24 June

NEW - Lorenzo Del Boca – journalist and writer

Author of Polentoni says north of Italy was betrayed by the Risorgimento

The author Lorenzo Del Boca, whose books and essays about Italian history and politics have been translated into several languages, was born on this day in 1951 in Romagnano Sesia in the province of Novara in Piedmont.  Del Boca has become known outside Italy following the publication of his book Polentoni in 2011, which puts forward his opinions about how and why the north of the country was betrayed by the unification of Italy in 1861.  But he refutes the idea that Polentoni is in any way a riposte to the book Terroni, published in 2010 by the author and journalist Pino Aprile, who is from Puglia in the south of Italy and expresses the opinion that the south was betrayed by the north as a result of the Risorgimento.  Polentoni argues that Risorgimento was a betrayal of the north as well as the south. Read more…

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Battle of Custoza

Austrians thwart Italy’s hopes of unifying the peninsula

An army of the recently unified Kingdom of Italy was driven out of Custoza in the Veneto region by Austrian troops in the Battle of Custoza on this day in 1866.  Although the Italians had twice the number of soldiers, the Austrians were victorious strategically and drove the Italians back across the Mincio river and out of the area then known as Venetia.  King Victor Emmanuel II’s younger son, Amadeo, was severely wounded in the battle but he survived his injuries and went on to reign briefly as King of Spain from 1870 to 1873.  The German Kingdom of Prussia had declared war on the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy seized the opportunity to join forces with Prussia, with the intention of annexing Venetia and uniting the Italian peninsula, in what became known as the Third Italian War of Independence. The Austrian Imperial army joined up with the Venetian army. Read more…

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Vittorio Storaro - cinematographer

Triple Oscar winner among best in movie history

Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, whose work has won three Academy Awards, was born on this day in 1940 in Rome.  Storaro won Oscars for Best Cinematography for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, for the Warren Beatty-directed historical drama Reds in 1981, and for The Last Emperor, Bernardo Bertolucci’s story of imperial China, in 1987.  Described as someone for whom cinematography was “not just art and technique but a philosophy as well”, Storaro worked extensively with Bertolucci, for whom he shot the controversial Last Tango in Paris and the extraordinary five-hour epic drama 1900.  He filmed many stories for his cousin, Luigi Bazzoni, collaborated with Coppola on three other movies and more recently has worked with Woody Allen. Storaro inherited his love of the cinema from his father. Read more…

Piero Barone – singer

Young tenor found fame on TV talent show

Piero Barone, one of the three singers who make up the Italian opera and pop group, Il Volo, was born on this day in 1993 in Naro, a town in the province of Agrigento in Sicily.  Il Volo hit the headlines after winning the Sanremo Music Festival in 2015. They came third when they represented Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest with their hit Grande Amore later that year in Austria and have since acquired growing popularity worldwide.  In 2016, the group, together with tenor Placido Domingo, released Notte Magica – A Tribute to the Three Tenors, a live album featuring many of the songs performed by the Three Tenors (Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Jose Carreras) for their iconic concert held at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome on the eve of the Italia ’90 World Cup.  Piero’s father, Gaetano Barone, is a mechanic. Read more…

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Battle of Solferino

Suffering of soldiers led to the founding of the Red Cross

The Battle of Solferino - part of the Second Italian War of Independence - took place on this day in 1859 south of Lake Garda between Milan and Verona.  It was the last battle in world history where all the armies were under the personal command of their monarchs.  The French army under Napoleon III was allied with the Sardinian army commanded by Victor Emmanuel II. Together, they were victorious against the Austrian army led by Emperor Franz Joseph I.  The battle lasted more than nine hours and resulted in thousands of deaths on both sides.  Jean-Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman, toured the battlefield afterwards and was so horrified by the suffering of the thousands of wounded and dying soldiers, he wrote a book about what he had seen and set about establishing the International Red Cross.  Read more…

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Benedetta Tagliabue - architect

Italian half of an acclaimed design partnership

The architect Benedetta Tagliabue, whose work in partnership with her late husband Enric Miralles included the iconic Scottish Parliament Building at Holyrood in Edinburgh, was born on this day in 1963 in Milan.  Tagliabue formed a close friendship with Barcelona-born Miralles when she was a student and he was teaching at Columbia University in New York.  They became business partners in 1991 and married a year later.  Tragically, Miralles died in 2000 at the age of just 45, having been diagnosed with a brain tumour, but Tagliabue has continued to run the business they created.  Tagliabue studied architecture in Switzerland and Venice, attending the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV), which is part of the University of Venice. She fell in love with the city of canals and made it her home for several years. 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 has not only been a bestseller, but one that has forcefully entered the historical and civil debate. In a passionate and polemical manner, Pino Aprile's book examines the effect that the unification of Italy has had on Southern Italy and analyses what some of the ramifications are today. A bestseller in Italy, the book sold more than 200,000 copies in its first year of print. More than a decade after the original book was released, Aprile has now 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, including evidence of a massacre of genocidal proportions. 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. He has worked in television with Sergio Zavoli on the investigative series Journey South. He lives in the Castelli Romano area, just outside Rome.

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Lorenzo Del Boca – journalist and writer

Author of Polentoni says north of Italy was betrayed by the Risorgimento

Lorenzo Del Boca had a long career working as
a journalist for the Turin-based daily La Stampa

The author Lorenzo Del Boca, whose books and essays about Italian history and politics have been translated into several languages, was born on this day in 1951 in Romagnano Sesia in the province of Novara in Piedmont.

Del Boca has become known outside Italy following the publication of his book Polentoni in 2011, which puts forward his opinions about how and why the north of the country was betrayed by the unification of Italy in 1861.

But he refutes the idea that Polentoni is in any way a riposte to the book Terroni, published in 2010 by the author and journalist Pino Aprile, who is from Puglia in the south of Italy and expresses the opinion that the south was betrayed by the north as a result of the Risorgimento. 

Del Boca points out on the back cover of Polentoni that in the 1990s he had already written two books that have been interpreted as ‘irreverent’ about the wealthy Savoy family.  

The first King of the united Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, was a descendant of the family, as were all the monarchs who succeeded him. Del Boca also says that he has been quoted extensively by Aprile as a bibliographic reference. 

Polentoni argues that Risorgimento was
a betrayal of the north as well as the south

The title of his book, Polentoni, is an offensive term sometimes used by people in southern Italy to describe northern Italians. It alludes to the northern Italian habit of eating polenta, which is a type of yellow or white ground cornmeal that can be served creamy, as a slice from a loaf of polenta, or fried.

After graduating in Philosophy from the University of Turin, Del Boca was involved for a time with local newspapers before going to work for La Stampa, the sixth most widely distributed Italian daily newspaper, which is based in Turin.

He became a professional journalist in 1980, working first as a court reporter and then as chief reporter at Stampa Sera. He went on to become a special correspondent at La Stampa, writing mainly about events connected with terrorism.

Del Boca has also specialised in writing about pseudo-history, about information that claims to be history, but is often based on theories that have been formed, which fall outside the rules and conventions followed by historians. 

His writing about the House of Savoy is characterised by a lack of reverence towards the famous family and he uses as sources articles and publications that do not accept the traditional version of the history of the Risorgimento.

He argues that while the south was ‘stripped, robbed and massacred’,  the Risorgimento was a shameful period in history in which there were no winners among ordinary Italians, with many northern people persuaded to fight and even die for the cause with a promise of better lives that was never delivered.

Other scholars and historians have criticised some of Del Boca’s ideas. but he has also received many awards for his writing.

Del Boca was president of the National Council of the Order of Journalists from 2001 to 2010, and was the first president to have been elected for a third consecutive term to be the head of the collective body that represents professional journalists in Italy.  

The Castello del Valentino is one of Turin's
historic former residences of the Savoy family

Travel tip:

Lorenzo Del Boca was born in Piedmont, which is the second largest region of Italy after Sicily. Piedmont, in the northwest of Italy, borders France, Switzerland and the Italian regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Val d’Aosta, and a small part of Emilia-Romagna. The territory was first acquired by Otto of Savoy in 1046 and its capital was established at Chambery, which is now in France. The Savoy territory became the Duchy of Savoy in 1416 and the seat of the Duchy was moved to Turin in 1563 by Duke Emanuele Filiberto. After Victor Amadeus II became King of Sardinia in 1720, Piedmont became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Turin grew in importance as a European capital city. Victor Emmanuel II was already the King of Sardinia-Piedmont before he was crowned King of the newly united Italy.  Much of the architecture of Turin 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. Other notable cities in Piedmont - Piemonte in Italian - include Novara, Alessandria and Asti. With a population of just over 850,000, Turin is the fourth largest city in Italy, after Rome, Milan and Naples.

The Torre del Pretorio
dates back to the 1400s

Travel tip:

Romagnano Sesia, the town and municipality where Lorenzo del Boca was born, is in the province of Novara in Piedmont. It is located about 80km (50 miles) northeast of Turin and about 25km (16 miles) northwest of Novara. Visitors to Romagnano are attracted by the Church of San Silvano and Abbazia di San Silvano, which form a complex is notable for its historical and artistic significance, including a 5th-century Paleochristian sarcophagus, the 15th century tower Torre del Pretorio, the Piazza Libertà, the town’s central square surrounded by arcades, and the remains of a medieval bridge that once spanned the Sesia river before it was diverted to protect the town from its force.  Romagnano stages a Good Friday procession, known as the Sacred Representation, which began in 1729 and has evolved into a large-scale theatrical performance. It involves more than 300 actors often drawn from the community, who dress in period costumes to recreate the scenes of Jerusalem.

Also on this day:

1859: The Battle of Solferino

1866: The Battle of Custoza

1940: The birth of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro

1963: The birth of architect Benedetta Tagliabue

1993: The birth of tenor Piero Barone, a singer with Il Volo

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23 June

Giuseppina Tuissi - partisan

Key figure in capture and execution of Mussolini

Giuseppina Tuissi, who was among a group of partisans who captured the deposed Fascist leader Benito Mussolini as he tried to escape to Switzerland in 1945, was born on June 23, 1923, in Abbiategrasso, near Milan.  Tuissi and her comrades seized Mussolini at Dongo, a small town on the shores of Lake Como, on April 27, 1945, along with his mistress Claretta Petacci.  Having heard that Hitler was preparing to surrender to the Allies, Mussolini was trying to reach Switzerland before flying on to Spain. He and Petacci and their entourage were executed at the village of Giulino di Mezzegra the following day before the partisan group took their bodies to be put on public display in Milan.  Tuissi, however, would herself be killed less than a couple of months later, probably at the hands of fellow partisans who suspected her of betraying comrades. Read more…

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Arnaldo Pomodoro - sculptor

Romagnolo artist best known for his Sphere within Sphere series

The avant-garde sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, who became famous for monumental spherical bronze sculptures with their outer surface cracked to reveal intricate interiors, was born in Morciano di Romagna, a small town just inland from the Adriatic coast, on June 23, 1926. Pomodoro’s first Sfera con Sfera (Sphere within Sphere) was installed in the Cortile della Pigna courtyard at the Vatican Museums in Rome in the 1960s and subsequently produced versions for locations around the world, including Trinity College, Dublin, the United Nations Plaza and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Pomodoro died yesterday - June 22, 2025 - the day before what would have been his 99th birthday. Broadly speaking, the sfera con sfera sculptures, which contain a smaller sphere at the centre of the larger, broken sphere, separated by layers of what look a little like the inner workings of a watch, represent the fragility of the world or of society and the complexities that lie beneath the surface.  Read more…

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Claudio Capone – actor and dubber

The Italian voice of a host of stars

Italy lost one of its most famous voices on June 23, 2008, with the death of actor and dubber Claudio Capone, who suffered a stroke while working in Scotland. He died two days later, at the age of only 55.  Although he began his career with the ambitions of any actor to reach the top of his profession, he was offered an opportunity only a few years out of drama school to do some voice-over work and found the flow of work in dubbing to be so consistent he ultimately made it his career.  Italian cinema and TV audiences have always preferred to watch imported films and TV shows with dubbed Italian voices rather than subtitles and it was down to Rome-born Capone that many foreign stars became famous in Italy, even if they did not speak a word of Italian.  The biggest example of this was the American actor Ronn Moss, who played fashion magnate Ridge Forrester in the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.  Read more…

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Francesca Schiavone – tennis player

First Italian woman to win a Grand Slam

Tennis champion Francesca Schiavone was born on June 23, 1980 in Milan.  When she won the French Open at Roland Garros in 2010 she became the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam event in singles. She was the runner-up in the French Open final the following year. Schiavone won eight titles on the WTA tour and was the runner up in events 11 times.  Her highest career ranking was World Number Four, which she achieved in January 2011.  She helped Italy win the Federation Cup in 2006, 2009 and 2010 and she has had the most wins for the Italian team.  She also appeared in the women’s doubles final at the 2008 French Open.  Schiavone retired from tennis after the 2018 US Open. In December 2019, Schiavone revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year but after successful treatment she was declared free of the disease.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce, by Ray Moseley

In his last days, Mussolini, the tyrant, was in the grip of anger, shame, and depression. The German armed forces that had sustained his puppet government since its creation in September 1943 were being inexorably driven out of Italy, the frontiers of his Fascist republic were shrinking daily and Mussolini was aware that German military leaders were negotiating with the Allies behind his back in neutral Switzerland. Moseley's The Last 600 Days of Il Duce is a well-researched and highly engaging book that throws light on the final 20 months of the despot's life and culminates with the dramatic capture and execution of Mussolini - and his mistress Claretta Petacci - by partisans of the Italian resistance on April 28, 1945.

Ray Moseley was chief European correspondent of the Chicago Tribune and in 1981 was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. During four decades as a foreign correspondent, he spent five years in Rome. He is also author of Mussolini's Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano. 

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22 June

Galileo Galilei convicted of heresy

'Father of Science' forced to deny that earth revolves around sun

One of the more bizarre episodes in the history of human intellectual advancement took place in Rome on this day in 1633 when Galileo Galilei, the brilliant astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and engineer – often described as ‘the father of science’ - was convicted of heresy.  His crime was to support the view – indeed, to confirm it with scientific proof – that the sun rather than the earth was the centre of the solar system, as had been theorised by the Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus in the previous century.  This flew completely in the face of a major plank of orthodox Roman Catholic beliefs, within which the contention that the sun moved around the earth was regarded as a fact of scripture that could not be disputed.  Read more…

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Walter Bonatti - mountaineer

Climber's outstanding career marred by 50-year row

Walter Bonatti, the Italian who some would argue is the greatest alpine mountain climber that ever lived, was born on this day in 1930 in Bergamo in Lombardy.  He was the first to complete some of the most demanding climbs in the Alps and the Himalayas, including the first solo climb in winter of the North face of the Matterhorn.  But those achievements were marred for half a century by the bitter row that sprang from the part he played in the 1954 Italian expedition to conquer K2, the 8,611-metre peak north-east of the Himalayas that is the second highest in the world - behind Mount Everest (8,848 metres) - but is regarded as the more difficult climb.  Incredibly fit and able to survive at high altitudes without oxygen, he was already such an accomplished climber at just 24 years of age that he was chosen to join the expedition. Read more…

Lucrezia Tornabuoni - political adviser

Medici wife one of most powerful women of the Renaissance

Lucrezia Tornabuoni, who became one of the most influential and therefore powerful women in 15th century Italy through family connections and her own political and business acumen, was born on this day in 1427 in Florence.  Connected by birth to the powerful Tornabuoni family on her father’s side and the Guicciardini through her mother, Lucrezia entered a third powerful family when she married Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici.  Yet she was an important figure in her own right, revealing political skill and a talent for diplomacy during her husband’s time as de facto leader of Florence, and when their son, Lorenzo, succeeded him.  She was also a successful property owner, buying houses, shops and farms in and around Pisa and Florence, which she would then lease out. She bought and renovated a hot spring, Bagno a Morba, turning it into a resort and spa for paying guests.  Read more…

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Book of the Day:  The Dawn of Modern Cosmology: From Copernicus to Newton, edited by Aviva Rothman

New to Penguin Classics, the astonishing story of the Copernican Revolution, told through the words of the ground-breaking scientists who brought it about. In the late 15th century, it was believed that the earth stood motionless at the centre of a small, ordered cosmos. Just over two centuries later, everything had changed. Not only was the sun the centre of creation, but the entire practice of science had been revolutionised. This is the story of that astonishing transformation, told through the words of the astronomers and mathematicians at its heart. Bringing together excerpts from the works and letters of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and others for the first time, The Dawn of Modern Cosmology is the definitive record of one of the great turning points in human history.

Aviva Rothman, editor and translator, is Associate Professor of History at Case Western University. She is a historian of science whose work focuses on the early modern period, and is the author of The Pursuit of Harmony: Kepler on Cosmos, Confession and Community.

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