Rossano Brazzi - Hollywood star

Actor quit as a lawyer for career on the big screen

Rossano Brazzi in a publicity shot
from a 1952 Italian magazine

The movie actor Rossano Brazzi, whose credits include The Barefoot Contessa, Three Coins in the Fountain and South Pacific, was born on this day in 1916 in Bologna.

Brazzi gave up a promising career as a lawyer in order to act and went on to appear in more than 200 films, more often than not cast as a handsome heartbreaker or romantic aristocrat.

He was at his peak in the 50s and 60s but continued to accept parts until the late 80s. His last major role was as Father DeCarlo in Omen III: The Final Conflict in 1981.

Brazzi's family moved to Florence when he was aged four. His father Adelmo, a shoemaker, opened a leather factory in which Rossano, his brother Oscar and his sister, Franca, would all eventually work.

Adelmo had ambitions for Rossano, however, helping him win a place at the University of Florence, where he obtained a law degree, and then sending him to Rome to work in the legal practice of a family friend.

But Rossano had become involved in a drama group at university and looked for opportunities to continue acting.  Eventually, he was approached by a film director and when he was offered a part in a film in 1939 he quit his job with the legal practice in order to devote himself to acting as a career.

He became something of a screen idol in Italy, where the cinema provided a release for Italians growing weary of the privations of war.  Brazzi fought with the Italian Resistance in Rome, motivated in part by the fate of his parents, who were persecuted by Mussolini's blackshirts after Adelmo had spoken out against the rise of the Fascist party.

The United Artists poster for the 1955
David Lean film Summertime

After the war, Italian film directors began to move towards gritty realism and parts for traditional male leads became scarce.  It prompted Brazzi to move to America and this proved a smart decision.

At the time, cinema audiences in America were declining as television persuaded people to stay at home.  It led the American film industry to recruit stars from Germany, France and Italy in the hope that their American films would attract large audiences in their native countries.  Brazzi, adept at portraying impeccably groomed romantic figures, became Hollywood's favourite Italian male lead for several years.

He made his first Hollywood appearance in Little Women in 1949, alongside June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor, but it was his performance as an Italian count in The Barefoot Contessa in 1954, which also starred Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart, that revitalised his career.

That year brought him another success in Three Coins in the Fountain, about the romantic adventures of three American girls in Rome. The following year, Summertime, set in Venice, in which Brazzi played the part of a businessman who has a romantic affair with an American tourist portrayed by Katharine Hepburn, bolstered his comeback.

An original poster from the
movie South Pacific

In 1958, he played Emile de Becque, the South Seas planter who wins the heart of Nellie Forbush, a Navy nurse played by Mitzi Gaynor, in the screen adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.

In the 1960s, he starred in The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), and Woman Times Seven (1967), followed by roles in Krakatoa East of Java and The Italian Job, starring Michael Caine, in 1969.

Brazzi was married twice.  His first marriage ended after 41 years in 1981 with the death of his wife, Lidia.  In 1984 he married their former housekeeper, the German-born Isle Fischer, with whom he lived in Rome until his death in 1994, aged 78.

Travel tips:

The University of Florence is situated close to the centre of Tuscany's regional capital, adjoining Piazza San Marco, just a few steps from the Galleria dell'Accademia, where Michelangelo's statue of David is the major attraction.  Alumni include past and current Prime Ministers Lamberto Dini and Matteo Renzi and the film director Franco Zeffirelli.

Campo San Vio in Venice was one of the locations used in
the Rossano Brazzi-Katherine Hepburn film Summertime

Travel tip:

One of the key locations in Summertime, the David Lean film in which Brazzi starred opposite Katherine Hepburn, is a pensione overlooking the Grand Canal.  For many years this was assumed to be the real-life Pensione Accademia, close to the Accademia Bridge.  In fact, the terrace of the supposed pensione was a set erected in Campo San Vio, a small square that looks out over the Grand Canal just along from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum at the end of Fondamenta Bragadin in the Dorsoduoro district.

More reading:

How Pier Angeli - 'Italy's Greta Garbo' - conquered Hollywood but died tragically young

The beauty and talent of screen goddess Gina Lollobrigida

Federico Fellini and La Dolce Vita

(Photo of Venice by Wolfgang Moroder)

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Reinhold Messner - mountaineer

Climber from Dolomites who conquered Everest

Reinhold Messner, pictured in 2012 at Castel Juval,
 one of the sites of his Messner Mountain Museum

Reinhold Messner, the Italian mountaineer who was the first climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and the first to reach the peak on a solo climb, was born on this day in 1944 in Bressanone, a town in Italy's most northerly region of Alto Adige, which is also known as South Tyrol.

Messner was also the first man to ascend every one of the world's 14 peaks that rise to more than 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) above sea level.

His 1976 ascent of Everest with the Austrian climber Peter Habeler defied numerous doctors and other specialists in the effects of altitude who insisted that scaling the world's highest mountain without extra oxygen was not possible.

Born only 45km from Italy's border with Austria, Messner grew up speaking German and Italian and has also become fluent in English.  His father, Josef, introduced him to climbing and took him to his first summit at the age of five. He soon became familiar with all the peaks of the Dolomites. 

From a family of 10 children - nine of them boys - Messner shared his passion for adventure with brothers Günther and Hubert, with whom he would later cross the Arctic.  He and Günther, two years his junior, began climbing together when Reinhold was 13 and by their early 20s were among the best climbers in Europe.

The Rupal face of Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, on the
descent from which Messner's brother sadly died

Their partnership ended tragically, however, on Messner's first major Himalayan climb in 1970, after the two had reached the summit of the previously unclimbed Rupal face of Nanga Parbat. Günther was killed in an accident after the two became separated on the descent of the Diamir face. The circumstances of his death were never conclusively established but Reinhold, who himself lost seven toes to frostbite, claims Günther was swept away by an avalanche.

Messner's motivation for attempting Mount Everest without taking supplies of bottled oxygen stemmed from his belief that climbs assisted in that way were not true tests of human capability, that in a way it was cheating.  He pledged that he would ascend Everest "by fair means or not at all." Having succeeded once, he repeated the feat from the Tibetan side in 1980, which gave him the distinction of achieving Everest's first solo summit.

Reinhold Messner pictured at Everest base camp

He became the first to complete all 14 of the so-called 'eight-thousanders' on 1986, a year ahead of the Polish mountaineer Jerzy Kukuczka.  All 14 are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges in Asia and Messner again scaled them all without extra oxygen.

Messner, who has crossed Antarctica on skis, has written 63 books, which include his autobiography Free Spirit: A Climber's Life, his Everest account The Crystal Horizon: Everest – The First Solo Ascent and All 14 Eight-thousanders, all published by Mountaineers Books.

As well as climbing, Messner became interested in politics and from 1999 to 2004 he was Member of the European Parliament for the Italian Green Party (Federazione dei Verdi).

Nowadays, he devotes much of his time to the Messner Mountain Museum project, which consists of five museums in his home region of Alto Adige, established to help educate visitors about the science and history of mountaineering and rock climbing.

Travel tip:

The small city of Bressanone - Brixen in German - became part of Italy only at the end of the First World War. It is characteristically German in its culture, with three quarters of the population of 21,500 speaking German as a first language. Located in a valley where the Eisack and Rienz rivers meet, it is shadowed on one side by Monte Telegrafo (2,504m) and on the other by Monte Pascolo (2,436m).

The Piazza Vescovile in Bressanone with the two towers
of the Cathedral in the background

Travel tip:

The third largest city in one of the richest regions in Italy, Bressanone has a cathedral that was rebuilt along Baroque lines in the 18th century but originates in the 10th century, and an unusual round Church of Saint Michael that was built in the 11th century with a Gothic bell tower added in the 15th century. Bressanone is a stop on the railway line from Verona in Italy to Innsbruck in Austria.

More reading:

Walter Bonatti - outstanding career marred by 50-year row

(Photo of Nanga Parbat by Daniel Martin GFDL 1.2)
(Photo at Everest base camp by Sanjay Kodain CC NY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Piazza in Bressanone by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Paolo Di Lauro - Camorra boss

Capture of mobster struck at heart of Naples underworld

Paolo di Lauro's prison mug shot.  Before his arrest, the
Camorra boss was rarely seen in public

Italy's war against organised crime achieved one of its biggest victories on this day in 2005 when the powerful Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro was arrested. 

In a 6am raid, Carabinieri officers surrounded a building in the notorious Secondigliano district of Naples and entered the modest apartment in which Di Lauro was living with a female companion.  The 52-year-old gang boss did not resist arrest, possibly believing any charges against him would not be made to stick.

However, at a subsequent trial he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment for drug trafficking and other crimes and remains in jail.

Di Lauro's conviction was significant because it removed the man who had been at the head of one of the most lucrative criminal networks in all of Italy for more than 20 years and yet managed to maintain such a low profile that police at times suspected he was dead.

At its peak, the Di Lauro clan presided over an organisation that imported and distributed cocaine and heroin said to be worth around €200 million per year.  The clan essentially controlled the run-down northern suburbs of Naples, making money also from real estate, counterfeit high-end fashion and prostitution.

Police raids are a regular feature of life in the
run-down Secondigliano district of Naples

Although born and brought up in the depressingly poor neighbourhood in which he was ultimately located and seized, there are few clues in Di Lauro's early life that he would become such a powerful figure.

An orphan adopted by a labourer and his wife, he dropped out of school when barely into his teens and worked as a shop assistant before moving to northern Italy, where he sold bed sheets and underwear to poor migrants from the south.

By the time he returned to Naples, where he settled and married a local girl, he had become more interested in making money from gambling than crime, having become adept at card games.  However, his success did not escape the notice of the Camorra, in particular the boss who then controlled Secondigliano and the surrounding neighbourhoods, Aniello La Monica.

La Monica noted Di Lauro's sharp, mathematical brain and in 1975 invited him to work for his organisation as book-keeper.

Di Lauro began to appreciate the money that bosses such as La Monica were making from organised crime but soon realised he could be making more. An old-fashioned Camorrista, La Monica was happy to reap the proceeds of black market cigarettes, the corrupt construction industry and protection rackets but shied away from the growing drugs market.

A narrow street in the Spanish
quarter of Naples

From time to time, Di Lauro would urge his boss to move into heroin and cocaine, where he could make much bigger profits.  Eventually his patience ran out and, in 1982, with La Monica still refusing to be persuaded, he set about removing him from power.

Not a man inclined to employ violent tactics as a first resort, Di Lauro hoped he could turn La Motta's supporters against him by spreading stories among clan members that he had been cheating them out of their rightful share of profits.

But La Monica learned about his treachery and hired two professional killers to track him down.  Di Lauro escaped and his retaliation revealed his own cold, ruthless side.  He lured La Monica into an ambush by arranging for him to step out on to the street outside his house, supposedly to meet an associate with some stolen diamonds.  There was no associate, but before La Monica realised it was a trap a car drew up from which four men emerged, firing pistols.  He was left face down in the street, dying from his wounds.

Di Lauro joined a large gathering of mourners at La Monica's funeral, although it was revealed later that he had probably been one of the gunmen in the car.

Thereafter, Di Lauro took control, impressing upon prominent clan members that they should at all times follow his code and remain as inconspicuous as possible, living modestly, dressing modestly, driving an ordinary car, never using drugs themselves and, if they wanted to do anything ostentatious, doing it only on faraway holidays.

Vesuvius looms above the sprawling port city with
its beautiful bay and panoramic views

He disappeared from public view himself so effectively that the police lost track of him completely in about 1997, at which point they assumed he was dead.  However, in 2004 he returned to Secondigliano in the hope of stamping out a feud developing between rival groups within the Di Lauro clan.

He was not successful and in the ensuing months a breakaway group tried to seize control.  The so-called Scampia Feud claimed more than 60 lives, with shootings often taking place in busy public areas.  It led to demonstrations on the streets and calls for a police crackdown.

It was this that brought so many Carabinieri into the area, many working undercover.  Di Paulo was tracked down after intelligence officers made a connection between the mobster and a woman they noticed making daily visits to a fish stall in the area they suspected he was living. Di Paulo was known to be partial to sea bream and salmon, which were the two fish the woman always bought.  It was by following her movements that they identified Di Paulo's apartment.

Travel tip:

Naples has some wonderful historic buildings, such as the Duomo di San Gennaro, the lavish Royal Palace and the 13th-century Castel Nuovo. But it is also rewarding just to wander the streets of the historic centre, particularly the chaotic Spanish Quarter and the ancient street known as Spaccanapoli, a narrow, straight thoroughfare largely closed to traffic that bisects the old party of the city.

The ancient Roman city of Herculaneum is much
better preserved than its neighbour Pompeii

Travel tip:

Tourists flock to the ruins of Pompeii to appreciate the damage wreaked by Vesuvius but a better preserved example of a Roman town or city can be found at Ercolano, a settlement built over the ruins of Herculaneum, that like Pompeii was completely buried by the 79AD eruption.  Unlike Pompeii, Herculaneum did not suffer catastrophic fires and many of the buildings remain intact.

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Umberto II - last King of Italy

Brief reign was followed by long exile

The future King of Italy, Umberto II,
pictured  in 1944

The last King of Italy, Umberto II, was born on this day in 1904 in Racconigi in Piedmont.

Umberto reigned over Italy from 9 May 1946 to 12 June 1946 and was therefore nicknamed the May King - Re di Maggio.

When Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia was born at the Castle of Racconigi he became heir apparent to the Italian throne as the only son and third child of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife Queen Elena of Montenegro.

He was given the title of Prince of Piedmont.

Umberto married Marie Jose of Belgium in Rome in 1930 and they had four children.

He became de facto head of state in 1944 when his father, Victor Emmanuel III, transferred his powers to him in an attempt to repair the monarchy’s image after the fall of Benito Mussolini’s regime.

The imposing frontage of the Castle of Racconigi,
birthplace in Piedmont of Umberto II

Victor Emmanuel III abdicated his throne in favour of Umberto in 1946 ahead of a referendum on the abolition of the monarchy in the hope that his exit and a new King might give a boost to the popularity of the monarchy.

However, after the referendum, Italy was declared a republic and Umberto had to live out the rest of his life in exile in Portugal.

He never set foot in Italy again because the constitution of the new republic barred all male heirs to the throne from entering the country.

When it became apparent that Umberto was dying in 1983, the Italian President, Sandro Pertini, wanted the Italian parliament to allow Umberto to return.

But this never happened and Umberto II died in March 1983 in Geneva and was interred in Hautecombe Abbey in Saint-Pierre-de-Curtille in France, which for centuries had been the burial place of members of the House of Savoy.

Travel tip:

The royal Castle of Racconigi, where Umberto II was born, is in Racconigi in the province of Cuneo in Piedmont. Dating back to around the year 1000, the castle was originally inhabited by Cistercian monks. It was acquired by the House of Savoy in the 16th century and in 1630, Duke Charles Emmanuel I granted it to his nephew, Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano and it became the official residence of the Carignano line of the House of Savoy. It has now been declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO.

The Palazzo Carignano in Turin

Travel tip:

Palazzo Carignano in Turin, was once a private residence used by the Princes of Carignano. It was built in the 17th century on the orders of Emmanuel Philibert, the son of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano. It was the birthplace of the first King of the new, united Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, and it was where the first Italian parliament met in 1861. The baroque palace in Via Accademia delle Scienze in Turin now houses a Museum of the Risorgimento.

More reading:

Mussolini and the founding of the Italian Fascists

The abdication of King Victor Emmanuel III



(Photo of the Castle of Racconigi by Geobia CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Dante Alighieri – poet

Famous son of Florence remains in exile

Sandro Botticelli's portrait of Dante,
painted in 1495

Dante Alighieri, an important poet during the late Middle Ages, died on this day in 1321 in Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is considered to be the greatest literary work written in Italian and has been acclaimed all over the world.

In the 13th century most poetry was written in Latin, but Dante wrote in the Tuscan dialect, which made his work more accessible to ordinary people.

Writers who came later, such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, followed this trend.

Therefore Dante can be said to have played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy.

His depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the Divine Comedy later influenced the works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lord Alfred Tennyson, among many others.

Dante was also the first poet to use the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, terza rima.

Dante was born around 1265 in Florence into a family loyal to the Guelphs. By the time he was 12 he had been promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, the daughter of a member of a powerful, local family.

He had already fallen in love with Beatrice Portinari, whom he first met when he was only nine.

A beautiful depiction of Dante and Beatrice in Florence, by
the English artist Henry Holliday in 1883

Years after his marriage to Gemma, Dante claimed to have met Beatrice again and wrote several sonnets to her, without ever getting to know her properly, an example of courtly love.

After defeating the Ghibellines, the Guelphs divided into two factions, the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs and when the Black Guelphs took power, Dante, a White Guelph was condemned to exile and ordered to pay a fine.

Dante, who was in Rome at the time, did not pay the fine and was condemned to perpetual exile. If he had returned to Florence he could have been burned at the stake.

By 1315 Florence had been forced to grant an amnesty to those in exile in exchange for public penance and the payment of a heavy fine, but Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile.

He accepted an invitation from Prince Guido Novello da Polenta to go to Ravenna in 1318. He finished Paradiso and died there, possibly of malaria, at about the age of 56.

The tomb of Dante Alighieri at the Church
of San Pier Maggiore in Ravenna

Dante was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore and a tomb was erected for him there in 1483.

Florence made repeated requests for the return of Dante’s remains but Ravenna has always refused. A tomb was built for him in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence but it has remained empty.

Travel tip:

Ravenna, where Dante lived in exile until his death in 1321, has a wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica of San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics. The city of Ravenna is mentioned by Dante in Canto V of his Inferno.

Dante's house in Via Santa Margherita in
Florence, which is now a museum

Travel tip:

Dante’s house in Via Santa Margherita in Florence is now a museum, il Museo Casa di Dante, open daily to the public from 10 am till six pm in summer and from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am till five pm between October and March. The museum is spread over three floors with exhibits illustrating the life and works of the great poet.


(Photo of Dante's tomb by Pivari CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Dante's house by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

Petrarch - the writer whose work inspired the the modern Italian language

Ludovico Ariosto - the father of humanism

Books:

The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso

Dante: The Story of His Life, by Marco Santagata


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Andrea Mantegna – artist

Genius led the way with his use of perspective

The painter Andrea Mantegna died on this day in 1506 in Mantua.

Mantegna's San Sebastian is at
the Louvre in Paris

He had become famous for his religious paintings, such as St Sebastian, which is now in the Louvre in Paris, and The Agony in the Garden, which is now in the National Gallery in London.

But his frescoes for the Bridal Chamber (Camera degli Sposi) at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua - Mantova in Italian - were to influence many artists who followed him because of his innovative use of perspective.

Mantegna studied Roman antiquities for inspiration and was also an eminent engraver.

He was born near Padua - Padova - in about 1431 and apprenticed by the age of 11 to the painter, Francesco Squarcione, who had a fascination for ancient art and encouraged him to study fragments of Roman sculptures.

Mantegna was one of a large group of painters entrusted with decorating the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua.

Much of his work was lost when the Allied forces bombed Padua in 1944, but other early work by Mantegna can be seen in the Basilica of Sant’Antonio and in the Church of Santa Giustina in Padua.

Mantagna's Miracolo di San Giacomo in the Ovetari
Chapel of the Church of the Eremitani in Padua

The artist later came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini, the father of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, and in 1453 he married Jacopo’s daughter, Nicolosia.

By 1459 he had moved on to Verona, where he painted a grand altarpiece for the Church of San Zeno and the following year he was appointed court artist by the Marquis Ludovico III Gonzaga of Mantua.

Mantegna’s frescoes for the Camera degli Sposi are considered among his best works and include portraits of members of the Gonzaga family.

The artist went on to paint nine pictures of the Triumphs of Caesar, drawing on his classical knowledge, which are also considered by experts to be among his finest works. These were sold in 1628 to King Charles I of England and are now in Hampton Court Palace.

After his death at about the age of 75 in Mantua, Mantegna’s sons set up a monument to him in the Church of Sant’Andrea.

Mantegna's ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi shows how he
created an illusion of depth through his use of perspective

Mantegna’s main artistic legacy is considered to be the introduction of spatial illusionism, as exemplified by the ceiling cupola of the Camera degli Sposi, which although flat appears concave. This use of perspective was followed by other artists for centuries.

Travel tip:

Mantua is an atmospheric old city in Lombardy, to the south east of Milan, famous for its Renaissance Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the Gonzaga family between 1328 and 1707. The Camera degli Sposi is decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna, depicting the life of Ludovico Gonzaga and his family. The beautiful backgrounds of imaginary cities and ruins reflect Mantegna’s love of classical architecture.

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea in Mantua.

Travel tip:

The 15th century Basilica of Sant’Andrea, which houses Andrea Mantegna’s tomb, is in Piazza Mantegna in Mantua. Mantegna was buried in the first chapel on the left, which contains a picture of the Holy Family and John the Baptist that had been  painted by him. The church was originally built to accommodate the large number of pilgrims who came to Mantua to see a precious relic, an ampoule containing what were believed to be drops of Christ’s blood mixed with earth. This was claimed to have been collected at the site of his crucifixion by a Roman soldier.

(Photo of the Basilica of Sant'Andrea by Geobia CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Nazis free captive Mussolini

Extraordinary daring of Gran Sasso Raid

Mussolini, centre, is escorted to a waiting aircraft after being
 freed from his captors. SS captain Otto Skorzeny is on his left.

One of the most dramatic events of the Second World War in Italy took place on this day in 1943 when Benito Mussolini, the deposed and imprisoned Fascist dictator, was freed by the Germans.

The former leader was being held in a remote mountain ski resort when 12 gliders, each carrying paratroopers and SS officers, landed on the mountainside and took control of the hotel where Mussolini was being held.

They forced his guards to surrender before summoning a small aircraft to fly Mussolini to Rome, from where another plane flew him to Austria.  Even Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime prime minister, professed his admiration for the daring nature of the daylight rescue.

Known as the Gran Sasso Raid or Operation Oak, the rescue was ordered by Adolf Hitler himself after learning that Mussolini's government, in the shape of the Grand Fascist Council, had voted through a resolution that he be replaced as leader and that King Victor Emmanuel III had ensured that the resolution was successful by having the self-styled Duce arrested.

The Campo Imperatore Hotel at the time of the raid.

The Italian government by then had decided defeat in the War was inevitable following the Allied invasion of Sicily and the damage inflicted by Allied bombers on Rome.  Despite the weaknesses of Italy's military capability being exposed in Greece, Albania and North Africa, Mussolini made an impassioned speech to the Grand Council before his arrest, insisting they fight on. Yet many of his former supporters, including his son-in-law, the foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, turned against him.

Hitler was furious. He regarded Mussolini not only as the only leader capable of organising the Italian forces, but as a personal friend. He denounced his successor, Marshall Pietro Badoglio, as a traitor.  The Italian government, by this time preparing to switch sides and declare war against Germany, tried to keep Mussolini's whereabouts a secret, moving him from one offshore island to another and them to remote areas of the mainland.

But the SS captain, Otto Skorzeny, personally chosen by Hitler to plan and organise Mussolini's rescue, intercepted coded radio messages and established that the former dictator's place of captivity since late August had been the Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort built on a plateau in Italy's Gran Sasso massif in Abruzzo, high in the Apennine Mountains, around 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) above sea level.  It was guarded by 200 Carabinieri soldiers and accessible only by a funicular railway.

The only viable way of reaching the hotel was from the air.  Dropping troops by parachute was seen as too dangerous because of the altitude but Skorzeny had an alternative plan. His reconnaissance identified what he thought was a strip of grassy land near the hotel, which he believed would be suitable to land troop-laden gliders. These had the added benefit of being effectively noiseless, which would lend the attack an element of surprise.

The Germans landed gliders on the mountainside in order
to take troops to the scene of the rescue

In the event, the grassy strip turned out to be strewn with rocks but Skorzeny ordered his pilots to attempt to land anyway, which was a considerable gamble.  It paid off as all bar two gliders touched down safely, including his own.

In another clever move, Skorzeny had taken with him an Italian military commander sympathetic to the German cause in General Fernando Soleti, who stepped out of his glider and immediately ordered the Italian guards advancing towards the invasion party not to shoot, threatening them with execution for treason if they disobeyed.

The ensuing confusion gave the Germans opportunity to take control and the entire Italian protection squad surrendered without a shot fired.  The only injury was to a radio operator, whom Skorzeny struck with his rifle butt to stop him summoning assistance.

Skorzeny found Mussolini's room and is said to have greeted the dictator with the words 'Duce, the Fuhrer has sent me. You're free!'. He immediately ordered a small aircraft known as the Storch (Stork), designed to take off and land in limited spaces, to fly to the hotel so that he could complete the next leg of the rescue.

The Hotel Campo Imperatore as it is today

The mission almost came to grief at this stage after Skorzeny, determined that he would deliver Mussolini personally to Hitler, insisted on flying to Rome with him, even though the plane was not meant to carry more than one passenger, in addition to the pilot.  There was no spare seat but Skorzeny found he could lie on the floor, his legs stretching into the fuselage.

With 12 men holding the plane back by its wings, the pilot powered up his engine to maximum speed before ordering the men to let go, at which point the plane shot off along the makeshift runway.  It left the ground but with extra weight on board failed to gain altitude quickly enough to avoid striking a rock, sending it veering off the plateau on a downwards trajectory towards the valley below.

The watching German soldiers thought the aircraft was certain to crash but the pilot somehow managed to regain control and gain height, disappearing into the distance to reach an airstrip just outside Rome without further mishap. Skorzeny later admitted he was prepared to take the risk, fearing the consequences if the mission failed.

Later, Mussolini would return to Italy to take charge of a puppet German state, the Italian Social Republic, based in the town of Salò on Lake Garda.  Within less than two years he was dead, captured by partisans and shot as he and his mistress, Clara Petacci, tried to flee to Switzerland.

Travel tip:

The Campo Imperatore still exists as a hotel today, consisting of 45 rooms, a panoramic restaurant, bar and swimming pool. The room where Mussolini was held has been turned into a museum, its decor and furnishings preserved as they were in 1943.  It is now accessible by road in summer but the road is partially closed in winter and visitors have to transfer to the funicular railway at Fonte Cerreto, which is a town on the road between L'Aquila and Assergi.  The area is now part of the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga national park.

The Venetian column with its winged lion of St Mark
on the waterfront of Salò on Lake Garda

Travel tip:

Salò, where Mussolini spent his last months in power, albeit as the leader of a satellite state controlled by the Nazis, is situated on the western shore of Lake Garda. For three centuries part of the Republic if Venice, it was captured by the Austrians in the 19th century before being freed by Garibaldi.  Its points of interest include a Gothic-style cathedral, a column topped by the winged lion of St Mark, symbolising its link with Venice, and the 16th century Palazzo della Magnifica Patria, home to an exhibition of documents from Renaissance history, Italy's colonial wars and the Resistance against Fascism.

Read more:

Benito Mussolini and the founding of the Italian Fascists

How Italy entered the Second World War

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates

(Photos of Gran Sasso Raid courtesy of German Federal Archive)
(Photo of Campo Imperatore by Ra Boe CC BY-SA 3.0)

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