in 1856 in Florence.  Although he became an American citizen at the first opportunity, both his parents being American, he spent his early years in Italy and would regularly return to the country throughout his life.  At his commercial peak during the Edwardian age, his studio in London attracted wealthy clients not only from England but from the rest of Europe and even from the other side of the Atlantic, asking him to grant them immortality on canvas.  His full length portraits, which epitomised the elegance and opulence of high society at the end of the 19th century, would cost the subject up to $5,000 - the equivalent of around $140,000 (€122,000; £109,000) today.  Sargent was born in Italy on account of a cholera pandemic, the second to hit Europe that century, which caused a high number of fatalities in London in particular. His parents, who were regular visitors to Italy, were in Florence and decided it would be prudent to stay.  Although his parents had a home in Paris, Italy, with its wealth of classical attractions, was a favourite destination.  Read more…

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Charles Emmanuel I – Duke of Savoy

Rash ruler who led catastrophic attack on Geneva 

Charles Emmanuel I, who developed a reputation for being hot-headed, was born on this day in 1562 in the Castle of Rivoli in Piedmont.  Renowned for his rashness and military aggression in trying to acquire territory, Charles Emmanuel has gone down in history for launching a disastrous attack on Geneva in Switzerland.  In 1602 he led his troops to the city during the night and surrounded the walls. At two o’clock in the morning the Savoy soldiers were ordered to dismount and climb the city walls in full armour as a shock tactic.  However the alarm was raised by a night watchman and Geneva’s army was ready to meet the invaders.  Many of the Savoy soldiers were killed and others were captured and later executed.  The heavy helmets worn by the Savoy troops featured visors with the design of a human face on them. They were afterwards called Savoyard helmets and the Swiss army kept some of them as trophies. Geneva’s successful defence of the city walls is still celebrated during the annual festival of L’Escalade, in which confectionery shops sell a cauldron known as a marmite made from chocolate.  Read more…

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11 January

Galeazzo Ciano - ill-fated Fascist politician

The son-in-law Mussolini had shot as a traitor

Galeazzo Ciano, part of the Fascist Grand Council that voted for Benito Mussolini to be thrown out of office as Italy faced crushing defeat in the Second World War, was killed by a firing squad in Verona on this day in 1944 after being found guilty of treason.  The 40-year-old former Foreign Minister in Mussolini's government was also his son-in-law, having been married to Edda Mussolini since he was 27.  Yet even his position in the family did not see him spared by the ousted dictator, who had been arrested on the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III but, after being freed by the Nazis, later exacted revenge against those he felt had betrayed him.  Ciano, a founding member of the Italy's National Fascist Party whose marriage to the Duce's daughter certainly helped him advance his career, had largely been supportive of Mussolini and was elevated to Foreign Minister in part because of his role in the military victory over Ethiopia, in which he was a bomber squadron commander. Yet he expressed doubts from the start over Italy's readiness to take part in a major conflict. In his diaries, which Edda was later to use without success as a bargaining tool as she tried to save her husband's life, Ciano recalled that he had tried to persuade Mussolini against committing to an alliance with Hitler.  Read more…

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The 1693 Sicily earthquake

Devastation that led to architectural rebirth

A huge earthquake destroyed or severely damaged scores of towns and cities in Sicily on this day in 1693, killing more than 60,000 people.  Records say the tremor struck at around 9pm local time and lasted about four minutes.  It was mainly confined to the southeast corner of the island, with damage also reported in Calabria on the Italian mainland and even on Malta, 190km (118 miles) away.  Although it is an estimate rather than a verifiable figure, the earthquake has been given a recorded magnitude of 7.4, which makes it the most powerful in Italian history, although in terms of casualties it was eclipsed by the earthquake that destroyed much of Messina and Reggio Calabria in 1908, with perhaps up to 200,000 killed.  At least 70 towns and cities - including Catania, Syracuse (Siracusa), Noto and Acireale - were either very badly damaged or destroyed, with an area of 5,600 sq km (2,200 sq mi) affected.  The earthquake is indirectly responsible for the wonderful Baroque architecture that makes the cities of southeast Sicily so attractive, commissioned by the island’s wealthy Spanish aristocracy.  Read more…

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The Giannini sextuplets

The multiple birth that made history

History was made on this day in 1980 when a schoolteacher from the Casentino valley in Tuscany gave birth to sextuplets in a hospital in Florence.  The babies – four boys and two girls – delivered between 4.17am and 4.22am at the Careggi Hospital, on the northern outskirts of the Tuscan capital, grew to become the first sextuplets in Europe to survive beyond infancy and only the second set in the world.  Their arrival turned the Gianninis - mum Rosanna and dad Franco - into instant celebrities and their house in Soci, a village in the municipality of Bibbiena, 60km (37 miles) east of Florence, was besieged by the world’s media, seeking pictures and interviews.  In Italy, the event was celebrated with particular enthusiasm, heralded as the good news the nation craved after a particularly difficult year marked by a series of catastrophes, including the Ustica plane crash, the bombing of Bologna railway station and the Irpinia earthquake.  The family eventually signed an exclusive deal with the best-selling Italian magazine Gente for access rights.  Photographs of the children appeared around the time of their birthday for a number of years.  Read more…

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Matteo Renzi – politician

Italy's youngest Prime Minister was inspired by the scout movement

Matteo Renzi, the former Prime Minister of Italy, was born on this day in 1975 in Florence.  When he became Prime Minister in February 2014, he was the youngest person to hold the office since Italian unification in 1861. His father, Tiziano Renzi was a Christian Democrat local councillor in Rignano sull’Arno, where Renzi was brought up as part of an observant Catholic family.  He went to school in Florence and was a scout in the association of Catholic Guides and Scouts of Italy.  On Renzi’s personal website he carries a quote from Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement: “Lasciare il mondo un po’ migliore di come lo abbiamo trovato - Leave the world a bit better than how you found it.”  In government, Renzi reformed labour and employment laws to boost economic growth and abolished some small taxes.  Renzi became interested in politics while still at school. He graduated from the University of Florence with a degree in Law and at the age of 21 joined the Italian People’s Party. After being elected as President of Florence Province in 2004, he joined the Democratic Party and was elected as Mayor of Florence in 2009.  Read more…

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10 January

NEW - Giorgio Mondadori - publisher

Helped launch La Repubblica after family split

The publisher Giorgio Mondadori, who was president of the famous publishing house set up by his father, Arnoldo Mondadori, until an acrimonious split in 1976, died on his 92nd birthday on this day in 2009 in a clinic in Tuscany.  Mondadori commissioned the Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, to build the company’s eye-catching headquarters in Segrate, near Milan, in 1975, which remains his legacy to the family business.  At around the same time that he left the company, for whom he had worked for 38 years, he set up a joint venture with another publishing group, L’Espresso, that resulted in the launch of La Repubblica, a new, centre-left national newspaper that was to grow into one of the most popular daily newspapers in Italy, with a circulation topped only by the long-established Corriere della Sera.  Born in Ostiglia, a small town in the province of Mantua, Lombardy, in 1917, Giorgio was the second of four children born to Arnoldo Mondadori and Andreina Monicelli, some 10 years after his father founded Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.  After completing his education, Giorgio began working for the company in 1938 at the age of 21.  Read more…

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Flaminio Bertoni - sculptor and car designer

Visionary ideas turned Citroën into style icon

The sculptor and automobile designer Flaminio Bertoni, the creative genius behind the groundbreaking Citroën cars of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, was born on this day in 1903 in what is now the Masnago district of Varese.  Bertoni, who lived in or near Paris from 1931 until his death in 1964, designed bodies for the stylish Traction Avant luxury executive car and the enduring workhorse 'Deux Chevaux' - the 2CV - which became almost a symbol of France.  Yes both of these were eclipsed, some would say, by the brilliance of Bertoni's aerodynamic, futuristic Citroën DS - also known as 'the Goddess' - which was named the most beautiful car of all time by the magazine Classic and Sports Car and was described by the Chicago Institute of Design soon after its launch as among the '100 most beautiful things in the world'.  Bertoni was fêted in France, where he was made a Knight of Arts and Letters by the government of Charles de Gaulle in 1961 but it was not until almost 40 years after his death that his achievements were given recognition in his home country, where his son, Leonardo, set up a museum in Varese to celebrate his work.  Read more…

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Caesar crosses the Rubicon

Act of defiance that started a civil war and coined a phrase

The Roman general Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon river in northern Italy in an act of military defiance that would plunge the Roman Republic into civil war on this day in 49BC.  The course of the Rubicon, which can still be found on maps of Italy today, entering the Adriatic between Ravenna and Rimini in northeast Italy, represented the border between the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul, over which Caesar had command, and what was by then known as Italia, the area of the peninsula south of the Alps directly governed by Rome.  One of the most powerful politicians in the Roman Republic after forming an alliance with Pompey and Crassus known as the First Triumvirate, Caesar had spent much of the previous decade expanding his territory through the Gallic Wars, taking control of much of modern-day France and northern Italy and extending the borders of the Republic as far as the Rhine.  He was the first Roman general to invade Britain.  The troops under his command - the 13th Legion - numbered more than 20,000 men who had seen Caesar’s military skills develop and were fiercely loyal.  Read more...

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Pina Menichelli – silent movie star

Screen diva who enjoyed worldwide fame

The actress Pina Menichelli, who became one of the most celebrated female stars of the silent movie era, was born on this day in 1890 in Castroreale, a village in northeast Sicily.  Menichelli’s career was brief – she retired at the age of just 34 – but in her last eight or nine years on screen she enjoyed such popularity that her films played to packed houses and she commanded a salary that was the equivalent of millions of euros in today’s money.  Without words, actors had to use facial expressions and body movements to create character in the parts they were playing and Menichelli, a naturally beautiful woman, exploited her elegance and sensuality to the full, at times pushing the limits of what was acceptable on screen.  In fact, one of her films, La Moglie di Claudio (Claudio’s Wife) was banned by the censors for fear it would offend sensitivities, particularly those of the Catholic Church.  Generally cast in the role of femme fatale, Menichelli thus became something of a sex symbol in the years after the First World War and there was considerable shock when she announced abruptly in 1924 that she was quitting the film industry for good.  Read more…

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Maurizio Sarri - football manager

Former coach of Juventus and Chelsea

The football coach Maurizio Sarri  was born on this day in 1959 in Naples.  Sarri, who has an unusual background for a professional football coach in that he spent more than 20 years in banking before devoting himself to the game full-time, took over as Chelsea manager in the summer of 2017, succeeding another Italian, Antonio Conte.  Previously, he had spent three seasons as head coach at SSC Napoli, twice finishing second and once third in Serie A.  He never played professionally, yet he has now held coaching positions at 20 different clubs.  Sarri was born in the Bagnoli district of Naples, where his father, Amerigo, a former professional cyclist, worked in the sprawling but now derelict Italsider steel plant.  It was not long, however, before the family moved away, however, first to Castro, a village on the shore of Lago d’Iseo, near Bergamo, and then to Figline Valdarno, in Tuscany, his father’s birthplace. It was there that Sarri grew up and played football for the local amateur team. A centre half, he had trials with Torino and Fiorentina but was deemed not quite good enough for the professional game.  Read more…

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San Pietro Orseolo – Doge of Venice and monk

Rich and powerful Doge made a life-changing decision

Pietro Orseolo, a former Venetian Doge who joined the Benedictine order, died on this day in 987.  He was canonised by Pope Clement XII in 1731 and his feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death on 10 January each year.  Pietro Orseolo became Doge of Venice in 976 but after just two years in office he left his palace in the middle of the night to go to France to become a monk.  Orseolo was originally from a powerful family in Udine and at the age of 20 became commander of the Venetian fleet waging successful campaigns against pirate ships.  He was elected Doge after the previous ruler of Venice had been killed in a revolt. Orseolo restored order to the city, built much needed hospitals and cared for widows and orphans.  He started to rebuild the Doge’s palace and St Mark’s Basilica using his own money. But he suddenly left Venice to travel to southern France with three other Venetians to join a Benedictine abbey. It is believed he told no one about his decision in advance, not even his wife and family.  After some years living as a monk performing menial tasks at the abbey, Orseolo went to live in the surrounding forest as a hermit. Read more…

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Giorgio Mondadori - publisher

Helped launch La Repubblica after family split

Giorgio Mondadori followed his
father into publishing

The publisher Giorgio Mondadori, who was president of the famous publishing house set up by his father, Arnoldo Mondadori, until an acrimonious split in 1976, died on his 92nd birthday on this day in 2009 in a clinic in Tuscany.

Mondadori commissioned the Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, to build the company’s eye-catching headquarters in Segrate, near Milan, in 1975, which remains his legacy to the family business.

At around the same time that he left the company, for whom he had worked for 38 years, he set up a joint venture with another publishing group, L’Espresso, that resulted in the launch of La Repubblica, a new, centre-left national newspaper that was to grow into one of the most popular daily newspapers in Italy, with a circulation topped only by the long-established Corriere della Sera.

Born in Ostiglia, a small town in the province of Mantua, Lombardy, in 1917, Giorgio was the second of four children born to Arnoldo Mondadori and Andreina Monicelli, some 10 years after his father founded Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.

After completing his education, Giorgio began working for the company in 1938 at the age of 21.

After the Second World War, his position in the company alongside his older brother, Alberto, became increasingly important. Indeed, after Arnoldo had decided to relocate the family to Switzerland, Giorgio and Alberto were the first to return to Milan, where the company had been based before relocating to Verona to escape the bombing of the city.

Giorgio Mondadori (right) with his father, Arnoldo
(left), flanking former PM Aldo Moro

Arnoldo sent Giorgio to the United States to study the latest industrial and commercial innovations with the aim of modernising the company, which had already become a leading publisher of both books and magazines but which needed to keep ahead of the competition as Italy’s economic recovery began to gather pace.

Nonetheless, Arnoldo remained in charge until well into his 70s, and it was not until 1968, when his father stepped back into the role of honorary president, Giorgio became president and chairman.

By this time, Giorgio was already a high-profile figure both in publishing and the sporting world, in which he was president of Verona’s football club, AC Verona, which under his charge won promotion to Serie A for the first time for the 1957-58 season.

As president of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Giorgio was instrumental in the decision to move the company’s headquarters away from Via Bianca di Savoia in central Milan because of constraints on necessary expansion plans.

After commissioning a number of architects to submit plans without finding one that matched their expectations, Giorgio and Alberto looked farther afield and it was on a visit to Brasilia, the federal capital of Brazil, that Giorgio came across the work of Oscar Niemeyer, who had designed many important buildings in the city.

La Repubblica is now one of
Italy's most popular newspapers

He was particularly taken with the design of the Foreign Ministry, also known as the Palace of the Arches, and commissioned Niemeyer to build something along similar lines for Mondadori. Giorgio acquired an area of land in Segrate, which he subsequently sold to the insurance company, Assicurazioni Generali, who paid for the construction of the building and leased it back to Mondadori. The project, incorporating a lake, began in 1971 and was completed in 1975.

It was in 1975 that Giorgio Mondarori hosted a meeting at his villa in  Sommacampagna, a town about 15km (9 miles) west of Verona, with the journalist Eugenio Scalfari and publisher Carlo Carraciolo, the aristocratic founder of Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso, which led to the foundation of La Repubblica, which at the start broke with tradition by including no business or sports sections, devoting itself solely to news.  Mondadori was appointed the newspaper’s first president.

However, in 1976, the year of La Repubblica’s newsstand debut, Mondadori found himself ousted from Arnoldo Mondadori Editore by his sisters, Cristina and Mimma, whose decision to merge their shareholdings left Giorgio with only a minority share. The presidency passed instead to Mario Formenton, Christina’s husband.

A bitter Giorgio soon left the company altogether, selling his 25 per cent holding, and teamed up with Caraciolo to form a new company, Giorgio Mondadori e Associati.

His new company flourished, specialising in publishing in the areas of travel and other leisure pursuits, building up a portfolio that included the magazines Airone, Bell'Italia, Bell'Europa, In Viaggio, Gardenia and Arte e Antiquariato.  He sold the company to entrepreneur and publisher Urbano Cairo in 1999, at which point he retired. 

He died at a private clinic in Figline Valdarno, Tuscany, a town about 35km (22 miles) southeast of Florence in the direction of Arezzo. He left a wife, Nara Panconesi, and children Claudia, Nicolò and Paolo. His ashes are buried in the Mondadori family tomb, at the Monumental Cemetery in Milan.

Travel tip:

The Palazzina Mondadori in Ostiglia now
houses Arnoldo Mondadori's book collection

Ostiglia, where Giorgio Mondadori was born, is a town rich in history. Situated about 160 km (99 miles) southeast of Milan and about 30 km (19 miles) southeast of Mantua, in Roman times, when it was called Hostilia, its location on the Via Claudia Augusta Padana saw it become a trade hub linking Emilia with northern Europe.  In the Middle Ages it was a stronghold of Verona before being acquired in turn by the Scaliger, Visconti and Gonzaga families. The Palazzina Mondadori, an elegant Art Nouveau-style building that was the first Arnoldo printing house, hosts Arnoldo Mondadori’s private library consisting of about 1,000 books, many signed by the authors.

Piazza Marsilio Ficino, the beautiful square
at the heart of Figline Valdarno

Travel tip:

Figline Valdarno, where Mondadori died, is famous for its literary and artistic heritage. The birthplace of renowned artists and writers such as Masaccio, Poggio Bracciolini and Benedetto Varchi, the town was mentioned by Dante in Paradise, the third part of his Divine Comedy.  At the centre of Figline Valdarno is the beautiful Piazza Marsilio Ficino, at one end of which is the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria, which contains works of art by Giovanni Andrea de Magistris and Andrea della Robbia among others.

Also on this day:

49BC: Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon river, sparking civil war

987: The death of Pietro Orseolo, Doge of Venice

1890: The birth of Pina Menichelli, silent movie star

1903: The birth of sculptor and car designer Flaminio Bertoni

1959: The birth of football coach Maurizio Sarri

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