8 November

Salvatore Cascio - actor

Child star of classic movie Cinema Paradiso

The actor Salvatore Cascio, who earned fame through his starring role in the Oscar-winning movie Cinema Paradiso, was born on this day in 1979 in Palazzo Adriano, a small town in a mountainous area of western Sicily.  In Guiseppe Tornatore’s nostalgic 1988 drama, Cascio was the eight-year-old child chosen to play the part of the the film’s central character as a small boy in a Sicilian village who loves to watch films at his local cinema and develops a friendship with the cinema’s grumpy but good-hearted projectionist, Alfredo.  His performance was so charming and captivating it won him the prize for best actor in a supporting role at the 1990 BAFTAs. He remains the only Italian to have won such an award. Roberto Benigni, star and director of the 1997 film Life is Beautiful, is the only Italian to have won a BAFTA as best actor.  By coincidence, the lead character in Cinema Paradiso is also called Salvatore and, like Cascio, is known as a boy as Totò, the Sicilian diminutive of Salvatore.  Landing the part was not down to just having the same name, however, although it helped when it came to filming.  Read more…

______________________________________

Andrea Appiani - painter

The master of the fresco technique became court painter to Napoleon

Neoclassical artist Andrea Appiani, who was chosen to paint for the Emperor Napoleon during the time in which he ruled Italy, died on this day in 1817 in Milan.  He is remembered for his fine portraits of some of the famous people of the period, including Napoleon, the Empress Joséphine, and the poet, Ugo Foscolo. He is also well regarded for his religious and classical frescoes.  Born in Milan in 1754, Appiani was intended for a career in medicine, to follow in his father’s footsteps, but he went into the private academy of the painter Carlo Maria Guidici instead, where he received instruction in drawing and copying from sculpture and paintings.  He then joined the class of the fresco painter Antonio de Giorgi at the Ambrosiana picture gallery in Milan and he spent time in the studio of Martin Knoller where he learnt more about painting in oils.  Appiani also studied anatomy at the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan with the sculptor Gaetano Monti and traveled to Rome, Parma, Bologna, Florence and Naples to further his studies.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Sandro Mazzola - footballer

Tragedy instilled determination to succeed

The footballer Sandro Mazzola, widely regarded as one of Italy’s greatest players after a glittering career with Internazionale of Milan and the Italian national team, was born on this day in 1942 in Turin.  A forward or attacking midfield player with all the attributes of the world’s best players, Mazzola won four Serie A titles and two European Cups for Inter-Milan, largely under the coaching of Helenio Herrero. His goals tally in Serie A games alone was 116 in 417 appearances. He was capped 70 times by the national team, part of the side that won the 1968 European championships and reached the World Cup final in 1970.  Mazzola always saw his success as a tribute to his father, Valentino, a brilliant player who was captain of the Torino team that was almost entirely wiped out in the Superga air disaster of 1949, when a plane carrying the team back from a friendly in Portugal crashed in thick fog into the rear wall of the Basilica of Superga, which overlooks the city of Turin.  His parents had divorced in 1946 but Valentino won custody of his son and instilled in him a love of football, as well as teaching him the basic skills.  Read more…  

_________________________________________

Paolo Taviani - film director

Half of a successful partnership with brother Vittorio

The film director Paolo Taviani, the younger of the two Taviani brothers, whose work together won great acclaim and brought them considerable success in the 1970s and 80s in particular, was born on this day in 1931 in San Miniato, Tuscany.  With his brother Vittorio, who was two years his senior and died in April of this year, he wrote and directed more than 20 films.  Among their triumphs were Padre Padrone (1977), which won the Palme d’Or and the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) prize at the Cannes Film Festival, La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars) 1982, which won the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes, and Caesar Must Die (2012), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.  The brothers famously would work in partnership, directing alternate scenes, one seldom criticising the other, if ever. The actor Marcello Mastroianni, who starred in their 1974 drama Allonsanfàn, is said to have addressed the brothers as “Paolovittorio.”  They were both born and raised in San Miniato by liberal, anti-Fascist parents who introduced them to art and culture.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Virna Lisi - actress

Screen siren turned back on glamour roles to prove talent

The actress Virna Lisi, born on this day in 1936, might have become the new Marilyn Monroe if she had allowed Hollywood to shape her career in the way the movie moguls had planned.  She was certainly blessed with all the physical attributes to fulfil their commercial ambitions - no less a screen goddess than Brigitte Bardot called her 'the most beautiful woman in the world' - but decided she was too good an actress to be typecast as mere window dressing or eye candy and ultimately rejected their advances.  In time she proved to herself that she made the right decision when her portrayal of the manipulative Catherine de' Medici, the Italian who was Queen of France between 1547 and 1559, in Patrice Chéreau’s 1994 film La Reine Margot won her three awards - Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, a César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) and the Italian film critics' award, the Nastro d'Argento (Silver Ribbon).  Born Virna Pieralisi in the town of Jesi, in the province of Ancona  in Marche, where her father had a marble importing business, she moved with her family to Rome in the early 1950s.  Read more…

______________________________________

Francesco Molinari – golfer

Second win in Italian Open gave him unique status

Francesco Molinari, one of two golfing brothers who have advanced the cause of the sport in Italy more than anyone in the modern era, was born on this day in 1982 in Turin.  He and Edoardo, who is 21 months’ his senior, won the Mission Hills World Cup in China in 2009, the first time Italy had won the two-player team event.  And when he sank a 5ft (1.5m) putt to beat the Masters champion Danny Willett to win the Italian Open in Monza in September 2016, Francesco became the first Italian to win his country’s open championship twice since it became part of the European tour in 1972.  He had won it for the first time in 2006 at the Castello di Tolcinasco course just outside Milan, which gave him his first European tour victory at the age of 23 and made him the first Italian to win the tournament since Massimo Mannelli in 1980.  The success made such an impact in Italy, and in Turin in particular, that Francesco was asked to be one of the official torch carriers on behalf of the host nation at the 2006 Winter Olympics, which were staged in Turin. Francesco had yet to win a major at the time this was originally posted but went close in the 2017 PGA Championship at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, before winning the Open Championship at Carnoustie in Scotland in 2018.  Read more…

______________________________________

Francis I of the Two Sicilies

Death of the king who failed to impress Lady Blessington 

Francis I died in Naples on this day in 1830 after having been King of the Two Sicilies for five years.  The Two Sicilies was the largest of all the Italian states before unification, originally formed as a union between the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples.  It lasted until 1860 when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, which became Italy in 1861.  The Two Sicilies originated when the Kingdom of Sicily was divided in 1283. The King at the time lost the island of Sicily but kept control of his part of southern Italy, which was also referred to as Sicily. The Two Sicilies had capitals in Palermo and Naples.  After Francis succeeded his father Ferdinand I in 1825 he took little part in government and lived with his mistresses in constant fear of assassination.  He is remembered for getting the Austrian occupation force removed from Naples, where it had been billeted at the expense of the treasury, and for founding the Royal Order of Francis I to reward civil merit.  We are fortunate to have been left with an impression of him by Lady Blessington, an English aristocrat, who lived in Naples between 1823 and 1826 and kept a fascinating diary of her time there.   In July 1823 she encountered Francis while he was still Prince of Salerno and heir presumptive to the throne.  Read more…

______________________________________

Book of the Day: Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words, by Alessandro De Rosa

Master composer Ennio Morricone's scores go hand-in-hand with the idea of the Western film. Often considered the world's greatest living film composer, and most widely known for his innovative scores to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the other Sergio Leone's movies, The Mission, Cinema Paradiso and more recently, The Hateful Eight, Morricone has spent the past 60 years reinventing the sound of cinema. In Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words, Morricone and fellow composer Alessandro De Rosa present a years-long discussion of life, music, and the marvellous and unpredictable ways that the two come into contact with and influence each other. The result is what Morricone himself defines: "beyond a shadow of a doubt the best book ever written about me, the most authentic, the most detailed and well curated. The truest." Opening for the first time the door of his creative laboratory, Morricone offers an exhaustive and rich account of his life, from his early years of study to genre-defining collaborations with the most important Italian and international directors, including Leone, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Argento, Tornatore, Malick, Carpenter, Stone, Nichols, De Palma, Beatty, Levinson, Almodóvar, Polanski, and Tarantino. In the process, Morricone unveils the curious relationship that links music and images in cinema, as well as the creative urgency at the foundation of his experimentations with "absolute music". Throughout these conversations with De Rosa, Morricone dispenses invaluable insights not only on composing but also on the broader process of adaptation and what it means to be human. As he reminds us, "Coming into contact with memories doesn't only entail the melancholy of something that slips away with time, but also looking forward, understanding who I am now. And who knows what else may still happen."

Alessandro De Rosa undertook his study of music composition following Ennio Morricone's advice. He studied with Boris Porena in Rome and then graduated from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Netherlands. He currently works as a freelance musician.

Buy from Amazon

Home

7 November

Feast day of Ercolano – patron saint of Perugia

Bishop was martyred after trying to save city

Today sees the Umbrian city of Perugia celebrate one of the two annual feast days of its patron saint, Ercolano, who according to legend was martyred on this day in 549 at the hands of the Ostrogoths, who ruled much of Italy at that time and had placed the city under siege.  Herculanus, as he is also known, was the Bishop of Perugia and as such was charged with trying to bring comfort to his flock in the face of inevitable capture by the Ostrogoths, the tribe, thought to have originated in Scandinavia, which had swept into Italy at the beginning of the sixth century.  They had a large, well-equipped army – more powerful than the army Perugia possessed, although it had enough soldiers to deter an advance – and the Ostrogoth leader, Totila, was prepared to wait outside the walls of the city for as long as it would take to starve the population into surrender.  Perugia’s authorities did all they could to prolong the siege, rationing supplies and ensuring none were wasted, but days passed into months and years and there was no evidence that the amply fed army at the gates of the city was planning to move on.  Read more…

______________________________________

Niccolò Machiavelli - statesman and diplomat

Dismissal gave public servant time to write about his ruthless ideas

Statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, whose name has become synonymous with the words "cunning" and "duplicity", was dismissed from office in Florence on this day in 1512 by a written decree issued by the Medici rulers.  Machiavelli was forced to withdraw from public life and retired to his home in the Chianti region of Tuscany, where he wrote his most famous work, The Prince, which was to give the world the political idea of ‘the ends justify the means’.  Had the Medici not distrusted him, Machiavelli might have continued to serve in Florence as a diplomat and military leader.  He may never have passed on to mankind the ideas he had learnt from his work during the turbulent period in Italian history when popes and other European countries were battling against Italy’s city states for power.  In The Prince he was able to write with first-hand knowledge about the methods he had seen used by Cesare Borgia and his father Pope Alexander V1 to take over large parts of central Italy.  The ideas he put forward were to make the word "machiavellian" a regularly used pejorative adjective and the phrase "Old Nick" to become an English term for the devil.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Luigi Riva - an Azzurri great

Italy's record goalscorer and hero of Cagliari

Luigi 'Gigi' Riva, who was born on this day in 1944, is widely regarded as one of the finest strikers in the history of Italian football.  Despite playing in an era when football in Italy was notoriously defensive, he scored more than 200 goals in a 16-year club career, 156 of them in Serie A for Cagliari, with whom he won the scudetto (shield) as Italian League champions in 1970.  Nicknamed "Rombo di tuono" - thunderclap - by the football writer Gianni Brera, Riva is also the all-time leading goalscorer for the Italian national team with 35 goals, his record having stood since 1974.  After his playing career, Riva spent 23 years as part of the management team for the Azzurri and was a key member of the backroom staff when Italy won the World Cup for a fourth time in 2006.  Born in Lombardy, not far from Lake Maggiore, Riva spent virtually his whole football career with Cagliari and made his home in Sardinia.  The 1969-70 title is the only championship in the club's history and Riva, who scored 21 goals in the title-winning season, is as revered on the island as Diego Maradona is in Naples.  Although he came from a loving home in the small town of Leggiuno, just a few kilometres inland from the shores of Lake Maggiore, Riva had a tough upbringing.  Read more…

______________________________________

Gaspare Tagliacozzi - surgeon

Professor invented rhinoplasty procedure

Pioneering plastic surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi died on this day in 1599 in Bologna.  During his career, Tagliacozzi had developed what became known as ‘the Italian method’ for nasal reconstruction.  He improved on the procedure that had been carried out by the 15th century Sicilian surgeons, Gustavo Branca, and his son, Antonio.  Tagliacozzi wrote a book, De Curtorum Chirugia per Insitionem - On the Surgery of Mutilation by Grafting - which described in great detail the procedures carried out in the past to repair noses amputated during battle.  Surgeons who came after him credit him with single-handedly revolutionising the procedure and inventing what is today referred to as a rhinoplasty procedure.  Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna in 1545. He studied medicine, natural sciences and anatomy at the University of Bologna, gaining a degree in philosophy and medicine by the age of 24.  After he was appointed professor of surgery and professor of anatomy at the University he taught at the Archiginnasio, famous for its anatomical theatre, where he procured the bodies of executed prisoners to use in dissections.  Read more…

____________________________________

Book of the Day: DK Eyewitness Umbria Travel Guide

Enchanting hill towns. Wildlife-filled national parks. Ancient Roman ruins. There are countless reasons to visit Umbria. Whatever your dream trip involves, the DK Eyewitness Umbria Travel Guide is the perfect companion.  With a brand-new design, beautiful new photography and inspirational content, this fully updated guide brings Umbria to life, transporting you there like no other travel guide. You'll find trusted travel advice, expert-led insights, detailed breakdowns of all the must-see sights, photographs on practically every page, and our hand-drawn illustrations, which take you inside the region's buildings and neighbourhoods.  You'll discover: our pick of Umbria's must-sees and top experiences; beautiful photography and detailed illustrations, taking you to the heart of Umbria; the best spots to eat, drink, shop and stay; detailed maps and walks that make navigating the region easy; easy-to-follow itineraries; expert advice to help you get ready, get around and stay safe; colour-coded chapters to each part of Umbria; a lightweight format, so you can take it with you wherever you go.  Includes a guide to 24 hours in Perugia, the region's capital city.

DK Eyewitness's highly visual guides show you what others only tell you, with easy-to-read maps, tips, and tours to inform and enrich your trip.

Buy from Amazon

Home

6 November

NEW - Antonio Landieri - Camorra victim

Family fought for 12 years to establish son’s innocence

A 12-year-fight to clear the name of an innocent victim of a Camorra clan war began on this day in 2004 when 25-year-old Antonio Landieri, a disabled resident of the notorious Vele di Scampia housing complex in Naples, was shot dead outside a recreation club where he had been playing table football with some friends.   Antonio and his friends were leaving the club, at the side of a square known to be frequented by drug dealers, when a car pulled up a short distance away from them in Via Labriola. A group of armed men emerged from the car and began shooting at them.  His friends instinctively ran away but Antonio, who could walk but only with severely restricted mobility - the consequence of complications at birth that left him partially paralysed - could not keep up and was hit several times in the back. He died in the arms of his mother, who had heard the shots being fired and ran down 11 flights of stairs from the family’s apartment in the run-down complex, fearful for her son’s safety.  The shooting made headlines in the local papers, who reported it as the latest event in a rapidly evolving war between rival Camorra gangs that would leave 70 dead in six months.  Read more…

______________________________________

Enzo Biagi - author and journalist

Much respected presenter taken off air by Berlusconi

Enzo Biagi, the distinguished print and television journalist and author of more than 80 books, died in Milan on this day in 2007, at the age of 87.  A staunch defender of the freedom of the press, Biagi himself was the victim of censorship from the highest level of the Italian government in 2002 when prime minister Silvio Berlusconi effectively sacked him from the public broadcaster RAI for what he called "criminal use" of the network.  In what became known as il Editto bulgaro - the Bulgarian Edict - because he made the pronouncement during a state visit to Sofia, Berlusconi named another journalist, Michele Santoro, and the satirical comedian, Daniele Luttazzi, as guilty of similar conduct and said it was his duty to "not to allow this to happen".  It meant that the last years of Biagi's life were marred somewhat by an absence from the screen that lasted five years.  He made an emotional comeback in April 2007, seven months before his death, when Romani Prodi had begun his second stint as PM and saw to it that he was reinstated.  Berlusconi's disapproval of Biagi was thought to have related to two interviews he conducted during the run-up to the 2001 elections.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Giovanni Buitoni - entrepreneur

Turned family business into multinational company

Giovanni Buitoni, the entrepreneur who turned Buitoni pasta and Perugina chocolates into the international brands they are today, was born on this day in 1891 in Perugia.  The Buitoni family had been making pasta since 1827, when Giovanni’s great grandmother, Giulia, opened a small shop in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, in order to support the family after her husband, Giovan Battista Buitoni, had become ill.  She had her own recipe for pasta that used only high quality durum wheat.  Giulia had pawned her wedding jewellery in order to set up the shop but the business did so well that in 1856 two of the couple’s nine children, Giuseppe and Giovanni, opened a factory in Città di Castello, just over the border in northern Umbria, to manufacture pasta using a hard durum wheat they sourced in Puglia.  Giovanni’s sons, Antonio and Francesco, continued the company’s expansion, founding manufacturing plants in other towns, including Perugia.  It was in Perugia in 1907 that Francesco, noting the increasing popularity of chocolate, joined several partners in launching the Perugina confectionary company. Giovanni junior’s destiny was probably always to have a role in the family business, although it came rather sooner than he expected.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Cesare Lombroso – criminologist

Professor who first encouraged study of criminal mind

Cesare Lombroso, a university professor often referred to as ‘the father of criminology’ was born on this day in 1835 in Verona.  Although many of his views are no longer held to be correct, he was the first to establish the validity of scientific study of the criminal mind, paving the way for a generation of psychiatrists and psychologists to create a greater understanding of criminal behaviour.  In broad terms, Lombroso's theory was that criminals could be distinguished from law-abiding people by multiple physical characteristics, which he contended were throwbacks to primitive, even subhuman ancestors, which brought with them throwbacks to primitive behaviour that went against the rules and expectations of modern civilised society.  Through years of postmortem examinations and comparative studies of criminals, the mentally disturbed and normal non-criminal individuals, Lombroso formed the belief that ‘born criminals’ could be identified by such features as the angle of their forehead, the size of their ears, a lack of symmetry in the face or even arms of excessive length.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Vino Novello

Raise a glass to autumn in Italy

Italy’s new wine from this year’s harvest - Vino Novello - goes on sale in the shops and will be served in bars and restaurants from around today.  The light, fruity, red wine, produced throughout Italy from different grape varieties, is enjoyable to drink and a bargain buy to take home with you.  Vino Novello is often similar in taste, body and colour to the French wine, Beaujolais Nouveau, which is exported to a number of other countries after its release in the third week of November.  Like Beaujolais Nouveau, Vino Novello has a low alcohol content and is meant to be drunk while it is still young. The wine should be consumed quickly after the bottle is opened and unopened bottles should be kept for only a few months. In some parts of Italy there is a tradition that the last days to drink it are i giorni della merla (the days of the blackbird), which are traditionally the coldest days at the end of January.  A major area for production is the Veneto, with the merlot grape being the one most used by winemakers to make Vino Novello. Many wine producing areas hold feste to celebrate and will serve local specialities to eat with the new wine.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Book of the Day: Mafia Republic: Italy's Criminal Curse. Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta and Camorra from 1946 to the Present, by John Dickie

In Mafia Republic, John Dickie, Professor of Italian Studies at University College, London and author of the international bestsellers Cosa Nostra and Mafia Brotherhoods, shows how the Italian mafias have grown in power and become more and more interconnected, with terrifying consequences.  In 1946, Italy became a democratic Republic, thereby entering the family of modern western nations. But deep within Italy there lurked a forgotten curse: three major criminal brotherhoods, whose methods had been honed over a century of experience. As Italy grew, so did the mafias. Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the Camorra from Naples, and the mysterious 'Ndrangheta from Calabria stood ready to enter the wealthiest and bloodiest period of their long history.  Italy made itself rich by making scooters, cars and handbags. The mafias carved out their own route to wealth through tobacco smuggling, construction, kidnapping and narcotics. And as criminal business grew exponentially, the mafias grew not just more powerful, but became more interconnected.  By the 1980s, Southern Italy was on the edge of becoming a narco-state. The scene was set for a titanic confrontation between heroic representatives of the law, and mafiosi who could no longer tolerate any obstacle to their ambitions. This was a war for Italy's future as a civilized country. At its peak in 1992-93, the 'Ndrangheta was beheading people in the street, and the Sicilian Mafia murdered its greatest enemies, investigating magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, before embarking on a major terrorist bombing campaign on the Italian mainland.  The reach of the camorra, in particular, had become astonishing, the organisation controlling much of Europe's wholesale cocaine trade. In Mafia Republic, John Dickie again marries outstanding scholarship with compelling storytelling.

John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies at University College, London and author of the international bestsellers Cosa Nostra and Mafia Brotherhoods. 

Buy from Amazon

Home

Antonio Landieri - Camorra victim

Family fought for 12 years to establish son’s innocence

Antonio Landieri's disability meant he was unable
to escape as Camorra gunmen opened fire

A 12-year-fight to clear the name of an innocent victim of a Camorra clan war began on this day in 2004 when 25-year-old Antonio Landieri, a disabled resident of the notorious Vele di Scampia housing complex in Naples, was shot dead outside a recreation club where he had been playing table football with some friends.

Antonio and his friends were leaving the club, at the side of a square known to be frequented by drug dealers, when a car pulled up a short distance away from them in Via Labriola. A group of armed men emerged from the car and began shooting at them.

His friends instinctively ran away but Antonio, who could walk but only with severely restricted mobility - the consequence of complications at birth that left him partially paralysed - could not keep up and was hit several times in the back. He died in the arms of his mother, who had heard the shots being fired and ran down 11 flights of stairs from the family’s apartment in the run-down complex, fearful for her son’s safety.

The shooting made headlines in the local papers, who reported it as the latest event in a rapidly evolving war between rival Camorra gangs that would leave 70 dead in six months.  The dead man, they said, was associated with the Di Lauro clan which controlled much of Scampia; the attackers were from the Amato-Pagano clan from neighbouring Secondigliano.

Antonio Lampieri’s family insisted this was not the case but few people other than relatives and close friends believed them. The police refused to allow Antonio a public funeral on the grounds that it could lead to more criminality. 

The Vele di Scampia apartment blocks acquired
their name because their shape resembled sails

As far as the authorities, the press and most of the city’s population were concerned, Antonio had been an international drug dealer who often travelled between Italy and Colombia. 

His family’s bid to convince people otherwise was not helped by the reputation of the Vele, also known as the Sette Palazzi - the Seven Palaces.

A large urban housing project built between 1962 and 1975, the Vele di Scampia consisted of seven massive apartment blocks, constructed to house between 40,000 to 70,000 people. The blocks were dubbed vele (sails) for their triangular shape.

The complex was inspired by modernist housing developments pioneered by French-Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier.  

The architect in charge, Francesco Di Salvo, was a specialist in low-cost housing and the Vele di Scampia buildings were designed to provide only subsistence-level dwellings. Although they were deliberately minimal, they were to have many shared exterior spaces. Di Salvo believed he could construct apartment blocks that recreated the spirit of the alleys and courtyards of historic Naples, crowded but congenial.

But costs soon exceeded the city’s budget for the project, with funds frequently stolen, and the green spaces, schools, common areas and playgrounds that were meant to become the pulsating heart of a thriving community never materialised. 

The promised public transport links with central Naples were never built and the Sette Palazzi turned into a hotspot for organised crime. Prostitution and drug-dealing took place openly. The police only occasionally took any notice and Scampia, which like Secondigliano had been a rural village before Naples began to expand, became a symbol for urban decline.

Naples mayor Luigi De Magistris
commended the Landieri family

Three of the seven blocks were demolished in 1997, 2000 and 2003. Yet 40,000 residents, some of whom had been displaced by the earthquake that hit the Naples area in 1980, remained squeezed into the four remaining blocks. Many outsiders believed that no one would choose to stay in the Vele unless they were involved in crime.

Antonio’s parents, Enzo and Raffaella, never gave up their fight to achieve justice for their son, despite being offered money by the family of one of the gunmen as compensation in return for giving up their quest for the truth.

They were helped in their cause by numerous groups and associations set up to campaign on their behalf, by a tenacious anti-mafia prosecutor, Maurizio De Marco, and ultimately by evidence given by eight different Camorra pentiti - informants who had struck deals with prosecutors to reduce their own sentences.

The process took 12 years but it was finally established that the intended victims were the Meola brothers, Vittorio and Salvatore, who were Di Lauro affiliates.  Antonio Landieri had been mistaken for a Meola associate known to have difficulty walking.  

In 2017, Landieri’s parents at last learned that their son was to be given official state recognition as an innocent victim of the Camorra. The mayor of Naples, Luigi De Magistris, commended the family for “never giving up in the search for truth and in the pursuit of justice".

The five individuals named as the perpetrators of the killing were sentenced to life imprisonment. Others involved had died before the case came to trial.

Landieri has been honoured in a number of ways in Scampia, with a tree planted in his name near Piazza Giovanni Paolo II, an annual poetry competition held for the Antonio Landieri prize and the local football stadium renamed Stadio Antonio Landieri.

A book dedicated to him - entitled Al di là della neve, storie di Scampia (Beyond the Snow, Stories of Scampia) - written by his cousin, Rosario Esposito La Rossa, won the 2008 Siani Prize.

Roberto Saviano's book put
Scampia in the spotlight

Travel tip: 

Though hardly a tourist attraction in the conventional sense, Scampia attracts some visitors, particularly because of the notoriety of the Vele. The area was immortalised by the author and investigative journalist Roberto Saviano in his book, Gomorrah, which documented Saviano's infiltration and investigation of a number areas of business and daily life controlled or affected by the Camorra.  Scenes from both the film and TV series based on the book were filmed in the neighbourhood, some inside the actual Vele complex. It was seen in a better light, however, when US actor Stanley Tucci’s culinary series, Searching for Italy, ventured into the area to feature a bistrot run by local volunteers. The intention to demolish the complex’s remaining blocks was announced in 2016 and residents began moving out in 2019 but it was later announced that one block was to be preserved and repurposed as offices. 

The Piazza del Plebiscito is the largest
public square in the city of Naples

Travel tip:

Scampia, which is just a 10-minute drive from Naples’s Capodichino international airport, is less than 10km (six miles) from the centre of the city, which many tourists do visit. They are drawn by such attractions as Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest continuously active venue for public opera in the world; the large open space of the Piazza del Plebiscito, which adjoins the Palazzo Reale; the Capodimonte Royal Palace and Museum, which houses works by Caravaggio, Raphael and Botticelli; the Santa Chiara religious complex; the elegant, glass-domed Galleria Umberto I, a 19th century shopping arcade; and the 12th century Castel dell'Ovo, located on a promontory and offering beautiful views of the harbour and Mount Vesuvius, the volcano - officially still active, although dormant since 1944 - that overlooks the city.

Also on this day:

1835: The birth of criminologist Cesare Lombroso

1891: The birth of entrepreneur Giovanni Buitoni

2007: The death of author and journalist Enzo Biagi

Vino Novello goes on sale

Home