21 July

Suso Cecchi D'Amico - screenwriter

Woman who scripted many of Italy's greatest movies

Suso Cecchi D’Amico, the most accomplished and sought-after screenwriter in 20th century Italian cinema, was born on this day in 1914 in Rome.  She collaborated on the scripts of more than 100 films in a career spanning 60 years and worked with almost every Italian director of note, particularly the pioneers of neorealism, the movement in which she was a driving force.  The classic films in which she was involved are some of the greatest in cinema history, including  Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948), William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953), Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (1958), which was released in the United States and Britain as Big Deal on Madonna Street, and Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962).  She also worked with Michelangelo Antonioni on Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955) and Franco Zeffirelli on Jesus of Nazareth (1977), but she was best known for her professional relationship with Luchino Visconti.  Read more…

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The Battle of Bezzecca

Garibaldi-led force suffers heavy casualties but wins important victory

The Battle of Bezzecca, a significant Italian victory in the push for unification, took place on this day in 1866 on a site approximately 10km (six miles) west of the northern tip of Lake Garda in what is now the Trentino region of northern Italy.  The battle was part of the Third Italian War of Independence as the new Kingdom of Italy, which had been formally proclaimed in 1861, sought to expel the Austrians from Venetia, which along with Papal Rome had remained outside the control of the fledgling nation.  It took place within the wider context of the Austro-Prussian War, a conflict that had begun earlier in the year after a territorial dispute. Italy, sensing an opportunity to annex Venetia and the part of Lombardy still under Austrian rule, had agreed an alliance with Prussia.  The Prussian victory at the Battle of Königgrätz resulted in Austria moving troops from Venetia towards Vienna. Read more…

Guglielmo Ferrero - journalist and historian

Nobel prize nominee who opposed Fascism

The historian, journalist and novelist Guglielmo Ferrero, who was most famous for his five-volume opus The Greatness and Decline of Rome, was born on this day in 1871.  The son of a railway engineer, he was born just outside Naples at Portici but his family were from Piedmont and while not travelling he lived much of his adult life in Turin and Florence.  A liberal politically, he was vehemently opposed to any form of dictatorship and his opposition to Mussolini’s Fascists naturally landed him in trouble. He was a signatory to the writer Benedetto Croce's Anti-Fascist Manifesto and when all liberal intellectuals were told to leave Italy in 1925, he refused. Consequently he was placed under house arrest.  It was only after four years, following appeals by officials from the League of Nations and the personal intervention of the King of Belgium, that he was allowed to leave Italy.  Read more…

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Beppe Grillo - comedian turned activist

Grillo founded populist Five Star Movement 

The comedian turned political activist Beppe Grillo was born on this day in 1948 in Genoa.  Grillo is the founder of the Five Star Movement - Movimento Cinque Stelle - an Italian political party that has enjoyed rapid growth in recent years. It enjoyed one of its first high-profile successes when Virginia Raggi was elected Mayor of Rome in 2016, while Luigi Di Maio, who succeeded Grillo as leader, became Italy’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister between 2018 and 2019.  The party's current president, Giuseppe Conte, was prime minister of Italy from 2018 to 2021. The Five Star Movement - M5S - polled more than 25 per cent of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies at the 2013 elections in Italy, increasing its share to 32.7 per cent in 2018, which made it Italy’s largest party.  At the same time as Raggi won 67 per cent of the vote in Rome, another M5S candidate, Chiara Appendino, was elected Mayor of Turin. Read more…

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Book of the Day:  A History of Italian Cinema, by Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni

This second edition of A History of Italian Cinema, an update of the bestselling definitive guide, was published to celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2018. Building upon decades of research, Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni’s new edition brings the definitive history of the subject, from the birth of cinema to the present day, up to date with a revised filmography as well as more focused attention on the melodrama, the crime film, and the historical drama. The book is expanded to include a new generation of directors as well as to highlight themes such as gender issues, immigration, and media politics. Accessible, comprehensive, and heavily illustrated throughout, this is an essential purchase for any fan of Italian film.

Peter Bondanella is the author of a number of groundbreaking books, including Hollywood Italians, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, and The Films of Roberto Rossellini. In 2009, he was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and the Arts for his contributions to the history of Italian cinema and his translations or editions of Italian literary classics (Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Vasari, Cellini).  Federico Pacchioni is Sebastian Paul & Marybelle Musco Chair of Italian Studies at Chapman University, Orange, California, USA.

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20 July

NEW - Pope Leo XIII

Why the papal name Leo has been inspirational

Pope Leo XIII, who was the fourth longest serving pope in history, died on this day in 1903 in Rome at the age of 93. His reputation for supporting the rights of industrial workers inspired the current pope, Leo XIV, to choose Leo as his papal name after he was elected in May 2025.  Leo XIII served as pope for 25 years, despite fears after his election in 1878 that he was in delicate health. Only three popes have served for longer. They were the first pope, Saint Peter the Apostle, Pope Pius IX, and Pope John Paul II. Leo XIII was born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci in Carpineto Romano in Lazio in 1810. His family were noble and religious and he was educated at the Jesuit College of Viterbo. He enjoyed Latin and was writing poems in Latin by the age of 11.  After his mother died, his father wanted his children to be near him, so he moved to Rome. Read more…

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Giorgio Morandi – painter

The greatest master of still life in the 20th century

The artist Giorgio Morandi, who became famous for his atmospheric representations of still life, was born on the day in 1890 in Bologna.  Morandi’s paintings were appreciated for their tonal subtlety in depicting simple subjects, such as vases, bottles, bowls and flowers.  He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna and taught himself to etch by studying books on Rembrandt. Even though he lived his whole life in Bologna, he was deeply influenced by the work of Cézanne, Derain and Picasso.  In 1910 Morandi visited Florence, where the work of Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello also impressed him.  Morandi was appointed as instructor of drawing for elementary schools in Bologna, a position he held from 1914 until 1929. He joined the army in 1915 but suffered a breakdown and had to be discharged.  Read more…

Death of Marconi

State funeral for engineer who was at first shunned

Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian electrical engineer who is credited with the invention of radio, died on this day in Rome in 1937.  Aged 63, he passed away following a series of heart attacks.  He was granted a state funeral in recognition of the prestige he brought to Italy through his work. In Great Britain, where he had spent a significant part of his professional life, all BBC and Post Office radio transmitters observed a two-minute silence to coincide with the start of the funeral service in Rome.  Marconi was born in Bologna on April 25, 1874. His father, Giuseppe Marconi, was an Italian country gentleman who was married to Annie Jameson, a member of the Jameson whiskey family from County Wexford in Ireland.  A student of physics and electrical science from an early age, Guglielmo conducted experiments at his father's country estate near Bologna. Read more…

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Giovanna Amati - racing driver

Kidnap survivor who drove in Formula One

Racing driver Giovanna Amati, the last female to have been entered for a Formula One Grand Prix, was born on this day in 1959 in Rome.  The story of Amati’s signing for the Brabham F1 team in 1992 was all the more remarkable for the fact that 14 years earlier, as an 18-year-old girl, she had been kidnapped by a ransom gang and held for 75 days in a wooden cage.  Kidnaps happened with alarming frequency in Italy in the 1970s, a period marked by social unrest and acts of violence committed by political extremists, often referred to as the Years of Lead. Young people with rich parents were often the targets. Amati, whose father Giovanni was a wealthy industrialist who owned a chain of cinemas, fitted the bill.  She was snatched outside the family’s villa in Rome in February 1978 and held first in a house a short distance away and then at a secret location. Read more… 

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Book of the Day:  The Popes: A History, by John Julius Norwich

The Popes: A History traces the history of the oldest continuing institution in the world, tracing the papal line down the centuries from St Peter himself – traditionally (though by no means historically) the first pope – to Benedict XVI, who was pope from 2005 to 2013. Of the 280-odd holders of the supreme office, some have unques­tionably been saints; others have wallowed in unspeakable iniquity. One was said to have been a woman – and an English woman at that – her sex being revealed only when she improvidently gave birth to a baby during a papal procession. Pope Joan never existed (though the Church long believed she did) but many genuine pontiffs were almost as colourful: Formosus, for example, whose murdered corpse was exhumed, clothed in pontifical vestments, propped up on a throne and subjected to trial; or John XII of whom Gibbon wrote: 'his rapes of virgins and widows deterred female pilgrims from visiting the shrine of St Peter lest, in the devout act, they should be violated by his successor.’

John Julius Norwich was well known for his histories of Norman Sicily, Venice, the Byzantine Empire and the Mediterranean. The second Viscount Norwich, he is an agnostic with no religious axe to grind. In this rich, authoritative book he does full justice to a rich and important tale. He was the son of the Conservative politician and diplomat Duff Cooper, later Viscount Norwich, and of Lady Diana Manners, a celebrated beauty and society figure.

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Pope Leo XIII

Why the papal name Leo has been inspirational

A photograph of Pope Leo XIII
taken at the time of his election

Pope Leo XIII, who was the fourth longest serving pope in history, died on this day in 1903 in Rome at the age of 93. His reputation for supporting the rights of industrial workers inspired the current pope, Leo XIV, to choose Leo as his papal name after he was elected in May 2025.

Leo XIII served as pope for 25 years, despite fears after his election in 1878 that he was in delicate health. Only three popes have served for longer. They were the first pope, Saint Peter the Apostle, Pope Pius IX, and Pope John Paul II.

He was born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci in Carpineto Romano in Lazio in 1810. His family were both noble and religious and he was educated at the Jesuit College of Viterbo. He enjoyed Latin and was writing his own poems in Latin by the age of 11.

After his mother died, his father, Count Domenico Pecci, wanted his children to be near him, so he moved to Rome, where he attended the Jesuit Collegium Romanum.

As a young man, Pecci studied at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, where he won awards for academic excellence. He was appointed as a prelate by Pope Gregory XVI before he was even ordained as a priest and he was later appointed as papal legate to Benevento.

He faced a decaying local economy badly affected by Mafia and Camorra organisations linked to the local aristocracy. Pecci arrested the most powerful aristocrat in Benevento and had others either killed or imprisoned.  He reformed the tax system to stimulate trade.

He was then sent to Perugia where his fight against corruption continued. When it was claimed a baker was selling bread below the legal weight, he personally went to the bakery and had all the bread weighed. The bread found to be below the weight was confiscated and distributed to poor people.

A book illustration showing
Pecci as Nuncio to Belgium

At the age of 33, Pecci was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium and he was then consecrated as an archbishop. 

From 1846 to 1877 he was a popular Archbishop of Perugia. He formed homeless shelters for boys, girls, and women, opened a bank, Monte di Pietà, which provided low-interest loans to poor people, and he created soup kitchens. 

After being appointed Cardinal Bishop of Crisogno in 1853, Pecci began to address the role of the church in modern society, defining it as ‘the mother of material civilisation’ because it upheld the dignity of working people and their right to a fair wage and to go on strike.

He was appointed to an office in the papal household in 1877 by Pope Pius IX, which required him to move back to Rome. After Pius IX died in 1878, Cardinal Pecci was elected as the new pope on the third ballot and he chose the papal name Leo XIII. He said he had always venerated Pope Leo XII because he admired his conciliatory attitude to foreign governments and his interest in education.

It was thought at the time that the more conservative cardinals voted for Pecci because they believed his age and health meant that his papacy would be brief, and they were trying to thwart other candidates they did not want to see elected.

However, during the next 25 years, Leo XIII worked to improve understanding between the church and the modern industrial world. He tried to reverse the trend towards an increasingly impoverished working class with socialist sympathies and anticlerical views, and he improved relations with Russia, Germany, France, and Britain. He also made the Catholic Church become more open to scientific progress.

An 1878 magazine illustration of
the Pecci house in Carpineto Romano

His 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed social inequality and social justice issues using papal authority, arguing that both capitalism and communism were flawed. 

He elevated the English Catholic theologian John Henry Newman to be a cardinal, along with creating the first cardinals from Australia, Canada, Slovenia, and Armenia.

After becoming ill in June 1903, Leo XIII died in the Apostolic Palace of pneumonia on July 20.

He was the first pope to have been born in the 19th century and the first to die in the 20th century. He had run the Catholic Church with efficiency and helped to gain more respect for the papacy at home and abroad. 

Leo XIII was entombed in Saint Peter’s Basilica briefly, but was later moved to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, a church in which he had been particularly interested.

When the American cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected as pope in 2025, he said one of the main reasons he chose Leo as his papal name was because of the social justice encyclical Rerum Novarum that had been written by Pope Leo XIII.

Piazza Regina Margherita has a fountain
dedicated to Pope Leo XIII

Travel tip:

Carpineto Romano, where Pope Leo XIII was born, is a small town in Lazio, about 37 miles (60km) southeast of Rome. There are still Roman ruins and medieval buildings to be seen, but it was made more splendid in the 16th century by the wealthy Aldobrandini family. It was a duchy under Donna Olimpia Aldobrandini, who played a significant role in its development. The town centre still has narrow cobblestone streets and some elegant palazzi with limestone doorways bearing Italian and Latin inscriptions. The Church of Saint John was significantly reworked while Leo XIII was Pope. It has a portal with bronze panels by the sculptor Tommaso Ambrosetti, who was from nearby Anagni. There is a fountain commemorating Leo XIII in Piazza Regina Margherita.  Carpineto Romano is situated in the Lepini mountains, offering views of the plains of Latina and the Sacco river valley.  The town attracts many visitors to the annual Pallio della Carriera festival, which re-enacts the splendour of the Aldobrandini era and includes a historical procession and a horse race, as well as stalls and exhibits highlighting the town's traditional cuisine.

The Basilica di San Domenico in Perugia has a
 bell tower that rises to almost 200ft (60m)

Travel tip:

Perugia, the capital of Umbria, where Pope Leo XIII spent more than 30 years as an archbishop, is a vibrant city that combines strong echoes of a significant history with an effervescent modern culture.  Standing atop a hill in the Tiber valley, in Etruscan times it was one of the most powerful cities of the period and its strategic position has made it a target for invading armies ever since. The city of today evolved around a fortified medieval village, at the heart of which is Piazza IV Novembre, which has a fountain, the Fontana Maggiore, sculpted by Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano.  The city’s imposing Basilica di San Domenico, built in the early 14th century also to designs by Giovanni Pisano, is the largest church in Umbria, with a distinctive 60m (197ft) bell tower and a 17th-century interior, designed by Carlo Maderno. It contains the tomb of Pope Benedict XI, who died in 1304. Nowadays, Perugia is term-time home to some 34,000 students at the University of Perugia and hosts the world-renowned Umbria Jazz Festival each July. Perugia is the home of the Perugina chocolate company, famous for Baci, which it celebrates with a chocolate festival each summer. 

Also on this day: 

1890: The birth of painter Giorgio Morandi

1937: The death of electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi

1959: The birth of racing driver Giovanna Amati

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19 July

Jacopo Tiepolo - Doge of Venice

Ruler laid down the law and granted land for beautiful churches

Jacopo Tiepolo, the Doge who granted the land for the building of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, died on this day in 1249 in Venice.  His election as Doge in 1229 had sparked a feud between the Tiepolo and Dandolo families, which led to the rules being changed for future elections. He also produced five books of statutes setting out Venetian law which was to change life in Venice significantly, bringing a raft of civil and economic regulations to which Venetians were obliged to adhere.  Tiepolo, who was also known as Giacomo Tiepolo, had previously served as the first Venetian Duke of Crete and had two terms as podestà – chief administrator - in Constantinople.  He acted as the de facto ruler of the Latin Empire, negotiating treaties with the Egyptians and the Turks.  Read more…

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The Great Fire of Rome

City devastated by nine-day blaze

Almost two thirds of the ancient city of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, which took hold on this day in 64 AD.  Accounts vary as to whether the blaze began on July 19 or on the evening of July 18. What seems not to be in doubt is that the fire spread uncontrollably for six days, seemed to burn itself out, then reignited and continued for another three days.  Of Rome’s 14 districts at the time, only four were unaffected. In three, nothing remained but ashes and the other seven fared only marginally better, with just a few scorched ruins still standing.  Among the more important buildings in the city, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the House of the Vestals, and the emperor Nero's palace, the Domus Transitoria were damaged or destroyed, along with the part of the Forum where senators lived and worked.  Read more…

Cesare Cremonini - philosopher

Great thinker famous for Galileo ‘denial’

The philosopher Cesare Cremonini, the contemporary and friend of Galileo Galilei who famously refused to look at the Moon through Galileo’s telescope, died on this day in 1631 in Padua.  Cremonini was considered one of the great thinkers of his time, a passionate advocate of the doctrines of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He was paid a handsome salary by his patron, Alfonso II d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, and kings and princes regularly sought his counsel.  He struck up a friendship with the poet, Torquato Tasso, while he was studying in Ferrara, and met Galileo in 1550 after he was appointed by the Venetian Republic to the chair of the University of Padua.  The two built a relationship of respect and friendship that endured for many years, despite many differences of opinion, yet in 1610 a divergence of views on one subject created an impasse.  Read more…

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Petrarch – Renaissance poet

Writer whose work inspired the modern Italian language

Renaissance scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca died on this day in 1374 at Arquà near Padua, now renamed Arquà Petrarca. Known in English as Petrarch, he is considered to be an important figure in the history of Italian literature.  He is often credited with initiating the 14th century Renaissance, after his rediscovery of Cicero’s letters, and also with being the founder of Humanism.  In the 16th century, the Italian poet Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch’s works.  Petrarch was born in Arezzo in Tuscany in 1304. His father was a friend of the poet Dante Alighieri, but he insisted that Petrarch studied law.  The poet was far more interested in writing and in reading Latin literature. Petrarch’s first major work, Africa, about the Roman general, Scipio Africanus, turned him into a celebrity.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Venice: Pure City, by Peter Ackroyd

The Venetians’ language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its readers to that sensual and surprising city.  His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and its trading empire, the wars against Napoleon, and the tourist invasions of today. Everything is here: the merchants on the Rialto and the Jews in the ghetto; the glassblowers of Murano; the carnival masks and the sad colonies of lepers; the artists - Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo. And the ever-present undertone of Venice’s shadowy corners and dead ends, of prisons and punishment, wars and sieges, scandals and seductions.  Venice: Pure City is a study of Venice much in the vein of his lauded London: The Biography. History and context are provided in each chap­ter, but Ackroyd’s portrait of Venice is a particularly novelistic one, both beautiful and rapturous. 

Peter Ackroyd is the award-winning author of Thames; London: The Biography; Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination; Shakespeare; acclaimed biographies of T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More; several successful novels; and the series Ackroyd’s Brief Lives. 

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