Giovanni Antonio Medrano - architect and engineer

Designed Teatro di San Carlo and Palace of Capodimonte in Naples

Medrano revolutionised theatre design with his
horseshoe-shaped auditorium at Teatro di San Carlo

The architect and engineer Giovanni Antonio Medrano, who left a lasting mark on Naples by designing the Teatro di San Carlo and the Royal Palace at Capodimonte while in the service of the Bourbon king Charles VII - later Charles III of Spain - was born on this day in 1703 in Sciacca, a town on the southwestern coast of Sicily.

Teatro di San Carlo, which is recognised as the oldest continuously active opera house in the world, set new standards for European theatre design with Medrano’s horseshoe-shaped layout and attention to acoustics.

His design became known as the Italian-style theatre model and was taken up by architects around the world as the gold standard for new projects. The San Carlo became a symbol of Bourbon prestige and remains one of his most enduring legacies.

Medrano, born into a noble Sicilian-Spanish family, was stationed in Naples as a military engineer and brigadier having taken part in the Spanish military campaign to conquer Naples in 1734. This campaign was part of the War of the Polish Succession, which had broadened into a wider conflict after the Bourbons used it as a pretext to attack Austrian territories in southern Italy and Sicily.

When the Spanish prince Don Carlos de Borbón became Charles VII of Naples in 1735, he appointed Medrano - his former tutor in the court of his father, Philip V of Spain - as his court architect, with a brief to design and oversee major royal projects that symbolised Bourbon authority and magnificence.

One of his first projects was to renovate the Royal Palace that adjoins the Piazza del Plebiscito, designed by Domenico Fontana and built between 1600 and 1614 on behalf of the Bourbon king Philip III. Medrano’s work was mainly focussed on readying the royal apartments ahead of the new king’s marriage to Maria Amalia of Saxony.

Medrano's Teatro di San Carlo, as it appeared in
a painting of the centre of Naples in around 1830

The project to construct a theatre connected to the palace essentially followed on from that after Charles VII decided he wanted to replace the Teatro San Bartolomeo, which had been the city’s main theatre since 1621, with something much bigger and which would reflect the growing status of Naples as a centre for opera. 

The Real Teatro di San Carlo was built in just eight months, partially helped by Medrano’s use of wood rather than stone in the internal construction. This choice was initially controversial, as traditionalists favoured stone or marble, symbols of permanence and royal prestige, but Medrano argued that wood reflects and diffuses sound more evenly than stone, giving rise to a clearer, warmer tone.

What set the Teatro di San Carlo apart, though, was Medrano’s horseshoe-shaped layout with its six tiers of boxes. Unlike previous theatre designs, which were either based on the semi-circular footprint of Roman auditoriums, or rectangular layouts similar to medieval banqueting halls, Medrano’s design wrapped the audience around the stage, enhancing the acoustics and allowing almost all spectators a view of the performers.

After the Teatro di San Carlo was inaugurated in November 1737, with a performance of Domenico Sarro's opera Achille in Sciro, the horseshoe design became the standard for new theatres in Europe and around the world.

Medrano’s wide architectural legacy includes the Royal Palace of Portici, built between 1737 and 1738 as a summer residence for the royal family, with views over the Bay of Naples. 

Medrano also designed and built the Royal Palace
of Portici, a summer residence overlooking the sea

The palace later became central to the excavations of Herculaneum, the Roman city that had been buried by the same volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79AD. The existence of ruins beneath the planned site of the palace was already known, marble having been discovered during the sinking of a well in 1709, but after more remains were revealed as the foundations were dug for the palace, Charles VII ordered more organised excavations, which Medrano oversaw.

The vast Reggia di Capodimonte, which Charles commissioned in 1738 after deciding the Portici palace was too small, was also designed by Medrano. Work began under Medrano’s direction but took over a century to complete, finishing in 1840.

Other projects attributed to Medrano include the Di Torcini bridge, which crossed the Volturno river at Venafro, north of Naples, and the Obelisk of Bitonto, which commemorates the decisive Bourbon victory over the Habsburg army at the town of the same name, near Bari in Puglia. 

Despite his successes, Medrano’s career was marred by controversy. In 1741, he and his associate Angelo Carasale were accused of fraud in tax dealings related to Capodimonte’s construction. The long trail was a contributing factor in delaying the work at Capodimonte.

The charges led to an 18-month jail sentence, after which Medrano was dismissed from his position at the court and exiled. Though he eventually returned to Naples, in 1746, and carried out renovations at the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, a church on via Portamedina in the centre of Naples, his reputation never fully recovered.

After the inauguration of the choir in the church in 1754, there is no record of Medrano being active professionally again. He died in 1760, at the age of 56. 

The Reggia di Capodimonte, another Bourbon palace,
now houses a major museum of Italian art

Travel tip:

The Reggia di Capodimonte, which Charles VII commissioned to house both his expanding court and the vast Farnese art collection, which he had inherited from his mother, Elisabetta Farnese, is a grand Bourbon royal palace a few kilometres from the centre of Naples.  Adjoining an area of woodland now known as the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, it was originally intended to be a hunting lodge but evolved as a replacement for the Reggia di Portici.  Its location was chosen because its elevated position - capo di monte literally means ‘top of the hill’ - promised an escape from the heat of the city. Although it has subsequently become part of greater Naples, at the time of its construction it was surrounded by parkland. Nowadays, the main building is home to the National Museum of Capodimonte, which showcases major works by Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, El Greco, Giovanni Bellini, Masaccio, Lorenzo Lotto and many others, as well as the best collection of paintings from the distinct tradition of Neapolitan art, and many works of monumental sculpture from the Farnese Collection.

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Some parts of Herculaneum are
extraordinarily well preserved

Travel tip:

Until 1969, the town now called Ercolano was known as Resina, the name given to the medieval settlement that was built on top of the volcanic material left by the eruption of Vesuvius that also destroyed nearby Pompeii.  The existence of Ercolano - the Roman city of Herculaneum - was not known until the early 18th century, when a farmer sinking a well came across ancient marble columns which, it transpired, were part of an ancient theatre.  Systematic exploration followed under the patronage of Charles VII, the Bourbon king of Naples, from the 1730s to the 1760s.  Charles was more concerned with treasure-hunting than archaeology, but under Giovanni Antonio Medrano’s supervision statues and frescoes were uncovered as well as the famous Villa of the Papyri, with its extraordinary library of carbonized papyrus scrolls. Ercolano was smaller and less prestigious than Pompeii but is better preserved due to the different volcanic materials that covered the town, although its more famous neighbour was a bigger city and its destruction was particularly well documented.  The ruins at Pompeii and Ercolano can both be reached by using the Circumvesuviana railway, which runs from Naples along the southern stretch of the Bay of Naples, terminating at Sorrento.

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More reading

The Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii

The emperor who came to the aid of the victims

The 19th century archaeologist who saved the relics

Also on this day:

1475: The birth of Pope Leo X

1912: The birth of film producer Carlo Ponti

1944: The birth of veteran pop star Gianni Morandi

1968: The birth of footballer Fabrizio Ravanelli

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10 December

Luigi Pirandello - playwright, poet and novelist

Brilliant writing was born out of ‘chaos’

Sicilian writer Luigi Pirandello died on this day in Rome in 1936.  Famous for his play Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore), Pirandello was also a prolific writer of novels, short stories and poetry, some of which were written in his native Sicilian dialect.  His plays are often seen as the forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd dramas of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco.  Pirandello’s contribution to the theatre was recognised in 1934 when he was awarded the Nobel prize in literature.  Pirandello was literally born in chaos. The name of the village near Agrigento in Sicily where his mother gave birth to him in 1867 is Caos, the Italian word for ‘chaos’, or in Sicilian, u Càvusu.  He was educated at home and had written his first play by the time he was 12. When his family moved to Palermo, he registered at the city’s university. Read more…

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Paolo Uccello - painter

Pioneer of perspective also worked in mosaics

Paolo Uccello, who was one of the leading painters in Florence in the 15th century, died on this day in 1475 at the age of 78.  The son of a surgeon, Uccello served an apprenticeship in the workshop of the sculptor and goldsmith Lorenzo Ghiberti but made his own mark as a painter and also as a mosaicist, at one time employed to work on the facade of Basilica di San Marco in Venice.  Younger than Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello, three giants of the Early Renaissance period, Uccello belonged to a generation of artists eager to move away from the flat, decorative forms of traditional Gothic art. His work is more often characterised by clear colours, well-defined outlines and a dramatic narrative, although he retains the fairytale quality of Gothic.  He was noted for his interest in linear perspective, which helped create a sense of depth in many of his paintings. Read more…

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Giuseppe Dossena - painter

Modern impressionist who funded his art with restoration projects

The painter Emilio Giuseppe Dossena was born on this day in 1903 in the small town of Cavenago d’Adda, about 48km (30 miles) southeast of Milan, in Lombardy.  Known more often simply as Giuseppe Dossena, he showed a talent for sculpture during his early years but preferred painting and soon began to produce outstanding landscapes in a neo-impressionist style.  With a young family to support, however, he had to find ways to supplement his income and eventually found regular work restoring and decorating villas and castles for a string of rich or aristocratic clients.  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dossena spent a number of years living in the United States, where he was employed as a restorer of priceless artworks owned by institutions ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of New York to the Playboy Club.  Read more…

Amedeo Nazzari - movie star

Sardinian actor seen as the Errol Flynn of Italian cinema

The prolific actor Amedeo Nazzari, who made more than 90 movies and was once one of Italian cinema's biggest box office names, was born on this day in 1907 in Cagliari.  Likened in his prime to the Australian-American star Errol Flynn, with whom he had physical similarities and the same screen presence, Nazzari enjoyed a career spanning five decades.  One of his first major successes, in the title role of the 1938 drama Luciano Serra, Pilot, in which he played a First World War veteran, established him as Italy's leading male star in 1930s and he maintained his popularity in the '40s and '50s.  He is remembered also for his appearance in Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, which won the 1957 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.  Towards the end of his career, he featured in Henri Verneuil's 1969 Mafia caper The Sicilian Clan. Read more...

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Giuseppe 'Peppino' Prisco - lawyer and football administrator

Vice-president who became Inter Milan icon

The lawyer and football administrator Giuseppe Prisco, who served as a senior figure in the running of the Internazionale football club in Milan for more than half a century, was born on this day in 1921.  Universally known as Peppino, he managed to combine a career in legal practice with a passion for Inter that he would share so publicly he became a symbol of the club whose name was chanted on the terraces.  Born in Milan into a family with its roots in Torre Annunziata, near Naples, he was said to have fallen in love with the nerazzurri at seven years old in 1929, when he witnessed his first derby against AC Milan at Inter’s old stadium, the Campo Virgilio Fossati, between Via Goldoni and Piazza Novelli to the east of the city centre.  His career as a lawyer did not begin until after he had served with the Alpini - the mountain troops of the Italian Army - on the Russian front in the Second World War. Read more…

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Errico Petrella – opera composer

Sicilian whose popularity drew scorn from rivals

The largely forgotten opera composer Errico Petrella, whose popularity in Italy in the 1850s and 1860s was second only to operatic giant Giuseppe Verdi, was born on this day in 1813 in Palermo.  He composed 25 works, mainly comedic or melodramatic in nature, and had a run of successes in the 1850s, when three of  his productions were premiered at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.  However, Petrella attracted the scorn of both Verdi and another contemporary, the German composer Richard Wagner, both of whose careers coincided exactly with Petrella’s, even down to having been born in the same year.  When Il Duca di Scilla had its first performance at La Scala in March 1859, a year on from his hugely successful Jone, which also premiered at the Milan theatre, Wagner’s criticism could have hardly been more unflattering.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays, by Luigi Pirandello. Translated by Mark Musa

Luigi Pirandello was the founding architect of 20th-century drama, brilliantly innovatory in his forms and themes, and in the combined energy, imagination and visual colours of his theatre.This volume of plays, translated from the Italian by Mark Musa, opens with Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most popular and controversial work in which six characters invade the stage and demand to be included in the play. The tragedy Henry IV dramatizes the lucid madness of a man who may be King. In So It Is (If You Think So) the townspeople exercise a morbid curiosity attempting to discover 'the truth' about the Ponza family. Each of these plays can lay claim to being Pirandello's masterpiece, and in exploring the nature of human personality each one stretches the resources of drama to their limits.

Luigi Pirandello’s first real success in the theatre came about in 1921 when Six Characters in Search of an Author was performed. Henry IV followed the next year and confirmed his position as a playwright. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. Mark Musa, who was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German, French and Italian at Indiana University, was best known for his translations of Italian classics, including Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. 

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9 December

Sonia Gandhi - Indian politician

Widow of ex-PM Rajiv born in pre-Alps of Veneto

Sonia Gandhi, an Italian who married into a famous political dynasty and became the most powerful woman in India, was born on this day in 1946 in a small town near Vicenza. In 1965, in a restaurant in Cambridge, England, where she was attending a language school, she met an engineering student from the University of Cambridge. They began dating and three years later were married. His name was Rajiv Gandhi, the eldest son of the future Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. They were married in a Hindu ceremony, Sonia moved into her mother-in-law’s house and from then on lived as an Indian. Rajiv became an airline pilot while Sonia looked after their two children, Rahul and Priyanka. Everything changed when Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh nationalists in 1984, a year after Sonia had been granted Indian citizenship. Read more…

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Bruno Ruffo - motorcycle racer

Italy's first world champion on two wheels

Motorcycle racer Bruno Ruffo, winner of the inaugural 250cc World Championship in 1949, was born on this day in 1920 in Colognola ai Colli, a village in the province of Verona.  He shares with Nello Pagani the distinction of being Italy's first world champion motorcyclist, Pagani having won the first world title in the 125cc class in the same year.  Ruffo wanted to race from the age of eight, having become fascinated with the motorcycles and cars that his father repaired in his workshop.  He was able to drive a car at the age of 10 and was given his first motorcycle by his father as a 16th birthday present.  He entered a race for the first time the following year at Montagnana near Padua and won. The minimum age for participants was 18 and it later transpired he had falsified his identity papers to take part.  Read more…

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Baldassare Ferri – singer

Male soprano was admired by the crowned heads of Europe

Castrato singer Baldassare Ferri was born on this day in 1610 in Perugia in the region of Umbria.  He is said to have possessed a beautiful soprano voice that was praised by other musicians and by much of the aristocracy of Europe.  The Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who was a great patron of music and himself a composer, is believed to have become so enchanted with Ferri that he had a portrait of the singer hung in his bedroom with the inscription, Baldassare Ferri, Re dei Musici (King of Musicians).  By the age of 11, Ferri was a chorister serving Cardinal Crescenzi in Orvieto. He then studied music in Naples and in Rome, where he was taught by Vincenzo Ugolini of Perugia, who was maestro of the Cappella Giulia.  Prince Wladislaus of Poland then secured Ferri’s services for the court of King Sigismund III at Warsaw, where the singer took part in dramas set to music. Read more…

Teofilo Folengo – poet

Style of writer’s verses took its name from the dumpling

Teofilo Folengo, who is remembered as one of the principal Italian ‘macaronic’ poets, died on this day in 1544 in the monastery of Santa Croce in Campese, a district of Bassano del Grappa in Veneto.  Folengo published, under the pseudonym Merlin Cocaio, a macaronic narrative poem entitled Baldo, which was a humorous send-up of ancient epic and Renaissance chivalric romance.  Writing in verse that mixed vernacular language with Latin became known as macaronic verse, the word deriving from the Latin macaronicus and the Italian maccarone, which meant dumpling, fare mixed crudely from different ingredients that at the time was regarded as a coarse, peasant food. It is presumed to be the origin of the modern Italian word maccheroni.  Folengo was a runaway Benedictine monk who satirised the monastic life using an invented, comic language that blended Latin with various Italian dialects.  Read more…

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Carlo Azeglio Ciampi - prime minister and president

The politician who took Italy into the euro

The politician and banker, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was born on this day in 1920 in Livorno.  He was the 49th prime minister of Italy between 1993 and 1994 and the tenth president, in office from 1999 to 2006.  Ciampi studied ancient Greek literature in Pisa, before being called up to do military duty, but in 1943 he refused to stay with the Fascists and took refuge in Abruzzo.  He managed to get to Bari, where he joined the Italian resistance movement.  After the war, he gained a doctorate in law from Pisa University and began working at the Banca d’Italia. He went on to become Governor of the bank and then President of the National Bureau de Change.  Ciampi was the first-non parliamentarian prime minister of Italy for more than 100 years, appointed by the President, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, to oversee a technical government.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life, an Indian Destiny, by Rani Singh

Sonia Gandhi's story represents the greatest transformational journey made by any world leader in the last four decades. Circumstance and tragedy, rather than ambition, paved her path to power. Born into a traditional, middle-class Italian family, Sonia met and fell in love with Rajiv Gandhi, son of future Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, while studying English in Cambridge. Cruelly tested by the assassinations of her mother-in-law and of her husband, she grew into a strong, authoritative but always private figure, president of a coalition ruling over a billion people in the world's largest democracy. Through exclusive interviews with members of her party, political opponents and family friends, Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life casts her in a new light. In the first mainstream biography of this inspirational figure, the author’s compelling narrative retraces the path of a brave leader, examining what her life and legacy mean for India.

Rani Singh is a London-based journalist who has worked extensively with BBC television and radio for over 15 years, and has also commented on South Asian affairs for CNN and NBC News. Her biography of Sonia Gandhi was endorsed by notable figures such as Henry Kissinger and Jon Snow.

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8 December

Mario Minniti - painter

Sicilian influenced by long-time collaborator Caravaggio

The painter Mario Minniti, who has acquired some historical notoriety over his long association with the brilliant but hot-tempered Renaissance great Caravaggio but went on to enjoy a successful career in his own right, was born on this day in 1577 in Syracuse, Sicily.  Minniti first encountered Caravaggio - born Michelangelo Merisi - when he arrived in Rome at the age of 15, seeking an apprenticeship following the death of his father.  Caravaggio was just a few years older than Minniti. They became friends and Minniti, who was blessed with boyish good looks, is thought to have been the model Caravaggio used in a series of works commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, one of the leading connoisseurs in Rome.  These included his paintings Boy with a Basket of Fruit, The Fortune Teller, The Musicians, Bacchus and The Lute Player.  Read more…

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Arnaldo Forlani - politician

Oldest surviving former prime minister

Arnaldo Forlani, who was Italy's oldest surviving prime minister until his death in 2023, was born on this day in 1925 in Pesaro.  A Christian Democrat for the whole of his active political career, Forlani was President of the Council of Ministers - the official title of the Italian prime minister - for just over eight months, between October 1980 and June 1981.  He later served as deputy prime minister (1983-87) in a coalition led by the Italian Socialist Party leader Bettino Craxi, having previously been defence minister under Aldo Moro (1974-76) and foreign affairs minister under Giulio Andreotti (1976-79).  Forlani represented Ancona in the Chamber of Deputies from 1958 until the party collapsed in 1994 in the wake of corruption investigations.  He was premier during a difficult period for Italy, which was still reeling from the terrorist attack on Bologna railway station. Read more…

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Marcello Piacentini – architect

Designer whose buildings symbolised Fascist ideals

Urban theorist and architect Marcello Piacentini was born on this day in 1881 in Rome.  The son of architect Pio Piacentini, he studied arts and engineering in Rome before going on to become one of the main proponents of the stark, linear designs characteristic of the Fascist era.  When he was just 26, he was commissioned with redesigning the centre of the Lombardy city Bergamo’s lower town, the Città Bassa, where Piacentini's buildings remain notable landmarks today.  The project marked Piacentini as an architect of considerable vision and talent.  He then went on to work throughout Italy, and in particular in Rome, for the Fascist government.  He designed a new campus for the University of Rome, La Sapienza, the road approaching St Peter’s in Rome that was named Via della Conciliazione, and much of the EUR district of the capital. Read more…

The Borghese Coup

Neo-fascist ‘plot’ aborted at last moment

Italians might have woken up on this day in 1970 to learn that the nation’s legitimate government had been overthrown in a neo-fascist coup had the plotters behind the insurrection not abandoned their action at the 11th hour. The night of December 7-8 had been chosen as the date for the Golpe Borghese - the Borghese Coup - the proposed coup d’état by Junio Valerio Borghese, a nobleman descended from the House of Borghese, which originated in Siena and went on to wield significant power and influence in Rome in the 17th century. Borghese, a former member of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, had been a naval commander in World War Two who had aligned himself with Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic following the armistice of 1943. He became a prominent neo-fascist in post-war Italy, first as a member of the Italian Social Movement. Read more…

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Johann Maria Farina - perfumier

Emigrant to Germany who invented Eau de Cologne

Johann Maria Farina, the Italian perfumier said to have created the world’s first Eau de Cologne, was born on this day in 1685 in the small town of Santa Maria Maggiore in Piedmont.  Farina’s family were masters in the art of distilling alcohol to carry fragrances, which involves different techniques to those used to distil alcohol to drink.  The method was developed in northern Africa, exported to Sicily and then on to the Italian mainland.  Farina’s antecedents brought it with them to Piedmont, where his grandmother established the family workshop in Santa Maria Maggiore, which is located about 130km (81 miles) northeast of Turin, not far from the border with Switzerland.  In his early 20s, Farina emigrated to Germany. Taking the name Johann Maria Farina - his given Italian name was Giovanni - he initially worked for an uncle. Read more…

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Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Prayers are followed by bonfires and feasting

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated on this day throughout Italy every year.  It is a public holiday everywhere, when banks and offices are closed, special masses take place in the churches and people celebrate the start of Christmas.  It is an official festa - feast day - in the Christian calendar, when the immaculate conception of Jesus is celebrated. The day commemorates Mary, the mother of Jesus, being given the grace of God to live a life ‘free of sin.’  Many people attend Mass and the Pope leads the celebrations from Rome.  The day was officially declared a festa by the Vatican in 1854.  It marks the official start of the Christmas season in Italy, when the lights and trimmings go up.  The shops are open and do a brisk trade, with many people not at work taking the opportunity to do some Christmas shopping.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, by Andrew Graham Dixon

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great painters. The worlds of Milan, Rome and Naples through which Caravaggio moved and which Andrew Graham-Dixon describes brilliantly in this book, are those of cardinals and whores, prayer and violence. On the streets surrounding the churches and palaces, brawls and swordfights were regular occurrences. In the course of this desperate life Caravaggio created the most dramatic paintings of his age, using ordinary men and women - often prostitutes and the very poor - to model for his depictions of classic religious scenes. Andrew Graham-Dixon's exceptionally illuminating readings of Caravaggio's pictures, which are the heart of Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, show very clearly how he created their drama, immediacy and humanity, and how completely he departed from the conventions of his time.

Andrew Graham-Dixon is a British art historian, art critic, author and broadcaster. A former chief art critic of the Independent and later the Sunday Telegraph, he has presented numerous art documentaries on BBC television and is the author of several books, including Howard Hodgkin; A History of British Art; Paper Museum: Writings About Painting, Mostly; Renaissance; and In the Picture.

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