Pope Alexander VI

Scheming pontiff married off his children to secure power

Pope Alexander VI: a portrait by Cristofano
 dell' Altissimo, property of the Uffizzi Gallery

Rodrigo Borgia became one of the most controversial popes in history when he took the title of Alexander VI on this day in 1492 in Rome.

He is known to have fathered several illegitimate children with his mistresses and his reign became notorious for corruption and nepotism.

Born in Valencia in Spain, Borgia came to Italy to study law at the University of Bologna. He was ordained a Deacon and then made Cardinal-Deacon after the election of his uncle as Pope Callixtus III. He was then ordained to the priesthood and made Cardinal-Bishop of Albano.

By the time he had served five popes he had acquired considerable influence and wealth and it was rumoured that he was able to buy the largest number of votes to secure the papacy for himself.

He had made himself the first archbishop of Valencia and when he was elected as Pope Alexander VI, following the death of Innocent VIII, his son, Cesare Borgia, inherited the post.

Borgia had many mistresses, but during his long relationship with Vanozza dei Cattanei he had four children that he acknowledged as his own, Cesare, Giovanni, Lucrezia and Goffredo. He had several other children with different mothers.

Altobello Melone's portrait of Cesare Borgia, which
 can be found in Bergamo's Accademia Carrara

He made many military alliances to secure his position and married his children off to the offspring of important families to strengthen his power base.

Lucrezia is known to have had three marriages arranged by her father but rumours that she was involved in poisoning men who had become Borgia’s enemies have never been substantiated.

When France and Spain were at war, Borgia offered to help the French on condition that Sicily was given to his son, Cesare. Then he offered to help Spain in exchange for Siena, Pisa and Bologna.

Cesare brought the north of Italy under control, conquering the duchies of Romagna, Umbria and Emilia, earning the admiration of Niccolò Machiavelli, who used Cesare as a model for his classic work on politics, The Prince.

As a patron of the arts, Borgia had Castel Sant’Angelo strengthened and restored and embellished the Vatican palaces. He also commissioned Michelangelo to draw up plans for the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica.

Borgia fell ill with fever in 1503 and died five days later after confessing his sins. He was 72 years old.

After a short stay in the crypts of  St Peter’s, Borgia’s body was moved to the church of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli.

Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome, which Rodrigo Borgia
strengthened and restored

Travel tip:

Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome was originally built as a mausoleum for the Emperor Hadrian and his family. It was later used by popes as both a fortress and a castle and is now a museum. Pope Alexander VI had bastions built at each corner of the base, added battlements and warehouses for arms and developed a papal apartment inside. The castle was featured by Puccini as the setting for the third act of his opera, Tosca, which ends with the heroine leaping to her death from the castle’s ramparts.

Travel tip:

The Church of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli, where Pope Alexander VI is buried, is the Spanish national church in Rome, dedicated to the Virgin of Montserrat. It is north of Palazzo Farnese in Via de Monserrato in the Campo dei Fiori area of Rome.

More reading:

Lucrezia Borgia - more sinned against than sinning?

How the Borgias inspired Machiavelli's political philosophy

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Carlo Rambaldi - master of special effects

Former commercial artist who created E.T.

Carlo Rambaldi, pictured in 2010

Carlo Rambaldi, the brilliant special effects artist who created Steven Spielberg's ugly-but-adorable Extra-Terrestrial known as E.T. and Ridley Scott's malevolent Alien, died on this day in 2012 in Lamezia Terme, the city in Calabria where he settled in later life.  He was a month away from his 87th birthday.

Unlike modern special effects, which consist of computer generated images, Rambaldi's creatures were typically made of steel, polyurethane and rubber and were animated by mechanically or electronically powered rods and cables.

Yet his creations were so lifelike that the Italian director of one of his early films was facing two years in prison for animal cruelty until Rambaldi brought his props to the court room to prove that the 'animals' on screen were actually models.

It was during this time that Rambaldi, a former commercial artist who had graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, not far from his home town of Vigarano Mainarda in Emilia-Romagna, pioneered the use animatronics (puppets operated mechanically by rods or cables) and mechatronics, which combined mechanical and electronic engineering.

He mostly found employment on low-budget horror films, but would occasionally be invited to bring his expertise to something a little less grisly and it was Rambaldi's work on the Italian director Dario Argento's stylish 1975 thriller Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) that caught the eye of Dino De Laurentiis, the US-based Italian producer who was looking for a special effects artist for a remake of King Kong.

Rambaldi's creation, the Extra-Terrestrial E.T.

Rambaldi moved to America, where he created Spielberg's benign musical aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) followed by the parasitic Alien of Scott's 1979 blockbuster before delivering his greatest triumph with E.T., which beguiled audiences with its wizened skin and cat-like eyes and was capable of 150 separate moves, even down to furrowing the brow and wrinkling the nose.

Rambaldi confessed that even he cried a little when he watched the finished movie, in which E.T., marooned on earth after the spaceship in which he arrives leaves without him, befriends a lonely boy called Elliott, who in turn helps him contact his home planet.  Spielberg based E.T. on an imaginary friend he created for himself as a boy when his parents divorced.

In 1983, E.T. surpassed Star Wars as the highest-grossing film of all-time. By the end of its run it had grossed $359 million in North America and $619 million worldwide.

E.T. won Rambaldi his third Oscar for special effects following King Kong and Alien.

The last film for which he produced the special effects was Primal Rage, released in 1988 and directed by his son, Vittorio.  He distrusted the digital technology on which so many directors now rely, claiming that emotions he was able to convey in E.T. could not be reproduced by any computer programme.

On their return to Italy, Rambaldi and his wife Bruna settled in Lamezia Terme. They had another son, Alex, and a daughter, Daniela.

The Castello Estense in Ferrara

Travel tip:

Vigarano Mainarda is a small town situated about 9km (6 miles) from Ferrara, the beautiful city in Emilia-Romagna that has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site for its cultural importance.  Formerly the seat of the powerful Este family, who ruled the city from 1240 to 1597, it shares with Lucca the distinction of having the best preserved Renaissance walls in Italy.  At the centre of the city is the impressive brick built Castello Estense, which dates back to 1385 and underwent extensive restoration in 1999.

Travel tip:

Lamezia Terme as a municipality has existed only since 1968, when the former communities of Nicastro, Sambiase and Sant'Eufemia Lamezia were merged.  There are Byzantine, Roman and Greek remains, including the ruins of a castle thought to have been built by Greek colonists and developed by the Normans.  There is also a well preserved watchtower, the Bastion of the Knights of Malta, built in about 1550 by the Spanish viceroy of Naples, Pedro de Toledo.

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Leaning Tower of Pisa

Poor foundations created tourist attraction by accident

The Leaning Tower has been declared
stable for the first time in its history 

Work began on the construction of a freestanding bell tower for the Cathedral in Pisa on this day in 1173.

The tower’s famous tilt began during the building process. It is believed to have been caused by the laying of inadequate foundations on ground that was too soft on one side to support the weight of the structure.

The tilt became worse over the years and restoration work had to be carried out at the end of the 20th century amid fears the tower would collapse.

At its most extreme the tower leaned at an angle of 5.5 degrees but since the restoration work undergone between 1990 and 2001 the tower leans at about 3.99 degrees.

The identity of the architect responsible for the design of the tower is not clear but the problem with the structure began after work had progressed to the second floor in 1178.

It is thought the tower would have toppled had construction not been halted for almost a century while Pisa, a Tuscan seaport, fought battles with Genoa, Lucca and Florence. This allowed time for the soil beneath the tower to settle.

When construction resumed in 1272, the upper floors were built with one side taller than the other to compensate for the tilt. The seventh floor was completed in 1319 and the bell chamber added in 1372.

In 1987, the 60-metre high tower was included in the Piazza del Duomo Unesco World Heritage site along with the neighbouring cathedral and baptistery.

The tower was closed to the public in 1990 while work was carried out to straighten it. The tower was effectively returned to its position in 1838.

It was reopened to the public in 2001 when it was declared that it would be stable for another 300 years.  In 2008, engineers announced that the tower had stopped moving for the first time in its history.

The Leaning Tower -- in Italian the Torre Pendente di Pisa -- has made Pisa famous and is a popular tourist attraction.

Pisa's Duomo, with the bell tower in the background

Travel tip:

The tower is one of the four buildings that make up the cathedral complex in the Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) in Pisa. The Duomo was the first to be constructed, followed by the Baptistery. While work on the tower was being carried out, a cemetery (Campo Santo) was added.

Travel tip:

During the summer the tower is open to visitors from 08.30 to 22.00. Tickets to climb the tower are limited and booking in advance is recommended if you want to avoid queueing. For more details, visit www.towerofpisa.org/tickets.

(Photo of Leaning Tower by medajancik CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

The collapse of the campanile in St Mark's Square

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Dino De Laurentiis – film producer

Campanian pasta seller helped make Italian cinema famous 

Dino De Laurentiis, pictured in about 1950

The producer of hundreds of hit films, Agostino ‘Dino’ De Laurentiis was born on this day in 1919 at Torre Annunziata, near Naples in Campania.

He made Italian cinema famous internationally, producing Federico Fellini’s Oscar- winning La Strada in 1954 in Rome.

After moving to the US he enjoyed further success with the film Serpico in 1973.

De Laurentiis was the son of a pasta manufacturer for whom he worked as a salesman during his teens.

While selling pasta in Rome in the 1930s he decided on impulse to enrol at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the city as an actor.

He quickly realised he had more talent for producing and after gaining experience in the different sectors of the industry made his first film, L’Amore Canta - 'Love Song' - in 1941 when he was just 22.

After serving in the army during the second world war, De Laurentiis became an executive producer at one of Rome’s emerging film companies, Lux.

Among the films he produced for Lux was Riso Amaro - 'Bitter Rice' - starring Silvana Mangano, whom he later married and had four children with. The film was a box-office success both at home and abroad.

An early publicity poster for the De
 Laurentiis production La Strada

Proud of his Campanian origins, De Laurentiis made Napoli Milionaria, - 'Naples Millionaire' - a comedy presenting a slice of life in Naples during and after the war.

In 1950 De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti formed their own film company and produced Fellini’s La Strada which won the Oscar for best foreign language feature in 1957.

The soundtrack was written by Nino Rota, who scored many of Fellini's films and is also known for the music that accompanied the first two Godfather films.

He moved to the US in the 1970s where he made Serpico starring Al Pacino and Conan the Barbarian, which helped launch the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Although De Laurentiis became an American citizen, he returned to Italy frequently, shooting scenes in Florence for Hannibal in 2001 starring Anthony Hopkins.

De Laurentiis and Silvana Mangano divorced shortly before her death in 1989 and he married Martha Schumacher in 1990, with whom he had another two daughters.

De Laurentiis died in 2010 at the age of 91 at his residence in Beverly Hills.

The harbour at Torre Annunziata, just outside Naples

Travel tip:

Torre Annunziata, where De Laurentiis was born, is a city near Naples in Campania. Close to Mount Vesuvius, it was destroyed in the eruption of 79 AD and was rebuilt over the ruins. Its name derives from a watch tower - torre - built to warn people of imminent Saracen raids and a chapel consecrated to the Annunziata (Virgin Mary). It became a centre for pasta production in the early 19th century. The Villa Poppaea, also known as Villa Oplontis, believed to be owned by Nero, was discovered about ten metres below ground level just outside the town and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Travel tip:

The Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Film Centre) was established in 1935 in Rome to promote the art and technique of film making. It is located near Cinecittà, the hub of the Italian film industry, to the south of the city. Cinecittà was bombed during the Second World War but rebuilt and used again in the 1950s for large productions, such as Ben-Hur. A range of productions, from television drama to music videos, are filmed there now and it has its own dedicated Metro stop.

More reading:

Federico Fellini - the cinematic legacy of Rimini's favourite son

Carlo Ponti - the man who married Sophia Loren twice

Sergio Leone - distinctive style of 'spaghetti western' producer

(Photo of movie poster by Pabloglezcruz CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Alfredo Catalani - composer

Music from Loreley and La Wally lives on 

Alfredo Catalani, composer of the opera La Wally

Opera composer Alfredo Catalani died on this day in 1893 in Milan at the age of just 39.

He is best remembered for his operas, Loreley, written in 1890, and La Wally, written in 1892, which are still to this day passionately admired by music experts.

Catalani was born in Lucca in Tuscany in 1854 and went to train at the Milan Conservatoire.

His work is said to show traces of Wagner and his style sometimes resembled that of Massenet and Puccini but his early operas were not successful.

Loreley premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1890. Later it was performed at Covent Garden in London in 1907 and in Chicago in 1919.

La Wally was first performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1892 to great acclaim.  The opera is best known for its aria, ‘Well then, I’ll go far away’ (Ebben? Ne andro lontana), sung when Wally decides to leave her home forever.

American soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez sang this aria in the 1981 film, Diva, in which a young Parisian is obsessed with an American soprano.

Hariclea Darclée, the Romanian soprano
who starred in the premiere of La Wally

In the opera, the heroine throws herself into an avalanche at the end, a scene which is difficult to stage in the theatre and therefore the opera is not performed regularly, but Wally’s principal aria is still sung frequently.

Catalani died before he reached the age of 40 of tuberculosis and was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.  The composer Amilcare Ponchielli and the conductor Arturo Toscanini also lie there.

Toscanini greatly admired Catalani’s music and named one of his daughters Wally.

He recorded the prelude to Act IV of La Wally and the Dance of the Water Nymphs from Loreley in Carnegie Hall in 1952 with the NBC symphony orchestra for RCA Victor.

The walls of Lucca are intact all around the Tuscan city

Travel tip:

Lucca, the birthplace of Alfredo Catalani, is a city in Tuscany, famous for its Renaissance walls, which have remained intact over the centuries. A promenade now runs along the top of the walls, providing a popular place to walk round the city, enjoying the views.

Travel tip:

Milan’s Teatro alla Scala was officially inaugurated in 1778. Known to Italians simply as La Scala, the theatre has become the leading opera house in the world and many famous artists have appeared there. The theatre was designed by neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini. The theatre has hosted the premieres of operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini and Catalani.

(Photo of Lucca walls by JoJan CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

Opening night at La Scala

The Genius of Puccini



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Domenico Modugno – singer and song writer

Artist who gave us a song that conjures up Italy

Domenico Modugno, who co-wrote the iconic
Italian pop song Volare

Domenico Modugno, who was one of the writers of the iconic Italian song, Volare, died on this day in 1994 in Lampedusa, the island off Sicily.

Modugno wrote Volare with Franco Migliacci and performed it in the San Remo music festival in 1958 with Johnny Dorelli.

Sometimes referred to as 'Nel blu dipinto di blu', the song won San Remo and became a hit all over the world.

It was the Italian entry in the 1958 Eurovision song contest. It came only third, yet received two Grammy Awards and sold more than 22 million copies.

Modugno was born in 1928 at Polignano a Mare near Bari in Apulia. After completing his military service he enrolled in drama school and had a number of parts in films while still studying.

The success of Volare proved to be the turning point in his career. He won the San Remo music festival again in 1959 and came second in 1960.

Watch an historic recording of Modugno's performance at Eurovision 

He also represented Italy in the Eurovision song contest for a second time in 1959.

Modugno at the 1958 Eurovision Song Contest with the
conductor Alberto Semprini

In 1962 he won San Remo for a third time and represented Italy at Eurovision again in 1966 with his song 'Dio come ti amo'. It was recorded in Italian and also in English as Oh How Much I Love You by other artists.

In 1984, Modugno suffered a severe stroke which left him partially paralysed and from 1986 onwards he worked to promote the rights of disabled people.

In 1987, Modugno was elected to the Italian Parliament as a Radical. He spoke out against the conditions in a psychiatric hospital in Sicily and held a concert to raise money for the patients.

His last song, Delfini, was written in 1993 in collaboration with one of his sons.

Modugno died on 6 August 1994 after a heart attack while he was staying at his seaside home in Lampedusa.

Polignano a Mare, where Modugno was born, is built on rocky
promontories overlooking the Adriatic sea

Travel tip:

Polignano a Mare, where Modugno was born, is in the province of Bari and looks out over the Adriatic sea. The resort benefits from tourism, agriculture and fishing. It is believed to be the site of the ancient Greek city of Neapolis.

Travel tip:

Lampedusa, where Modugno had a seaside home, is a large island in the Mediterranean sea that is part of the Sicilian province of Agrigento. It is the southernmost part of Italy. The nearest land to it is Tunisia, which is about 113 kilometres away.

(Photo of Polignano a Mare by Martin Stiburek CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Franco Lucentini – author

Writer was one half of a famous literary partnership

The novelist Franco Lucentini, who achieved success with Carlo Fruttero in a remarkable literary association, died on this day in 2002 in Turin.

A news correspondent and editor, Lucentini met Fruttero in 1953 in Paris and they started working together as journalists and translators.

But they were best known for the mystery thrillers they produced together, which they composed in a businesslike manner.

After choosing a subject they would take it in turns to write and then edit the material until a novel was complete.

Their most popular books were The Sunday Woman (La donna della domenica), which was later made into a film and The D Case (La verita sul caso D), which was based on an unfinished work by Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, in a photograph
taken for the Corriere della Sera newspaper

Lucentini fell foul of the Fascist regime while studying Philosophy at the University of Rome because of distributing anti-war messages among his fellow students and had to spend two months in prison.

But after the Second World War he was hired by the Allies to work as a junior editor for their news agency in Naples. Lucentini then went on to work in Rome for Italy's ANSA news agency.

After Fruttero and Lucentini met, they formed a successful literary team, writing, editing and translating for the Einaudi publishing house.

They produced several novels together after the success of The Sunday Woman and F& L went on to become a well known literary trademark.

But in 2002, suffering from lung cancer and having reached the age of 81, Lucentini chose to end his own life on 5 August at his home in Turin.

The campus of the University of Rome, pictured
soon after it was built in 1935

Travel tip:

The University of Rome, where Lucentini studied Philosophy during the Second World War, was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII.  Now known as the Sapienza University of Rome, it is one of the largest in Europe. The main campus, which was designed by Marcello Piacentini, is near Rome’s Termini railway station.

Travel tip:

Turin, where Lucentini lived in later life, is the capital city of the region of Piedmont in the north of Italy. It is an important business centre, particularly for the car industry, and has a rich history linked with the Savoy Kings of Italy. Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library and Palazzo Madama, which used to house the Italian senate, is at the heart of royal Turin.

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