Panettone and pandoro - festive treats

Which can claim the oldest Christmas tradition?

Panettone is served as a Christmas treat by families
not just in Italy but all over the world

The festive treats tucked into by Italian families on Christmas Day almost always include a wedge or slice of panettone, the fluffy sweet bread with the familiar dome shape that sells in tens of millions at this time of year.

In little more than 100 years since it was first produced commercially on a large scale, panettone has gained such popularity that it has become readily available in food outlets on almost every continent.

It is rare to find a supermarket in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, or in most western European countries, which does not have panettone jostling for shelf space with indigenous Christmas specialities.

Nowadays, panettone is finding increasing competition from another Italian sweet bread frequently seen on Christmas tables, its tall star-shaped rival, pandoro.  

A recent Twitter poll conducted by the website thelocal.it found that panettone was still the preferred choice of about two thirds of participants, but pandoro’s popularity is almost certainly on the rise.

Bauli is one of the oldest brands of 
the classic panettone bread

But which of them has the more authentic historical claim to be Italy’s true Christmas cake?

One story in Italian folklore claims that panettone was served at a lavish, 12-course Christmas Eve banquet thrown in the late 15th century by Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, but only after the dessert made by the Duke’s head pastry chef, had accidentally been burned. 

A young kitchen assistant called Toni is said to have saved the day by adding raisins and orange peel to some dough left over from the original dessert to fashion an impromptu cake. The Duke and his guests are said to have enjoyed the cake so much they asked the pastry chef what it was called, to which he replied ‘Pane di Toni’ - Tony’s bread.

There is no way of knowing whether that story is authentic. The earliest actual record of a sweet bread resembling panettone is that which appeared in a register of expenses of the Borromeo college of Pavia in 1599.

The entry for December 23 of that year includes the costs for five pounds of butter, two pounds of raisins and three ounces of spices for the baker to make 13 loaves to be given to college students on Christmas Day.

Large scale manufacture of panettone began in Milan in the early part of the 20th century. Baker Angelo Motta was the first to set up a production facility for the bread, creating its characteristic dome shape by making the dough rise three times in a 20-hour period.

Pandoro is often sliced and dusted with
icing sugar for the Christmas table 

Pandoro is similarly thought to date back to the 15th century, when Venetian bakers are said to have dusted cone-shaped loaves with real gold for their wealthy clients, hence the name pan d’oro - bread of gold - although others believe the name derives from the golden colour obtained by adding egg to the dough.

The pandoro made today, though, originates in Verona and is thought to have evolved from a traditional Veronese Christmas cake called nadalin, invented in the 13th century to celebrate the first Christmas in the city under the rule of the Scala family. 

Nadalin was a flat cake with a crust of granulated sugar, marsala wine, almonds and pine nuts, but its star shape, said to represent the comet that guided the Magi to Bethlehem, is thought to have been the inspiration for the shape of pandoro.

Industrial-scale production of pandoro began in Verona 1894 in a factory begun by entrepreneur Domenico Melegatti.

Both panettone and pandoro are sold today as Christmas specialities. Pandoro generally comes with icing sugar to sprinkle over the cone before serving. A popular way to serve pandoro is to slice the bread horizontally and arrange the star-shaped slices so that they resemble the shape of a Christmas tree.

The Roman amphitheatre in Verona is one of 
the city'a many tourist attractions

Travel tip:

Verona, the traditional home of pandoro, is the third largest city in northeast  Italy, with a population across its whole urban area of more than 700,000. It has a wealth of tourist attractions, of which the Roman amphitheatre known the world over as L’Arena di Verona is just one. The city was also the setting for three plays by Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew - although it is unknown whether the English playwright ever actually set foot in the city.  Nonetheless, tourists flock to visit a 13th century house in Verona where Juliet is said to have lived, even though there is no evidence that Juliet and Romeo actually existed and the balcony said to have inspired Shakespeare’s imagination was not added until the early 20th century.

The beautiful Piazza Ducale in Vigevano, as
seen from the Castello Sforzesco

Travel tip:

The banquet thrown by Ludovico il Moro, who was a member of the Sforza family, quite likely took place at the Castello Sforzesco in Vigevano, a Lombard fortress developed by the Visconti family and rebuilt between 1492–94 for Ludovico, who transformed the fortification into a rich noble residence. Leonardo da Vinci was often his guest at Vigevano, as was the architect Donato Bramante, who designed the tower that watches over the beautiful rectangular Piazza Ducale, which was completed in 1493 as the forecourt to the castle.  The Peroni Brewery was founded by Giovanni Peroni in Vigevano in 1846.

Also on this day:

800: Charlemagne, King of the Franks and the Lombards, crowned Holy Roman Emperor

1874: The birth of soprano Lina Cavalieri

1988: The birth of singer-songwriter Marco Mengoni

Natale - Christmas Day

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24 December

Pier Giorgio Perotto - electronics engineer

Pioneer who designed world’s first personal computer

The engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, whose Programma 101 machine is seen as the first example of a desktop personal computer, was born on this day in 1930 in Turin.  Perotto invented the Programma 101 in the early 1960s while working for Olivetti, which more than half a century earlier had opened Italy’s first typewriter factory.  The Programma 101, which itself had the appearance of an office typewriter, was really an electronic calculator, but was programmable via information stored on a magnetic strip, which meant it could be instructed to perform a series of calculations in accordance with the needs of the user.  For example, the machine could be programmed to work out tax and other payroll deductions for every employee at a company with the operator needing only to enter the employee’s earnings.  Launched in 1964 and put into production the following year at a price considerably lower than any other computer on the market, the Programma 101 was a great success. In 1969, it was used by NASA in the planning of the Apollo 11 space mission, which saw the first humans set foot on the surface of the moon.  Read more…

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Francesco Cirio - canning pioneer

Market trader whose name became known worldwide

Francesco Cirio, who pioneered the technique of canning food products to preserve their freshness, was born on this day in 1836 in the town of Nizza Monferrato in what is now Piedmont.  His father was a grain trader and Francesco developed entrepreneurial instincts at an early age.  By the age of 14 he was working at the fruit and vegetable market of Porta Palazzo in Turin.  He soon became aware that there was a demand for fresh Italian produce in London and Paris and set up a company to export fruit and vegetables to other cities in Europe.  At the same time he heard about the work of Nicolas Appert, the French confectioner and chef, whose attempts to find ways to preserve food led him to discover that heat could be used as a method of sterilisation and that foods treated in that way could be sealed in cans and would retain their fresh condition for many months.  The method, which became known as Appertisation, was taken up by Cirio, who set up his first canning factory in Turin in 1856 at the age of 20, concentrating first on peas and then achieving similar success with other vegetables.  Read more…

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Lazzaro Ponticelli – war veteran

Wounded soldier survived to set records for longevity

Lazzaro Ponticelli, who became the oldest living man of Italian birth and the oldest man living in France, was born on this day in 1897 in a frazione of Bettola in Emilia-Romagna.  Before his death at the age of 110 years and 79 days, Ponticelli was the last surviving officially recognised veteran of the First World War from France and the last infantry man from its trenches to die.  He had moved to France at the age of eight to join his family who had gone there to find work. At the age of 16, he lied about his age to join the French army in 1914.  Ponticelli was transferred against his will to the Italian army when Italy entered the war the following year. He enlisted in the 3rd Alpini regiment and saw service against the Austro-Hungarian army at Mount Pal Piccolo on the Italian border with Austria.  At one stage he was wounded by a shell but continued firing his machine gun although blood was running into his eyes.  He spoke of a period when fighting ceased for three weeks and the two armies swapped loaves of bread for tobacco and took photographs of each other, as many of them could speak each other's language.  Read more…

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Domenico Sarro – composer

Court choirmaster wrote several important operas

Opera composer Domenico Sarro was born on this day in 1679 in Trani, a seaport north of Bari in Apulia.  He was given the middle name, Natale, which is the Italian word for Christmas.  Sarro is famous for being the composer of Achille in Sciro, the opera chosen for the opening night of the new Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1737.  He studied music from the age of six at Sant’Onofrio, a church near Porta Capuana, one of the ancient city gates of Naples, which at the time was the location of the city’s music conservatory. His first opera, L’opera d’amore, was performed in Naples in 1702.  Sarro was appointed assistant choirmaster to the Neapolitan court in 1702 and by 1706 was having his religious music performed in churches in Naples. He wrote several of what were then referred to as three-act musical dramas, which were performed in theatres and private palaces throughout the city.  Sarro’s opera, Didone abbandonata, was premiered on February 1, 1724 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples. It was the first setting of a major libretto by the writer Pietro Metastasio, who would become the most celebrated librettist of the 18th century.  Read more…

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Vigilia di Natale – Christmas Eve

Feasting on fish the night before Christmas

The day before Christmas, la Vigilia di Natale, is also referred to as ‘the feast of the seven fishes’ in Italy.  It is a tradition that no meat is served on Christmas Eve, but families in many areas will follow the tradition of serving seven fish courses for the evening meal.  Afterwards, many people will go to midnight mass to celebrate the coming of Christ and, in Rome, some will head to St Peter’s Square.  Fish dishes regularly served at the beginning of the meal include baccalà  (salt cod) and frutti di mare (shellfish). In Naples, a popular dish to start the meal is broccoli fried with frutti di mare.  For the pasta course, lasagne with anchovies is popular in the north, while vermicelli with clams (vongole) is often served in the south.'  There are traditionally seven different fish dishes, representing the seven sacraments, on the menu on Christmas Eve. In some areas of southern Italy, in the midnight between 24 and 25 December it is customary for families to stage a procession, at home, led by a candle-bearer followed by the youngest family member carrying a figurine of the baby Jesus, with the rest of the family members following. This procession ends with the placing of the “baby” in the cradle of the family nativity scene.  Read more…

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23 December

Dino Risi – film director

Film comedy director helped launch career of Sophia Loren

The director Dino Risi, who was regarded as one of the masters of Italian film comedy, was born on this day in 1916 in Milan.  He had a string of hits in the 1950s and 1960s and gave future stars Sophia Loren, Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman opportunities early in their careers.  Risi’s older brother, Fernando, was a cinematographer and his younger brother, Nelo, was a director and writer.  He started his career as an assistant to Mario Soldati and Alberto Lattuada and then began directing his own films.  One of Risi’s early successes was the 1951 comedy, Vacation with a Gangster, in which he cast the 12-year-old actor Mario Girotti, who later became well known under the name Terence Hill.  His 1966 film, Treasure of San Gennaro was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a silver prize.  Among his best-known films are Pane, amore e… in 1955, Poveri ma belli in 1956, Una vita difficile in 1961 and Profumo di donna in 1974.  He was awarded the David di Donatello award for best film director in 1975 for Profumo di donna.  The actor Al Pacino would win an Oscar for a remake of the movie as Scent of a Woman in 1992.  Read more…

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Carla Bruni - former First Lady of France

Ex-model and singer who married Nicolas Sarkozy

Carla Bruni, the model and singer who became the wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, was born on this day in 1967 in Turin.  She and Sarkozy were married in February 2008, just three months after they met at a dinner party. Sarkozy, who was in office from May 2007 until May 2012, had recently divorced his second wife.  Previously, Bruni had spent 10 years as a model, treading the catwalk for some of the biggest designers and fashion houses in Europe and establishing herself as one of the top 20 earners in the modelling world.  After retiring from the modelling world, she enjoyed considerable success as a songwriter and then as a singer. Music remains a passion; to date, her record sales stand at more than five million.  Born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, she is legally the daughter of Italian concert pianist Marisa Borini and industrialist and classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi.  However, she revealed in a magazine interview soon after she and Sarkozy were married at the presidential residence the Élysée Palace in Paris, that her biological father is the Italian-born Brazilian businessman Maurizio Remmert, who was a classical guitarist.  Read more…

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Michele Alboreto - racing driver

Last Italian to go close to Formula One title 

No Italian motor racing driver has won the Formula One world championship since 1953 but Michele Alboreto, who was born on this day in 1956, went as close as anyone.  Racing for Ferrari, Alboreto finished runner-up in 1985, beaten by just 20 points by Alain Prost. Riccardo Patrese finished second in 1992 but the gap between him and champion Nigel Mansell was a massive 52 points after the British driver won nine Grand Prix victories to Patrese's one.  Patrese was never even in the hunt in 1992 after Mansell began the season with five straight wins. By contrast, Alboreto's 1985 duel with Prost could have gone either way until well into the second half of the campaign. Alboreto scored two race wins and four second places to lead by five points after winning race nine of the 16-race series in Germany.  However, a series of disastrous engine failures late in the season wrecked Alboreto's chance to be the first Italian champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953.  Prost won the next race in Austria to draw level and after both finished on the podium in the Netherlands the Frenchman led by just three points with five races left.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa – writer

Sicilian prince whose novel achieved recognition after his death

The Sicilian writer, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was born on this day in 1896 in Palermo in Sicily.   He became the last Prince of Lampedusa after the death of his father and his only novel, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), was published in 1958 after his death, soon becoming recognised as a great work of Italian literature.  The novel, which is set in his native Sicily during the Risorgimento, won the Strega Prize in 1959 for him posthumously.  After starting to study jurisprudence at university in Rome he was drafted into the army in 1915.  He fought in the battle of Caporetto and was taken prisoner by The Austro-Hungarian army. He was held in a prisoner of war camp for a while in Hungary but managed to escape and return to Italy.  Giuseppe inherited his father’s title in 1934 and eventually settled down to write his novel. He completed Il Gattopardo in 1956, but it was rejected by the first two publishers he submitted it to.  Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa died in Rome in 1957 at the age of 60. His novel was published a year after his death. It became the best selling novel in Italian history.  Read more…

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Giovanni Battista Crespi - Baroque artist

Religious painter portrayed saints expressing human emotions

Painter, sculptor and architect Giovanni Battista Crespi was born on this day in 1573 in Romagnano Sesia in the Piedmont region of Italy.  His father was the painter Raffaele Crespi, who eventually moved his family to live in Cerano near Novara. When Giovanni Battista Crespi became one of the chief Lombardy artists of the early 17th century, he was often referred to as Il Cerano.  Reflecting the Counter Reformation pious mood of the time, many of his paintings focused on mysteries and mystical episodes in the lives of the saints, capturing their emotions.  Crespi spent some time in Rome, where he formed a friendship with the Milanese cardinal, Federico Borromeo, who became his patron. Together, they went to Milan, which was under the inspiration of the cardinal’s uncle, Charles Borromeo, and was a centre for the fervent spiritual revival in art.  Crespi formed a style that was Mannerist in its use of colour and in the mystical quality of his figures, although he also gave them realistic details.  Along with other artists, Crespi completed a series of paintings, Quadroni of St Charles, for the Duomo in Milan.  Read more…

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22 December

NEW - The Totonero betting scandal

Match-fixing scheme saw players banned and clubs relegated

Italian football fans learned the full list of punishments handed down as a consequence of the Totonero match-fixing scandal on this day in 1980. Two Serie A clubs - AC Milan and Lazio - were relegated to Serie B. Three others in Serie A and two in Serie B were handed a penalty in the form of a five-point deduction in their respective league tables.  Of 20 players banned, some indefinitely, by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), half had represented the Italy national team. The most famous were Paolo Rossi, who would go on to be part of the Azzurri team that won the World Cup in Spain in 1982, and Enrico Albertosi, who had been goalkeeper in the Italian team that won the European championships in 1968.   Rossi, who scored six goals in Spain ‘82, would have missed the tournament had his sentence not been reduced, somewhat controversially, from three years to two.  Felice Colombo, then president of AC Milan, was banned from football for life, although the disqualification was later reduced to six years.  Read more…

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Giacomo Puccini – opera composer

Musical genius who took the baton from Verdi

Giacomo Puccini, one of the greatest composers of Italian opera, was born on this day in 1858 in Lucca in Tuscany.  He had his first success with his opera, Manon Lescaut, just after the premiere of Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff. Manon Lescaut was a triumph with both the public and the critics, and he was hailed as a worthy successor to Verdi.  Puccini was born into a musical family who encouraged him to study music as a child while he was growing up in Lucca.  He moved to Milan to continue his studies at the Milan Conservatory, where he was able to study under the guidance of the composer, Amilcare Ponchielli.  He wrote an orchestral piece that impressed Ponchielli and his other teachers when it was first performed at a student concert. Ponchielli then suggested that Puccini’s next work might be an opera.   Puccini’s first attempt at opera was successful enough for it to be purchased by a firm of music publishers and after some revisions it was performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.  His next opera, Edgar, which also made its debut at La Scala, was not so well received but his third composition, Manon Lescaut, was a triumph when it was first performed in Turin in 1893.  Read more…

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Alessandro Bonvicino – Renaissance painter

Talented artist from Brescia acclaimed for sacred paintings and portraits

Alessandro Bonvicino, who became famous for the altarpieces he painted for churches in northern Italy, died on this day in 1554 in Brescia in Lombardy.  Nicknamed Il Moretto da Brescia - the little moor from Brescia - Bonvicino is known to have painted alongside the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto in Bergamo. The portrait painter Giovanni Battista Moroni from Albino, in the province of Bergamo, was one of his pupils.  Bonvicino, sometimes known as Buonvicino, was born in Rovato, a town in the province of Brescia, in about 1498. It is not known how he acquired his nickname of Il Moretto.  He studied painting under Floriano Ferramola, but is also believed to have trained with Vincenzo Foppa, a painter who was active in Brescia in the early years of the 16th century.  It is thought he may also have been an apprentice to Titian in Venice and it is known that he modelled his portrait painting on the Venetian style. Bonvicino is believed to have admired Raphael, although there is no evidence he ever travelled to Rome. He specialised in painting altarpieces in oils rather than in fresco.  At the height of his career, Bonvicino was considered one of the most acclaimed painters working in Brescia. Read more…

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Giuseppe Bergomi – footballer

World Cup winner who spent his whole career with Inter

The footballer Giuseppe Bergomi, renowned as one of the best defenders in the history of Italian football and a member of the World Cup-winning Azzurri side of 1982, was born on this day in 1963 in Milan.  Bergomi spent his entire club career with the Milan side Internazionale, spanning 20 years in which he made 756 appearances, including 519 in Serie A, which was a club record until it was overtaken by the Argentine-born defender Javier Zanetti, who went on to total 856 club appearances before he retired in 2014.  In international football, Bergomi played 87 times for the Italian national team, of which he was captain during the 1990 World Cup finals, in which Italy reached the semi-finals as hosts.  Alongside the brothers Franco, of AC Milan, and Giuseppe Baresi, his team-mate at Inter, and the Juventus trio Gaetano Scirea, Antonio Cabrini and Claudio Gentile, he was part of the backbone of the Italian national team for much of the 1980s.  He made his Azzurri debut in April 1982, only a couple of months before the World Cup finals in Spain, aged just 18 years and 3 months, making him the youngest player to feature in a match for Italy since the Second World War.  Read more…

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Giacomo Manzù – sculptor

Shoemaker’s son who became internationally acclaimed sculptor

Sculptor Giacomo Manzù was born Giacomo Manzoni on this day in 1908 in Bergamo in Lombardy.  The son of a shoemaker, he taught himself to be a sculptor, helped only by a few evening classes in art, and went on to achieve international acclaim.  Manzoni changed his name to Manzù and started working in wood while he was doing his military service in the Veneto in 1928.  After moving to Milan, he was commissioned by the architect, Giovanni Muzio, to decorate the Chapel of the Sacred Heart Catholic University.  But he achieved national recognition after he exhibited a series of busts at the Triennale di Milano.  The following year he held a personal exhibition with the painter, Aligi Sassu, with whom he shared a studio.  He attracted controversy in 1942 when a series of bronze bas reliefs about the death of Christ were exhibited in Rome. They were criticised by the Fascist government after they were interpreted as an indictment of Nazi-Fascist violence and Manzù had to go into hiding for a while, fearful of arrest.   Manzù had started teaching at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, but during the war he went back north to live in Clusone, to the north of Bergamo.  Read more…

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Giovanni Bottesini - double bass virtuoso

Musician was also a composer and conductor

The composer, conductor and double bassist Giovanni Bottesini was born on this day in 1821 in Crema, now a city in Lombardy although then part of the Austrian Empire.  He became such a brilliant and innovative performer on his chosen instrument that he became known as “the Paganini of the double bass” - a reference to the great violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, whose career was ending just as his was beginning.  Bottesini was one of the first bassists to adopt the French-style bow grip, previously used solely by violinists, violists and cellists.  He was also a respected conductor, often called upon to direct performances at the leading theatres in Europe and elsewhere, and a prolific composer, particularly in the last couple of decades of his life.  A close friend of Giuseppe Verdi, he wrote a dozen operas himself, music for chamber and full orchestras, and a considerable catalogue of pieces for double bass, for accompaniment by piano or full orchestra, or duets.  When conducting opera, Bottesini would often bring his double bass on stage to play fantasies based on the evening's opera, of his own composition, during the intermission.  Read more…

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