Arturo Toscanini - conductor

Cellist who became orchestra leader by chance

Arturo Toscanini is remembered as one of the 
most influential figures in 20th century music

The brilliant conductor Arturo Toscanini was born on this day in 1867 in Oltretorrente, a working-class neighbourhood of Parma, now part of Emilia-Romagna.

Toscanini came to be recognised as one of the most influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century. An intense individual who was a perfectionist in everything he did, as well as having a brilliant ear for detail in orchestral performances, he also had the gift of being able to remember complete musical scores after only one reading. 

At various times, he was the music director at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and at the New York Philharmonic. He became particularly well known in the United States after he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. 

Toscanini had the privilege of conducting the world premieres of many of the greatest operas of his lifetime, including Pagliacci, La bohème, La fanciulla del West and Turandot, as well as Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Salome, Pelléas et Mélisande and Euryanthe. 

The son of a tailor, Toscanini developed an interest in music at an early age and won a scholarship to Parma Conservatory, where he studied the cello. 

Toscanini (right) and the composer Giacomo Puccini
enjoyed a close professional relationship

He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with whom he toured Brazil. It was there, in Rio de Janeiro, that the young Arturo picked up the conductor’s baton for the first time, although entirely through circumstance.

Prior to a presentation of Verdi’s Aida, the singers refused to work with the locally hired conductor, Leopoldo Miguez, who abruptly resigned. His replacement was subjected to booing from the audience, who were unhappy with his performance, and also resigned, leaving the orchestra without a conductor and the next performance only hours away.

Aware of his ability to remember whole scores, a member of the orchestra suggested giving the baton to Toscanini. Only 19 years old and with no conducting experience, Toscanini was reluctant at first but was eventually persuaded to accept the invitation, aware that the whole tour was at risk of being cancelled if he did not.

In the event, he led the two-and-a-half hour performance flawlessly, and entirely from memory. He found he had a natural talent for the job. The audience warmed to his charisma and intensity and applauded his musicianship. He kept the baton for another 18 operas as the tour unfolded with great success.

Toscanini became one of the
most sought-after conductors

Word spread of his ability and he soon found himself in demand. He continued to play the cello, but his talent as a conductor brought so much work that opportunities to take his seat in the orchestra became fewer and fewer.

He made his conducting debut in Italy at the Teatro Carignano in Turin in November, 1886, leading the premiere of a revised version of Alfredo Catalani’s Edmea. He soon broadened his repertoire to symphonic concerts, his reputation growing so fast that in 1898 he was named principal conductor at La Scala, at the age of just 31.

He remained at the Milan theatre, Italy’s principal opera house, for 10 years before he was lured away to America for the first time by Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the former general manager at La Scala, who had taken the same role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and persuaded Toscanini to join him there. 

Toscanini spent seven seasons at the Met, returning to Europe in 1915. He was due to leave New York on the British liner RMS Lusitania on May 7 but decided at the last moment to depart a week earlier on the Italian liner Duca degli Abruzzi. It proved a mightily fortuitous decision: the Lusitania never made it to its intended destination, sinking off the coast of Ireland after being torpedoed by a German u-boat. A total of 1,197 passengers and crew perished.

He maintained his transatlantic lifestyle, conducting around Europe and in the United States, leading the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra between 1928 and 1936. He ceased working in his native Italy, however, after falling foul of the Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini was keen to attach himself to Toscanini, whom he described as ‘the greatest conductor in the world’ and wished to promote as a symbol of Italian excellence. But Toscanini had little truck with Fascism, defying Mussolini by refusing to conduct the party’s official hymn, Giovinezza.

Toscanini's tomb at the Cimitero Monumentale
in Milan, where he was buried after his death at 89

Eventually, though, his defiance rebounded on him when he refused to lead a rendition of Giovinezza at a concert in Bologna in 1931, in spite of the presence in the audience of a leading Fascist official. Afterwards, Toscanini was set upon by Blackshirts and badly beaten. His passport was confiscated and he was put under surveillance. The passport was eventually returned following a public outcry and as Italy entered World War Two he left the country.

Prior to that, he had considered retirement. Instead, he embarked on a new chapter of his career, leading the newly-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra. When Toscanini did finally retire, in 1954, he was 87 years old.

Although he reportedly had numerous affairs, notably with the American soprano, Geraldine Farrar, Toscanini was married only once, to Carla De Martini, who was a teenager when they met. They remained together from their wedding in 1897 to her death in 1951. They had three children, a son, Walter, and daughters Wally and Wanda.

Toscanini died on January 16, 1957, having suffered a stroke on New Year's Day at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in New York City. He was 89. His body was returned to Italy and buried at the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan. His tomb carries an epitaph based on a remark he is said to have made at the end of the 1926 premiere of Puccini's unfinished Turandot.

"Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto - Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died".

The house where Toscanini was
born is now a museum of his life

Travel tip:

The house in Borgo Rodolfo Tanzi, in the Oltretorrente district of Parma, where Arturo Toscanini was born, is now a museum of his life, open to the public between 10am and 6pm from Wednesday to Sunday, closing on Monday and Tuesday. A 15-minute walk from the city centre and close to the sprawling green space of the Parco Ducale, the house was one shared by the Toscaninis and three other families. His father, a tailor who fought in Garibaldi’s army in the campaign to unite Italy, used the downstairs room as a workshop. Among the exhibits on display are photographs, theatre programmes and posters, letters to and from composers with whom he worked, such as Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss, and some of the clothes he wore to conduct. There is a letter from Albert Einstein, the German physicist and noted campaigner against racism, praising Toscanini for standing up to the Fascists.

Parma's 12th century baptistery
is among the city's main sights

Travel tip:

Parma is an historic city, famous for its Prosciutto di Parma ham and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the true ‘parmesan’. In 1545 the city was given as a duchy to the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, Alessandro Farnese, whose descendants ruled Parma till 1731. As well as Toscanini, the city’s musical heritage includes the composer, Giuseppe Verdi, who was born near Parma at Bussetto. The city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio, and a Conservatory named in honour of Arrigo Boito, who wrote the libretti for many of Verdi’s operas.  An elegant city with an air of prosperity common to much of Emilia-Romagna, Parma’s outstanding architecture includes an 11th century Romanesque cathedral and the octagonal 12th century baptistery that adjoins it, the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, which has a beautiful late Mannerist facade and bell tower, and the Palazzo della Pilotta, which houses the Academy of Fine Arts, the Palatine Library, the National Gallery and an archaeological museum.

Also on this day:

1347: The birth of Saint Catherine of Siena

1541: The birth of Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany

1546: The birth of poet and courtesan Veronica Franco

1625: The death of poet Giambattista Marino

1927: The birth of politician Tina Anselmi

1940: The birth of record-breaking pop star Mina 

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24 March

Dario Fo – writer and actor

Prolific playwright put the spotlight on corruption

Playwright and all-round entertainer Dario Fo was born in Leggiuno Sangiano in the Province of Varese in Lombardy on this day in 1926.  His plays have been widely performed and translated into many different languages. He is perhaps most well known for Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997.  Fo’s early work is peppered with criticisms of the corruption, crime, and racism that affected life in Italy at the time. He later moved on to ridicule Forza Italia and Silvio Berlusconi and in later life his targets included the banks and big business.  He was brought up near the shores of Lago Maggiore but moved to Milan to study. During the war he served with several branches of the forces before deserting. He returned to Milan to study architecture but gave it up to paint and work in small theatres presenting improvised monologues. In the 1950s Fo worked in radio and on stage performing his own work. He met and later married actress Franca Rame and they had a son, Jacopo, who also became a writer.  Read more…

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Luigi Einaudi - politician and winemaker

Composer's grandfather was President of the Republic

The politician, economist, journalist and winemaker Luigi Einaudi was born on this day in 1874 in Carrù, in the province of Cuneo in what is now Piedmont.   Einaudi, who is the grandfather of the musician and composer Ludovico Einaudi and the father of publisher Giulio Einaudi, was elected President of the new Italian Republic between 1948 and 1955, the second person to occupy the post.  He was actively involved with politics from his university days, when he supported socialist movements.  For a decade he edited a socialist magazine but later took a more conservative position. After being appointed to the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy in 1919, in the days when the upper house of the Italian parliament was a non-elected body, he was one of the signatories in forming the Italian Liberal Party (PLI).  The PLI initially joined forces with the Italian Fascists and it was through their support that Mussolini was able to win the 1924 general election with an absolute majority.  Einaudi had been both a journalist and an academic since graduating in law from Turin University in 1895.  Read more…

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Salvatore Viganò – dancer and choreographer

Ballet performer inspired Beethoven to compose music to suit his choreography

Salvatore Viganò, an innovative dancer who became the ballet master at La Scala opera house in Milan, was born on this day in 1769 in Naples.  He introduced the idea of ‘coreodramma’, a synthesis of dance and pantomime, in dramatic ballets based on historical and mythological themes and Shakespeare’s plays.  Viganò was born into a family of dancers and was the nephew of the composer Luigi Boccherini. When he was young, his main interests were literature and music. He studied composition with his uncle, Boccherini, and was composing his own music by the time he was a teenager.  His mother, Maria, Boccherini’s sister, had been a ballerina, and dance gradually became Viganò’s main interest. In 1788 he appeared as a dancer on the stage in Venice and the following year he performed in the coronation festivities of Charles IV of Spain.  His elder sister, Vincenza Vigano-Mombelli also became a dancer and she wrote the libretto for Rossini’s first opera, Demetrio e Polibio. While performing in Madrid,he met and married the dancer, Maria Medina. He also met the choreographer Jean Dauberval, who he later joined up with in France and England. His friendship with Dauberval stimulated his interest in choreography. Read more...

Mimmo Jodice - photographer

Camera work with shades of metaphysical art

Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Jodice, who has been a major influence on artistic photography in Italy for half a century, was born on this day in 1934 in Naples.  Jodice, who was professor of photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli from 1969 to 1996, is best known for his atmospheric photographs of urban scenes, especially in his home city.  Often these pictures reflected his fascination with how Italian cities habitually mix the present and the future with echoes of the past in their urban landscapes, with the incongruous juxtapositions of ancient and modern that were characteristic of metaphysical art occurring naturally as part of urban evolution.  His books Vedute di Napoli (Views of Naples) and Lost in Seeing: Dreams and Visions of Italy have been international bestsellers and he has exhibited his work all over the world.  Born in the Sanità district of Naples, Jodice was the second of four children. His father died when he was still a boy and the requirement that he find work as soon as he was able meant he had only a limited education.  Nonetheless, he was drawn towards art and the theatre, classical music and jazz.  Read more…

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Guido Menasci - poet, librettist and biographer

Respected writer and historian who found fame from an opera

The writer Guido Menasci, who is best known as a co-author of the libretto for composer Pietro Mascagni’s successful opera Cavalleria rusticana but was also a respected historian, was born on this day in 1867 in the Tuscan port of Livorno.  Menasci, a law graduate from the University of Pisa and briefly a prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Lucca, wrote for a number of literary magazines in Italy and beyond and produced a biography of the German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang Goethe that is considered a definitive work.  Fluent in French as well as Italian, he published books and gave lectures in Paris, often on the subject of art history, which was another of his fascinations.  Yet he was most famous for his work with Mascagni and his fellow librettist, Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, whom he met through his involvement with literary and cultural societies in Livorno, where all three grew up.  They collaborated on a number of operas, the most famous of which by some way was Cavalleria rusticana, which was performed for the first time in 1890, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.   Based on a novella of the same name by Giovanni Verga, Cavalleria rusticana is a simple story of betrayal and revenge.  Read more…

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Giorgio Gori - politician

Mayor who steered city of Bergamo through Covid nightmare

The politician Giorgio Gori, who as Mayor of Bergamo became one of the spokespersons for Italy during the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, was born in Bergamo on this day in 1960.  Of 158,000 deaths from the virus in Italy since it was identified in a patient from the town of Codogno in February 2020, more than 39,000 have been in the Lombardy region, with the city of Bergamo and the surrounding area suffering the heaviest toll.  Bergamo province lost 4,500 citizens in the first month of the pandemic alone and is haunted by the image of a convoy of military vehicles carrying coffins away for cremation elsewhere because the city’s own crematorium could no longer cope with the numbers of dead.  As television crews descended on the city, Gori regularly agreed to be interviewed on camera and thus was seen by audiences in many countries as the story of Covid-19’s devastating impact on Italy dominated news bulletins.  Gori’s own background is in the media. Educated in the magnificent but traditionally demanding surroundings of the Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi in Bergamo’s historic Città Alta, he went on to study architecture at the University of Milan but at the same time began to contribute to local newspapers, including L’Eco di Bergamo and Bergamo-Oggi, and the city’s own television station, BergamoTV.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Accidental Death of an Anarchist: West End Edition, by Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Adapted by Tom Basden

An irrepressible fraudster known only as the Maniac is brought into Police Headquarters just as the officers are preparing for a judicial review of the recent 'accidental' death of a suspect in custody.  Outwitting his captors, the Maniac dupes them into performing a farcical recreation of the incident, exposing the absurd corruption and terrifying idiocy at the heart of the system.  Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Dario Fo and Franca Rame's riotous satire, was written after Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist arrested after the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, died while being interrogated by the police. It has been widely performed around the world since its premiere in 1970. Tom Basden's hilarious, bang-up-to-date adaptation was first performed at Sheffield Theatres in September 2022. It transferred for a sold out run at the Lyric, Hammersmith, before transferring again into the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London's West End in June 2023.

Dario Fo’s best-known plays include Mistero Buffo, Accidental Death of an Anarchist (co-written with his wife, Franca Rame) and Can't Pay? Won't Pay! Playwright Tom Basden is the author of The Crocodile, Holes, There is a War and Joseph K, an adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial. He has written for some of Britain’s most popular comedy television shows including Peep Show, Fresh Meat, The Wrong Mans, Plebs and Here We Go.

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23 March

The founding of the Italian Fascists

Mussolini launched party at 1919 Milan rally

Italy's notorious future dictator Benito Mussolini officially formed what would become known as the National Fascist Party on this day in 1919 at a rally in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro.  A war veteran and former socialist activist who had moved towards a more nationalist political stance, Mussolini initially drew his followers together as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group).  This group evolved into the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) two years later, sweeping to power in 1922 when King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war after 30,000 of Mussolini's supporters, the Blackshirts, marched on Rome, asked Mussolini to form a government.  Born the son of a blacksmith in Predappio, in Emilia-Romagna, Mussolini had been an active socialist, first in Switzerland, where he had moved as a 19-year-old to seek work and avoid military service, and again when he returned to Italy.  He became a leading figure in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and edited the left-wing newspaper Avanti.  But he was expelled by the PSI because of his opposition to the party's neutral stance on the First World War.  Read more…

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Lorenzino de’ Medici - assassin

Mystery over motive for killing cousin

Lorenzino de’ Medici, who became famous for the assassination of his cousin, the Florentine ruler Alessandro de’ Medici, was born on this day in 1514 in Florence.  The killing took place on the evening of January 6, 1537.  The two young men - Alessandro was just four years older - were ostensibly friends and Lorenzino was easily able to lure Alessandro to his apartments in Florence on the promise of a night of passion with a woman who had agreed to meet him there.  Lorenzino, sometimes known as Lorenzaccio, left him alone, promising to return with the woman in question, at which point Alessandro dismissed his entourage and waited in the apartments.  When Lorenzino did return, however, it was not with a female companion but with his servant, Piero, and the two attacked Alessandro with swords and daggers. Although a struggle ensued, they killed him.  The motive has been debated for centuries. One theory was that it was an act of revenge following a legal controversy the previous year, when Alessandro sided against Lorenzino in a dispute over the inheritance of his great, great grandfather, Pierfrancesco the Elder.  Read more…

Ugo Tognazzi - comic actor

Achieved international fame through La Cage aux Folles

Ugo Tognazzi, the actor who achieved international fame in the film La Cage aux Folles, was born on this day in 1922 in Cremona.  Renowned for his wide repertoire in portraying comic characters, Tognazzi made more than 62 films and worked with many of Italy's top directors.  Along with Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi and Nino Manfredi, Tognazzi was regarded as one of the four top stars of commedia all'italiana - comedy the Italian way - in the 1960s and 1970s.  In 1981 he won the award for best actor at the Cannes International Film Festival for his role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Tragedia di un Uomo Ridicolo (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man).  His work was widely acclaimed in Italy, but it was not until he was cast in the role of homosexual cabaret owner Renato Baldi in the French director Édouard Molinaro's 1979 movie La Cage Aux Folles that he became known outside Italy.   The film became in its time the most successful foreign language film ever released in the United States, with box office receipts of more than $20 million.  The film spawned two sequels in which Tognazzi reprieved the role of the mincing Baldi, who in the story was the joint owner of a night club in St Tropez that specialised in drag acts.  Read more…

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Franco Battiato – singer-songwriter

Long career of a musical philosopher

One of the most popular singer-songwriters in Italy, Franco Battiato, was born on this day in 1945 in Ionia in Sicily.  Nicknamed Il Maestro, Battiato has written many songs with philosophical and religious themes. He has also had a long-lasting professional relationship with Italian singer Alice, with whom he represented Italy at the 1984 Eurovision Song Contest.  Battiato graduated from high school at the Liceo Scientifico Archimede in Acireale, a city in the province of Catania in Sicily.  He went to Rome and then moved on to Milan, where he won his first musical contract. After his first single, La Torre, was released, Battiato performed the song on television. After some success with the romantic song E l’amore, he released the science fiction single La convenzione, which was judged to be one of the finest Italian progressive rock songs of the 1970s.  The albums of electronic music he produced in the ‘70s, obscure at the time, are now sought after by collectors.  His popularity grew after he moved away from progressive rock to a more mainstream pop style, producing music that was regarded as elegant, yet easy to listen to. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy,  by Christopher Duggan 

Fascist Voices, winner of the 2013 Wolfson History Prize, is a fresh and disturbing look at a country in thrall to a charismatic dictator. Tracing fascism from its conception to its legacy, Christopher Duggan unpicks why the regime enjoyed so much support among the majority of the Italian people. He examines the extraordinary hold the Duce had on Italy and how he came to embody fascism.  By making use of rarely examined sources, such as letters and diaries, newspaper reports, secret police files, popular songs and radio broadcasts, Duggan explores how ordinary people experienced Italian Fascism on a daily basis; how its ideology influenced politics, religion and everyday life to the extent that Mussolini's legacy still lingers in Italy today.

The late Christopher Duggan was Professor of Italian History at Reading University. His books on modern Italian history included History of Sicily, with Moses Finley and Denis Mack Smith; Fascism and the Mafia; A Concise History of Italy; Francesco Crispi: From Nation to Nationalism; and The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796.

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22 March

Michele Sindona - fraudster and killer

Failed banker ordered murder of investigating lawyer

The shadowy banker Michele Sindona, who had links to underworld figures in Italy and America as well as prominent politicians, died in hospital in the Lombardy town of Voghera, 70km (43 miles) south of Milan, on this day in 1986.  His death, attributed to cyanide poisoning, came four days after he had been sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the killing of a lawyer investigating the collapse of his $450 million financial empire.  His own lawyer claimed Sindona had been murdered but although it was never established beyond doubt, the circumstances of his death, caused by drinking coffee laced with the poison at breakfast in Voghera's maximum-security prison, pointed towards suicide.  During his chequered career, which also saw him sentenced to 25 years' jail in America for fraud following the failure of the Franklin National Bank on Long Island, Sindona had links with Mafia bosses in Sicily and New York, with the illegal Propaganda Due masonic lodge and with the controversial head of the Vatican Bank, the American Archbishop, Paul Marcinkus.  He had close ties with another Vatican Bank client who met an untimely death, Roberto Calvi. Read more…

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Lea Pericoli - tennis player

Star remembered for on-court fashion as much as tournament success

The tennis player Lea Pericoli, who won 30 tournaments on the international circuit between 1953 and 1972, was born in Milan on this day in 1935.  Pericoli, who continued playing until the age of 40, also won 27 titles at the Italian national championships, a record that still stands today.  She never progressed beyond the last 16 in singles at three three Grand Slam tournaments in which she participated but was a semi-finalist twice in women’s and mixed doubles at the French Open in Paris, playing on the red clay surface which most suited her game.  Yet she achieved fame beyond mere results after joining up with the British player-turned-fashion designer Teddy Tinling, whose designs she would often be the first to wear on court.  In an era not long after a female player wearing only a calf-length skirt was considered mildly outrageous, Tinling dressed Pericoli in a succession of culottes, short dresses and skirts, extravagantly decorated with lacy frills, sometimes feathers and even mink.  Crowds were drawn to Pericoli’s matches as much to see what she was wearing as to watch her play.  Read more…

Nino Manfredi - actor and director

Totò fan became maestro of commedia all’italiana

The actor and director Saturnino ‘Nino’ Manfredi, who would become known as the last great actor of the commedia all’italiana genre, was born on this day in 1921 in Castro dei Volsci, near Frosinone in Lazio.  Manfredi made more than 100 movies, often playing marginalised working-class figures in the bittersweet comedies that characterised the genre, which frequently tackled important social issues and poked irreverent fun at some of the more absurd aspects of Italian life, in particular the suffocating influence of the church.  He was a favourite of directors such as Dino Risi, Luigi Comencini, Ettore Scola and Franco Brusati, who directed him in the award-winning Pane and cioccolata (Bread and Chocolate), which evoked the tragicomic existence of immigrant workers and was considered one of his finest performances.  It helped him fulfil his dream of following in the footsteps of his boyhood idol Totò, the Neapolitan comic actor whose eccentric characters took enormous liberties in mocking Italian institutions, and to be spoken off in the company of Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi as a true maestro of commedia all’italiana.  Read more…

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'La Castiglione' – model and secret agent

Beautiful woman helped the cause of Italian unification

Virginia Oldoini, who became known as La Castiglione, was born on this day in 1837 in Florence.  She became the mistress of the Emperor Napoleon III of France and also made an important contribution to the early development of photography.  She was born Virginia Oldoini to parents who were part of the Tuscan nobility, but originally came from La Spezia in Liguria. At the age of 17 she married the Count of Castiglione, who was 12 years older than her, and they had one son, Giorgio.  Her cousin was Camillo, Count of Cavour, who was the prime minister to Victor Emmanuel II, the King of Sardinia, later to become the first King of a united Italy.  When the Countess travelled with her husband to Paris in 1855, Cavour asked her to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoleon III.  Considered to be the most beautiful woman of her day, she became Napoleon III’s mistress and her husband demanded a separation. During her relationship with Napoleon III she influenced Franco-Italian political relations, mingled with European nobility and met Otto von Bismarck.  She became known both for her beauty and elaborate clothes.  Read more…

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Vittorio Emanuele II Monument - Rome landmark

‘Altar of the Fatherland’ built to honour unified Italy’s first king

The foundation stone of Rome’s huge Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II was laid on this day in 1885 in the presence of his son and successor Umberto I and his family.  The monument, which took half a century to complete fully, occupies a site on the northern slope of the Capitoline (Campidoglio) Hill on the south-eastern side of the modern city centre, a few steps from the ruins of the Forum, the heart of ancient Rome.  Built in white Botticino marble, the multi-tiered monument is 135m (443 ft) wide, 130m (427 ft) deep, and 70m (230 ft) high, rising to 81m (266ft) including the two statues of a chariot-mounted winged goddess Victoria on the summit of the two propylaea.  Its appearance has earned it various nicknames, ranging from the ‘wedding cake’ to the ‘typewriter’, although it is officially known as Vittoriano or Altare della Patria.  The Altar of the Fatherland is actually just one part of the monument, at the front and in the centre, consisting of an inset statue of the goddess Roma and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where two soldiers guard an eternal flame.  Above it is a large bronze horse-back statue of Vittorio Emanuele II himself on a central plinth in front of the broad upper colonnade.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, by Gerald Posner

From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, God’s Bankers traces the political intrigue of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church’s accumulation of wealth and its byzantine financial entanglements across the world. Told through 200 years of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and the Popes who oversee it all, Gerald Posner uncovers an eyebrow-raising account of money and power in one of the world’s most influential organizations.  God’s Bankers has it all: a revelatory and astounding saga marked by poisoned business titans, murdered prosecutors, and mysterious deaths written off as suicides; a carnival of characters from Popes and cardinals, financiers and mobsters, kings and prime ministers; and a set of moral and political circumstances that clarify not only the church’s aims and ambitions, but reflect the larger tensions of more recent history. And Posner even looks to the future to surmise if Pope Francis can succeed where all his predecessors failed: to overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s Machiavellian inner court and to rein in the excesses of its seemingly uncontrollable financial quagmire. This book reveals with extraordinary precision how the Vatican has evolved from a foundation of faith to a corporation of extreme wealth and power.

Gerald Posner was one of the youngest attorneys ever hired by the Wall Street law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He is the author of 11 books, including New York Times bestsellers, and one a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. 

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