22 February

Giulietta Masina - actress

Married to Fellini and excelled in his films

The actress Giulietta Masina, who was married for 50 years to the film director Federico Fellini, was born on this day in 1921 in San Giorgio di Piano, a small town in Emilia-Romagna, about 20km (12 miles) north of Bologna.  She appeared in 22 films, six of them directed by her husband, who gave her the lead female role opposition Anthony Quinn in La strada (1954) and enabled her to win international acclaim when he cast her as a prostitute in the 1957 film Nights of Cabiria, which built on a small role she had played in an earlier Fellini movie, The White Sheik.  Masina's performance in what was a controversial film at the time earned her best actress awards at the film festivals of Cannes and San Sebastián and from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists (SNGCI).  Both La strada and Nights of Cabiria won Oscars for best foreign film at the Academy Awards.  Masina also won best actress in the David di Donatello awards for the title role in Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965) and a second SNGCI best actress award for his 1986 film Ginger and Fred.  Although born in northern Italy, one of four children, her parents sent her to live with a widowed aunt in Via Lutezia in the Parioli area of Rome.  Read more…

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Mario Pavesi – entrepreneur

Biscuit maker who gave Italian motorists the Autogrill

Italy lost one of its most important postwar entrepreneurs when Mario Pavesi died on this day in 1990.  Pavesi, originally from the town of Cilavegna in the province of Pavia in Lombardy, not only founded the Pavesi brand, famous for Pavesini and Ringo biscuits among other lines, but also set up Italy’s first motorway service areas under the name of Autogrill.  Always a forward-thinking businessman, Pavesi foresaw the growing influence American ideas would have on Italy during the rebuilding process in the wake of the Second World War and the way that Italians would embrace road travel once the country developed its own motorway network.  He was one of the first Italian entrepreneurs to take full advantage of advertising opportunities in the press, radio, cinema and later television.  Born in 1909 into a family of bakers, Pavesi moved to Novara in 1934, opening a pastry shop in Corso Cavour, where he sold a range of cakes and confectionery and served coffee. During the next few years, until Italy became embroiled in the war, he expanded the business in several ways.  Read more…

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Enrico Piaggio - industrialist

Former aircraft manufacturer famed for Italy's iconic Vespa motor scooter

Enrico Piaggio, born on this day in 1905 in the Pegli area of Genoa, was destined to be an industrialist, although he could not have envisaged the way in which his company would become a world leader.  Charged with rebuilding the family business after Allied bombers destroyed the company's major factories during World War II, Enrico Piaggio decided to switch from manufacturing aircraft to building motorcycles, an initiative from which emerged one of Italy's most famous symbols, the Vespa scooter.  The original Piaggio business, set up by his father, Rinaldo in 1884, in the Sestri Ponente district of Genoa, provided fittings for luxury ships built in the thriving port. As the business grew, Rinaldo moved into building locomotives and rolling stock for the railways, diversifying again with the outbreak of World War I, when the company began producing aircraft.  In 1917 the company bought a new plant in Pisa and in 1921 another in nearby Pontedera, which became a major centre for the production of aircraft engines and is still the headquarters of Piaggio today.   Aeroplanes remained the focus of the business, which Enrico and his brother, Armando, inherited with the death of their father in 1938.  Read more…

Renato Dulbecco - Nobel Prize-winning physiologist

Research led to major breakthrough in knowledge of cancer

Renato Dulbecco, a physiologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his role in drawing a link between genetic mutations and cancer, was born on this day in 1914 in Catanzaro in Calabria.  Through a series of experiments that began in the late 1950s after he had emigrated to the United States, Dulbecco and two colleagues showed that certain viruses could insert their own genes into infected cells and trigger uncontrolled cell growth, a hallmark of cancer.  Their findings transformed the course of cancer research, laying the groundwork for the linking of several viruses to human cancers, including the human papilloma virus, which is responsible for most cervical cancers.  The discovery also provided the first tangible evidence that cancer was caused by genetic mutations, a breakthrough that changed the way scientists thought about cancer and the effects of carcinogens such as tobacco smoke.  Dulbecco, who shared the Nobel Prize with California Institute of Technology (Caltech) colleagues Howard Temin and David Baltimore, then examined how viruses use DNA to store their genetic information.  Read more…

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Giovanni Zenatello - opera singer and director

Tenor star who turned Verona’s ancient Arena into major venue

The early 20th century opera star Giovanni Zenatello, who was not only a highly accomplished performer on stages around the world but also the driving force behind the establishment of the Arena di Verona as a major venue, was born on this day in 1876 in Verona.  Zenatello spent a large part of his career in the United States but is remembered with enormous respect in Italy - and in particular in his home city - for having teamed up with impresario Ottone Rivato and others to put on a spectacular staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Arena in 1913, the first operatic production of the century to take place within the remains of the Roman amphitheatre and the forerunner of hundreds more.  The tenor was already an important figure in Italian opera for his interpretations of Verdi’s Otello and most of the other dramatic or heroic leading male roles in the popular works of the day.  He had also been the first to sing the role of Pinkerton in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.  Zenatello initially trained as a baritone and when he made his professional stage debut in Belluno in 1898, taking on the roles of Silvio in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Alfio in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, it was as a baritone.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Cinema of Federico Fellini, by Peter Bondanella

This major artistic biography of Federico Fellini shows how his exuberant imagination was shaped by popular culture, literature, and his encounter with the ideas of Carl Jung, especially Jungian dream interpretation.  Covering Fellini's entire career, The Cinema of Federico Fellini links his mature accomplishments to his first employment as a cartoonist, gag man, and sketch-artist during the Fascist era and his development as a leading neorealist scriptwriter. Peter Bondanella thoroughly explores key Fellinian themes to reveal the director's growth not only as an artistic master of the visual image but also as an astute interpreter of culture and politics. Throughout the book Bondanella draws on a new archive of several dozen manuscripts, obtained from Fellini and his scriptwriters. These previously unexamined documents allow a comprehensive treatment of Fellini's important part in the rise of Italian neorealism and the even more decisive role that he played in the evolution of Italian cinema beyond neorealism in the 1950s. By probing Fellini's recurring themes, Bondanella reinterprets the visual qualities of the director's body of work - and also discloses in the films a critical and intellectual vitality often hidden by Fellini's reputation as a storyteller and entertainer. After two chapters on Fellini's pre-cinematic career, the book covers all his films in analytical chapters arranged by topic: Fellini and his growth beyond his neorealist apprenticeship, dreams and metacinema, literature and cinema, Fellini and politics, Fellini and the image of women, and La voce della luna and the cinema of poetry.

Until his retirement in 2007, Peter Bondanella was Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, Film Studies, and Italian at Indiana University. A member of the European Academy of Sciences and the Arts and past President of the American Association for Italian Studies, Bondanella wrote numerous books and articles on Italian literature and cinema and translated or edited a number of Italian literary classics.

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21 February

Domenico Ghirardelli – chocolatier

Built famous US business with skills learned in Genoa

The chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli, founder of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in San Francisco, was born on this day in 1817 in a village just outside Rapallo in Liguria.  Also known as Domingo, Ghirardelli arrived in San Francisco in 1849 during the rapid expansion years of the Gold Rush, having spent the previous 10 years or so in Peru, where he had run a successful confectionery business.  After making money as a merchant, initially ferrying supplies to prospectors in the gold fields, he set up his first chocolate factory in 1852, drawing on the skills he acquired as an apprentice in Genoa.  By the end of the century, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was one of the city’s most successful businesses, with a prestige headquarters on North Point Street, a short distance from Fisherman’s Wharf, in a group of buildings that became known as Ghirardelli Square.  The son of a spice importer, Ghirardelli was born in the village of Santa Anna, just outside Rapallo, about 25km (16 miles) along the Ligurian coast from Genoa, in the direction of La Spezia to the southeast.  His father wanted him to have a trade and once he had reached his teens sent him to be an apprentice at a confectioner in Genoa.  Read more…

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Raimondo Montecuccoli – military leader

Brilliant tactician outwitted his opponents

Raimondo, Count of Montecuccoli, a soldier, strategist and military reformer who served the Habsburgs with distinction during the Thirty Years’ War, was born on this day in 1609 in Pavullo nel Frignano in the Duchy of Modena and Reggio.  As well as being Count of Montecuccoli, Raimondo also became a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and the Duke of Melfi in the Kingdom of Naples.  He was born in the Castle of Montecuccolo in Pavullo nel Frignano near Modena and at the age of 16 began serving as a soldier under the command of his uncle, Count Ernest Montecuccoli, who was a General in the Austrian army.  After four years of active service in Germany and the Low Countries, Raimondo became a Captain of Infantry.  He was wounded at the storming of new Brandenburg and at the first Battle of Breitenfeld, where he was captured by Swedish soldiers.  After being wounded again at Lutzen in 1632 he was made a major in his uncle’s regiment. He then became a lieutenant–colonel of cavalry.  At the storming of Kaiserslautern in 1635 he led a brilliant charge and was rewarded by being made a colonel.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Abbati - painter and revolutionary

Early death robbed Italian art of bright new talent

Italy lost a great artistic talent tragically young when the painter and patriot Giuseppe Abbati died on this day in 1868.  Only 32 years old, Abbati passed away in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, having contracted rabies as a result of being bitten by a dog.  Abbati was a leading figure in the Macchiaioli movement, a school of painting advanced by a small group of artists who began to meet at the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence in the late 1850s.  The group, in which Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Cristiano Banti were other prominent members, were also for the most part revolutionaries, many of whom had taken part in the uprisings that occurred at different places in the still-to-be-united Italian peninsula in 1848.  Abbati, born in Naples, had joined Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, losing his right eye in the Battle of the Volturno in 1860, when around 24,000 partisans were confronted by a 50,000-strong Bourbon army at Capua, north of Naples.  The son of Vincenzo Abbati, also a painter, Abbati was taken to live in Florence when he was six and to Venice before he was 10.  Read more…

Death of Pope Julius II

Pope who commissioned Michelangelo for Sistine Chapel

Pope Julius II, who was nicknamed ‘the Warrior Pope’, died on this day in 1513 in Rome.  As well as conducting military campaigns during his papacy he was responsible for the destruction and rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica and commissioning Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  He is also remembered by students of British history as being the Pope who gave Henry VIII dispensation to marry Catherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow.  Born Giuliano della Rovere, he was the nephew of Francesco della Rovere, who became Pope Sixtus IV.  His uncle sent him to be educated by the Franciscans and he was made a Bishop soon after his Uncle became Pope.  He later became Cardinal Priest of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and was very influential in the College of Cardinals.  One of his major rivals was Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who was elected Pope Alexander VI in 1492. After accusing him of corruption, Della Rovere retreated from Rome until Alexander died in 1503.  He was succeeded by Pope Pius III who died less than a month after becoming Pope and Della Rovere was finally elected as Pope Julius II in November 1503.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Journey of the Italians in America, by Vincenza Scarpaci

The Italian imprint on North America that began centuries ago with the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Giovanni da Verrazzano continues in every aspect of American life today. Between 1880 and 1914, nearly four million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. While the Italian population was initially clustered in the industrial northeast, the growing number of immigrants began fanning out across the country in search of work or adventure, transforming the communities and landscapes they came into contact with along the way as dramatically as they themselves were changed by the American experience.  In The Journey of the Italians in America, Scarpaci embraces the contradictions of the Italian American legacy, considering the multifarious ways in which Italians became an essential part of American history without generalizations. Every aspect of life, ranging from religion, the struggle for citizenship, anti-Italian prejudice, World War II, Columbus Day parades, Italians in popular culture, and of course, food, all come to life in this insightful and candid photographic journey.  Drawing from both private and public photograph collections, the author explores the traditions, history, and legacy of Italians in America. Around 400 photographs, some dating to the 1800s, represent more than 100 years of Italian American life, each telling the intimate story of an Italian family, individual, or business. From agrarian family homesteads in Italy to prosperous commercial enterprises in New York City, the photographs, accompanied by insightful, detailed captions, capture the complex and nuanced chronicle of an ethnic group as diverse as it is influential.

Brooklyn native Vincenza Scarpaci is a writer and teacher. She graduated from Hofstra University in New York in 1961 with a bachelor of arts degree in history and went on to obtain her PhD in history from Rutgers University in 1972.

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20 February

NEW - Pino Aprile – journalist

Author wrote about unification from the point of view of the South

Writer Pino Aprile, who became internationally famous as the author of Terroni, a book outlining 'all that has been done to ensure that the Italians of the south became Southerners', was born on this day in 1950 in Gioia del Colle, in Puglia.  Terroni was first published in 2010, a year before Italy celebrated the 150th anniversary of becoming a unified country. Over 200,000 copies were sold in Italy and an English version of Terroni, translated by Ilaria Marra Rosiglioni, was published in 2011.  With the stage set for the tricolore to fly proudly over a year of celebrations in Italy, Terroni appeared just before the party started, to provide readers with stark examples of what Aprile claims happened to people living in the south of the country when troops fighting for Victor Emmanuel II arrived in their towns and villages.  The catalogue of alleged massacres, executions, rapes, and torture that Aprile details in Terroni are hard to read about. Aprile himself says that at times he was tempted to walk away from the whole project. But he persevered because he was determined to set out the South’s version of events during the Risorgimento in Italy for readers to consider.  Read more…

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Ferruccio Lamborghini - car maker

Tractor manufacturer inspired by Enzo Ferrari's 'insult'

Fans on one side of a great rivalry in Italy's performance car market were in mourning on this day in 1993 following the death at the age of 76 of Ferruccio Lamborghini.  Lamborghini, who made his fortune from building tractors to service Italy's post-war agricultural recovery, set up as a car maker in 1963 in direct competition with Enzo Ferrari, who had been selling sports cars with increasing success since 1947.  It is said there was no love lost between the two, not least because they first met when Lamborghini turned up at Ferrari's factory in Maranello, a few kilometres from Modena, to complain to Enzo in person that Ferrari were using inferior parts.  Lamborghini had become a collector of fast cars and owned a Mercedes-Benz 300SL, a Jaguar E-Type and two Maserati 3500 GTs among others.  He acquired his first Ferrari, a two-seater 250GT with bodywork designed by Pinin Farina, in 1958, and went on to own several more.  He was generally unimpressed, complaining that they were noisy and rough and essentially re-purposed track cars, with too little luxury refinement.  Read more…

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Laura Bassi – scientist

Ground-breaking academic paved the way for women

Brilliant physicist Laura Bassi died on this day in 1778 in Bologna.  She had enjoyed a remarkable career, becoming the first woman to earn a Chair in Science at a university anywhere in the world.  When she was just 13 her family’s physician had recognised her potential and took charge of her education.  When she was 20 he invited philosophers from the University of Bologna along with the Archbishop of Bologna, who later became Pope Benedict XIV, to examine her progress.  They were all impressed and Bassi was admitted to the Bologna Academy of Sciences as an honorary member, the first female ever to be allowed to join.  Her theses at the university showed influences of Isaac Newton’s work on optics and light. She was a key figure in introducing his ideas about physics to Italy.  When she received her degree from the university there was a public celebration in Bologna.  Another of her theses about the property of water led to her being awarded the post of Professor of Physics at the university.  As a woman, she was not allowed to teach at the university so she gave lessons and did experiments in her own home.  Read more…

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The Battle of Parabiago

When Visconti fought Visconti for control of Milan

One of the bloodiest battles of the 14th century took place on this day near the village of Parabiago, about 20km (12 miles) northwest of Milan.  The Battle of Parabiago in 1339 saw the armies of Azzone Visconti, the ruler of Milan, defeat an attempt to unseat him by his exiled uncle, Lodrisio Visconti, leader of a mercenary army named the Compagnia di San Giorgio - the Company of St George.  In 1311, Lodrisio had helped Matteo Visconti and his son Galeazzo regain the rulership of Milan from the Della Torre family, who had previously held power in the city but was later instrumental in imprisoning Galeazzo and his son, Azzone, as part of a power struggle. When Galeazzo and Azzone ultimately escaped, Lodrisio fled.  Initially holding up in his castle at Seprio, about 38km (24 miles) northwest of Milan, near the city of Varese, he was besieged by soldiers led by Azzone, who destroyed the castle but failed to capture Lodrisio.  In exile, Lodrisio became a condottiero - a mercenary military leader - and found employment with the Della Scala family of Verona, also known as the Scaligeri, who controlled much of the area that today makes up Veneto, with the exception of Venice, as well as the key strategic cities and surrounding territories of Brescia in Lombardy, Parma in Emilia-Romagna and Lucca in northern Tuscany.  Read more…

The Barber of Seville premieres in Rome

Rival fans wreck debut of Rossini’s most famous opera

The Barber of Seville, the work that would come to be seen as Gioachino Rossini’s masterpiece of comic opera, was performed for the first time on this day in 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.  Commissioned by the theatre’s owner, Duke Francesco Sforza-Cesarini, it had a libretto by Cesare Sterbini based on the French comedy play Le Barbier de Séville and was originally entitled Almaviva or The Useless Precaution, out of deference to Giovanni Paisiello, the most popular composer in Italy in the 18th century, whose own version of Il barbiere di Siviglia had been very successful.  The second part of the same text, by Pierre Beaumarchais, was behind Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, which premiered four years after Paisiello’s.  Nonetheless, Paisiello’s loyal fans saw Rossini’s opera as an attempt to steal their favourite’s thunder, whatever name he gave it, and organised what was nothing short of an act of sabotage, packing the theatre on opening night and proceeding to jeer, shout and catcall throughout the whole performance, unsettling the cast and leading to a number of mishaps on stage.   Read more…

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Francesco Maria II della Rovere - the last Duke of Urbino

Last male in famous family line

Francesco Maria II della Rovere, the last holder of the title Duke of Urbino and the last surviving male from a famous noble family, was born on this day in 1549 in Pesaro in Le Marche.  Descended from the 15th century Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco Maria II’s only male heir, Federico Ubaldo della Rovere, died without fathering a son, which meant the Duchy reverted to Francesco Maria II, who in turn was convinced he should give it to Pope Urban VIII, of the Barberini family.  Federico’s daughter, Vittoria della Rovere, had been convinced she would be made Duchess of Urbino but had to be content with the Duchies of Rovere and Montefeltro, as well as an art collection that became the property of Florence after she had married Ferdinando II de’ Medici.  Pope Sixtus IV, best known for building the Sistine Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official papal residence in Vatican City, had come from a poor family in Savona in Liguria, but once elected pope became wealthy and powerful and set about ensuring that his personal prosperity was used to the betterment of his family.  He soon made his nephews Giuliano della Rovere (the future Pope Julius II) and Pietro Riario both cardinals and bishops.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Terroni: All That Has Been Done to Ensure That the Italians of the South Became "Southerners", by Pino Aprile. Translated by Ilaria Marra Rosiglioni

Terroni, the essay by Pino Aprile that has opened a breach in nationalistic rhetoric, is one of those readings that are not forgotten. Not only a sensational bestseller, but a long-seller that has forcefully entered the historical and civil debate, conferring new awareness and restoring pride. As historian Giordano Bruno Guerri wrote, after its publication nothing could have continued in the same way, and we would have had an Italy and a history "before" and "after" Terroni. More than a decade after the original book was released, Aprile has published - in Italian so far - Nuovo Terroni, a definitive version that re-proposes the original manifesto with important additions, and with three new  parts, completely unpublished: The evidence of the massacre: an impeccable and sensational study, ten years in the making, that demonstrates with incontrovertible demographic data the size of what was a real genocide; The Sardinia case: reconstructing the history of the Savoy presence since 1724, we discover that the Piedmontese anticipated on the island everything they later did in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies starting from 1861. A part of the country considered a colony and a land of conquest, with looting, massacres, deprivation of all rights, itinerant firing squads. The political consequences: with the birth of initiatives and movements that never existed in a century and a half, and the consequent denunciation of distortions, inequalities, iniquities. Some commentators have said that the book is destined to become a fundamental document for understanding Italian history. 

Pino Aprile is a journalist and author of numerous books. Currently residing in the Castelli Romani region of Lazio, Italy, he worked in television with Sergio Zavoli on the investigative series Journey South and on weekly programs for RAI News1.

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Pino Aprile – journalist

Author wrote about unification from the point of view of the South

Pino Aprile has enjoyed a long
career as a writer and journalist

Writer Pino Aprile, who became internationally famous as the author of Terroni, a book outlining 'all that has been done to ensure that the Italians of the south became Southerners', was born on this day in 1950 in Gioia del Colle, in Puglia.

Terroni was first published in 2010, a year before Italy celebrated the 150th anniversary of becoming a unified country. Over 200,000 copies were sold in Italy and an English version of Terroni, translated by Ilaria Marra Rosiglioni, was published in 2011.

With the stage set for the tricolore to fly proudly over a year of celebrations in Italy, Terroni appeared just before the party started, to provide readers with stark examples of what Aprile claims happened to people living in the south of the country when troops fighting for Victor Emmanuel II arrived in their towns and villages.

The catalogue of alleged massacres, executions, rapes, and torture that Aprile details in Terroni are hard to read about. Aprile himself says that at times he was tempted to walk away from the whole project. But he persevered because he was determined to set out the South’s version of events during the Risorgimento in Italy for readers to consider. 

At the beginning of the book there is a publisher’s note explaining that the singular noun terrone is an offensive term used by people in northern Italy to describe those from southern Italy. The word is from the term terra, meaning dirt or land, and to call someone a terrone implies that they are ignorant, uneducated, lazy, unwilling to work, rude, and of poor hygiene. 

Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose
soldiers stand accused

Italy’s Corte di Cassazione (the equivalent of a Supreme Court) has upheld the decision of a lower court that the term terrone is derogatory and offensive.

Aprile says he grew up not realising what had really happened in the area he was born in during the Risorgimento, because the history was never taught in schools. He had not realised that the people in the South who were labelled as brigands and executed were in fact Bourbon soldiers defending their homeland and that their wives and children were allegedly killed by Giuseppe Garibaldi’s soldiers just because they were considered brigands by association.

He had also never known that the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was one of the most industrialised places in the world, only just behind England and France, before it was invaded by Garibaldi and his men. 

Aprile writes: “The South has been deprived of its institutions; it has been deprived of its industries, its riches and of its ability to react. It has also been deprived of its people, with an emigration that was induced or forced…”

He says that while we think of the North of Italy today as prosperous, and the South as poor, the reverse was the case when Garibaldi set out to unify Italy. And he claims large quantities of money and valuable items were taken from the South to pay off the debts of the North. 

For the reader, references to the war crimes he says were committed during the military campaign to unify Italy are disturbing to say the least. Millions were either killed or wounded and at the very least forced to abandon their homes and land, leading to mass emigration from the south of Italy to the United States and South America.

Terroni sold more
 than 200,000 copies

But Aprile ends Terroni on a hopeful note saying: "I believe that there is no other land in Europe today that has a more promising future, and as many riches to offer than our South."

Aprile is the author of numerous other books, some of which have been translated into English. During his career as a journalist, Aprile was deputy editor of the magazine, Gente, and editor of the magazine, Oggi and he worked for Tg1, the Rai news programme, and TV7.  He also worked with Sergio Zavoli on the investigative series, Journey South.

Although he was born in Gioia del Colle and brought up in the Puglian coastal city of Taranto, Aprile spent many years living and working in Milan. He now lives in the Castelli Romani region of Lazio.

Pino Aprile is celebrating his 75th birthday today.

The well-preserved throne room inside
Gioia del Colle's historic castle

Travel tip:

Gioia del Colle, where Pino Aprile was born, is a comune of Bari in Puglia. It is situated on top of a hill between the Adriatic and Ionian seas. The town’s castle dates from the Byzantine period but it was enlarged by the Normans and Swabians, who successively dominated the area. The main church, initially dedicated to Saint Peter when it was built in the 11th century, but later renamed Madonna della Neve, contains historic frescoes. Gioia del Colle is famous for its production of mozzarella and for its Gioia del Colle Primitivo wine.

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The remains of the Greek
Temple of Poseidon

Travel tip:

The coastal city of Taranto in Puglia, where Pino Aprile grew up, is an important port as well as an Italian naval base. It was founded by the Greeks in the eighth century BC and had become one of the largest cities in the world with a population of about 300,000 by 500 BC. There are several ruined Greek temples, some dating back to the sixth century BC. The old city or Città Vecchia retains the same street layout as when the Byzantines rebuilt it after it had been damaged by the Saracens in 927AD. Taranto has a Big Sea, the natural harbour where the ships are moored, which is separated from its Little Sea, which is actually a lagoon, by a cape. Taranto is famous for its mussels, which are given their distinctive flavour by the special conditions of salinity of the Little Sea. It is also said to be where the Tarantella, a frenetic dance, originated as a response to being bitten by a supposedly venomous spider.

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Also on this day: 

1339: The Battle of Parabiago

1549: The birth of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, last Duke of Urbino

1778: The death of groundbreaking scientist Laura Bassi

1816: Rossini’s Barber of Seville premieres in Rome

1993: The death of car maker Ferruccio Lamborghini

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