Repatriation of Vittorio Emanuele III sparked anger
The remains of Italy’s wartime king, Vittorio Emanuele III, whose reputation was tarnished by his apparent complicity with Mussolini's Fascist regime, were returned to Italian soil on this day in 2017, 70 years after his death in exile in Egypt. His body had been buried in St. Catherine’s Catholic Cathedral in Alexandria since 1947, when he died at the age of 78, a year and a half after abdicating in favour of his son, Umberto II. His remains were flown to Italy by military aircraft for reburial at his family’s mausoleum at the Sanctuary of Vicoforte, a church in the province of Cuneo, Piedmont. At the same time, the body of his wife, Queen Elena, who had died in France in 1952, was flown to Italy from Montpelier, so that they could be buried side by side. Vittorio Emanuele’s coffin, draped in a flag bearing the coat of arms of the Savoy family, was taken from the plane at Cuneo’s small Levaldigi airport and escorted to the Sanctuary solely by local officials. Read more…
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The day a pontiff finally lost patience with the Tudor king
Pope Paul III announced the excommunication of King Henry VIII of England from the Catholic Church on this day in 1538 in Rome. Henry had been threatened with excommunication by the previous pope, Clement VII, in 1533 after he married Anne Boleyn. However, Clement did not act on his threat straight away, hoping Henry might come to his senses. Henry had been awarded the title of Defender of the Faith by a previous pope because he had written a defence of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church against the protestant leader Martin Luther. But Clement died the following year and a new pope had to be elected. Pope Paul III, who was born Alessandro Farnese, became pontiff in 1534 and took on the job of organising the Counter Reformation as well as using nepotism to advance the power and fortunes of the Farnese family. Read more…
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Artist who captured life in Venice
The painter Ettore Tito, whose landscapes and scenes from contemporary life in Venice earned him a substantial following in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was born on this day in 1859 in Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. Despite his southern roots, Tito spent most of his life in Venice. His Campanian father captained merchant ships but his mother was Venetian and they moved to Venice when Ettore was still a child. His prodigious talent for art emerged at an early age. He was taken under the wing of the Dutch artist Cecil van Haanen and was accepted by the Accademia di Belle Arti at the age of 12, graduating at 17 after studying under Pompeo Marino Molmenti, a distinguished professor. Tito appreciated the beauty of Venice but wanted his paintings to capture the character of the city and its people. Read more…
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Sacking in 546 left city a shadow of its former self
The Ostrogoths, the Germanic tribe that took over large parts of the Italian peninsula with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, achieved a symbolic victory on this day in 546 when an army under the leadership of King Totila captured and sacked Rome following a year-long siege of the Eternal City. The event was part of the Gothic War between the Ostrogoths, who had originated on the Black Sea in the area now known as Crimea, and the Byzantine (Eastern) Empire, between 535 and 554. Totila led a fightback by the Ostrogoths after the fall of the Gothic capital at Ravenna in 540 signalled the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines. He had swept south with his forces and was based at Tivoli, east of Rome, as he plotted how he would recapture the region of Latium. In 545, he laid siege to the city. Read more…
Marriage to Napoleon earned Austrian noblewoman an Italian Duchy
Austrian archduchess Maria Luisa d'Asburgo-Lorena reigned as Duchess of Parma from April 1814 until her death on this day in 1847. She was the eldest child of Francis I, the first Emperor of Austria and - as Francis II - the last Holy Roman Emperor. Despite being brought up to despise France, Maria Luisa agreed to marry Napoleon Bonaparte by proxy in 1810. When she was asked for her consent, she replied: ‘I wish only what my duty commands me to wish.’ Fortunately, when she met Napoleon for the first time, she remarked: ‘You are much better looking than your portrait.’ She bore him a son in 1811, Napoleon Francois Joseph Charles Bonaparte, who was styled King of Rome at his birth and who later became Napoleon II. After Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia in 1812, the French ruler’s fortunes changed dramatically and he had to abdicate and go into exile. Read more…
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World War I pilot claimed eight aerial victories
First World War pilot Leopoldo Eleuteri, who was credited with seven of the eight combat victories he claimed, was born in Castel Ritaldi, a small town in Umbria about 60km (37 miles) by road southeast of Perugia, on this day in 1894. Eleuteri did not begin flying active combat sorties as a fighter pilot until February 1918 but progressed rapidly with the 70th Squadron of the Corpo Aeronautico Militare, the airborne arm of the Royal Italian Army. He went on to fly more than 150 sorties and between April 1918 and October 1918 claimed eight enemy planes shot down, being eventually credited with seven successes in his own right. Passionate about all forms of mechanised flight since he was a boy, Eleuteri volunteered for aeronautical service as soon as he was old enough. He was a student in a technical school until he was conscripted in 1915. Read more…
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Musician who developed the model for ‘comic opera’
A prolific composer of operas, Domenico Cimarosa was born on this day in 1749 in Aversa, between Naples and Caserta in Campania. Cimarosa wrote more than 80 operas during his lifetime, including Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage), which is considered to be his finest work. Other composers judge it to be among the greatest examples of opera buffa, the Italian term for comic opera, and Verdi considered it to be the model for the genre. Cimarosa attended a free school connected to a monastery in Naples where the organist taught him music and as a result obtained a scholarship to attend a musical institute in the city for 11 years. He wrote his first opera at the age of 23 and, after several successes in theatres in Naples, he was invited to Rome where he produced another comic opera, L’Italiano in Londra. Read more…
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Brigadier-General James L Dozier held for 42 days
Three years after the kidnap and murder of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro shocked Italy and the wider world, terrorists representing the ultra-left group Brigate rosse - the Red Brigades - returned to the headlines on this day in 1981 with the abduction of the high-ranking United States Army officer James L Dozier. Brigadier-General Dozier, who was serving in Italy as deputy Chief of Staff of NATO's Southern European land forces, was seized and taken from his apartment in Verona and held for 42 days before being rescued by Italian special forces. The kidnap took place at between 5.30 and 6pm when four men turned up at the door of the apartment posing as plumbers. The general was overpowered and then struck over the head before his wife, Judith, who was initially held at gunpoint, was tied up with chains and plastic tape. Read more…
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Fascist Voices 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 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.
Christopher Duggan was until his death in 2015 Professor of Italian History at Reading University. He wrote several books on modern Italian history, including History of Sicily, with Moses Israel 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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