17 August

The Milan-Monza railway

First line in northern Italy sparked industrial growth 

The first railway line laid in northern Italy was opened on this day in 1840. The line, authorised by Ferdinand I of Austria, within whose empire the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia fell at the time, connected the city of Milan with the smaller city of Monza, covering a distance of 12.8km (eight miles).  It was the second railway line to be built on the Italian peninsula, following on from the shorter Naples-Portici line, which had been opened in October of the previous year.  Italy was a little behind in developing railways. The first steam-powered railway engine had completed its maiden journey some 56 years earlier, in England.   But once Milan-Monza was operational, quickly followed by the first section of what would become a Milan-Venice line, the rest of Italy awoke to their potential.  By the end of the 1840s, there were nine or 10 routes, mainly in the north; by unification in 1861, the network had expanded to more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) and by the early 1870s, there were some 7,000km (4,340 miles) of track, enabling travel from the outposts of Susa in the northwest, close to the border with France, and Udine in the northeast, all the way down to Maglie, south of Lecce, and Cariati, east of Cosenza, in the south.  Read more…

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Cesare Borgia – condottiero

Renaissance prince turned his back on the Church

Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, became the first person in history to resign as a Cardinal on this day in 1498 in Rome.  Cesare was originally intended for the Church and had been made a Cardinal at the age of 18 after his father’s election to the Papacy. After the assassination of his brother, Giovanni, who was captain general of the Pope’s military forces, Cesare made an abrupt career change and was put in charge of the Papal States.  His fight to gain power was later the inspiration for Machiavelli’s book The Prince.  Cesare was made Duke of Valentinois by King Louis XII of France and after Louis invaded Italy in 1499, Cesare accompanied him when he entered Milan. He reinforced his alliance with France by marrying Charlotte d’Albret, the sister of John III of Navarre.  Pope Alexander encouraged Cesare to carve out a state of his own in northern Italy and deposed all his vicars in the Romagna and Marche regions.  Cesare was made condottiero - military leader - in command of the papal army and sent to capture Imola and Forlí.  He returned to Rome in triumph and received the title Papal Gonfalonier from his father.  Read more…

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Franco Sensi - businessman

Oil tycoon who rescued AS Roma football club

The businessman Francesco ‘Franco’ Sensi, best known as the businessman who transformed a near-bankrupt AS Roma into a successful football club, died on this day in 2008 in the Gemelli General Hospital in Rome.  He was 88 and had been in ill health for a number of years. He had been the longest-serving president of the Roma club, remaining at the helm for 15 years, and it is generally accepted that the success the team enjoyed during his tenure - a Serie A title, two Coppa Italia triumphs and two in the Supercoppa Italiana - would not have happened but for his astute management.  His death was mourned by tens of thousands of Roma fans who filed past his coffin in the days before the funeral at the Basilica of San Lorenzo al Verano, where a crowd put at around 30,000 turned out to witness the funeral procession. The then-Roma coach Luciano Spalletti and captain Francesco Totti were among the pallbearers.  Sensi, whose father, Silvio, had helped bring about the formation of AS Roma in 1927 in a merger of three other city teams, grew up supporting the club and followed his father into a business career.  Read more…

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Pope Benedict XIV

Erudite, gentle, honest man was chosen as a compromise

Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini began his reign as Pope Benedict XIV on this day in 1740 in Rome.  Considered one of the greatest ever Christian scholars, he promoted scientific learning, the baroque arts and the study of the human form.  Benedict XIV also revived interest in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, reduced taxation in the Papal States, encouraged agriculture and supported free trade.  As a scholar interested in ancient literature, and who published many ecclesiastical books and documents himself, he laid the groundwork for the present-day Vatican Museum.  Lambertini was born into a noble family in Bologna in 1675. At the age of 13 he started attending the Collegium Clementinum in Rome, where he studied rhetoric, Latin, philosophy and theology. Thomas Aquinas became his favourite author and saint. At the age of 19 he received a doctorate in both ecclesiastical and civil law.  Lambertini was consecrated a bishop in Rome in 1724, was made Bishop of Ancona in 1727 and Cardinal-Priest of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in 1728.  Following the death of Pope Clement XII, Lambertini was elected pope on the evening of August 17, 1740.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Railways and the Formation of the Italian State in the Nineteenth Century, by Albert Schram

Railways and the Formation of the Italian State in the Nineteenth Century relates the history of Italian railways with special regard to their relation with the Italian state from the 1840s, when the first lines were constructed, until nationalization in 1905. It shows that while the Italian state interfered continuously in railway matters, it was nevertheless incapable of creating viable conditions for railway companies. Throughout the nineteenth century 'the railway question' continued to have a pernicious and divisive influence on Italian political life; and because of the low quality of railway regulation, and other factors, the railways' contribution to the creation of a national market and the economic unification of the country was limited. The book also examines Italian regional social and economic statistics before and after political unification in order to obtain a deeper insight into the continuing disparity between northern and southern Italy. Finally, the book places the development of the Italian railways in a European context, and compares their construction with those in Germany.

Albert Schram, the Vice Chancellor of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology, wrote Railways and the Formation of the Italian State in the Nineteenth Century as his PhD thesis after obtaining his doctorate degree in the field of Economic History from the European University Institute in Fiesole, near Florence.

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16 August

NEW - Jannik Sinner – tennis player

The astonishingly fast rise of a top Italian sportsman

Jannik Sinner, who has become the highest ranked Italian tennis singles player in history, was born on this day in 2001 in Innichen, also known as San Candido, in northern Italy.  Sinner is currently ranked as the World No 1 in Singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), having won a Grand Slam title at the 2024 Australian Open. He also led the Italian team to victory in the Davis Cup competition in 2023, the first time Italy had won the Davis Cup since 1976.  He grew up in Sexten - Sesto in Italian - in the Dolomites, where his father worked as a chef and his mother as a waitress in a ski lodge, in a part of the predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol province. Sinner was a competitive skier between the ages of seven and 12.  But he also had a talent for tennis and decided to focus on that sport exclusively from the age of 13. He went to train with the Italian coach Riccardo Piatti in Bordighera in Liguria, where he quickly improved his Italian.  Sinner had limited success as a junior, but he began playing on the ITF Men’s Tour in 2018.  Because of his low ranking he could compete in Challenger events only if he was given wild cards, but in 2019 he won his first ATP Challenger event in Bergamo at the age of 17 and a half.  Read more…

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Umberto Baldini – art restorer

Saved hundreds of artworks damaged by Arno floods

Umberto Baldini, the art historian who helped save hundreds of paintings, sculptures and manuscripts feared to have been damaged beyond repair in the catastrophic flooding in Florence in 1966, died on this day in 2006.  Baldini was working as director of the Gabinetto di Restauro, an office of the municipal authority in Florence charged with supervising restoration projects, when the River Arno broke its banks in the early hours of November 4, 1966.  With the ground already saturated, the combination of two days of torrential rain and storm force winds was too much and dams built to create reservoirs in the upper reaches of the Arno valley were threatened with collapse.  Consequently thousands of cubic metres of water had to be released, gathering pace as it raced downstream and eventually swept into the city at speeds of up to 40mph.  More than 100 people were killed and up to 20,000 in the valley left homeless. At its peak the depth of water in the Santa Croce area of Florence rose to 6.7 metres (22 feet).  Baldini was director of the conservation studios at the Uffizi, the principal art museum in Florence.  Read more... 

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Vincenzo Coronelli – globe maker

Friar whose globes of the world were in big demand

Vincenzo Coronelli, a Franciscan friar who was also a celebrated cartographer and globe maker, was born on this day in 1650 in Venice.  He became famous for making finely-crafted globes of the world for the Duke of Parma and Louis XIV of France.  This started a demand for globes from other aristocratic clients to adorn their libraries and some of Coronelli’s creations are still in existence today in private collections.  Coronelli was the fifth child of a Venetian tailor and was accepted as a novice by the Franciscans when he was 15. He was later sent to a college in Rome where he studied theology and astronomy.  He began working as a geographer and was commissioned to produce a set of globes for Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma. Each finely crafted globe was five feet in diameter.  After one of Louis XIV’s advisers saw the globes, Coronelli was invited to Paris to make a pair of globes for the French King.  The large globes displayed the latest information obtained by French explorers in North America. They are now in the François-Mitterand national library in Paris.  Read more…

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Tonino Delli Colli – cinematographer

Craftsman who shot Life is Beautiful and Italy's first colour film

Antonio (Tonino) Delli Colli, the cinematographer who shot the first Italian film in colour, died on this day in 2005 in Rome.  The last film he made was Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, shot on location in Arezzo in Tuscany, for which he won his fourth David di Donatello Award for Best Cinematography.  Delli Colli was born in Rome and started work at the city’s Cinecittà studio in 1938, shortly after it opened, when he was just 16.  By the mid 1940s he was working as a cinematographer, or director of photography, who is the person in charge of the camera and light crews working on a film. He was responsible for making artistic and technical decisions related to the image and selected the camera, film stock, lenses and filters. Directors often conveyed to him what was wanted from a scene visually and then allowed him complete latitude to achieve that effect.  Delli Colli was credited as director of photography for the first time in 1943 on Finalmente Si (Finally Yes), directed by László Kish.  In 1952 Delli Colli shot the first Italian film to be made in colour, Totò a colori. He had been reluctant to do it but was given no choice by his bosses.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Wimbledon: A Personal History, by Sue Barker

Sue Barker first walked through those famous wrought-iron gates aged 13 in 1969 to play in the National Schools event. What Sue didn't know then, was that every year for the next half century, she would be back in some capacity. As a junior, aged 15, as a semi-finalist and Grand-Slam winner ranked No.3 in the world, as a broadcaster leading the BBC coverage for thirty years and for the first time, as a fan in 2023.  Now she returns as a storyteller.  With her first-hand insight and perspective, Sue paints an intimate portrait of the place, past and present, full of behind-the-scenes details drawn from her own experiences as well as personal conversations with her former mentors, contemporary players, friends and colleagues - giants of the game such as Rod Laver, Billie Jean King, John McEnroe, Roger Federer, Venus Williams and many others. They share poignant memories with her and some startling revelations, from Sampras's deep regret that he didn't involve his parents more in his Centre Court triumphs to Borg divulging that McEnroe was always the quietest presence in the locker room ... You cannot be serious!  From the most talked-about matches and famous rivalries to the fashions and trends, from the stunning breakthroughs, to the near wins and gut-wrenching disappointments, Wimbledon: A Personal History is touched throughout by Championship stardust and is as tightly packed with stories as the courts are with blades of grass.

Sue Barker CBE is an award-winning broadcaster and former professional tennis player. During her tennis career she won 15 WTA singles titles, including a Grand Slam - the French Open in 1976, aged 20. At her career height she was Britain's No 1 player, with a world ranking of No 3.  As a broadcaster, in 2001 she became the first woman to win the Royal Television Society's best sports presenter award. She led the BBC's reporting on the Olympics for over a decade, including London 2012. She anchored Sports Personality of the Year for 19 years, was quizmaster on A Question of Sport for 24 years and fronted coverage of Wimbledon for three decades.

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Jannik Sinner – tennis player

The astonishingly fast rise of a top Italian sportsman

Jannik Sinner has enjoyed a rapid
rise to the top of the ATP rankings

Jannik Sinner, who has become the highest ranked Italian tennis singles player in history, was born on this day in 2001 in Innichen, also known as San Candido, in northern Italy.

Sinner is currently ranked as the World No 1 in Singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), having won four Grand Slam titles - the Australian Open in 2024 and 2025, the US Open in 2024 and Wimbledon in 2025. 

He also led the Italian team to victory in the Davis Cup competition in 2023, the first time Italy had won the Davis Cup since 1976. Italy retained the Davis Cup title in 2024.

Sinner grew up in Sexten - Sesto in Italian - in the Dolomites, where his father worked as a chef and his mother as a waitress in a ski lodge, in a part of the predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol province. Sinner was a competitive skier between the ages of seven and 12.

But he also had a talent for tennis and decided to focus on that sport exclusively from the age of 13. He went to train with the Italian coach Riccardo Piatti in Bordighera in Liguria, where he quickly improved his Italian.

Sinner had limited success as a junior, but he began playing on the ITF Men’s Tour in 2018.  Because of his low ranking he could compete in Challenger events only if he was given wild cards, but in 2019 he won his first ATP Challenger event in Bergamo at the age of 17 and a half.

He was the first person born in 2001 to reach a Challenger final and the youngest Italian to win a Challenger final in history.

Sinner holds up the trophy after winning the
2024 Australian Open, his first Grand Slam

Sinner entered his first ATP tournament as a lucky loser at the Hungarian Open in 2019. His first ATP Masters victory came at the Italian Open against Steve Johnson and he broke into the top 200 with his next ATP win at the Croatia Open.

He won a second ATP Challenger title in Lexington, becoming one of just 11 players aged 17 to win multiple Challenger titles.

Later that year he qualified for his first Grand Slam main draw at the US Open but lost his debut match to Stan Wawrinka.

Sinner qualified for the 2019 NextGen ATP finals and, despite being the lowest seed, he beat the top seed, Alex de Minaur, to win the title.

He reached the second round of the Australian Open and the third round of the Rome Masters in 2020. He became the youngest quarter finalist at the French Open, since Novak Djokovic in 2006, and he finished 2020 as the world No 37.

The following year, he reached his first ATP Masters final at the Miami Open, finishing runner up in the tournament to Hubert Hurkacz.

Sinner won his first ATP title in Washington, and entered the top 15 for the first time in August 2021. He reached the fourth round of the US Open that year before losing to Alexander Zverev.

Jannik Sinner is often cheered on by a group of
supporters who call themselves the 'Carota Boys'

After reaching the semi-finals of the Vienna Open later that year, he became the first male player born after 2000 to get into the top 10. Also in 2021, he beat big-serving giant John Isner 6-2, 6-0 in a Davis Cup match against the United States, which made him only the second player in Isner's career to "bagel" the American, winning a set without conceding a single game.

Sinner ended the year by going ahead of his fellow countryman Matteo Berretini in the rankings.

In 2023, he reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon, before losing to Djokovic in straight sets, but beat the then World No 1 and defending champion Djokovic at the 2024 Australian Open, becoming the first Italian man to reach the final at this event.  

He was cheered on in Melbourne by group of fans known as the 'Carota Boys', who watch his matches dressed in carrot costumes - inspired partly by his red hair and partly by his practice earlier in his career of munching a raw carrot on court during changeovers.

Sinner became World No 1 in June 2024 and won the Halle Open as the top player in the world. At Wimbledon, he lost to Daniil Medvedev in a five-set quarter-final after having a medical timeout because of illness. Sadly, he was unable to represent Italy at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris because he had tonsillitis.

He followed by winning three Masters 1000 events, the US Open, and the ATP Finals to finish the year as the world No. 1. 

In 2025, Sinner successfully defended his title at the Australian Open before serving a three-month suspension for testing positive for a banned substance inadvertently absorbed through his skin during a massage. He returned to competion to finish runner-up at the French Open, losing an epic final to Carlos Alcaraz, before obtaining revenge over the Spaniard in the final at Wimbledon, becoming the first Italian to win the famous grass court title.

Jannik Sinner currently lives in Monte Carlo in Monaco. To this date he has won 20 singles titles on the ATP Tour.

Bolzano's duomo, the Cattedrale Maria Himmelfahrt,
was consecrated in 1180 and built in Romanesque style

Travel tip:

The South Tyrol area of what is now northern Italy is also known as Südtirol in Germany and Alto Adige in Italian. Together with the autonomous province of Trento, South Tyrol forms the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. It has a population of just over half a million people, of whom around 63 per cent speak German as their first language, although the provincial capital, Bolzano, has an Italian-speaking majority. Sinner's home village of Innichen/San Candido and the neighbouring Sexten/Sesto are slightly more than 100km (62 miles) east of Bolzano by road and just a few kilometres from the border with Austria. Almost half the region's population live in Bolzano and the surrounding areas. One of the largest urban areas in the Alpine region, it has a mediaeval city centre famous for its wooden market stalls, selling among other things Alpine cheeses, hams and bread. Places of interest include the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, the imposing 13th-century Mareccio Castle, and the Duomo di Bolzano with its Romanesque and Gothic architecture. 

The resort town of Bordighera in Liguria was the
subject of a landscape painting by Monet in 1884

Travel tip:

Bordighera, where Jannik Sinner moved at the age of 13 to further his ambitions in tennis, is a small, picturesque town on Italy’s Riviera, just 20km (12 miles) from Italy’s western border with France. It is famous for its flower industry and was a popular holiday destination for the English during Queen Victoria’s reign. Being situated where the Maritime Alps meet the sea, it enjoys the benefit of a climate that invariably produces mild winters. It was the first town in Europe to grow date palms. Its seafront road, the Lungomare Argentina - named in honour of a visit to the town by Evita Peron in 1947 - is 2.3km (1.4 miles) long and is said to be the longest promenade on the Italian Riviera. Queen Margherita of Savoy - wife of Umberto I - had a winter palace, Villa Margherita, in the town.  Tourism remains a huge part of Bordighera's economy but it tends to be less crowded and less expensive than some of the higher-profile Riviera resorts.

Also on this day:

1650: The birth of globe maker Vincenzo Coronelli

2005: The death of cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli

2006: The death of renowned art restorer Umberto Baldini

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15 August

Francesco Zuccarelli - landscape painter

Tuscan-born artist appealed to English tastes

Francesco Zuccarelli, who was considered to be the most important landscape painter to emerge from Venice in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1702.  Zuccarelli’s picturesque Arcadian landscapes were especially appealing to English buyers, and he was more famous in England even than his contemporary, Canaletto.  His fame in England prompted Zuccarelli to spend two periods of his life there. He settled in London for the first time at the end of 1752 and remained for 10 years, enjoying great success.  After returning to Italy after being elected to the Venetian Academy, he went back to England from 1765 to 1771, during which time he was a founding member of the Royal Academy and became one of George III’s favourite painters.  Born in Pitigliano, a mediaeval town perched on top of a tufa ridge in southern Tuscany, Zuccarelli received his early training in Florence, where he engraved the frescoes by Andrea del Sarto in SS Annunziata.  Zuccarelli’s father Bartolomeo owned several local vineyards. With considerable income at his disposal, he sent Francesco to Rome at the age of 11 or 12 to begin an apprenticeship.  Read more…

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Gianfranco Ferré - fashion designer

Sought to create clothes for real women 

Gianfranco Ferré, who became one of the biggest names in Italian fashion during the 1980s and 1990s, was born on this day in 1944 in Legnano, a town in Lombardy north-west of Milan, between the city and Lake Maggiore, where in adult life he made his home.  Ferré was regarded as groundbreaking in fashion design in the same way as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in that his clothes were created with real people rather than catwalk models in mind, yet without compromise in terms of aesthetic appeal.  At the peak of his popularity, his clients included Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Jordan, Paloma Picasso, Sophia Loren and the late Diana, Princess of Wales.  Ferré first trained to be an architect, placing emphasis on the structure of his garments in which strong seams were often a prominent feature. He was once dubbed the Frank Lloyd Wright of fashion, which was taken to be a reference to the powerful horizontals in his designs.  His staff addressed him as "the architect". He was also well known for inevitably including variations of white dress shirts in his collections, adorned with theatrical cuffs or multiple collars.   Read more…

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Carlo Cipolla - economic historian

Professor famous for treatise on ‘stupidity’

Carlo Maria Cipolla, an economic historian who for many years was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and taught at several Italian universities, was born on this day in 1922 in Pavia.  He was one of the leading economic historians of the 20th century and wrote more than 20 academic books on economic and social history but also on such diverse subjects as clocks, guns and faith, reason and the plague in 17th century Italy.  Yet it was for his humorous treatise, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, that he became famous. The book, written very much tongue in cheek, became a bestseller in Italy after it was published in 1976.  In it, Cipolla produced a graph that divided the human species into four types, each sharing one characteristic of another type.  He proposed that there are (a) bandits, whose actions bring benefits for themselves but losses for others; (b) intelligent people, whose actions bring benefits for themselves and for others; (c) naive or helpless people, whose actions bring benefits for others but who tend to be exploited and therefore incur losses for themselves; and (d) stupid people, whose actions result not only in losses for themselves but for others too.  Read more…

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Ferragosto

A chance to enjoy quieter cities while Italians take a holiday

Italy, San Marino and the Italian speaking region of Switzerland all celebrate Ferragosto on this day every year with a public holiday.  This day of celebration originated during Roman times, when Feriae Augusti, the festival of the Roman Emperor Augustus, took place on 1 August. It was a day of rest for working people to signal the culmination of weeks of hard work by labourers on the land.  The month of August itself is named after Augustus. Its original name was sextilis, as it was the sixth month in the Roman calendar. Just as Julius Caesar had previously renamed quintilis - the fifth month - Iulius after himself, it was only natural for Augustus, as Julius Caesar’s chosen heir, to follow suit.  Over the centuries, it became traditional for workers to wish their employers ‘Buon Ferragosto, and to receive a bonus of extra money from their bosses in return. During the Renaissance, this tradition actually became law throughout the Papal States.  The Catholic Church moved the date for Ferragosto to 15 August to coincide with the celebrations for the Feast of the Assumption, a day of worship to mark the ascendance of the Virgin Mary into Heaven.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Glory of Venice - Art in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Andrew Robison and Jane Martineau

Venice, home of Tiepolo, Canaletto, Piranesi, Piazzetta, and Guardi, was the most artistic city of 18th-century Italy. This beautiful book examines the whole range of the arts in Venice during this period, including paintings, pastels and gouaches, drawings and watercolours, prints, illustrated books and sculpture.  The Glory of Venice - Art in the Eighteenth Century begins with an introduction by Andrew Robison and a general introduction to Venetian art by Michael Levey. Essays by other eminent authorities then discuss the international taste for Venetian art and major aspects of the art of the period. The essays are followed by a catalogue that discusses and reproduces many of the finest works of the time along with biographies and critical discussions of the artists. The selection of works emphasises the beauty, quality, distinctiveness, variety, balance, and unity of Venetian art. It includes altarpieces by Tiepolo, Piazzetta, and others that demonstrate the importance of profoundly serious and grand religious art; it presents the finest examples of history paintings and allegories, views and landscapes, architectural fantasies, decorative paintings, and portraits; and it offers a large selection of particularly fine graphic art, for many of the greatest painters - including Marco Ricci, Piazzetta, Canaletto, and Tiepolo - also devoted themselves to printmaking, book illustration, and designs for stage sets and the decorative arts, and often found greater freedom for their fantasy in such works.

Andrew Robison joined the curatorial staff of the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1974, becoming Senior Curator in 1983 and Andrew W Mellon Senior Curator in 1991. Jane Martineau is a British art historian, and acting editor of The Burlington Magazine.

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