Domenico Fontana – architect

Swiss designer who built the Royal Palace in Naples

The Royal Palace in Piazza del Plebiscito was
designed by Fontana in his role as Royal Engineer

Domenico Fontana, an architect working during the late Renaissance, died on this day in 1607 in Naples. Although he had a long career working for the papacy in Rome, Fontana was employed by the Spanish Viceroy of Naples toward the end of his life and he built the Royal Palace in Naples.

His work in Naples led to the rediscovery of Pompeii, when a crew working for him building canals became the first to confirm the location of the ancient city.

Fontana was born in Melide, a municipality in the district of Lugano in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

He went to Rome in 1563 to join his older brother and began a career as a plasterer, moving on to become a mason and master builder, showing particular expertise with measuring and good technical skills. After moving to Rome, just before Michelangelo's death, Fontana was able to study the works of both ancient and modern masters of design.

Fontana’s first architectural project was to design a villa for Cardinal Montalto, who later became Pope Sixtus V. He was then commissioned to design a Cappella del Presepio, a chapel of the crib, for the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. This was a powerful domed building over a Greek cross.

He then constructed the Palazzo Montalto near Santa Maria Maggiore and later, when Cardinal Montalto became Pope, he was appointed as the official papal architect.

Domenico Fontana was born in
the Swiss canton of Ticino 

Fontana designed the Vatican Library, made alterations to Basilica San Giovanni in Laterano and rebuilt the Lateran Palace, on the site of the former medieval palace. 

He also worked with Giacomo della Porta on the completion of St Peter’s dome, with them both referring to Michelangelo’s model that the great architect had left behind him. 

His most famous undertaking was the removal of the 320-ton Egyptian obelisk, which had been brought to Rome in the first century. He moved it from its location near the Vatican and re-erected it in St Peter’s Square in front of the basilica in 1586. This was said to have taken the concerted effort of 800 men, 160 horses, and countless pulleys and metres of rope, and was a feat of engineering that astonished his contemporaries.

It also demonstrated his mastery of statics, the branch of classical mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of force and torque (the rotational equivalent of linear force), acting on a physical system that does not experience an acceleration, but rather is in equilibrium with its environment. . 

But, after later being accused of misappropriating public money, Fontana was dismissed from his post in 1592 by Pope Clement VIII, who was the fourth pope to come after the death of Pope Sixtus V in 1590. 

Fontana went to live in Naples where he became Royal Engineer at the court of the Spanish Viceroy and he was responsible for building the Royal Palace in Piazza del Plebiscito, which commenced in 1600.

Later, during work he was overseeing to construct a canal linking the River Sarno with some mills in Torre Annunziata, his workmen were the first to find some remains of Pompeii. At the time, the importance of this discovery was not fully understood and the ancient city of Pompeii in Campania was not rediscovered until 150 years later.

Domenico Fontana was the first Ticinese architect to gain major recognition in Roman architecture, establishing a lineage of Ticinese builders who dominated the Roman scene for nearly two centuries afterwards and contributed significantly to the construction of baroque Rome alongside architects such as Carlo Maderno and Francesco Borromini.

Fontana's legacy is marked by his architectural innovation and his pivotal role in shaping Renaissance and Baroque Rome and Naples. 

Michelangelo's Dome of St Peter's is one of the
most familiar landmarks on the Rome skyline

Travel tip:

Michelangelo's dome, which Domenico Fontana helped to complete, is one of the dominant features of the Rome skyline.  Situated next to the Tiber, St Peter's is the largest Christian church in the world, covering 5.7 acres with a capacity to accommodate 60,000 people, with room for a further 400,000 in the square outside.  The dome itself rises to a height of 136.57 metres (448.1 feet) from the floor of the basilica to the top of the external cross. The Egyptian obelisk in the square, which Fontana erected, rises to 40m (132 ft), and was placed at or near the spot where St Peter was believed to have been crucified by the Romans in 64 AD. The construction of St Peter’s Basilica took 120 years, from the laying of the foundation stone in April 1506 under Pope Julius II to its formal dedication in November 1626 by Pope Urban VIII. The project spanned the reigns of 21 popes and  was led by eight different chief architects. In addition to Michelangelo, other key figures in shaping the design included Donato Bramante, who created the initial layout, Carlo Maderno, who completed the main façade, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who left a considerable imprint on both the vast interior and St Peter’s Square.

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The Throne Room inside the Royal Palace, in
which 30 rooms are open to the public

Travel tip:

The Royal Palace (Palazzo Reale) in Naples, which was designed by Domenico Fontana near the end of his life, was once one of the magnificent residences of the Kings of Naples. The palace is at the eastern end of Piazza del Plebiscito and dates back to 1600, when building commenced using Domenico Fontana’s design. It now houses a 30-room museum and has the largest library in southern Italy, which are both open to the public to look round.  The palace was originally commissioned to host King Philip III of Spain. Though the monarch never actually visited, the building became the seat of Spanish, Austrian, and eventually Bourbon power in the region. From 1734, King Charles of Bourbon and his successors expanded the palace, transforming its interior into a showcase of Baroque and Neoclassical opulence. During the Napoleonic era, rulers such as Joachim Murat further embellished the estate with refined Neoclassical decor. After Italian Unification in 1861, the House of Savoy took ownership, eventually opening the palace to the public in 1919.

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More reading: 

Giovanni Antonio Medrano, the Sicilian who designed Teatro di San Carlo

Luigi Vanvitelli, Neapolitan genius behind Royal Palace at Caserta

Why the Bourbons executed Joachim Murat, the flamboyant Neapolitan King of Naples

Also on this day:

1503: The birth of Giovanni della Casa, author of manual on etiquette

1909: The birth of politician and partisan Walter Audisio

1952: The birth of athlete Pietro Mennea

1971: The birth of footballer Lorenzo Amoruso 

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27 June

Giorgio Vasari - the first art historian

Artist and architect who chronicled lives of Old Masters

Giorgio Vasari, whose 16th century book on the lives of Renaissance artists led to him being described as the world's first art historian, died on June 27, 1574 in Florence.  Born in Arezzo in 1511, Vasari was a brilliant artist and architect who worked for the Medici family in Florence and Rome and amassed a considerable fortune in his career.  But he is remembered as much for Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, a collection of biographies of all the great artists of his lifetime.  The six-part work is remembered as the first important book on art history.  Had it not been written, much less would be known of the lives of Cimabue, Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Giorgione, Raphael, Boccaccio and Michelangelo among many others from the generation known as the Old Masters.  Read more…

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Gianluigi Aponte - shipping magnate

Billionaire started with one cargo vessel

Gianluigi Aponte, the billionaire founder of the Mediterranean Shipping Company, which owns the second largest container fleet in the world and a string of luxury cruise liners, was born on June 27, 1940 in Sant’Agnello, the seaside resort that neighbours Sorrento in Campania.  He and his wife, Rafaela, a partner in the business, have an estimated net worth of $11.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.  The Mediterranean Shipping Company has more than 510 container ships, making it the second largest such business in the world, behind the Danish company Maersk. MSC Cruises, meanwhile, is the fourth largest cruise company in the world. With offices in 45 countries, it employs 23,500 people, with a fleet of 17 luxury cruise liners.  The business, which Aponte began in 1970 with one cargo vessel, has more than 60,000 staff in 150 countries. Read more…

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The Ustica Massacre

Mystery plane crash blamed on missile strike

An Italian commercial flight crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea between Ponza and Ustica, killing everyone on board on June 27, 1980.  The aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC9-15 in the service of Itavia Airlines was en route from Bologna to Palermo, flight number IH870. All 77 passengers and the four members of the crew were killed, making this the deadliest aviation incident involving a DC9-15 or 10-15 series.  The disaster became known in the Italian media as the Ustica massacre - Strage di Ustica - because Ustica, off the coast of Sicily, was a small island near the site of the crash.  After the fragments of the aircraft that were recovered from the sea were re-assembled, the Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism issued a statement in 1989 asserting that the DC9 had been shot down. Read more…

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Giorgio Almirante – politician

Leader who tried to make fascism more mainstream

Giorgio Almirante, founder and leader of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, was born on June 27, 1914 at Salsomaggiore Terme in Emilia-Romagna.  He led his political party for long periods from 1946 until he handed over to his protégé, Gianfranco Fini, in 1987.  Almirante trained as a schoolteacher but went to work for the Fascist journal Il Tevere in Rome.  In 1944, he was appointed Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Culture to the Italian Social Republic, the short-lived German puppet state led by Benito Mussolini after he was thrown out of office as Italy’s prime minister.  After the Fascists were defeated, Almirante was indicted on charges that he had ordered the shooting of partisans, but these were lifted. He set up his own fascist group in 1946, which was soon absorbed into the Italian Social Movement (MSI).  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Lives of the Artists, by Giorgio Vasari, translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella

Packed with facts, attributions, and entertaining anecdotes about his contemporaries, 16th century painter and architect Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists is a collection of biographical accounts that also presents a highly influential theory of the development of Renaissance art.   Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto, who represent the infancy of art, in The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, to give the book its full, original title, Vasari considers the period of youthful vigour, shaped by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and Masaccio, before discussing the mature period of perfection, dominated by the titanic figures of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.  This specially commissioned translation - by Peter Bondanella and Julia Conaway Bondanella - is an abridged version of the original six-volume work, containing 36 of the most important lives as well as an introduction and explanatory notes.

Giorgio Vasari was an Italian Renaissance painter in the Mannerist style and architect and sculptor of renown. Peter Bondanella, who died in 2017, was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Italian, Comparative Literature, and Film Studies at Indiana University, United States. Julia Conaway Bondanella is Associate Professor of Italian and Associate Director of the Honours Division at the same university.  

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26 June

San Marino is bombed by British

Allies believed the Germans were using rail facilities

The British Royal Air Force bombed the tiny Republic of San Marino on June 26, 1944 as a result of receiving incorrect information.  It was recorded at the time that 63 people were killed as a result of the bombing, which was aimed at rail facilities. The British mistakenly believed that the Germans were using the San Marino rail network to transport weapons.  San Marino had been ruled by Fascists since the 1920s but had managed to remain neutral during the war.  After the bombing, San Marino’s government declared that no military installations or equipment were located on its territory and no belligerent forces had been allowed to enter.  However, by September of the same year San Marino was briefly occupied by German forces, but they were defeated by the Allied forces in the Battle of San Marino.  Read more…

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Alberto Rabagliati - singer and actor

Performer found fame through radio

The jazz singer and movie actor Alberto Rabagliati, who became a star of Italian radio in the 1930s and 40s, was born on June 26, 1906 in Milan.  His movie career reached a peak in the post-War years, when he had roles in the Humphrey Bogart-Ava Gardner hit Barefoot Contessa and in The Monte Carlo Story, starring Marlene Dietrich.  The son of parents who had moved to Milan from a village in Piedmont, Rabagliati’s career began when he won a competition in 1927 to find a Rudolph Valentino lookalike.  The prize was to be taken to Hollywood to audition, so his life changed overnight.  Later he recalled: "For someone like me, who had never been beyond Lake Como or Monza Cathedral, finding myself on board a luxury steamer with three cases full of clothes, a few rolls of dollars, grand-duchesses and countesses flirting with me was something extraordinary".  Read more…

Claudio Abbado – conductor

The distinguished career of a multi award-winning musician

The internationally acclaimed orchestra conductor Claudio Abbado was born on June 26, 1933 in Milan.  Abbado was musical director at La Scala opera house from 1972 to 1980 and remained affiliated to the theatre until 1986. He was the principal conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra and was appointed director of the Vienna State Opera and the Berlin Philharmonic.  Born into a musical family, Abbado studied the piano with his father, Michelangelo,from being eight years old. His father was a professional violinist and a professor at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory. His mother, Maria Carmela Savagnone, was a pianist and his brother, Marcello, became a concert pianist, composer, and teacher.  After the Nazis jailed his mother for harbouring a Jewish child, Abbado grew up anti-fascist. Read more… 

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Paolo Maldini - football great

Milan defender's record-breaking career spanned 25 years

Paolo Maldini, the AC Milan defender who won the European Cup and Champions League more times than any other player in the modern era, was born on June 26, 1968 in Milan.  A Milan player for the whole of his 25-year professional career - plus six years as a youth player before that - Maldini won Europe's biggest club prize five times. Only Francisco Gento, a member of the all-conquering Real Madrid side of the 1950s and 60s, has more winner's medals.  Maldini also won seven Serie A championships plus one Coppa Italia and five Supercoppa Italiana titles in domestic competition, as well as five European Super Cups, two Intercontinental Cups and a World Club Cup.  Only in international football did trophies elude him, although he played in the finals of both the World Cup, in 1994, and the European Championships, in 2000. Read more… 

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Book of the Day: The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44, by Rick Atkinson

In An Army at Dawn - winner of the Pulitzer Prize - Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of the Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north.  The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill and their military advisors engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to push the Germans up the Italian peninsula. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.  Drawing on an astonishing array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank.

Rick Atkinson is the bestselling author of eight works of narrative military history, including The Fate of the Day, The Guns at Last Light, The Day of Battle, An Army at Dawn, The Long Gray Line, In the Company of Soldiers, and Crusade. He was a reporter, foreign correspondent, war correspondent, and senior editor at The Washington Post for more than 20 years. His many awards include Pulitzer Prizes for history and journalism,

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25 June

Marta Abba - actress

Aspiring star who became Pirandello’s muse

Marta Abba, who as a young actress became the stimulus for the creativity of the great playwright Luigi Pirandello, was born on June 25, 1900 in Milan.  The two met in 1925 when Pirandello, whose most famous works included the plays Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) and Henry IV (1922), asked her to see him, having read an enthusiastic appreciation of her acting talents by Marco Praga, a prominent theatre critic of the day.  Abba had made her stage debut in Milan in 1922 in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull and was noted for the exuberance and passion of her performances. Pirandello was impressed with her and immediately hired her as first actress for his Teatro d’Arte company in Rome.  Over the next nine years until Pirandello’s death in 1936, Abba would become not only his inspiration but his confidante. Read more…

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Luigi Capello – World War I Army Commander

Popular General experienced both glory and shame

General Luigi Capello, who was held in high regard by the Allies during World War I, but was disgraced when his troops suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Caporetto, died on June 15, 1941 in Rome.  His reputation was ruined when he was removed from his command after a disastrous defeat by the Austrian army, which resulted in 13,000 Italians killed and up to 300,000 wounded or captured, and he never resumed his military career.  Capello went on to join the Fascists and took part in the March on Rome in 1922. His fall from grace was complete after he was accused of taking part in a failed conspiracy against Mussolini. Stripped of his military honours, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, although he was released after serving 11.  Born in Intra on the shores of Lake Maggiore in 1859, Capello became a second lieutenant in the Italian Army in 1878. Read more… 

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Aldo Serena - footballer

Azzurri striker left field in tears after penalty miss

Aldo Serena, one of the two Italian players who most felt the agony of defeat after the Azzurri suffered the pain of losing at the semi-final stage when the football World Cup last took place on home soil, was born on June 25, 1960 in Montebelluna, in the Veneto.  The match that ended the host nation's participation in the Italia '90 tournament took place in Naples against an Argentina side that included the local hero, Diego Maradona. It was decided on penalties after finishing 1-1 over 120 minutes. Italy converted their opening three penalties, as did Argentina.  Then Roberto Donadoni’s shot was saved by the Argentina goalkeeper, Sergio Goycochea.  Up stepped Maradona, who scored, to the delight of many in the crowd who had divided loyalties.  Suddenly, everything was down to Aldo Serena.  Read more… 

Elena Cornaro Piscopia – philosopher

First woman to graduate from a university

Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to receive an academic degree from a university on June 25, 1678, it is believed, in Padua.  She was awarded her degree in philosophy at a special ceremony in the Duomo in Padua in the presence of dignitaries from the University of Padua and guests from other Italian universities.  Piscopia was born in a palazzo in Venice in 1646. Her father had an important post at St Mark’s and he was entitled to accommodation in St Mark’s Square.  She was taught Latin and Greek when she was a young child and was proficient in both languages by the time she was seven. She then went on to master other languages as well as mathematics, philosophy and theology.  Her tutor wanted her to study for a degree in theology at Padua University but the Bishop of Padua refused to allow it because she was female. Read more…

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Francesco Domenico Araja - composer

Brilliant musician introduced Italian opera to Russia

Francesco Araja was the first in a long line of Italian composers to work for the Imperial Court in St Petersburg in Russia. Born on June 25, 1709 in Naples, then in the Kingdom of Sicily, Araja received a musical education in his native city and was composing operas by the age of 20.  He made history as the composer of the first Italian opera to be performed in Russia and as the composer of the first opera with a Russian text.  It is thought that Araja was probably taught music by his father Angelo Araja and his grandfather Pietro Aniello Araja, who were both musicians. He was appointed maestro di cappella at the church of Santa Maria La Nova in Naples at the age of just 14.  Araja’s early operas were staged in Naples, Florence, Rome, Milan and Venice. His opera Berenice was performed in Florence in 1730. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Pirandello in Context, edited by Patricia Gaborik

For students of Luigi Pirandello's life and works, this volume provides a multi-faceted view spanning the many genres in which he wrote, from poetry and essays to fiction and drama. Pirandello in Context gives a true sense of Pirandello's remarkable sensitivity to place – from his native Sicily to Germany and Latin America – and of how his perspective was shaped by a wide range of interlocutors with varying professional backgrounds, from contemporary philosophers to fellow playwrights such as Bernard Shaw, directors such as Max Reinhardt and the actress Marta Abba. Diverse contributors explore the sheer genre-bending originality of Pirandello's humour, metatheatre, and fantastic tales, and reveal how profound shifts in society, culture, and politics in his time – Freud, Futurism, Fascism – conditioned not just his thought but also his meteoric rise to fame. A final section is dedicated to Pirandello's legacy in literature and drama throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.

Patricia Gaborik is a theatre historian and playwright based in Rome, Italy. She has published several essays on 19th and 20th-century Italian performance. She is the translator of Massimo Bontempelli's Watching the Moon and Other Plays (Italica, 2013) and of Gabriele Pedulla's In Broad Daylight: Movies and Spectators After the Cinema (Verso, 2012).

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