Mudslides in Campania

Towns and villages destroyed in natural disaster

Dramatic picture shows mud cascading down mountainside

Italy was in shock on this day in 1998 as a series of mudslides brought devastation in Campania, destroying or badly damaging more than 600 homes and killing 161 people. Almost 2,000 people were left with nowhere to live.

The mudslides were set off by several days of torrential rain and blamed on the increasingly unstable landscape caused by the deforestation and unregulated construction of roads and buildings.

Torrents of mud coursed down mountainsides in several areas between Avellino and Salerno to the east of Naples.  The town of Sarno bore the brunt of the damage but the villages of Quindici, Siano and Bracigliano were also badly hit.

The accumulation of large quantities of volcanic ash deposited by historic eruptions of the nearby Mount Vesuvius is thought to have made the mudslides particularly fast moving and the affected communities were quickly overwhelmed.

Scenes in the Sarno suburb of Episcopio was said to be reminiscent of nearby Pompeii, the city destroyed in the Vesuvius eruption of 79AD, with some streets completely buried in mud up to four metres deep.

Hospitals and schools were destroyed and volunteers joined rescue workers in digging for survivors over several days. It is believed that the bodies of some victims were never found, particularly among a significant number of illegal immigrants in the area.

Residents wade through mud in Sarno

Nearly 4,000 firefighters, troops, forest rangers and medical workers, including 80 United States marines based in Naples, helped with the rescue operation.

One factor thought to have contributed to the unstable mountainsides was the replacement of chestnut trees, which have large root systems that help hold the ground together, with hazelnut trees, which are more profitable but have much smaller root systems.

Environmentalists also pointed to the burning of trees and brush to plant commercial crops and the uncontrolled expansion of towns and villages, with parts of streams and river beds disappearing under concrete and asphalt and drainage channels often clogged with rubbish and building waste.

Many houses, apartment blocks and industrial buildings were said to be shoddily built with inadequate foundations, which meant they quickly collapsed when the mudslides hit.

The catastrophe prompted the Italian Ministry of the Environment to introduce legislative measures for environmental protection which have come to be known as Legge Sarno (Sarno Laws).

But the government was accused of responding too slowly as the disaster was unfolding, failing to issue evacuation instructions even after the Mayor of Sarno telephoned the Civil Protection Department to warn that a torrent of mud, rocks and broken trees was heading for the town.  Rescuers did not arrive until after nightfall, which meant valuable time was lost in which helicopters and other equipment could not be used.

Campania has been plagued by mudslides.  There have been almost 650 since 1918, the highest for any region in Italy.  In fact, it is the most dangerous part of Italy for natural disasters, with almost one-third of all the country's floods, landslides and earthquakes over the past 70 years taking place within its borders.

Travel tip:

Sarno is situated in an area of 500 square kilometres known as the Sarno basin, in which some 750,000 people live.  It is made up of largely industrial towns but also contains the ruins of Pompeii, some 20 kilometres to the west. Parts of the Roman city buried by the 79AD eruption of Vesuvius were unearthed in 1599 during work to alter the course of the River Sarno, although serious excavation did not begin until 1748.

Porticoes line the historic main
street in Cava de' Tirreni

Travel tip:

A diocese of the Roman Catholic church from around 1,000AD, Sarno had religious ties for many years with Cava de' Terreni, a town a few kilometres from Salerno notable for a Benedictine abbey and a beautiful porticoed main street in the commercial district of what was once the most prosperous town in the area.

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Bartolomeo Cristofori - inventor of the piano

Instrument maker adapted harpsichord to play soft and loud notes

Bartolomeo Cristofori in a 1726 portrait

Bartolomeo Cristofori, the man widely credited with inventing the piano, was born on this day in 1655 in Padua.

He came up with the idea while working for the Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici in Florence, who had hired him to look after his collection of harpsichords and other instruments.

It is thought that Cristofori, who was assumed to have been an established maker of musical instruments when Ferdinando invited him to Florence in around 1690, wanted to create a keyboard instrument similar to a harpsichord but capable of playing notes of varying loudness.

An inventory of Medici instruments from 1700 described an "arpicimbalo", which resembled a harpsichord but which created sounds through hammers and dampers rather than the plucking mechanism employed by the harpsichord. It was said to be "newly invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori".

In 1711, Scipione Maffei, a poet and journalist, referred to Cristofori's "gravicembalo col piano, e forte" (harpsichord with soft and loud), the first time it was called by its eventual name, pianoforte. A Florentine court musician, Federigo Meccoli, noted that the "arpi cimbalo del piano e forte" was first made by Cristofori in 1700, which is regarded as the birth date for the piano.

An early model was dismissed by the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach as possessing too heavy a touch and too weak a treble.  Cristofori made further modifications over time and by 1726 his instrument had many of the characteristics of a modern piano, albeit with fewer keys.

In Germany, meanwhile, the organ designer Gottfried Silbermann, using Cristofori's blueprint, began making pianos of his own in 1730, which met with Bach's approval.

Three Cristofori pianos survive, the oldest a 1720 model at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  The Museo Strumenti Musicali in Rome has one dated at 1722 and the Musikinstrumenten-Museum of Leipzig University has one made in 1726.

Cristofori’s invention was initially slow to catch on in Italy, but records show that Queen Maria Barbara de Braganza of Spain, patron and student of the composer Domenico Scarlatti, bought five. It is thought that hundreds of Scarlatti’s single-movement keyboard sonatas, of which there were more than 500, may have been intended for piano, rather than harpsichord.

By the late 18th century, thanks to its range and versatility, the pianoforte had become a leading instrument of Western music. By the end of the 19th century, many wealthier households in Europe and North America possessed a piano and almost every major Western composer from Mozart onwards had played it and put it at the heart of their musical output.

Cristofori remained in Florence following the death of Ferdinando in 1713 and continued to work for the Medici court until his health declined.  There is evidence that his assistants were Giovanni Ferrini and Domenico dal Mela, who both went on to establish notable careers of their own.  Dal Mela is said to have made the first upright piano.  Cristofori died in Florence in January 1731.

The Basilica of St Anthony in Padua

Travel tip:

The city of Padua - or Padova - in the Veneto region of northern Italy is best known for the frescoes by Giotto that adorn the Scrovegni Chapel and for the vast 13th-century Basilica of St. Anthony, notable for its Byzantine-style domes. The old part of the town has arcaded streets and many cafes. The University of Padua, established in 1222, is one of the oldest in the world.

Travel tip:

Florence is said to be the birthplace of opera, a form of entertainment that evolved after musicians, dancers and actors began performing light-hearted scenes known as intermezzi to keep audiences entertained between acts of Roman plays.  Noble Florentine families began to enthuse more about the intermezzi than the plays themselves and in 1600 the first complete opera - Euridice, by Jacopo Peri - was performed at the Pitti Palace at the royal wedding of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV of France.

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Niccolò Machiavelli – writer and diplomat

Political scientist came up with the idea ‘the ends justify the means’ 

Niccolò Machiavelli: detail from a
portrait by Santi di Tito

Statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, whose name has become synonymous with the idea of political cunning, was born on this day in 1469 in Florence.

The ideas he put forward in his writing were to make the word ‘machiavellian’ a regularly used pejorative adjective and the phrase ‘Old Nick’ a term to denote the devil in English.

The son of an attorney, Machiavelli was educated in grammar, rhetoric and Latin. After Florence expelled the Medici family in 1494 he went to work for the new republic in the office that produced official Florentine documents.

Machiavelli also carried out diplomatic missions to Rome on behalf of the republic where he witnessed the brutality of Cesare Borgia and his father, Pope Alexander VI, as they tried to acquire large parts of central Italy .

He later became responsible for the Florentine militia and, because of his distrust of mercenaries, used citizens in the army. Under his command, Florentine soldiers defeated Pisa in battle in 1509.

But Machiavelli’s success did not last and in 1512 the Medici, using Spanish troops, defeated the Florentines at Prato . He was dismissed from office in Florence by a written decree issued by the new Medici rulers.

Machiavelli was forced to withdraw from public life and retired to his home in the Chianti region of Tuscany, where he wrote his most famous work, ‘The Prince’, which was to give the world the political idea of ‘the ends justify the means’.

In ‘The Prince’ he was able to write with first-hand knowledge about the methods he had seen used by Cesare Borgia on behalf of his father, Pope Alexander VI.

The book put forward the idea that the aims of princes, such as glory and survival, could justify the use of immoral means. 

Machiavelli also advocated that it is safer to be feared than to be loved, if you can’t achieve both, and he recommended that if an injury has to be done to a man ‘it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared’.

His ideas were to exert a lasting, profound influence on western political thought and are still referred to today. But in modern times, people have begun to interpret them as pragmatic observations rather than as encouraging ruthlessness, cruelty and violence in people.

Machiavelli never returned to public office and died at his home in 1527 at the age of 58.

Travel Tip:

Machiavelli wrote ‘The Prince’ at his country home in Sant’Andrea in Percussina, south of Florence, in the heart of Chianti country near San Casciano Val di Pesa. The house where he is believed to have lived is now a bed-and-breakfast called La Fonte del Macchiavelli.

The Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, which
has a monument to Machiavelli

Travel Tip:

There is a monument to Machiavelli in the beautiful Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence , where many famous Florentines are buried. A marble structure by Innocenzo Spinazzi was erected in his memory in 1787. The Latin inscription on the front of the monument means: ‘No eulogy is equal to such a name’.

(Photo of the Basilica di Santa Croce by Diana Ringo CC BY-SA 4.0)

More reading:

Dismissal led Machiavelli to write seminal work The Prince

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Alessandro Scarlatti - composer

Prolific opera composer was ahead of his time

Baroque composer Alessandro Scarlatti was born on this day in 1660 in Palermo.

Alessandro Scarlatti

He is considered to be the founder of the Neapolitan School of opera, from which modern opera developed, and his two sons, Domenico and Pietro Filippo, also went on to become composers.

Scarlatti is believed to have been a pupil of Giacomo Carissimi in Rome. When his opera Gli equivoci nel sembiante was produced in the city he gained the support of Queen Christina of Sweden, an enthusiastic patron of the arts who had taken up residence there. He became her maestro di cappella and joined the Arcadian Academy she had founded.

Along with composers Bernardo Pasquini and Arcangelo Corelli, he regularly visited her home to perform music he had dedicated to her.

In 1684 Scarlatti became maestro di cappella to the royal family in Naples and produced a series of operas and music for state occasions for them.

Scarlatti also enjoyed the patronage of Ferdinando de' Medici and composed operas for his private theatre near Florence. He was also maestro di cappella for Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni who procured him a post at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

It was in Rome that Scarlatti produced some of his best operas and church music but he eventually retired to live in Naples where he died in 1725.

Scarlatti’s music formed an important link between the early Italian Baroque vocal style of the 17th century and the classical school of the 18th century and anticipated the work of later composers such as Mozart and Schubert.

Il Mitridate Eupatore, composed for production during the Carnival in Venice in 1707, is thought to be his masterpiece. He also wrote hundreds of chamber cantatas for a solo voice.

The Palazzo Farnese is now the home of the French
Embassy in Campo De' Fiori in Rome

Travel tip:

Palazzo Farnese, where Scarlatti was a guest of Queen Christina of Sweden at gatherings of the Arcadian Academy, is in Piazza Farnese in the Campo De’ Fiori area of Rome. It is now being used as the French Embassy. Queen Christina was given permission to lodge in this important Renaissance building by Pope Alexander VII because when she first came to live in Rome it was standing empty, following the death of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese.


Travel tip:

Palermo, where Alessandro Scarlatti was born, is the capital of Sicily. It is famous for its history, culture, architecture, food and wine. It has examples of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches and palaces. Palazzo dei Normanni, a marvellous example of Norman architecture, is the seat of the Sicilian Regional Assembly. The Teatro Massimo, the biggest theatre in Italy, has staged operas starring Enrico Caruso.


More reading:

Why Arcangelo Corelli was a major influence on the development of music

Bernardo Pasquini's life as opera composer to a queen

Giovanni Borelli, the 17th century Neapolitan physiologist who was first to explain movement

Also on this day: 

1913: The birth of Maserati designer Pietro Frua

1930: The birth of radical politician and campaigner Marco Pannella


(Photo of Palazzo Farnese by Myrabella CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Giovanni Guareschi – writer

Satirical magazine editor first used Don Camillo to fill a gap

Giovanni Guareschi created the character of
Don Camillo for the satirical magazine he ran

Author Giovanni Guareschi, the creator of the fictional character, Don Camillo, was born on this day in 1908 in Roccabianca in Emilia-Romagna.

The popular stories featuring his famous comic creations, the stalwart Italian priest, Don Camillo, and the Communist mayor, Peppone, have since been made into many radio and television programmes and films.

Guareschi, who was christened Giovannino, started his career writing for the Gazzetta di Parma and then became a magazine editor.

He was called up to serve in the army in 1943 but was quickly taken prisoner, along with other Italian soldiers, by the Germans. He wrote a secret diary while he was in the prison camp, Diario Clandestino.

After the war Guareschi founded a weekly satirical magazine, Candido, where his Don Camillo stories first appeared. He had written the introductory story for another publication but lifted it to fill a gap in Candido at the last minute.

His magazine criticised and satirised the Communists but after they were beaten in the 1948 elections he turned his attentions to the Christian Democrats instead.

The magazine published a satirical cartoon poking fun at the president, Luigi Einaudi, which was judged by a court to be 'contempt of the president' and after Guareschi had subsequently been charged with libelling a former prime minister, Alcide de Gasperi, he was sent to prison.

When Guareschi was released, his health started to deteriorate and he had to spend time in Switzerland recuperating. He retired from editing Candido, although he remained a contributor until he died in 1968 after a heart attack.

The Castello di Roccabianca, built in 1450

Travel tip:

Roccabianca, where Guareschi was born, is a comune to the northwest of Parma, which takes its name from the castle (rocca) built there in the 1450s by Pier Maria Rossi, which has been restored and is now open to the public.


Travel tip:

Guareschi is buried in the graveyard of the church of San Michele in Le Roncole, the village near Bussetto in Emilia-Romagna where the composer Giuseppe Verdi was born.

(Photo of the Castello di Roccabianca by Antonio Pedroni CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Pope Pius V - Saint

Pontiff dismissed jester and clamped down on heretics

Saint Pius V: a painting by El Greco

The feast day of Saint Pius V is celebrated every year on this day, the day before the anniversary of his death in 1572 in Rome.

Saint Pius V, who became Pope in 1566, is remembered chiefly for his role in the Counter Reformation, the period of Catholic resurgence following the Protestant Reformation.

He excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and for persecuting English Catholics and he formed the Holy League, an alliance of Catholic states against the Turks.

Saint Pius V was born Antonio Ghislieri in Bosco, now Bosco Marengo, in Piedmont. At the age of 14 he entered the Dominican Order, taking the name of Michele. He was ordained at Genoa in 1528 and then sent to Pavia to lecture. 

He became a bishop under Pope Pius IV but after opposing the pontiff was dismissed. After the death of Pius IV, Ghislieri was elected Pope Pius V in 1566. His first act on becoming Pope was to dismiss the court jester and no Pope has had one since.

Protestantism had by then conquered many parts of Europe and Pius V was determined to prevent it getting into Italy. He therefore took a personal interest in the activities of the Inquisition in Rome and appeared to be unmoved by the cruelty practiced.

After his death in 1572, Pius V was buried in the Vatican despite having asked to be buried in Bosco.

He was canonised by Pope Clement XI in 1712.  Cardinal John Henry Newman later explained his severity as necessary for the time. He wrote about Pius V: “He was a soldier of Christ in a time of insurrection and rebellion, when in a spiritual sense, martial law was proclaimed.”

The parish church in Bosco Marengo with a monument
to Pope Saint Pius V in the foreground

Travel tip:

Bosco Marengo is a town in the province of Alessandria in Piedmont, southeast of Turin and Alessandria. The 16th century church of Santa Croce in the town was commissioned by Pope Pius V in the year of his election to the papacy to house his tomb and it now contains a marble monument to the pope.

Travel tip:

In 1698 the body of Pope Pius V was transferred to a tomb in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza del Esquilino in Rome, not far from the Termini railway station. The front of the tomb has a bronze lid engraved with a likeness of the Pope which was designed to be lifted down to allow pilgrims to view the saint’s remains.

(Photo of church in Bosco Marengo by Davide Papalini CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Sara Errani - tennis champion

Six-times Grand Slam doubles winner reached No 5 in singles

Sara Errani is arguably Italy's most
successful tennis player

Tennis star Sara Errani, who was born in Bologna on this day in 1987, is one of the most successful Italian tennis players of all time.

She and former partner Roberta Vinci's career record of five Grand Slam doubles titles is unparalleled.  No other Italian combination has won more than one Grand Slam title.

Errani won her sixth Grand Slam title at the US Open in 2024, winning the mixed doubles with an Italian partner in Andrea Vavassori. In the same year, Errani and her new women's doubles partner, Jasmine Paolini, were runners-up in the French Open and returned to the Roland Garros clay courts two months later to win the women's doubles gold medal at the Paris Olympics.

Nicola Pietrangeli, who was ranked the No 3 men's singles player at his peak, won the French Open championship in 1959 and 1960 and was runner-up in Paris on two other occasions, as well as winning the men's doubles at the French in 1959, with fellow Italian Orlando Sirola. Jannik Sinner became the most successful Italian singles player in Grand Slams when his Australian Open triumph in January 2025 gave him his third title at the highest level.

Errani and Vinci won on all surfaces, achieving a career Grand Slam in 2014 when they triumphed in the women's doubles at Wimbledon, having already won the French and US titles in 2012 and the Australian in both 2013 and 2014.  They are only the fifth pairing in tennis history to complete a career Grand Slam.

Errani also achieved a world ranking of No 5 in singles in 2013, having been runner-up to Maria Sharapova in the 2012 French Open as well as winning five WTA singles titles in the space of 12 months.

Among Italian women players, only Francesca Schiavone has achieved a higher singles ranking, reaching No 4 after winning the 2010 French Open.

Errani and Vinci, who also won five WTA doubles titles, have since ended their partnership, Errani deciding to focus on singles, having dropped out of the top 10 in 2014.  In February 2016 year she won her ninth career singles title, defeating the Czech player Barbora Strycova 6-0, 6-2 in the final of the Dubai Championships.

Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci won five Grand Slam titles

As a young girl, Errani showed talent in several sports, including swimming, football and athletics. But after she was picked to represent Italy in a tennis tournament in France at the age of just 12, her parents, fruit and vegetable trader Giorgio and pharmacist Fulvia, found the money to send her to the renowned Nick Bolletieri Academy in Florida.

She was the youngest ever to stay at the facility without her parents and, unable to speak any English, admitted she was so lonely she cried every day.  Yet, knowing the sacrifice her family had made, she stayed for 10 months.

On returning to Italy, she showed the benefit of Bolletieri's tuition and was Italy's No 1 at 18 years and under before she turned 16. Yet her talent was undervalued at home and it was only after moving to Spain that she was given the support necessary to fulfil her potential.

She won her first WTA tournament in Palermo in July 2008, picking up a second two weeks later in Slovenia, after which she pointedly dedicated her success to "all the Italians who never believed in me as a tennis player and said I would never go anywhere."

Though born in Bologna, Errani grew up in Massa Lombarda, in the province of Ravenna, where she still lives.

Updated April 28, 2025.

Travel tip:

Bologna has a reputation as the gastronomic capital of Italy, the city that invented tortellini and mortadella and gave the world the meat sauce (ragù) known as bolognese, which is authentically served with tagliatelle rather than spaghetti.  The best shops to buy fresh food in Bologna can be found in the Quadrilatero, an area adjoining Piazza Maggiore, bordered to the north by Via Francesco Rizzoli, to the south by Via Luigi Carlo Farini and to the east by Via Castiglione. It has a market that has occupied the same location since Medieval times.

Bologna hotels from Expedia.co.uk

The interior of the Basilica di San
Vitale is notable for beautiful mosaics

Travel tip:

No visit to Ravenna would be complete without taking in the stunning art of the octagonal Basilica di San Vitale, which dates back to the sixth century and contains some of the finest examples of Byzantine mosaics in the world, particularly those decorating the ceilings of the choir and apse. There are more mosaics in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, across the courtyard from the Basilica.

More reading:

How Roberta Vinci reached a US Open singles final

Francesca Schiavone - the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam tournament

The rise to number one of Camila Giorgi

Also on this day:

1675: The birth of painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini

1945: Brazilian troops liberate town of Fornovo di Taro


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