13 March

Ligabue - record-breaking rock star

Musician and writer once dubbed 'Italy's Springsteen'

Rock musician Luciano Ligabue - known simply as Ligabue - was born on this day in 1960. Once dubbed ‘Italy’s Springsteen’, he has been hugely successful in his own country but has never managed to achieve true international recognition. Yet such is his popularity in Italy that a Ligabue concert held on a stage erected on Reggio Emilia's airfield in 2005 attracted an audience of 180,000, a European record for a paid-for event headlined by a single artist. He has played before audiences of more than 110,000 at the Giuseppe Meazza football stadium in Milan -- the home of Internazionale and AC Milan -- and has twice repeated the so-called Campovolo event in Reggio Emilia. In September 2015, a concert to celebrate Ligabue's 25 years in the music business sold 150,000 tickets, setting another record as the most lucrative single music concert in Italian history, with proceeds of around €7 million.  Although he grew up with a love of music, it was some years before Ligabue was able to make a living from his passion. As a young man, he flitted from one job to another.  Read more…

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Flavia Cacace - dancer

Star of Strictly Come Dancing famous for Argentine Tango

The dancer Flavia Cacace, who found fame through the British hit television show, Strictly Come Dancing, was born on this day in 1980 in Naples.  She and professional partner Vincent Simone, who is from Puglia, performed on the show for seven seasons from 2006 to 2012.  The show, which has been mimicked in more than 50 countries across the world, including Italy and the United States, pairs celebrities with professional dancers, combining Latin and ballroom dances in a competition lasting several months.  Cacace, who was runner-up in 2007 with British actor Matt d'Angelo, left the show as champion in 2012 after she and the British Olympic gymnast Louis Smith won the final, which was watched by an estimated 13.35 million viewers.  The youngest of six children, Cacace moved to England shortly before her fifth birthday when her father, Roberto, a chef, decided to look for work opportunities in London.  Her family are from the Vomero district of Naples, a smart neighbourhood that occupies an elevated position on a hill overlooking the city, offering spectacular views.   Read more…

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Corrado Gaipa – actor

From The Godfather to voice of Alec Guinness

The respected character actor and voice-dubber Corrado Gaipa was born on this day in 1925 in Palermo.  His versatility as a voice actor brought him considerable work at a time when Italian cinema audiences much preferred to watch dubbed versions of mainstream English-language films rather than hear the original soundtrack with subtitles.  Gaipa’s voice replaced that of Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy.  He was also heard dubbing Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Burt Lancaster in The Leopard, Telly Savalas in The Dirty Dozen and Lee J Cobb in The Exorcist.  He was the voice of a number of characters in animation films also, including Bagheera in Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book and Scat-Cat in The Aristocats.  As an actor in his own right, he worked with many leading directors in Italian cinema, including Francesco Rosi and Vittorio Gassman. His most famous role was probably that of Don Tommasino in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.  In Mario Puzo’s story, Don Tommasino was an old friend in Sicily of the movie’s main character, Vito Corleone.  Read more…

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Bruno Conti - World Cup winner

Roma star was key figure for Azzurri in 1982 victory

The former footballer - now coach - Bruno Conti, who played a starring role as Italy won the World Cup in Spain in 1982, was born on this day in 1955 in Nettuno, a seaside resort south of Rome.  A winger with extravagant skills, Conti became an increasingly influential figure as the Azzurri campaign in 1982 gathered momentum after a slow start.  He scored Italy’s goal against Peru in the first group stage, a fine shot into the top right-hand corner from 20 yards (18m), although as a team Italy were not at their best and failed to win any of their opening three matches, scraping into the second group phase only by virtue of having scored more goals than Cameroon, who finished with the same number of points.  But the second phase saw a transformation as Italy defied the odds to beat the holders Argentina and the multi-talented Brazil team of Socrates, Zico and Falcao who had started the tournament as hot favourites.  Although the striker Paolo Rossi ultimately took the headlines with his hat-trick against Brazil, Conti played superbly in both matches, his runs and turns posing problems repeatedly for the opposition defence.  Read more…

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12 March

Gianni Agnelli - business giant

Head of Fiat more powerful than politicians

The businessman Gianni Agnelli, who controlled the Italian car giant Fiat for 40 years until his death in 2003, was born on this day in 1921 in Turin.  Under his guidance, Fiat - Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino, founded by his grandfather, Giovanni Agnelli, in 1899 - became so huge that at one time in the 1990s, literally every other car on Italy's roads was produced in one of their factories.  As its peak, Fiat made up 4.4 per cent of the Italian economy and employed 3.1 percent of its industrial workforce.  Although cars remained Fiat's principal focus, the company diversified with such success, across virtually all modes of transport from tractors to Ferraris and buses to aero engines, and also into newspapers and publishing, insurance companies, food manufacture, engineering and construction, that there was a time when Agnelli controlled more than a quarter of the companies on the Milan stock exchange.  His personal fortune was estimated at between $2 billion and $5 billion, which made him the richest man in Italy and one of the richest in Europe.  It was hardly any surprise, then, that he became one of the most influential figures in Italy.  Read more…

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Gaspare Campari - drinks maker

Bar owner who created classic red aperitif

Gaspare Campari, whose desire to mix distinctive and unique drinks for the customers of his bar in Milan resulted in the creation of the iconic Campari aperitif, was born on this day in 1828 in Cassolnovo, a small town approximately 30km (19 miles) southwest of the northern city.  He founded the company, subsequently developed by his sons, Davide and Guido, that would grow to such an extent that, as Gruppo Campari, it is now the sixth largest producer of wines, spirits and soft drinks in the world with a turnover of more than €1.8 billion.  Gaspare was the 10th child born into a farming family in the province of Pavia, where Cassolnovo is found, but he had no ambition to work on the land.  After working in a local bar, at the age of 14 he went to Turin, then the prosperous capital of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.  He obtained an apprenticeship to Giacomo Bass, the Swiss proprietor of a pastry and liqueur shop on Piazza Castello.  He is also said to have worked at the historic Ristorante Del Cambio, on Piazza Carignano, as a waiter and dishwasher.  In 1850, by then in his early 20s and armed with the knowledge he had acquired in about eight years in Turin, he moved to Novara.  Read more…

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Gabriele D’Annunzio – writer and patriot

Military hero influenced Mussolini with his distinctive style

Poet, playwright and political leader Gabriele D’Annunzio was born on this day in 1863 in Pescara in Abruzzo.  He is considered to be the leading writer in Italy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as being a military hero and a political activist. Some of his ideas and actions were believed to have influenced Italian Fascism and the style of the dictator, Benito Mussolini.  D’Annunzio was the son of a wealthy landowner and went to university in Rome. His first poetry was published when he was just 16 and the novels that made him famous came out when he was in his twenties.  At the age of 30 he began a long liaison with the actress Eleonora Duse and started writing plays for her. But his writing failed to pay for his extravagant lifestyle and he had to flee to France in 1910 because of his debts.  After Italy entered the First World War, D’Annunzio returned and plunged into the fighting, losing an eye during combat while serving with the air force. He became famous for his bold, individual actions, such as his daring flight over Vienna to drop thousands of propaganda leaflets and his surprise attack on the Austrian fleet with power boats when they were moored at Buccari Bay in what is now Croatia.  Read more…

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Pietro Andrea Mattioli – doctor

The first botanist to describe the tomato

Doctor and naturalist Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli was born on this day in 1501 in Siena.  As the author of an illustrated work on botany, Mattioli provided the first documented example of an early variety of tomato that was being grown and eaten in Europe.  He is also believed to have described the first case of cat allergy, when one of his patients was so sensitive to cats that if he went into a room where there was a cat he would react with agitation, sweating and pallor.  Mattioli received his medical degree at the University of Padua in 1523 and practised his profession in Siena, Rome, Trento and Gorizia.  He became the personal physician to Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, in Prague and to Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, in Vienna.  While working for the imperial court it is believed he tested the effects of poisonous plants on prisoners, which was a common practice at the time.  Mattioli’s interest in botany led him to describe 100 new plants and document the medical botany of his time in his Discorsi (Commentaries) on the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, a Greek physician and botanist.  Read more…

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11 March

NEW - Etna’s biggest eruption

Sicily volcano spewed lava for four months

The largest eruption of the Mount Etna volcano in recorded history began on this day in 1669.  After several days of seismic activity in the area, a fissure measuring two metres wide and about 9km (5.6 miles) long opened up on the southeastern flank of the Sicilian mountain in the early hours of 11 March.  The lava that was spewed out of the enormous gash continued to flow for four months until the eruption was declared to be over on 16 July, a duration of 122 days.  Although stories of 20,000 deaths as a result of the eruption have been dismissed as myth, with no recorded evidence of any casualties, an estimated 15 towns and villages were destroyed as well as hundreds of buildings in the city of Catania, and some 27,000 people are thought to have been made homeless.  Mount Etna is situated in the northeastern vertex of the triangular island of Sicily. The most active volcano in Europe, it looms over the coastal city of Catania, which has a population within its metropolitan area of more than 1.1 million.  It has a long history of eruptions, going back at least to 396BC, when it reportedly thwarted an advance on Syracuse by the Carthanaginians.  Read more…

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Franco Basaglia - psychiatrist

Work led to closure of mental hospitals by law

The psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, whose work ultimately led to changes in the law that resulted in the closure and dismantling of Italy’s notorious psychiatric hospitals, was born on this day in 1924 in Venice.  As the founder of the Democratic Psychiatry movement and the main proponent of Law 180 - Italy's Mental Health Act of 1978 - which abolished mental hospitals, he is considered to be the most influential Italian psychiatrist of the 20th century.  His Law 180 - also known as Basaglia’s Law - had worldwide impact as other countries took up the Italian model and reformed their own way of dealing with the mentally ill.  Basaglia was born to a well-off family in the San Polo sestiere of Venice. He became an anti-Fascist in his teens and during the Second World War was an active member of the resistance in the city, to the extent that in December 1944, he was arrested and spent six months inside Venice’s grim Santa Maria Maggiore prison, being released only when the city was liberated in April of the following year.  He graduated in medicine and surgery from the University of Padua in 1949.  Read more…

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Torquato Tasso – poet

Troubled Renaissance writer came back to Sorrento

Torquato Tasso, who has come to be regarded as the greatest Italian poet of the Renaissance, was born on this day in 1544 in Sorrento.  Tasso’s most famous work was his epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) in which he gives an imaginative account of the battles between Christians and Muslims at the end of the first crusade during the siege of Jerusalem.  He was one of the most widely read poets in Europe and his work was later to prove inspirational for other writers who followed him, in particular the English poets Spencer and Byron.  The house where Tasso was born on 11 March, 1544 is in Sorrento’s historic centre, a few streets away from the main square, Piazza Tasso, in Via Vittorio Veneto.  It now forms part of the Imperial Hotel Tramontano, where the words for the beautiful song, Torna a Surriento, were written by Giambattista De Curtis while he was sitting on its terrace in 1902.  Tasso travelled about in Italy constantly during his 51 years but came back to Sorrento towards the end of his life to visit his beloved sister Cornelia, at a time when he was deeply troubled with mental health problems.  Read more…

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Rigoletto debuts at La Fenice

Verdi opera staged after battle with censors

Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto was performed for the first time on this day in 1851 in Venice.  It enjoyed a triumphant first night at the Teatro La Fenice opera house, where the reaction of the audience was particularly gratifying for the composer and his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, after a long-running battle to satisfy the censors.  Northern Italy was controlled by the Austrian Empire at the time and a strict censorship process applied to all public performances.  Verdi, who had accepted a commission to write an opera for La Fenice the previous year, knew he was likely to risk falling foul of the Austrians when he chose to base his work on Victor Hugo's play, Le roi s'amuse, which provoked such a scandal when it premiered in Paris in 1832 that it was cancelled after one night and had remained banned across France ever since.  Hugo's play depicted a king - namely Francis I of France - as a licentious womaniser who paid only lip service to what was considered moral behaviour as he constantly sought new conquests.  The French government had been horrified by the play's disrespectful portrayal of a monarch and the Austrians.  Read more…

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Sidney Sonnino – politician

Minister who pushed Italy to switch sides in World War One

Sidney Sonnino, the politician who was Italy’s influential Minister of Foreign Affairs during the First World War, was born on this day in 1847 in Pisa.  Sonnino led two short-lived governments in the early 1900s but it was as Foreign Affairs Minister in 1914 that he made his mark on Italian history, advising prime minister Antonio Salandra to side with the Entente powers – France, Great Britain and Russia – in the First World War, abandoning its Triple Alliance partnership with Germany and Austria-Hungary.  His motives were entirely driven by self-interest. A committed irredentist who saw the war as an opportunity to expand Italy's borders by reclaiming former territory, he reasoned that Austria-Hungary was unlikely to give back parts of Italy it had seized previously.  Instead, he sanctioned the secret Treaty of London with the Entente powers, which led Italy to declare war on Austria-Hungary in 2015.  In the event, although Sonnino backed the winning side, the promises made in the Treaty of London, namely that Italy would win territories in Tyrol, Dalmatia and Istria, were not fulfilled. Despite suffering major casualties, including 600,000 dead, Italy was granted only minor territorial gains.  Read more…

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Etna’s biggest eruption

Sicily volcano spewed lava for four months

Eruptions are a regular occurrence on the Mount Etna
volcano - this spectacular shot was taken in January this year

The largest eruption of the Mount Etna volcano in recorded history began on this day in 1669.

After several days of seismic activity in the area, a fissure measuring two metres wide and about 9km (5.6 miles) long opened up on the southeastern flank of the Sicilian mountain in the early hours of 11 March.

The lava that was spewed out of the enormous gash continued to flow for four months until the eruption was declared to be over on 16 July, a duration of 122 days.

Although stories of 20,000 deaths as a result of the eruption have been dismissed as myth, with no recorded evidence of any casualties, an estimated 15 towns and villages were destroyed as well as hundreds of buildings in the city of Catania, and some 27,000 people are thought to have been made homeless.

Mount Etna is situated in the northeastern vertex of the triangular island of Sicily. The most active volcano in Europe, it looms over the coastal city of Catania, which has a population within its metropolitan area of more than 1.1 million.  It has a long history of eruptions, first documented in 396BC, when it reportedly thwarted an advance on Syracuse by the Carthanaginians. 

Etna looms large over the port city of Catania,
with the outskirts just 15km from the summit

The 1669 eruption began after a period of intense seismic activity, with accounts of steam and gas rising from the summit to greater heights than normal. A number of earthquakes took place on the evening of 10 March before the first of several fissures in the mountainside appeared shortly after midnight. More opened up in the course of the next day.

The wide stream of molten lava made for a spectacular sight after nightfall but it destroyed every settlement in its path, while other buildings collapsed under the weight of boulders and ash.  Villages up to 5km (3.1 miles) away were covered by up to 12cm (4.7ins) of ash and ash deposits were recorded in Calabria on the Italian mainland, and even as far away as Greece.

Catania itself began to come under threat just over a week after the first rupture appeared on the southeastern flank but volcanologists believe the progress of the lava slowed when it reached a lake and consequently did not reach the walls of the city until around 16 April, having travelled about 15km (9.3 miles).

Some accounts have it that Catania was destroyed but it is thought now that, while many buildings near the boundary were severely damaged, most of the city was left intact.  Although the walls were eventually breached by the lava, it took a further 15 days for that to happen, and the barrier they presented was enough to divert the main flow towards the Ionian Sea.  

The 1669 eruption is captured in art by Giacinto
Platania in a fresco in Catania's duomo

The evacuation of the city was considered, but thanks to barriers being constructed within the walls from the remains of buildings that had been destroyed, the lava advanced only about another 200m.

Where Catania did suffer was from an influx of homeless refugees, up to 20,000 in number, swarming in from settlements razed to the ground by the lava, whose presence led to a breakdown of law and order and caused the artisan classes and the aristocracy to flee.

It is thought that the confusion over the extent of damage and casualties may be because Catania was hit by a further natural catastrophe only 24 years later when an earthquake and tsunami killed up to 60,000 Sicilians, including a third of the population of Catania.

In fact, only 77 deaths have been recorded in Etna’s entire known history, largely because its activity is generally well anticipated and its lava eruptions slow enough to allow residents to escape to safety.

Etna's eruptions attract thousands of visitors for
their spectacular nighttime views

Travel tip:

Mount Etna’s regular eruptions make for spectacular sights, particularly after night has fallen, while the mountain dominates the region even during its periods of relative quiet.  It has a base diameter of 40km (25 miles) and is more than 3,330m (10,825ft) tall, although its height varies depending on activity.  Despite its high level of activity, tourist excursions to see the craters and to appreciate the diversity of flora and fauna at the lower levels are very popular. Visitors must be mindful that temperatures at elevated levels are much colder than at sea level even in the height of summer. Indeed, during the winter months, a number of the mountainside villages become ski resorts.

Catania's beautiful Basilica
della Collegiata

Travel tip:

The city of Catania, which is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, is one of the ten biggest cities in Italy, and the seventh largest metropolitan area in the country, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. Twice destroyed by earthquakes, in 1169 and 1693, it can be compared in some respects with Naples, which sits in the shadow of Vesuvius, in that it lives with the constant threat of a natural catastrophe.  As such it has always been a city for living life to the full. In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks and many restaurants.  It is also notable for many fine examples of the Sicilian Baroque style of architecture, including the beautiful Basilica della Collegiata, with its six stone columns and the concave curve of its façade.

Catania hotels by Booking.com

Also on this day:

1544: The birth of poet Torquato Tasso

1847: The birth of politician Sidney Sonnino

1851: The opera Rigoletto premieres in Venice

1924: The birth of psychiatrist Franco Basaglia

(Picture credits: Etna looming over Catania by notiziecatania from Pixabay; Basilica della Collegiata by Luca Aless via Wikimedia Commons)

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