18 October

Alessandro Antonelli – architect

The creator of Turin’s striking Mole 

Alessandro Antonelli, who became famous for designing what has become Turin’s most iconic building, died on this day in 1888 in the Piedmont capital.  Antonelli was the architect of the Mole Antonelliana, which was named after him. The Mole now houses the National Museum of Cinema. At 167.5 metres (550ft), it remains the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world, and is believed to be the tallest of any construction to house a museum.  Mole is an Italian word that is used to describe a building of monumental proportions. Turin’s impressive Mole is represented on the obverse side of the Italian two euro cents coin, which is the side that displays the nationality of the country that has issued the coin.  Antonelli was born in Ghemme, a town near Novara in Piedmont, in 1798. His father was a notary and he was one of 11 children.  Read more… 

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Theft of Caravaggio masterpiece

Fate of Nativity taken from Palermo church remains a mystery

One of the most notorious art crimes in history was discovered on this day in 1969 when a housekeeper at the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo arrived for work to find that the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, painted by the Renaissance master Caravaggio in 1609, had been stolen. The painting sat above the altar in the Oratory, which is situated in Via Immacolata in the centre of the Sicilian capital, adjacent to the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, but when the housekeeper, Maria Gelfo, opened up with her sister on the morning of 18 October, they were confronted with an empty frame.  Worth an estimated £20 million (€23.73 million; $27.52 million), the painting has never been found, leaving half a century’s worth of theories about its fate to remain unproven.  Most of the theories link the theft to the Sicilian Mafia.  Read more…

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Cristoforo Benigno Crespi - entrepreneur

Textile boss created industrial village of Crespi d’Adda

The entrepreneur Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, who became famous for creating a company-owned village around his textile factory in Lombardy, was born on this day in 1833 in Busto Arsizio, about 34km (21 miles) northwest of Milan.  A textile manufacturer, in 1869 Crespi bought an area of land close to where the Brembo and Adda rivers converge, about 40km (25 miles) northeast of Milan, with the intention of building a cotton mill on the banks of the Adda.  The factory he built was substantial, with room for 10,000 spindles, but as well the capacity to produce textiles on a large scale, Crespi recognised that it was essential to his plans to have a contented workforce. Consequently, following the lead of other manufacturers in the textile industry outside Italy, he set about providing on site everything to meet the daily needs of his employees.  Read more…

Luca Giordano – artist

Talented Neapolitan was renowned for being a fast worker

Luca Giordano, the most celebrated and prolific Neapolitan painter of the late 17th century, was born on this day in 1634 in Naples.  His nicknames were Luca Fa Presto - "Luca work faster" - said to derive from the way his father, the copyist Antonio Giordano, used to admonish him, Fulmine (the Thunderbolt) because of his speed, and Proteus, because he was reputed to be able to imitate the style of almost any other artist.  Giordano’s output both in oils and in frescoes was enormous and he is said to have once painted a large altarpiece in just one day.  He was influenced at the start of his career by Jose de Ribera, who he was apprenticed to, and he also assimilated Caravaggio’s style of dramatic intensity.  But after Giordano had travelled to Rome, Florence and Venice, his style underwent a profound change.  Read more…

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Ludovico Scarfiotti - racing driver

Last Italian to win ‘home’ Grand Prix

The racing driver Ludovico Scarfiotti, whose victory in the 1966 Italian Grand Prix at Monza is the last by an Italian, was born on this day in 1933 in Turin.  His success at Monza, where he came home first in a Ferrari one-two with the British driver Mike Parkes, was the first by a home driver for 14 years since Alberto Ascari won the last of his three Italian Grand Prix in 1952.  It was Scarfiotti’s sole victory - indeed, his only top-three finish - in 10 Formula One starts. His competitive career spanned 15 years, ending in tragic circumstances with a fatal crash in 1968, little more than a month after he had come home fourth in the Monaco Grand Prix in a Cooper-BRM.  Scarfiotti in some respects was born to race. His father, Luigi, a deputy in the Italian parliament who made his fortune from cement, had raced for Ferrari as an amateur.  Read more…

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Luke the Evangelist

Scientists believe Saint is buried in Padua

The feast day of St Luke the Evangelist - la festa di San Luca - is celebrated in Padua and throughout Italy on this day every year.  Luke the Evangelist is believed to be one of the four authors of the Gospels in the New Testament. Both the Gospel According to St Luke and the book of Acts of the Apostles have been ascribed to him.  Luke is believed to have been a doctor who was also a disciple of St Paul. It has been claimed he was martyred by being hung from an olive tree, although other sources say he worked as a doctor until his death at the age of 84.  He is regarded as the patron saint of artists, physicians, surgeons, students and butchers and it is strongly believed that his body lies in the Basilica of Santa Giustina in Prato della Valle in Padua.  It is thought that Luke was a Greek physician who lived and worked in the city of Antioch in ancient Syria.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Architecture of Modern Italy: Volume One - The Challenge of Tradition, 1750-1900, by Terry Kirk

A groundbreaking and authoritative two-volume survey - the first truly comprehensive history of modern Italian architecture and urbanism to appear in any language. Told in lively prose, The Architecture of Modern Italy recounts more than 250 years of experimentation, creativity, and turmoil that have shaped the landscape of contemporary Italy. The Challenge of Tradition, 1750-1900 , explores the dynamic balancing of forces demanded by a reverence for Italy's unparalleled architectural patrimony and a desire for new means of expression and technological innovation. From the neoclassical fantasies of Giovanni Battista Piranesi to the spectacular steel-and-glass gallerie of Milan and Naples, it reveals an underappreciated history of richness and complexity. The book is exhaustively illustrated with rare period images, new photography, maps, drawings, and plans. Alongside Colin Rowe's Italian Architecture of the 16th Century, it provides almost a complete overview of the history of Italian architecture.

Terry Kirk was a professor of architectural history at the American University of Rome. Around 500 students a year benefitted from his wisdom, enjoying lectures that sometimes consisted of walking tours around the Eternal City.

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17 October

The founding of Atalanta football club

Bergamo institution started by students of local high school

The football club now known as Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio - generally referred to as Atalanta - was founded on this day in 1907 in the Lombardy city of Bergamo.  The club was the idea of a group of students from the Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi, one of the city’s oldest and most prestigious high schools.  They gave it the rather long-winded name of the Società Bergamasca di Ginnastica e Sports Atletici - the Bergamasca Society of Gymnastics and Athletic Sports - to which they attached the name Atalanta after the Greek mythological heroine famed for her running prowess.  For the first seven years of its life, the new club had no home and played friendly matches on whatever open space was available, but in 1914 found a home ground in Via Maglio del Lotto, adjoining the railway line just outside Bergamo railway station.  Read more…

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The end of the Venetian Republic

Peace treaty saw Venice given away to Austria

A peace settlement signed in a small town in north-east Italy on this day in 1797 heralded a dark day for Venice as the Most Serene Republic officially lost its independence after 1,100 years.  The Treaty of Campo Formio, drawn up after the Austrians had sought an armistice when faced with Napoleon Bonaparte's advance on Vienna, included an exchange of territory that saw Napoleon hand Venice to Austria.  It marked the end of the First Coalition of countries allied against the French, although it was a short-lived peace.  A Second Coalition was formed the following year.  The Venetian Republic, still a playground for the rich but in decline for several centuries in terms of real power, had proclaimed itself neutral during the Napoleonic Wars, wary that it could not afford to sustain any kind of conflict.  Read more…

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Bartolommeo Bandinelli - Renaissance sculptor

Career scarred by petty jealousies

The sculptor Bartolommeo Bandinelli, a contemporary and rival of Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini in Renaissance Italy, was born on this day in 1473 in Florence.  He left his mark on Florence in the shape of the monumental statue of Hercules and Cacus in the Piazza della Signoria and his statues of Adam and Eve, originally created for the Duomo but today housed in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello.  He was skilled in small sculptures but became known and disliked for his antagonistic manner with other artists and his particular hatred of Michelangelo, of whom he was bitterly jealous.  Giorgio Vasari, the artist and sculptor who compiled a history of art and artists, recalled Bandinelli being so enraged by the excitement that ensued when a Michelangelo drawing was uncovered in the Palazzo Vecchio that, as soon as an opportunity arose, he tore it up.  Read more…

Giovanni Matteo Mario - operatic tenor

Disgraced nobleman became the toast of London and Paris

The operatic tenor Giovanni Matteo Mario, a Sardinian nobleman who deserted from the army and began singing only to earn a living after fleeing to Paris, was born on this day in 1810 in Cagliari.  He was baptised Giovanni Matteo de Candia and some of his relatives were members of the Royal Court of Turin. His father, Don Stefano de Candia of Alghero, held the rank of general in the Royal Sardinian Army and was aide-de-camp to the Savoy king Charles Felix of Sardinia.  He became Giovanni Mario or Mario de Candia only after he had begun his stage career at the age of 28. He was entitled to call himself Cavaliere (Knight), Nobile (Nobleman) and Don (Sir) in accordance with his inherited titles, yet on his first professional contract, he signed himself simply ‘Mario’ out of respect for his father, who considered singing a lowly career.  Read more…

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Cristofano Allori – artist

Mannerist painter’s masterpiece was inspired by his mistress 

The artist Cristofano Allori, who is particularly remembered for his 1613 painting of Judith with the Head of Holofernes, which is now in the British Royal Collection, was born on this day in 1577 in Florence. Allori was a painter of the late Florentine Mannerist school who specialised in portraits and religious subjects. He is well regarded by experts because of the delicacy and technical perfection of his work. His skill was demonstrated by some copies he made of Correggio’s works, which for a time were thought to be duplicates that had been painted by Correggio himself. The artist was extremely fastidious about his work, which limited the number of paintings he executed, but there are still fine examples of his art to be seen in Florence. He received his first lessons in painting from his father, Alessandro Allori, who had many distinguished pupils. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Working Hands of a Goddess: The Tactics, Culture and Community Behind Gian Piero Gasperini's Atalanta BC, by Tom Underhill

The Working Hands of a Goddess is the story of how Atalanta BC rose from the lower reaches of Serie A to become Champions League quarter-finalists in just four years. The appointment of Gian Piero Gasperini as manager in 2016 changed the club's fortunes forever. Quickly making his mark, he developed a squad that played one of Europe's most scintillating brands of football, and upset the status quo by going toe-to-toe with the giants of the Italian game. Tom Underhill analyses and details the tactics and systems that underpin this thrilling team, the stories and backgrounds of the unique players that define it, and the culture and history that not only produced a beautiful football team but a special club and city-wide community. When the Covid-19 pandemic rocked the community, Atalanta became far more than just a football team by uniting a city in strife.  

Tom Underhill is a football writer from Yeovil, England, with a specialist interest in tactics. He is co-founder and head of content at First Time Finish. Tom has a master's degree in research journalism, and a first-class degree in geography from the University of Plymouth.

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16 October

Dino Buzzati - author

Novelist likened to Camus whose short stories remain popular

The multi-talented author Dino Buzzati, whose output included five novels, several plays, a children’s novel, five opera libretti, some poetry, a comic book in which he also drew the illustrations, and several books of short stories, was born on this day in 1906 in Belluno.  Buzzati’s most famous novel, Il deserto dei Tartari (1940), titled The Tartar Steppe in the English translation, saw Buzzati compared to Albert Camus and Franz Kafka as a work of existentialist style, but it is for his short stories that he still wins acclaim.  Several new collections of stories have been published in recent years, showcasing Buzzati’s extraordinary talent. Buzzati, who worked as a journalist for the whole of his adult life and also painted prolifically, was one of four children born to Giulio Cesare Buzzati, a professor of international law. Read more…

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Dorando Pietri - marathon runner

Athlete who made his fortune from famous disqualification

The athlete Dorando Pietri, who found fame and fortune after being disqualified in the 1908 Olympic marathon, was born on this day in 1885 in Mandrio, a hamlet near Carpi, in Emilia-Romagna.  In an extraordinary finish to the 1908 race in London, staged on an exceptionally warm July day, Pietri entered the White City Stadium in first place, urged on by a crowd of more than 75,000 who were there to witness the finish, only for his legs to buckle beneath him.  He was helped to his feet by two officials only to fall down four more times before he crossed the finish line.  Each time, officials hauled him to his feet and walked alongside him, urging him on and ready to catch him if he fell.  The final 350 yards (320m) of the event accounted for 10 minutes of the two hours, 54 minutes and 46 seconds recorded as his official time.  Read more…

Election of Pope John Paul II

How Karol Wojtyla became first non-Italian pope for 455 years

Pope John Paul II, who was to have a political and social influence unmatched by any pontiff since the Middle Ages, was elected to be the new leader of the Catholic Church on this day in 1978.  The result of the second Papal conclave in what became known as the Year of the Three Popes was announced after eight ballots. The new pontiff succeeded Pope John Paul I, who had died on September 28 after only 33 days in office, who had himself followed Pope Paul VI, who had passed away in August after reigning for 15 years.  The new man chosen was 58-year-old Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, then Archbishop of Kraków, the first non-Italian to hold office for 455 years since the Dutch Pope Adam VI, who served from 1522-23.  Wojtyla's stand against Poland's Communist regime had brought him respect but he was not seen as a Vatican favourite. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Bewitched Bourgeois: Fifty Stories (New York Review Books: Classics), by Dino Buzzati. Translated by Lawrence Venuti.

Poe and Kafka meet The Twilight Zone in this anthology of fifty fantastical tales, many of them reflecting the political and social energies of the time, by an Italian master of the short story.  The modern Italian writer Dino Buzzati wrote a huge body of short fiction, several hundred pieces, spanning a 40-year period. They offer a remarkable inventory of fantastic premises and tropes, international in the reach of their geographical settings, at times commenting on Italian issues but usually reflecting the worldwide horrors, catastrophes, and fanaticisms that characterized the 20th century.  A journalist for much of his life, Buzzati was adept at turning current events into fantasies that depicted social and political nightmares. He challenged the ideological complacencies of his era in accessible stories that solicit the reader's vicarious response, mixing sentiment, humour, and tragedy. The Bewitched Bourgeois is the latest volume of Buzzatti's stories to be published in English.

Dino Buzzati studied law at the University of Milan and, at the age of twenty-two, went to work for the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he remained for the rest of his life. Lawrence Venuti, professor emeritus of English at Temple University in Philadelphia, is a translator from Italian, French, and Catalan into English, as well as a translation theorist and historian.

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15 October

NEW - Stefano D’Arrigo – writer

Author’s greatest work took him 17 years to complete

The Sicilian poet, writer, and art critic Stefano D’Arrigo, who once made a small appearance in a Pier Paolo Pasolini film, was born Fortunato Stefano D’Arrigo on this day in 1919 in Alì Terme, a comune of Messina.  He became famous for his novel, Horcynus Orca (Killer Whale) which was published in 1975 and was considered a masterpiece of 20th century Italian literature.  The action in the book takes place in the aftermath of World War II and follows the journey of a Sicilian fisherman as he returns home to his village after serving in the Italian Navy during the war.  The reader experiences the fisherman’s encounters with the transformed landscape and people and sees through his eyes the impact of war on the traditional ways of life in Sicily.  Stefano D’Arrigo left Alì Terme after completing elementary school when he was ten years old.  Read more… 

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Virgil – Roman poet

Writer’s epic poem commemorates achievements and ideals of Rome

Regarded as the greatest of the Roman poets, Virgil, or Publius Vergilius Maro as he was originally named, was born on this day in 70 BC in the village of Andes near Mantua, in what is now Lombardy.  Virgil is famous for his work, The Aeneid, which told the story of Rome’s founder and the Roman mission to civilise the world under divine guidance. It is widely considered one of the most important poems in the history of Western literature.  Experts have high regard for Virgil’s poetry, not only for the music and diction of his verse and for his skill in constructing an intricate work on a grand scale, but also because of what it reveals about Roman life and behaviour.  Virgil was born of peasant stock and his love of the Italian countryside and the people who worked in it is well reflected in his poetry.  He was educated in Cremona, Milan and Rome. Read more…

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Angelo Schiavio - footballer

Scored goal that won Italy's first World Cup

Angelo Schiavio, the hero of the Italian football team’s first World Cup victory in 1934, was born on this day in 1905 in Bologna.  The centre forward, a prolific goalscorer for his home-town club in Serie A, scored the winning goal in the final against Czechoslovakia to hand victory to the Azzurri in the 16-team tournament, of which the Italians were hosts.  In the final at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome, the Azzurri had gone behind to a goal by the Czech winger Antonin Puc with 19 minutes remaining, but equalised 10 minutes later through Raimundo Orsi, the Argentina-born forward from Juventus, taking the match into extra time.  Schiavio struck the decisive goal, driven home with his right foot from a pass by Enrique Guaita, another Argentine – one of 12 to represent Italy and Argentina in the days before playing for more than one nation was outlawed. Read more…

Giovanni Migliara – painter

19th century artist captured many beautiful views for posterity

Giovanni Migliara, who rose from working as a theatre set designer to becoming court painter to King Charles Albert of Sardinia, was born on this day in 1785 in Alessandria in Piedmont.  He was first apprenticed to the sculptor Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, but then went on to study at the Brera Academy.in Milan with Giocondo Albertolli.  He began working as a set designer with Teatro Carcano in Milan in 1804 and then moved to La Scala in 1805, where he served under the direction of Alessandro Sanquirico until 1809. His theatre work enabled him to acquire skills as a landscape artist and a creator of perspective.  Migliara had to stop working while he was suffering from a serious lung problem but from about 1810 he started painting miniatures and then moved on to watercolours and then oils on canvas, silk and ivory, drawing inspiration from Venetian painters.  Read more…

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Gibbon's moment of inspiration

Walk around the Forum sparked idea for epic work 

The English writer and historian Edward Gibbon claimed that the inspiration to write the book that - unbeknown to him - would grant him literary immortality came to him while exploring the ruins of the Forum in Rome on this day in 1764.  Gibbon, who had enjoyed modest success with his first book, entitled Essay on the Study of Literature, was in Rome after deciding to embark on the Grand Tour, taking in the Italian cities of Florence, Naples and Venice as well as the capital.  Later, in his memoirs, Gibbon wrote that:  "It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind."  In the event, the book expanded to cover more than the city of Rome.  The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ran to six volumes and as many as 5,000 pages. Read more…

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Roberto Vittori – astronaut

High-flying Colonel contributed to space research

Roberto Vittori, the last non-American to fly on board the US Space Shuttle, was born on this day in 1964 in Viterbo.  An Italian air force officer, Vittori was selected by the European Space Agency to be part of their Astronaut Corps and has participated in three space flights.  In 2011 Vittori was on board the Space Shuttle that travelled to the International Space Station to install the AMS-02 cosmic ray detector to examine dark matter and the origin of the Universe.  Vittori is one of five Italians to have visited the International Space Station. The others are Umberto Guidoni, who was the first European to set foot on board, Paolo Nespoli, at 61 (at the time of writing) the European Space Agency’s oldest active astronaut, Luca Parmitano and Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian woman in space.  Nespoli participated in three International Space Station missions.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: A Literary Tour of Italy, by Tim Parks

An acclaimed author of novels and short stories, Tim Parks – who was described in a recent review as “one of the best living writers of English” – has delighted audiences around the world with his finely observed writings on all aspects of Italian life and customs. A Literary Tour of Italy contains a selection of his best essays on the literature of his adopted country.  From Boccaccio and Machiavelli through to Moravia and Tabucchi, from the Stil Novo to Divisionism, across centuries of history and intellectual movements, these essays will give English readers, and lovers of the Bel Paese and its culture, the lay of the literary land of Italy.

Tim Parks is the author of 20 novels, including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, Sex Is Forbidden and Painting Death, all of which have been translated into many languages. As well as being a novelist and the author of several works of non-fiction, Tim is the acclaimed translator of books by Moravia, Calvino, Machiavelli and other Italian writers. 

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