Maria Luisa - Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalia

Marriage to Napoleon earned Austrian noblewoman an Italian Duchy

Maria Luisa married Napoleon in 1810, two
years before the French emperor's exile to Elba

Austrian archduchess Maria Luisa d'Asburgo-Lorena reigned as Duchess of Parma from April 1814 until her death in Parma on this day in 1847. She was the eldest child of Francis I, the first Emperor of Austria and - as Francis II - the last Holy Roman Emperor. 

Despite being brought up to despise France, Maria Luisa agreed to marry Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of France, by proxy in 1810. When she was asked for her consent, she replied: ‘I wish only what my duty commands me to wish.’ Fortunately, when she met Napoleon for the first time, she remarked: ‘You are much better looking than your portrait.’ 

She bore him a son in 1811, Napoleon Francois Joseph Charles Bonaparte, who was styled King of Rome at his birth and who later became Napoleon II.

After Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia in 1812, the French ruler’s fortunes changed dramatically and he had to abdicate and go into exile on the island of Elba. 

The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau gave the Duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalia to Maria Luisa, who was to rule over them until her death.

To prevent Maria Luisa from joining Napoleon in Elba, the Emperor Francis II sent Count Adam Albert von Neipperg to accompany his daughter to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains. Maria Luisa fell in love with him and they became lovers. 

A portrait of Maria Luisa
with her son, Napoleon II

After Napoleon was defeated for the last time at the Battle of Waterloo and exiled to Saint Helena in 1815, Maria Luisa travelled to Parma, accompanied by Neipperg. She later wrote to her father, saying that the citizens had welcomed her with such enthusiasm she had tears in her eyes.

She removed the existing Grand Chamberlain from office and installed Neipperg in his place, leaving the day-to-day running of the Duchy to him afterwards.

After Napoleon died in 1821, Maria Luisa married Neipperg, with whom she had three children. She was devastated when Neipperg died of heart problems in 1829.

He was replaced as Grand Chamberlain by the Emperor Francis II with another Austrian, Josef von Werklein, but in 1831 he was denounced by protestors who had gathered in the streets of Parma to show their opposition to him. 

Maria Luisa asked her father to replace von Werklein and he sent a French nobleman, Charles Rene de Bombelles, who had served in the Austrian army against Napoleon, to be the next Grand Chamberlain of the Duchy of Parma.

He reformed the finances of the Duchy and developed a close personal relationship with Maria Luisa. They were married in 1834, just six months after his arrival in Parma.

Maria Luisa became ill in December 1847 and she died of pleurisy on the evening of 17 December in Parma, the city she had ruled over for more than 30 years. Her body was sent to Vienna, where she was buried at the Imperial Crypt. 

Prosciutto di Parma ham is one of the gastronomic
delights associated with the city of Parma

Travel tip

Parma, over which Maria Luisa ruled from 1814 to 1847, is an historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for its Prosciutto di Parma ham and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the true ‘parmesan’. In 1545 the city was given as a duchy to the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, whose descendants ruled Parma till 1731. The composer, Verdi, was born near Parma at Bussetto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio, and a Conservatory named in honour of Arrigo Boito, who wrote the libretti for many of Verdi’s operas.  An elegant city with an air of prosperity common to much of Emilia-Romagna, Parma’s outstanding architecture includes an 11th century Romanesque cathedral and the octagonal 12th century baptistery that adjoins it, the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, which has a beautiful late Mannerist facade and bell tower, and the Palazzo della Pilotta, which houses the Academy of Fine Arts, the Palatine Library, the National Gallery and an archaeological museum.

The equestrian monument to
Ranuccio I Farnese in Piacenza

Travel tip

Piacenza, where Maria Luisa also held power, is the first major city along the route of the Via Emilia, the Roman road that connected Piacenza with the Adriatic resort of Rimini. Parma, some 66km (41 miles) along the route, is the next, followed by Reggio Emilia, Modena and Bologna. The main square in Piacenza is named Piazza Cavalli because of its two bronze equestrian monuments featuring Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma and his son Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma, who succeeded him. The statues are masterpieces by the sculptor Francesco Mochi.  The city is situated between the River Po and the Apennines, with Milan just over 72km (45 miles) to the northwest. Piacenza Cathedral, built in 1122, is a good example of northern Italian Romanesque architecture.  Among many notable people, Piacenza is the birthplace of Giorgio Armani, founder of the eponymous fashion house.

Also on this day:

546: Ostrogoth army sacks Rome

1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII

1749: The birth of composer Domenico Cimarosa

1859: The birth of painter Ettore Tito

1894: The birth of WW1 pilot Leopoldo Eleuteri

1981: Nato boss James L Dozier seized by Red Brigades

2017: The remains of exiled monarch Vittorio Emanuele III return to Italy

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16 December

Giovanni Agnelli – entrepreneur

Founder of Fiat had keen eye for a good investment

Giovanni Agnelli, the businessman who founded the Fiat car manufacturing company, died on this day in 1945 in Turin.  As soon as Agnelli heard about the idea of a ‘horseless carriage’, he recognised it as a business opportunity and in 1898 met up with an inventor looking for investors for his project.  In 1899 he became part of a group who founded the Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino. Within a year he had become managing director of the company and by 1903 the business was making a small profit.  Giovanni had been born in Villar Perosa, a small town near Pinerolo in Piemonte, in 1866.  He embarked on a military career after finishing his studies but returned to his home town to follow in his father’s footsteps and become Mayor.  Fiat continued to grow and went public before the start of the First World War. After the war the first Fiat car dealership was established in the United States and the company continued to expand internationally.  Although Giovanni Agnelli had many other business interests, he remained actively involved with Fiat until his death on 16 December 1945 at the age of 79.  Read more…

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Francesco Graziani - World Cup winner

Forward injured seven minutes into 1982 final

The footballer Francesco Graziani, who played in all of Italy’s matches in the 1982 World Cup in Spain but had the misfortune to be reduced to the status of a spectator when injury struck just seven minutes into the final, was born on this day in 1952 in Subiaco, in Lazio.  Graziani, a striker with Fiorentina who had made his name with Torino, scored a vital goal in Italy’s final match of the opening group phase against Cameroon, securing the draw that was enough to take the azzurri through to the second stage of the competition.  He played in Italy’s epic victories over Argentina and Brazil in the second group phase and in the thumping semi-final win over Poland but was replaced by Alessandro Altobelli after damaging a shoulder in the opening moments of the final against West Germany.  Altobelli went on to score Italy’s third goal as they overcame the Germans 3-1 to lift the trophy for a third time.  With 23 goals in 64 appearances for the national team, Graziani - nicknamed ‘Ciccio’ - achieved a strike rate in international football similar to his goals-per-game ratio in his career at domestic level, which brought him 142 goals in 413 league appearances.  Read more…

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The founding of AC Milan

English roots of one of Italy’s football giants

The football club that would eventually become known as AC Milan was founded on this day in 1899.  Although Juventus have won twice as many domestic Serie A titles - 36 to their 18 - AC Milan have been Italy’s most successful club in international club football, winning 18 trophies, including the European Cup/Champions League on seven occasions.  Yet the club owes its existence largely to five expatriate Englishmen, who conceived the idea of forming a football club - a cricket and football club, to be more accurate - during an evening at the Fiaschetteria Toscana bar, a few steps from the Duomo in the centre of Milan, where they would meet frequently to socialise.  The group comprised Alfred Edwards, a businessman from Shropshire, players Samuel Davies, from Manchester, David Allison and Edward Nathan Berra, both English but born in France, and Herbert Kilpin, who is remembered as the club’s driving force.  Kilpin, a butcher’s son from Nottingham, was both a footballer and a businessman. He had been a founder-member of the Garibaldi Reds, the amateur team in which Nottingham Forest has its roots.  Read more…

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Santo Versace - businessman and politician

Entrepreneurial brain behind Versace fashion empire

Santo Versace, sometime politician and the business brain behind Italy's world famous luxury fashion label, was born on this day in 1944 in Reggio Calabria.  Along with his brother and sister, Gianni and Donatella, Santo grew up in Italy's southernmost major city, which is situated right on the "toe" of the Italian peninsula and separated from the island of Sicily by barely 10km of the Strait of Messina.  Unlike his younger siblings, who were inspired by their mother, Francesca, a dressmaker who owned a small clothes shop, to become designers, Santo took after their father, Antonio, a coal merchant who in time became an interior decorator, in wishing to become a business entrepreneur.  He helped his father hump sacks of coal while still a child and learned the basics of running a business as a teenager before attending the University of Messina, from which he graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics.  At first, Santo worked in banking for Credito Italiano in Reggio Calabria before switching to teaching economics and geography to high school students. In 1972, after completing his military service, he set up as an accountant and management consultant in Reggio Calabria.  Read more…

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Ivana Spagna – singer-songwriter

Dance track made 30 years ago still holds record

The singer and songwriter Ivana Spagna, whose single Call Me achieved the highest placing by an Italian artist in UK chart history when it reached number two in 1987, was born on this day in 1954 in the town of Valeggio sul Mincio, in the Veneto.  Often performing as simply Spagna, she has sold more than 10 million copies of her singles and albums in a career spanning 46 years, having released her first single in 1971 at the age of 16.  She began to sing professionally in the early 1980s, when she provided the vocals for a number of disco tracks lip-synched by other artists, and when she relaunched her recording career in her own right she met with immediate success.  The single Easy Lady, recorded in 1986 and which she tends to regard as her debut single as a professional artist, sold more than two million copies, as did Call Me, which was released the following year.  Spagna defied the expectations of her record company, who had misgivings about promoting an Italian singing in English under the stage name “Spain” but were pleasantly surprised by her popularity.  Call Me topped the European singles chart and reached No 13 in the Billboard dance chart in the United States.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Match: The Story of Italy v Brazil 1982, by Piero Trellini

The Match is a multi-award-winning book first published in Italy in 2019. The book has been reprinted numerous times, with translated versions published to great acclaim in Spain and Latin America. It also inspired the 2022 Sky Sports TV series Italy v Brazil 3-2 – La Partita. This is the eagerly awaited English edition.  The book tells the tale of an extraordinary sports event – a match described by Time magazine in 2010 as the most beautiful game in football history: Italy v Brazil at Spain 82.  Piero Trellini delves into the stories and lives of the many great players and characters who shone on that day and lit up that unforgettable match – from Paolo Rossi to Sócrates, from Enzo Bearzot to Zico – as well as some forgotten figures who all played their part.  The Match takes us on a fascinating journey through the 1982 World Cup, and includes fresh insight and fascinating anecdotes on the historical and sporting links between the two countries. Italy, a nation historically at the forefront of football, did not arrive in Spain as favourites, with widespread doubts about their chances, not least in the Italian press. This is one of the reasons why their triumph that summer is still celebrated in Italy above any others by the azzurri.

Piero Trellini is an award-winning Italian writer whose journalistic work has appeared in La Repubblica and many other leading Italian newspapers. He has spent most of his life researching and reliving the Italy-Brazil match of 1982, collecting stories, anecdotes and memorabilia, including the referee’s whistle used that day. The Match won the 2020 Bancarella Sport Prize, the Mastercard Letteratura Prize, the Massarosa Jury Award, was named Book of the Year by TuttoSport and the book with the best narrative by Corriere della Sera.

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15 December

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Spaghetti western has steadily gained critical acclaim

The film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, was released on this day in Italy in 1966.  It was the third and final instalment in the Dollars Trilogy, following A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More.  Despite mixed reviews to begin with, it was a financial success, grossing more than $25 million at the box office.  The film has gained respect over the years and is now seen as a highly influential example of the Western film genre and has been acclaimed as one of the greatest films of all time.  Directed by Sergio Leone, the film, known in Italian as Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, was made partly at the Cinecittà studio in Rome and partly on location.  It became categorised as a 'spaghetti western' and was distinctive because of Leone’s film–making style, which involved juxtaposing close-ups with lengthy long shots.  Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach star in the title roles. They are three gunslingers out to find buried gold against the backdrop of the violence of the American Civil War.  The score for the film was composed by Ennio Morricone and the iconic main theme for the film became a popular hit in 1968.  Read more…

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John Paul Getty III released

Heir to world’s biggest fortune held by kidnappers for 158 days

A story that dominated the Italian press and newspapers around the world ended on this day in 1973 when police responding to a tip-off found a shivering, malnourished and deeply traumatised American teenager inside a disused motorway service area in a remote part of southern Italy.  John Paul Getty III, grandson of the richest man in the world, the oil tycoon John Paul Getty, had been held in captivity for more than five months by a kidnap gang who had demanded $17 million for his safe return.  The boy’s 80-year-old grandfather, whose personal fortune would equate today to almost $9 billion but who was notoriously mean, at first refused to pay a penny and stuck to that position until late November, when a letter containing a lock of hair and a human ear arrived at the offices of a daily newspaper in Rome.  After a further letter arrived containing a photograph of John Paul Getty III minus one ear, the octogenarian’s representatives made contact with the kidnappers and negotiated his release for $3 million.  Even then, John Paul Getty Senior refused to pay more than $2.2 million, which his lawyers allegedly told him was the maximum he could claim as a tax-deductible expense.  Read more…

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Comunardo Niccolai - footballer

‘King of own goals’ was also a champion

The footballer Comunardo Niccolai, a central defender with a propensity for scoring calamitous own goals, was born on this day in 1946 in Uzzano, a beautiful hill town in Tuscany.  Niccolai scored six own goals in his Serie A career, which contributed to his standing as something of a cult figure in Italian football.  He was actually an exceptionally talented player - good enough to be picked for the Italian squad for the World Cup in 1970, where the azzurri finished runners-up, as well as a key figure in the Cagliari team that won the Serie A title in 1970.  But he seemed unable to avoid moments of freakish bad luck and he acquired such unwanted notoriety as a result that people outside the game still reference his name when describing someone doing something to their own disadvantage.  For example, during the course of one of the regular political crises in Italy in the late 1990s, the right-wing politician Francesco Storace said of a policy decision taken by prime minister Massimo D’Alema, “Ha fatto un autogol alla Niccolai” - meaning that he had “scored an own goal Niccolai-style”.  Read more…

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Frankie Dettori - champion jockey

Milan-born horseman among all-time greats

Lanfranco "Frankie" Dettori, the three-times British champion jockey, was born on this day in 1970 in Milan.  As well as winning the UK jockeys' title in 1994 and 1995 and again in 2004, Dettori has won more than 500 Group Races around the world, including 20 British Classics.  He won his first Classic in 1994 on Balanchine in the Oaks. He won his first St Leger in 1995 on Classic Cliche, his first 2,000 Guineas in 1996 on Mark of Esteem and his first 1,000 Guineas in 1998 on Cape Verdi, finally completing the set at the 15th attempt when Authorized won the Derby at Epsom in 2007. Dettori won the Derby for a second time in 2015 on Golden Horn, which he rates as the best horse he has ever ridden.  English-bred and owned by the diamond dealer Anthony Oppenheimer, Golden Horn won the Derby, the Eclipse Stakes, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe for Wiltshire trainer John Gosden during the 2015 season, each time with Dettori in the saddle.  Apart from his big-race successes, which also include 24 Group Race wins in Italy and all of the Irish Classics, Dettori is best known for his unprecedented and so-far unequalled achievement of riding the winners of all seven races on a single day at Ascot in 1996.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: All about Sergio Leone: The Definitive Anthology, by Oreste De Fornari

The first volume of the All about series devoted to leading cinema figures, All About Sergio Leone is dedicated to the most American of Italian directors, whose film-making methods have influenced scores of directors since, including Quentin Tarantino in particular. The book provides a detailed examination of films, personal memories of the director and of the many collaborators who worked with him (from Bertolucci to Dario Argento, from Ennio Morricone to Clint Eastwood), script excerpts and beautiful photographs. The volume - written by an experienced Italian film critic who knew Leone well and with a preface by Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore - includes a collection of quotes arranged alphabetically and an essay that explains what distinguished Leone from the myriad of Italian and American movie directors, particularly in their approach to Westerns.

Oreste De Fornari is an Italian historian, critic, award-winning broadcaster and television presenter. He is also a director of documentary flms and author of  works on Walt Disney, Truffault and Hitchcock as well as Sergio Leone.  Giuseppe Tornatore is considered as one of the directors who brought critical acclaim back to Italian cinema. His most noted film is Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

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14 December

Luciano Bianciardi - novelist and translator

Writer who brought contemporary American literature to Italian audiences

The journalist, novelist and translator Luciano Bianciardi, who was responsible for putting the work of most of the outstanding American authors of the 20th century into Italian, was born on this day in 1922 in Grosseto in Tuscany.  Bianciardi translated novels by such writers as Saul Bellow, Henry Miller, William Faulkner and Norman Mailer, who were read in the Italian language for the first time thanks to his understanding of the nuances of their style.  He also wrote novels of his own, the most successful of which was La vita agra (1962; published in English as It’s a Hard Life), which was made into a film, directed by Carlo Lizzani and starring Ugo Tognazzi.  Bianciardi, whose father, Atide, was a bank cashier, developed an appreciation for learning from his mother, Adele, who was an elementary school teacher.  At the same time he acquired a lifelong fascination with Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, after his father gave him a book by a local author, Giuseppe Bandi, about Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand.  Bianciardi’s university education was interrupted by the Second World War.   Read more…

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Fabrizio Giovanardi – racing driver

Touring car specialist has won 10 titles

One of the most successful touring car racers in history, the former Alfa Romeo and Vauxhall driver Fabrizio Giovanardi, was born in Sassuolo, not far from Modena, on this day in 1966.  Giovanardi has won the European Championship twice, the European Cup twice, the British Championship twice, the Italian Championship three times and the Spanish touring car title once.  His best season in the World Championship came in 2005, when he finished third behind the British driver Andy Priaulx.  At the peak of his success, Giovanardi won a title each season for six consecutive years. Like many drivers across the motor racing spectrum, Giovanardi had his first experience of competition in karting, winning Italian and World titles in 125cc karts in 1986, before graduating to Formula Three and Formula 3000.  He was hoping from there to step up to Formula One but although he won a number of races the opportunity to drive competitively for an F1 team did not come about.  It was during the 1991 season that he tried his luck in touring cars and met with immediate success.  Read more…

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Errico Malatesta - anarchist

Middle-class boy who became notorious revolutionary

Errico Malatesta, one of the most prominent figures in the anarchist movement that flourished in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was born on this day in 1853 in the province of Caserta, in what is now Campania.  A committed revolutionary who was arrested for the first time at the age of 14, he spent more than 10 years of his life in prison and about 35 years in exile.  Apart from his activity in his own country, Malatesta helped organise anarchist revolutionary groups in several European countries, as well as in Egypt, and in North and South America, including Argentina, where he helped bakers form the country's first militant workers' union.  Born into a family of middle-class landowners in Santa Maria Capua Vetere in what was then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Malatesta was arrested aged 14 for sending an "insolent and threatening letter" to King Victor Emmanuel II.  Although he would become closely associated with the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Malatesta drew his first inspiration from Giuseppe Mazzini, the Italian revolutionary who was a driving force in the Risorgimento movement.  Read more…

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Guarino da Verona – Renaissance scholar

Humanist who lost Greek manuscripts went grey overnight

Professor of ancient Greek, Guarino da Verona, who dedicated his life to learning the language and educating others to follow in his footsteps, died on this day in 1460 in Ferrara.  Da Verona studied ancient Greek in Constantinople for more than five years and returned to Italy with two cases full of rare Greek manuscripts that he had collected. It is said that when he lost one of the cases during  a shipwreck, he was so distraught that his hair turned grey in a single night.  Da Verona, who was also sometimes known as Guarino Veronese, was born in 1374 in Verona. He studied in Italy and established his first school in the 1390s before going to Constantinople.  After returning to Italy, he earned his living by teaching Greek in Verona, Venice and Florence.  Da Verona taught the philosophy of humanism to Leonello, Marquis of Este, who then became his patron and employed him to teach Greek in Ferrara. Da Verona’s method of teaching became renowned and he attracted students from all over Italy and Europe, even from as far away as England. He supported poor students using his own money and many of them became well known scholars themselves.  Read more…

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Princess Maria Antonia of Naples and Sicily

Sad, short life of a Neapolitan princess

The youngest daughter of Ferdinand, King of Naples and Sicily, Princess Maria Antonia, was born on this day in 1784 at the Royal Palace in Caserta.  Princess Maria Antonia was named after her aunt, Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, who was executed by guillotine in Paris in 1793.  Marie Antoinette was the favourite sister of the Princess’s mother, Maria Carolina of Austria, who became opposed to the military expansion of the new French republic as a result of her sister’s horrific death.  Princess Maria Antonia’s own fate was sealed when she became engaged to Infante Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, who later became King Ferdinand VII of Spain.  She married him in Barcelona in 1802.  When she failed to provide Ferdinand with an heir, suffering two miscarriages, there were rumours that Maria Antonia, whose title was now Princess of Asturias, was plotting to poison both her mother in law, the Queen of Spain, and the Spanish Prime Minister. This was allegedly to avenge her aunt, Marie Antoinette, because Spain was becoming increasingly dominated by Napoleon.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: A Literary Tour of Italy, by Tim Parks

An acclaimed author of novels and short stories, Tim Parks – who was described in a recent review as “one of the best living writers of English” – has delighted audiences around the world with his finely observed writings on all aspects of Italian life and customs. This volume contains a selection of his best essays on the literature of his adopted country.  From Boccaccio and Machiavelli through to Moravia and Tabucchi, from the Stil Novo to Divisionism, across centuries of history and intellectual movements, A Literary Tour of Italy will give English readers, and lovers of the Bel Paese and its culture, the lay of the literary land of Italy in an elegantly written rehearsal of the significance of 23 Italian writers. Parks can be as entertaining as he is scholarly, and this new volume of essays goes into places inaccessible to the casual tourist, deep into the literature of a country he knows well.

Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since. In addition to 15 non-fiction books, Parks has written 19 novels, the most recent of which is Hotel Milano, published in 2023.

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