Andrea Pirlo - footballer and winemaker

Midfielder who won multiple honours now focused on vineyard

Andrea Pirlo was part of the Italian national
team that won the World Cup in 2006

The footballer Andrea Pirlo, who some commentators bracket with Roberto Baggio as one of the two best Italian footballers of the last 30 years, was born on this day in 1979.

The midfielder won the Italian Serie A championship six times with two clubs, and is double winner of the Champions League.

In international football he has a World Cup winner’s medal as a member of the 2006 Italian national team that lifted the trophy in Germany.  In 2019, he was recognized by the Italian Football Hall of Fame.

Pirlo has also enjoyed success as a coach but lately has also been focusing on growing his sustainable wine company, Pratum Coller, which aims for eco-friendly wine production with minimal environmental impact. 

As a strong advocate for protecting nature, Pirlo has helped spark environmental discussions around popular Italian passions, such as wine and football. Artificial football pitches have also attracted ire for their contribution to PFAS, chemicals that harm the ecosystem. 

In the United States, the AFFF lawsuit has been raising awareness about how PFAS in firefighting foam has contributed to cancer. These chemicals are also present in some football equipment, such as gloves and boots.  

Pirlo opened his Pratum Coller winery in 2007 in a village just outside his home town of Flero, which can be found 8km (five miles) south of the city of Brescia in Lombardy.

Since retiring as a player, Pirlo has devoted more
time to running the winery he launched in 2007

In all, Pirlo won 119 caps for his country, the fourth highest total of all Italian internationals. Fellow players nicknamed him l’architetto – the architect – for his ability to design and construct attacking moves.

The highlight of his international career was undoubtedly the role he played in Italy winning the 2006 World Cup in Germany. The fulcrum of the azzurri midfield, he scored one goal and was credited with the assist for three other goals during the tournament.

One of those assists resulted in the crucial opening goal for Italy scored by Fabio Grosso in the classic semi-final against the host nation.  He was also one of Italy’s successful penalty takers during the shoot-out that decided the final against France.

He was named man of the match three times in the tournament, more than any other player.  He matched that achievement six years later at Euro 2012, when Italy were beaten in the final.

Although he began his career as an attacking midfielder or sometimes even a second striker, Pirlo excelled as a deep-lying central midfielder, a playmaker with wonderful vision and the ability to hit accurate passes over any distance.

He also acquired renown as a free kick specialist, capable of curling the ball into the net beyond the reach of the goalkeeper. He claims he honed his technique by watching Roberto Baggio train at Brescia, the club at which Baggio wound down his career and Pirlo began his.

Pirlo in the colours of AC Milan,
where his talent came to the fore

Born in Flero, Pirlo began his career with the Flero youth side. He joined Brescia in 1994 and made his debut in Serie A in May the following year at the age of 16.

He helped Brescia win the Serie B title and promotion to Serie A in 1998. It earned him a move to Internazionale of Milan, who loaned him to Reggina for the 1999-2000 season and then back to Brescia in 2000-01, where he played alongside Baggio, his childhood idol.

Because Baggio occupied the attacking midfield position for Brescia, manager Carlo Mazzone decided to deploy Pirlo in the deep-lying playmaker role that he would make his own. Years later, Pirlo still described the moment he delivered a long pass that enabled Baggio to score against Juventus as one of the high spots of his career.

After three seasons on Inter’s books, Pirlo was sold to city rivals AC Milan for 33 billion Italian lire – just over 17 million euro – in June 2001.

It was at Milan, in particular under Carlo Ancelotti, where Pirlo began to realise his talent and became a world class player.  He was a key player in a period of consistent success as Italian football became dominated by clubs owned by two business giants - Silvio Berlusconi’s AC Milan and Massimo Moratti’s Inter.

Milan won two Champions Leagues (2003 and 2007), two UEFA Super Cups (2003 and 2007), two Serie A titles (2004 and 2011), a FIFA Club World Cup (2007), a Supercoppa Italiana (2004), and a Coppa Italia (2003) during Pirlo’s time.

After Ancelotti left to become Chelsea manager in 2009, Pirlo remained with Milan for a further two seasons, winning the scudetto again in 2011, but new coach Massimiliano Allegri used him differently and his final season was restricted to 17 appearances for Serie A, which prompted him to seek a change of direction - and a move to Juventus.

Pirlo enjoyed more success when
he moved from Milan to Juventus

There, under coach Antonio Conte, he added three more Serie A titles (2012, 2013, 2014), as well as two more Supercoppa Italiana titles (2012 and 2013). When Conte left to become national manager, Pirlo again worked with Allegri but more successfully this time, playing his part in a league and cup double in 2015 before leaving to play Major League Soccer for New York City.

His final appearance was in the Champions League final – his fourth – in which Juventus were beaten 3-1 by Barcelona.

After calling time on his playing career in 2017, Pirlo returned to Juventus in 2020 as Under-23 head coach, taking charge of the Serie A side just a few days later after Maurizio Sarri was sacked. 

He won the Supercoppa Italia and the Coppa Italia in his debut season, as well as qualifying for the Champions League but was replaced the following season nonetheless. He has since coached in Turkey and back in Italy with Sampdoria, but with less success.

One of two children – he has a brother Ivan – Pirlo was married for 13 years to Deborah Roversi, with whom he had two children. He has had two more children with his second wife, Valentina Baldini. In 2013, his autobiography, Penso Quindi Gioco - I Think, Therefore I Play - became a bestseller.

This is an updated version of an article originally published in 2017.

The Chiesa della Coversione di San Paolo
is the parish church of Flero 

Travel tip:

Flero, where Andrea Pirlo was born, is a town in Lombardy of just under 9,000 residents, situated eight kilometres south of Brescia in the flat plain of the Po Valley, although close enough to the Italian pre-Alps for snow-capped mountains to be visible on clear winter days.  Lake Garda and Lake Iseo are a short distance away.  Flero itself is a typical northern Italian commuter town, orderly and clean with a couple of churches and a few modern shops. The grapes for Pirlo’s Pratum Coller winery are grown in a small vineyard in the adjoining village of Coler, where Pirlo’s father was born. 

The Capitoline Temple is part of Brescia's 
extensive Roman archaeological park

Travel tip:

The city of Brescia tends not to attract many tourists compared with nearby Bergamo or Verona, partly because of the counter-attraction of the lakes.  Yet it has plenty of history, going back to Roman times, and many points of interest, including two cathedrals – the Duomo Vecchio and its neighbour, the Duomo Nuovo – and the attractive Piazza della Loggia, with a Renaissance palace, the Palazzo della Loggia, which is the town’s municipal centre.  The Torre dell’Orologio clock tower bears similarities to the one in St Mark’s Square in Venice. Brescia boasts the largest Roman archaeological area in the whole of Northern Italy . A very important historical legacy in the heart of the city, an integral part of the site that has been a World Heritage Site since 2011. Located along Via Musei near Piazza del Foro, one of the oldest in Brescia, you can admire the Capitoline Temple with the statue of the Winged Victory, and the  Roman Theatre.

Also on this day: 

1462: The birth of woodcarver and architect Baccio d'Agnolo

1860: The birth of politician Vittorio Orlando

1870: The birth of sculptor Pompeo Coppini

1946: The birth of actor Michele Placido

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18 May

Giuseppe Ayala – politician and magistrate

Judge who was part of struggle against the Mafia

Anti-Mafia prosecutor Giuseppe Ayala was born on this day in 1945 in Caltanissetta in Sicily.  Ayala became well known as an anti-Mafia magistrate and anti-Mafia judge. He was a prosecutor at the so-called Maxi Trial in Palermo in 1987, which resulted in the conviction of 342 Mafiosi.  He has continually raised doubts about whether it was the Mafia working alone who were responsible for the killing of his fellow anti-Mafia investigator Giovanni Falcone in 1992.  The deaths of Falcone and another prominent anti-Mafia magistrate, Paolo Borsellino, also murdered by the Mafia, came a few months after the killing of Christian Democrat politician, Salvatore Lima, who was thought to be the Mafia’s man on the inside in Rome and had close links with Italy’s three-times prime minister, Giulio Andreotti.  There was speculation that it suited senior figures in the Italian government that the two magistrates were killed because they knew too much about corruption at the highest level.  Ayala studied at the University of Palermo and obtained a degree in jurisprudence. Afterwards he worked as a public prosecutor.  Read more…

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Ezio Pinza - opera and Broadway star

Poor boy from Rome who made his home at the Met

The opera star Ezio Pinza, who had 22 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1926 to 1948 and sang to great acclaim at many other of the world’s most famous opera houses, was born on this day in 1892 in Rome.  Pinza, a bass who was blessed with a smooth and rich bass voice and matinee idol looks, also had a successful career in musical theatre on Broadway and appeared in a number of Hollywood films.  Born Fortunio Pinza in relative poverty in Rome, he was the seventh child born to his parents Cesare and Clelia but the first to survive.  He was brought up many miles away in Ravenna, which is close to the Adriatic coast, about 85km (53 miles) from Bologna and 144km (90 miles) from Venice.  He dropped out of Ravenna University but studied singing at Bologna’s Conservatorio Martini and made his opera debut at Cremona in 1914 in Bellini’s Norma.  Pinza signed up to fight for his country in the First World War, after which he resumed his career in 1919. Within a short time he was invited to perform at Italy’s most prestigious opera house, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he came under the baton of the brilliant but demanding conductor, Arturo Toscanini.  Read more…

Giovanni Falcone - anti-Mafia crusader

Sicilian lawyer made life's work of taking on Cosa Nostra 

Giovanni Falcone, who would become known as an anti-Mafia crusader during his career as a judge and prosecuting magistrate, was born on this day in 1939 in Palermo.  The son of a state clerk, he was raised in a poor district of the Sicilian city. Some of the boys with whom he played football in the street would go on to become Mafiosi but Falcone was determined from an early age that he would not be drawn into their world.  Educated at the local high school, he studied law at Palermo University. In 1966, at the age of 27, he was appointed a judge in Trapani, a crime-ridden port on the west coast of Sicily and began his lifelong quest to defeat the criminal organisation.  In time, Falcone became the Mafia's most feared enemy and by 1987, when he was the chief prosecutor at the so-called Maxi Trial in Palermo which convicted 342 members of the so-called Cosa Nostra, the likelihood he would be murdered meant he could not leave home without a heavily armed police escort.  He worked in a bomb-proof bunker underneath the city's law courts. His home was similarly protected and when he travelled between the two it was with a convoy of armoured police cars.  Read more…

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Domenico di Pace Beccafumi – artist

Painter from Siena experimented with rich colour 

Considered one of the last true representatives of the Sienese school of painting, Domenico di Pace Beccafumi died on this day in 1551 in Siena.  He is remembered for his direction of the paving of the Duomo - cathedral - of Siena between 1517 and 1544, when he made ingenious improvements to the technical processes employed for this task, which in the end took more than 150 years to complete.  Domenico was born in Montaperti near Siena in about 1486. His father, Giacomo di Pace, worked on the estate of Lorenzo Beccafumi, whose surname he eventually took.  Seeing his talent for drawing, Lorenzo had taken an interest in him and recommended that he learn painting from the Sienese artist, Mechero.  In 1509 Di Pace Beccafumi travelled to Rome for a short period, where he learnt from artists working on the Vatican.  Back in Siena, he painted religious pieces for churches and was only mildly influenced by the trends dominating the neighbouring Florentine school.  He designed scenes from the Old Testament to decorate the floor of the cathedral and also painted frescoes for Palazzo Pubblico in the city.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Vendetta: The Mafia, Judge Falcone and the Quest for Justice, by John Follain

On May 23, 1992 the Mafia assassinated its 'Number One Enemy', the legendary prosecutor Judge Falcone, with a motorway bomb that also killed his wife Francesca and three bodyguards. Fifty-seven days later, the Mafia killed Falcone's friend and colleague, Judge Paolo Borsellino, with a car bomb outside his mother's home that also killed five bodyguards. These two murders changed forever how Italy viewed the Mafia. Vendetta tells the inside story of the assassination plots and the investigation that followed. Follain reveals Borsellino's desperate race against time to find out who killed his friend while knowing he was next on the list and reveals the daring undercover police mission which unmasked the killers.  Based on new and exclusive interviews and the testimony of investigators, Mafia supergrasses, survivors, relatives and friends, Vendetta recounts the events hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute as the Mafiosi plan and carry out the murders, and as the police hunt them down.

John Follain is an editor for European government news at Bloomberg. He was previously a reporter for Bloomberg, and a correspondent for the Sunday Times based in Paris and in Rome, covering events across Europe. He was also a correspondent for Reuters based in Paris and Rome. As well as Vendetta, he has written eight non-fiction books including the award-winning Zoya's Story, an international bestseller, and Death in Perugia: The Definitive Account of the Meredith Kercher Case.

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17 May

NEW - Giulio Carlo Argan – art historian and politician

Award winning art expert switched from Fascism to Communism

Art historian and critic Giulio Carlo Argan, who joined the Fascist party in the 1920s but went on to become the first Communist mayor of Rome nearly 50 years later, was born on this day in 1909 in Turin.   After stepping down as Mayor of Rome in 1979, Argan represented the Italian Communist Party as a Senator of the Italian Republic, between 1983 and 1992.  Argan’s family were originally from Geneva, but by the 19th century they had settled in the Piedmont region. His father was the bursar of the provincial mental asylum and his mother was a school teacher. After leaving high school, Argan went to study at the University of Turin.  He joined the National Fascist Party in 1928 and after graduating in 1931 he worked for the National Arts and Antiquity Directorate. Among his duties were directing the magazine, Le Arti, and helping to establish what became one of the most prestigious institutes for art conservation and restoration. It has been said that his career was helped by his friendship with Cesare Maria De Vecchi, 1st Conte de Val Cismon, one of the four leaders of the Blackshirt mob that marched on Rome in 1922 and helped to put Mussolini in power.  Read more…

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Luca Cadalora - motorcycle world champion

Modena rider won titles in 125cc and 250cc categories

Luca Cadalora, the motorcycle racer who was three times a world champion, was born on this day in 1963 in Modena, Emilia-Romagna.  Later employed as a coach to Italy’s seven-times world champion Valentino Rossi, Cadalora began his professional motorcycle racing career in 1984, riding an MBA in the 125cc world championship.  He picked up a respectable 27 points to finish eighth in his debut season, his best performance a second place in the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, but had a very disappointing second season, finishing only three races to collect a meagre four points.  His switch to the Garelli team, the dominant force at the time in the 125cc class, catapulted him to fame.  Cadalora and team-mate Fausto Gresini, his fellow Italian, battled it out for the title through the season, each finishing with four wins. Cadalora took the upper hand by winning four of the first seven races and it was his consistency over the campaign that clinched the title. He failed to complete only one of 11 races and finished in the top four in the other 10, finishing runner-up in his last three to pip Gresini by 114 points to 109.  Read more…

Federico II Gonzaga – Duke of Mantua

Ruler received a valuable education at the papal court

Federico II Gonzaga, who became the ruler of Mantua and Montferrat, was born on this day in 1500 in Mantua.  He spent his childhood living as a political hostage, first at the court of Pope Julius II in Rome and then at the court of Francis I of France.  It wasn’t perhaps an ideal start in life, but historians believe the political, social and cultural education he received in the company of popes, cardinals, and kings helped shape him as a future ruler.  Federico was the son of Francesco II Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este. His godfather was Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli’s model for the ideal Renaissance Prince.  His father, Francesco, was captured by the Venetians during battle and held hostage for several months. While he was absent, his wife, Isabella, ruled Mantua.  Francesco managed to secure his own release only by agreeing to send his son, Federico, to be a hostage at the papal court.  After the death of Pope Julius II in 1513, Federico was sent to the court of the new King of France, Francis I, where he became a favourite, as he had interests in common with the King.  After the death of his father in 1519, Federico returned to rule Mantua and established Isabella Boschetti as his mistress there.  Read more…

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Sandro Botticelli – painter

Renaissance master was forgotten until the 19th century

Early Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli died on this day in 1510 in Florence.  Years before his death he had asked to be buried in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence at the feet of a woman for whom it is believed he suffered unrequited love.   She was Simonetta Vespucci, a married noblewoman, who had died in 1476. She is thought to have been the model for Botticelli’s major work, The Birth of Venus, which was painted years later in 1485, and that she also appeared in many of his other paintings.  After his death, Botticelli was quickly forgotten and his paintings remained in the churches and villas for which they had been created until the late 19th century, when people started to appreciate his work again.  Botticelli was born Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi in 1445. He was active during the golden age of painting in Florence under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and was for a time apprenticed to both Fra Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio.  In 1481 Botticelli was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to paint three frescoes for the Sistine Chapel.  Read more…

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Giovanna Trillini - fencing champion

Four-times Olympic champion in foil

The Olympic fencing champion Giovanna Trillini, one of Italy’s most successful female athletes, was born on this day in 1970 in Jesi, a medieval town in the Marche region.  Trillini won the individual gold medal in the foil event at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and was part of Italy’s gold-medal winning group in the team foil at Barcelona in 1992 as well as at Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000.  She competed at five consecutive summer Olympics between 1996 and 2008 and her total medal haul of eight, including one silver and two bronze medals in the individual foil, makes her Italy’s fifth most successful Olympian and the third most successful female competitor.  After winning individual gold in Barcelona, she was honoured by being asked to be the flag bearer for the azzurri team at the opening ceremony for the Games in Atlanta four years later.  Trillini’s career also encompassed 19 medals in world championship events, including nine golds, and six in the European championships.  Born into a sporting family, Trillini was encouraged to take up fencing by her two brothers, Ezio and Roberto, who were both regular competitors in the sport, in which Italy has a long tradition.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Michelangelo: Architect, by Giulio Carlo Argan and Bruno Contardi

Argan’s last published book examines in detail the complex story of the architectural production of Michelangelo (1475-1564): his early works in Rome at the beginning of the 16th-century, the Florentine period between 1516 and 1534, including the Biblioteca Laurenziana, and finally the major Roman projects from 1534 to 1564, among them St. Peter's, the Porta Pia, and Santa Maria degli Angeli. An essentially anticlassical architect, Michelangelo replaced proportion with rhythm, shunning the conventional requirements for balance and measure. The authors analyze the artist's complex relations with his papal and Medici patrons and with his own works, which often failed to progress beyond the drawing board or were never completed. Michelangelo's drawings with their impatient notations and the architect's impetuous inventions, made them difficult for construction workers to follow. Michelangelo: Architect reproduces many annotated sketches, pen-and-ink studies, plans and renderings, along with rich black-and-white photographs of the buildings, details and sculptures Michelangelo produced. The book includes a bibliography, index of works, and index of names.

Giulio Carlo Argan was an art historian, critic and politician, who was a professor at the University of Rome between 1959 and 1976. He was a prolific author on the history of art. His former pupil Bruno Contardi was a curator and arts administrator, who served as Milan's Superintendent of Artistic and Historical Works.

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Giulio Carlo Argan – art historian and politician

Award-winning art expert switched from Fascism to Communism

Giulio Carlo Argan was a major
figure in the arts as well as politics

Art historian and critic Giulio Carlo Argan, who joined the Fascist party in the 1920s but went on to become the first Communist mayor of Rome nearly 50 years later, was born on this day in 1909 in Turin.

After stepping down as Mayor of Rome in 1979, Argan represented the Italian Communist Party as a Senator of the Italian Republic, between 1983 and 1992.

Argan’s family were originally from Geneva, but by the 19th century they had settled in the Piedmont region. His father was the bursar of the provincial mental asylum and his mother was a school teacher. After leaving high school, Argan went to study at the University of Turin.

He joined the National Fascist Party in 1928 and after graduating in 1931 worked for the National Arts and Antiquity Directorate. Among his duties were directing the magazine, Le Arti, and helping to establish what became one of the most prestigious institutes for art conservation and restoration. 

It has been said that his career was helped by his friendship with Cesare Maria De Vecchi, 1st Conte de Val Cismon, one of the four leaders of the Blackshirt mob that marched on Rome in 1922 and helped to put Mussolini in power.

Argan published a manual of art for high schools and contributed to the magazine, Primato, which was run by another high ranking Fascist official. After World War II he taught in the universities of Palermo and Rome.

He co-founded the publishing house, Il Saggiatore, and was a member of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts, which was a predecessor to the Ministry of Culture.

Argan became Mayor of Rome in 1976,
the first Communist to hold the office

In 1968, Argan published his most famous work, Storia dell’arte italiana - The History of Italian Art. 

He then founded an institute for industrial design in Rome In 1973.  Argan was interested in art as a form of social engagement, which he thought was integral and necessary to life. He identified architecture and urban planning as areas where the community had a particularly strong interaction with culture.

A prolific writer of books on art, Argan’s major works, which tended to emphasise the social context of art, ranged from studies of  Renaissance painters and architects, including Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo and Palladio, through the Baroque period in art, to modern sculpture and abstract art. His last book, Michelangelo architetto, was published in 1990.

He stimulated much debate in 1963 with his discussion on ‘the death of art’, by which he meant the end of the creative autonomy of the individual. He saw it as an ‘irreversible’ crisis in the system of traditional art techniques used in an industrial and capitalist society.

He was a professor at the University of Rome from 1959 to 1976. He donated his entire library to the university in 1982, following which he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus. 

In 1976, he was elected as Rome’s first Communist mayor, an office he held for more than three years. While he was Mayor, he supported the defence of the environment and the relaunch of the Imperial Forums, using the slogan: ‘Either cars or monuments,’ and he prevented the construction of a four-star hotel on one of the most panoramic points of the capital city. He resigned as Mayor on health grounds in 1979.

Later, he served as a Communist Senator representing Rome and Tivoli for nearly 11 years. 

Argan was awarded the Feltrinelli prize for the Arts in 1958 and the Gold Medal for Merit and Culture in Art by the Italian Republic in 1976.

He died in Rome in 1992, aged 83. After his death, collections of his writing and articles were published.

The site of the Royal Palace was 
chosen for its open, sunny position

Travel tip:

Giulio Carlo Argan was born in the city of Turin in Piedmont, where much of the architecture illustrates its rich history as the home of the Savoy kings of Italy. In the centre of the city, Piazza Castello, with the Royal Palace, Royal Library, and Palazzo Madama, which used to be where the Italian senate met, showcases some of the finest buildings in ‘royal’ Turin.  The Royal Palace – the Palazzo Reale – was built on the site of what had been the Bishop’s Palace, built by Emmanuel Philibert, who was Duke of Savoy from 1528 to 1580. He chose the site because it had an open and sunny position close to other court buildings. Some members of the House of Savoy are buried in Turin’s Duomo in Piazza San Giovanni, which is also famous for being the home of the Turin shroud. Many people believe that the cloth now preserved in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud was the actual burial shroud of Jesus Christ. 

The entrance to the Villa d'Este and the Tivoli
Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage site

Travel tip:

Argan spent much of his life living in Rome and, as a Senator, he represented both Rome and Tivoli, a town and commune in Lazio about 30 miles, 19 kilometres, north east of Rome. Tivoli  offers a wide view over the Roman Campagna, a low-lying area of countryside surrounding Rome. Tivoli is famous for being the site of Hadrian’s villa, a large villa complex built around AD 120 by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and the Villa d’Este, a 16th century villa, famous for its terraced hillside Renaissance Garden. Both villas are UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Villa d'Este is often referred to simply as the Tivoli Gardens, and for its profusion of fountains, more than 50 in total. The nearby river Aniene was diverted to provide water for the complex system of pools, water jets, channels, fountains, cascades and water games. Canals were dug and 200 metres of underground pipes were laid. 

Also on this day:

1500: The birth of Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua

1510: The death of painter Sandro Botticelli

1963: The birth of motorcycle world champion Luca Cadalora

1970: The birth of fencing champion Giovanna Trillini

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