The Giannini sextuplets

The multiple birth that made history

Rosanna Giannini and her babies featured on
 the cover of Gente magazine each year 

History was made on this day in 1980 when a schoolteacher from the Casentino valley in Tuscany gave birth to sextuplets in a hospital in Florence.

The babies – four boys and two girls – delivered between 4.17am and 4.22am at the Careggi Hospital, on the northern outskirts of the Tuscan capital, grew to become the first sextuplets in Europe to survive beyond infancy and only the second set in the world.

Their arrival turned the Gianninis - mum Rosanna and dad Franco - into instant celebrities and their house in Soci, a village in the municipality of Bibbiena, 60km (37 miles) east of Florence, was besieged by the world’s media, seeking pictures and interviews.

In Italy, the event was celebrated with particular enthusiasm, heralded as the good news the nation craved after a particularly difficult year marked by a series of catastrophes, including the Ustica plane crash, the bombing of Bologna railway station and the Irpinia earthquake.

The family eventually signed an exclusive deal with the best-selling Italian magazine Gente for access rights.  Photographs of the children appeared around the time of their birthday for a number of years and features were written by the magazine’s leading journalist, Achille Mezzadri, who would later ghostwrite Rosanna’s autobiography, Vivere con sei gemelli – Living with sextuplets.

The couple – Rosanna was 29 and Franco 30 – faced uncharted territory in raising six babies simultaneously and faced enormous bills, too, first needing to find a house that would accommodate them all.

The sextuplets made the cover of Gente
when they began to attend school

They received help from the Tuscan regional government, while Rosanna’s revelation that she had to wash at least five loads of clothes every day prompted a major detergent company to propose a television advertising campaign for their products featuring the Giannini family.

The multiple pregnancy came about after Rosanna, desperate to start a family with Franco after being married in 1976, had been given hormone treatment after fearing she was entering an unnaturally early menopause.

She became pregnant in April 1979 but after feeling unwell during a particularly hot summer that year she was admitted to hospital for tests.  There she underwent an ultrasound scan and was astonished when the nurse carrying out the scan told her she was expecting twins, then spotted the third, fourth, fifth and sixth babies.

Her gynaecologist told her to keep her news a secret to avoid media attention ahead of the event but once the babies arrived there was no keeping it quiet.  By an amazing coincidence, the only other surviving sextuplets in the world at that time had been born in South Africa on January 11, 1974.

The six Giannini children – Letizia, Linda, Fabrizio, Francesco, Giorgio and Roberto – all weighed between 2lb 9oz (1.16kg) and 3lb 12oz (1.7kg) and thrived through childhood and adolescence, although Francesco came through a difficult time when he developed a serious kidney problem as a 19-year-old.

He slipped into a coma for a while and Rosanna credits the intervention of Don Alvaro, the parish priest of nearby Arezzo, who visited him in hospital and performed a blessing with the relics of Padre Pio, the much-venerated saint, for bringing about his recovery.

Rosanna pictured in 2015, aged 64, when her
famous sextuplets turned 35

Media interest in the family naturally tailed off after a number of years but in 2015, on the occasion of the children’s 35^th birthday, Rosanna gave an interview to the Italian newspaper La Stampa in which she lamented the fact that, despite four of the six obtaining degrees and the other two passing their high school exams, only Giorgio, a business economics graduate, had a permanent job, as an auditor for a company in Florence.

Of the others, Linda and Letizia, both graduates, were teaching but only on temporary contracts, Roberto had a job in a textile factory and Fabrizio, the other graduate, was working in a shopping mall with no job security.  Francesco had recently been laid off from his office job.

“In a way my children are emblematic of today’s Italy,” she said. “Four have degrees, the other two have high school certificates, and yet four do not have permanent or stable jobs.”

She and Franco had, though, become grandparents for the first time thanks to the arrival in 2014 of Letizia’s son, Tommaso.

The hilltop town of Bibbiena

Travel tip:

Bibbiena is an ancient town situated on a hill overlooking the Archiano river with a well-preserved medieval centre not well known to tourists but which contains a number of attractive palaces and churches, including the 14^th century Chiesa di San Lorenzo and the 12^th century Chiesa di Santi Ippolito e Donato. The town is surrounded by typical Tuscan countryside of rolling hills dotted with characteristic larch, beech and fir trees.  The town has a strong tradition of producing pecorino cheese.

Arezzo's sloping Piazza Grande

Travel tip:

The city of Arezzo is well worth including in any Tuscan itinerary. Its central square, the sloping Piazza Grande, is as beautiful as any in Italy, while the city’s Duomo has painted vaulted ceilings and a 15th-century fresco of Mary Magdalene by Piero della Francesca. The Basilica di San Francesco has a chapel decorated with more Piero frescoes and inside the Basilica di San Domenico can be found a 13th-century Crucifix painted by Cimabue.  Piazza Grande hosts a large antiques fair every month and an annual medieval festival entitled the Saracen Joust, which features “knights” on horseback representing different areas of the city.

Home

Pina Menichelli – silent movie star

Screen diva who enjoyed worldwide fame

Pina Menichelli in one of the extravagant
costumes she wore in Il Fuoco

The actress Pina Menichelli, who became one of the most celebrated female stars of the silent movie era, was born on this day in 1890 in Castroreale, a village in northeast Sicily.

Menichelli’s career was brief – she retired at the age of just 34 – but in her last eight or nine years on screen she enjoyed such popularity that her films played to packed houses and she commanded a salary that was the equivalent of millions of euros in today’s money.

Without words, actors had to use facial expressions and body movements to create character in the parts they were playing and Menichelli, a naturally beautiful woman, exploited her elegance and sensuality to the full, at times pushing the limits of what was acceptable on screen.

In fact, one of her films, La Moglie di Claudio (Claudio’s Wife) was banned by the censors for fear it would offend sensitivities, particularly those of the Catholic Church.

Generally cast in the role of femme fatale, Menichelli thus became something of a sex symbol in the years after the First World War and there was considerable shock when she announced abruptly in 1924 that she was quitting the film industry for good.

Born Giuseppa Iolanda Menichelli, she came from a theatrical background.  Her parents, Cesare and Francesca, were touring theatre actors, part of a dynasty of performers that included Nicola Menichelli, an 18^th century comedian. Two sisters and a brother also became actors.

Menichelli and Amleto Novelli in the film Padrone
delle Ferriere directed by Eugenio Perego

She grew up on the road. She went to school in Bologna in northern Italy and joined a theatre company to tour Argentina as a teenager in 1908.

While she was living in Buenos Aires she met and married Libero Pica, an Italian journalist who was based there, and had two sons, the first of whom, sadly, survived only a few days.

Had things worked out differently, her big-screen career might never have happened, but after she became pregnant for a third time the couple separated and she returned to Italy. Her third child, a daughter, was born in Milan in 1912.

In 1913, with the Italian film industry still in its infancy, Menichelli signed up with the Rome studio Cines, and between 1913 and 1915 made 35 movies, graduating from small parts in short films to lead roles in features.

She was climbing the ladder towards fame, having earned favourable comparisons with Lydia Borelli and Francesca Bertini, the most famous Italian actresses of the day, when she moved to Itala Films of Turin, lured there by the director, Giovanni Pastrone, who saw in her the potential to become a star.

Giovanni Pastrone recognised Pina
Menichelli's star potential

He gave her the lead role in a film entitled Il Fuoco (The Fire), about the tempestuous love affair between an aristocratic poet (Menichelli) and an impoverished painter (Febo Mari), which was critically acclaimed and became a global success.

Her next role, as a glamorous Russian countess pursued by an amorous diplomat (Alberto Nepoti), in Pastrone’s Tigre Reale (Royal Tiger), had critics trying to outdo one another in the extravagance of their praise, referring to her “erotic charge, seductive glances and provocative body movements.”

One critic, noting Menichelli's propensity for writhing poses and sudden, dramatic movements, rather unflatteringly dubbed her "Our Lady of the Spasms."

It established Menichelli as the biggest star of all the divas of Italy’s silent movie scene and her salary catapulted almost overnight from around 12,000 lire per year working for Cines to move than 300,000 lire per year at Itala.

In 1919, she took the bold decision to leave Pastrone and Itala Films in order to sign up with Rinascimento Film of Rome, a company set up specifically for her by Baron Carlo d’Amato, who would later become her second husband.

The Italian film industry was beginning to struggle as the economic hardships of the 1920s began to take hold, yet by targeting foreign markets D’Amato was able to buck the trend and Menichelli continued to enjoy success.

La Storia di Una Donna won
critical acclaim for Menichelli

She was also given a platform to show off a different range of acting talents by a director willing to experiment.  His 1920 feature La Storia di Una Donna starred Menichelli as a mystery woman taken unconscious with gunshot wounds to a hospital, where a detective trying to identify her finds a diary telling the story of her life, which is then played out for the audience as a series of extended flashbacks, a technique at the time that was highly unusual.

Menichelli made a total of 13 films for D’Amato, rounding off with a couple of light-hearted comedies before the two were married in 1924, following the death of her first husband, who had always refused to allow their marriage to be annulled.

It was then that she announced she was not only retiring but turning her back on the cinema to the extent that she wished almost to erase it from her life, destroying every photograph, poster and programme she possessed and making it known that approaches from journalists, biographers or cinema historians who might wish to chronicle her career would not be welcome.

Wealthy enough never to have to worry about money, she seemingly wanted nothing but to resume the life of a housewife and mother that was denied to her when she parted acrimoniously from her first husband.  The image of a “vamp”, a femme-fatale, a sex symbol, she felt was incompatible with that of a good wife.

She lived the remainder of her life – another 60 years – out of the spotlight, outliving her husband and dying in relative obscurity in Milan in 1984 at the age of 94.

The hilltop town of Castroreale in Sicily

Travel tip:

Castroreale, where Pina Menichelli was born, is a hilltop village in northeast Sicily about 9km (5.5 miles) inland and 30km (19 miles) southwest of the city of Messina. It is notable for having 80 churches – roughly one for every 35 residents.  Notable among these are the 15^th century Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta, with its Mannerist façade with Baroque and classical decorations, the church of the Candelora on Via Umberto I, which contains a 17^th century wooden altar with carvings attributed to Giovanni Siracusa.  Two art collections, housed in the former church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and in the Civic Museum, are worth a visit.

The Villa della Regina was a palace of the House of Savoy

Travel tip:

The studios of Itala Film, where Menichelli found fame, were in Via Luisa del Carretto, a street in Turin in the neighbourhood of Gran Madre, a quiet residential area across the Po river from the main part of the city yet only five or 10 minutes from the centre.  Nearby is the Villa della Regina, a 17^th century palace designed by Ascanio Vitozzi for the House of Savoy.

Home

Massimiliano Fuksas – architect

Brilliant designs illuminate cities worldwide

Massimiliano Fuksas is one of Italy's foremost
architects of the modern era

The international architect Massimiliano Fuksas, whose work has influenced the urban landscape in more than a dozen countries across the globe, was born on this day in 1944 in Rome.

The winner of multiple awards, Fuksas sits alongside Antonio Citterio and Renzo Piano as the most important figures in contemporary Italian architectural design.

His Fuksas Design company, which has its headquarters in a Renaissance palace near Piazza Navona in Rome, also has offices in Paris and in Shenzhen, China, employing 140 staff.

Among more than 600 projects completed by the company in 40 years, those that stand out include Terminal Three at the Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport in China, the New National Archives of France at Pierrefitte sur Seine-Saint Denis, the Peres Peace House in Tel Aviv,  the Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg, the Armani Ginza Tower in Tokyo, the Italian Space Agency headquarters in Rome and the FieraMilano Trade Fair complex on the outskirts of Milan.

Ongoing projects include the new EUR Hotel and Conference Centre in Rome, the Duomo metro station in Naples, the Australia Forum centre in Canberra, Australia and the Rhike Park music theatre and museum complex in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Fuksas, who had a Lithuanian father and an Italian mother of Austrian heritage, wanted to be an artist and in the early 1960s would work in the studio of the painter Giorgio de Chirico, who had been the founder of the Scuola Metafisica in Italian art in the early part of the century, which had similarities with the Surrealism movement that emerged in Paris at around the same time.  

Fuksas's Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg resembles
a giant paper lantern 

He spent time in London with Archigram, a group of avant-garde architects, and also visited Copenhagen before returning to Rome to enrol at Sapienza University, where he graduated in architecture in 1969.

Setting up a studio with his first wife, Anna Maria Sacconi, in the 1970s he worked on many public sector projects in Lazio, particularly in the towns of Anagni and Paliano.

Fuksas’s reputation began to grow after a leading architecture magazine in France ran a feature about his municipal gymnasium project in Paliano, famous for a façade that appears to have become detached from the main building and leans at a seemingly precarious angle.  It led him to be invited to exhibit at the Paris Biennial of 1982.

Since 1985 he has shared a professional as well as personal relationship with Doriana Mandrelli, a designer from Rome who graduated from Sapienza University in 1979. She became his second wife and is the mother of his three daughters, Elisa, Lavinia and Priscilla.

The FieraMilano site is notable for its
undulating mesh roof

By the 1990s, major international projects were keeping Fuksas continuously busy, including the Twin Tower office and residential development in Vienna, the Europark retail complex in Salzburg and the modernisation of the PalaLottomatica sports venue in Rome’s EUR district.

In 2004, the new headquarters and research centre for Ferrari at Maranello in Emilia-Romagna and the Nardini Research Centre at Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto were completed, followed the following year by the FieraMilano site between the suburbs of Rho and Pero.

With Doriana running the business, a lucrative deal was struck with Armani to revamp some stores and construct new ones, among the most eye-catching being the Armani Ginza Tower in Tokyo.

Although he has moved away from the bizarre and surrealistic, into which category the façade of the Paliano gymnasium fell, Fuksas still wanted his buildings to have a bold visual impact and would use conventional materials to create unusual effects.

For example, he wanted the roof of the FieraMilano to resemble draped cloth and achieved this with an undulating mesh of steel and glass.  With the circular Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg, the use of an irregular steel frame covered with a translucent textile membrane creates the impression, especially at night, of a giant lantern.

The terminal Fuksas designed for Shenzen Bao'an
International airport in China

The airport terminal in Shenzen, which Fuksas designed after winning a competition from a field that included the British architectural star Sir Norman – now Lord – Foster, itself resembles the frame of an aeroplane.

Fuksas and his family divide their time between homes in Rome, where they have a substantial apartment overlooking Castel Sant’Angelo, and in Paris, where their residence is on the fashionable Place de Vogues in the Marais neighbourhood.

Unlike some architects obsessed with modernity, Fuksas is respectful of history.  In fact, he says he would do nothing with the traditional historic centres of Italian cities except turn them into clean and airy pedestrian zones, empty of traffic except for metro trains and non-polluting buses and trams, beginning with Rome and Naples.

Fuksas's design for the facade of a gymnasium complex
in the town of Paliano was bizarre but drew attention

Travel tip:

The medieval hill town of Anagni, full of steep, narrow streets offering shade from the summer sun, used to be popular with Roman emperors as a cooler, fresher place to which to retreat from the oppressive heat of the summer.  It also produced four popes, all from the Conti family.  Paliano is among the smaller, neighbouring towns and villages.

Rome's cylindrical Castel Sant' Angelo seen across the
bridge over the Tiber river

Travel tip:

Once the tallest building in Rome, the distinctively cylindrical Castel Sant’Angelo was originally commissioned by the Emperor Hadrian to be built on the right bank of the Tiber as a mausoleum for him and his family, although it was later used by the popes as a fortress and castle.  An urn containing Hadrian's ashes was placed there a year after his death in 138, together with those of his wife Sabina, and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius. The remains of subsequent emperors were also placed there, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217, although after the building’s conversion to military use it became a target for Visigoth looters in the fifth century and most of the urns were destroyed and their contents randomly scattered.

Home

Maria Teresa de Filippis – racing driver

Pioneer for women behind the wheel

Maria Teresa de Filippis in 1958

The racing driver Maria Teresa de Filippis, who was the first woman to compete in a Formula One world championship event and remains one of only two to make it on to the starting grid in the history of the competition, died on this day in 2016 in Gavarno, a village near Bergamo in Lombardy.

De Filippis, a contemporary of the early greats of F1, the Italians Giuseppe Farina and Alberto Ascari and the Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio, qualified for the Belgian Grand Prix in June 1958 and finished 10^th.

She made the grid for the Portuguese and Italian Grands Prix later in the year but had to retire from both due to engine problems. 

She managed only six laps in the former but was unlucky not to finish in the latter event at Monza, where she completed 57 of the 70 laps. Although she was at the back of the field, 13 other cars had retired earlier in the race and she would therefore have finished eighth.

These were her only F1 races. The following year she turned her back on the sport following the death of her close friend, the French driver Jean Behra, in a crash in Germany. Only a year earlier, her former fiancé, the Italian driver Luigi Musso, had also been killed.

De Filippis prepares to take the wheel outside the Maserati
garage during the 1958 season

De Filippis came from a wealthy background, born in Naples in 1926 and brought up in the 16^th century Palazzo Marigliano. Her family, with aristocratic roots, also owned the Palazzo Bianco in Caserta.

A keen horsewoman, she also loved skiing and tennis as a teenager but took up car racing in order to prove a point to her two older brothers, Antonio and Giuseppe, who had teased her about her prowess at the wheel.

Determined to prove them wrong, at 22 she entered her first race, a hill climb between the port of Salerno and the town of Cava di Tirreni, 10km (6 miles) inland, and won.

Finding, to her surprise, that she had no fear behind the wheel she quickly progressed to sports car events, finishing second in the 1954 Italian sports car championship.

It was at the sports car race that accompanied the 1956 Naples Grand Prix that De Filippis caught the eye.  Driving a works-entered Maserati 200S on a circuit that followed the walled streets and tree-lined boulevards of Posillipo, an upmarket residential area of her home city, she started at the back of the grid after missing practice but worked her way through the field to finish second.

Maria Teresa de Filippis pictured at the age of 88

The invitation to compete in Formula One soon followed and it was in the Maserati 250F, the same car that took Fangio to his fifth world title the previous year, that she made her historic debut at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

Although a woman in motorsport was not a new phenomenon – the French driver and aviator Camille du Gast had taken part in the 1901 Paris to Berlin rally – Formula One was a wholly male-dominated world and there were considerable barriers to overcome.

Stirling Moss, the British driver she considered a friend, doubted whether a woman had the strength to handle an F1 car at speed, while the director of the French Grand Prix at Reims that followed the Belgian race allegedly barred her from taking part, telling her – in her words – that “the only helmet a woman should wear is the one at the hairdressers.”

It was at the French Grand Prix that Luigi Musso died. Although they had broken off their engagement and he had a new girlfriend, his death hit De Filippis hard nonetheless and made her think about whether she wanted to continue.

As the only female driver, she was never short of attention, but one of the fans to whom she was introduced at her Monza appearance in 1958, an Austrian textile chemist by the name of Theodor Huschek, made a bigger impression than others.

The iconic Maserati 250F

She bumped into him again in Istanbul the following year and after meeting for a third time on a skiing trip they became engaged and married. After living in Austria and Switzerland they moved to Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Dolomites, then to Rome and next Capri, the idyllic island in the Bay of Naples.

They had a daughter, Carola, and settled in Bergamo area when Theodor began working for the Legler textile firm in Ponte San Pietro, to the northwest of the city. They settled in Gavarno, a village between Scanzorosciate and Nembro.

Despite De Filippis having broken new ground for women in motor racing, the only other female driver to participate in a Formula One race is Lella Lombardi, her fellow Italian, who started 12 times between 1974 and 1976.

In later life, De Filippis was vice-president of the International Club of Former F1 Grand Prix Drivers.

The facade of the Palazzo Marigliano

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Marigliano, built in the early 16^th century, is the former home of Andrea de Capua, the fourth Count of Altavill and the chief legal executive for the Kingdom of Naples. It was refurbished in the 1750s with frescoes by Francesco de Mura and paintings by Giovanni Battista Maffei. It can be found right in the heart of the city in Via San Biagio dei Librai, which forms part of the historic Spaccanapoli, the narrow, straight thoroughfare that runs in a 2km (1.25 miles) diagonal across the city. Today the beautiful inner courtyard hosts artisan workshops and part of the palace is given over to apartments.

Gavarno is situated in a wooded valley near Bergamo

Travel tip:

Gavarno is a village of some 1,200 residents a few kilometres to the northeast of Bergamo overlooking the stream of the same name that joins the Serio river at nearby Nembro. Built largely on a gentle hillside, it is in an area popular with walkers, offering pleasant woodland paths. Between Gavarno and Nembro there is a interesting modern church, consecrated only in 2000, dedicated to Pope Giovanni XXIII, who hailed from Sotto il Monte in Bergamo province.

Home

Pope Innocent X

Political pontiff dominated by sister-in-law

The portrait of Innocent X by the Spanish artist Diego
Velázquez, notable for a terse facial expression

A politically charged and controversial period in papal history ended on this day in 1655 with the death in Rome of Pope Innocent X.

Described by some historians as a scheming and bitter pontiff, Innocent X’s tenure was notable for his malicious attack on a rival family, his destruction of the ancient city of Castro, a squabble with France that almost ended in war, his interference in the English Civil War and his refusal to recognise the independence of Portugal.

It was also overshadowed by rumours of an immoral relationship with his sister-in-law, Olimpia Maidalchini, the widow of his late brother. Historians generally agree that these were unfounded, yet Innocent X was dominated by her to the extent that she became the most powerful figure in his court, her influence so strong that ambassadors, cardinals and bishops knew that the pope would defer to her before making any decision and consequently would address any issues directly to her.

Born in Rome in 1574 and baptised as Giovanni Battista Pamphili, he came from a wealthy and well-established family who originally came from Gubbio in Umbria.

His parents, Camillo Pamphili and Flaminia de Bubalis, groomed him from an early age with the ambition that he would one day become pope.

Innocent X's predecessor, Urban VIII, as
depicted by Caravaggio in 1598

He studied jurisprudence at the Collegio Romano and succeeded his uncle, Girolamo Pamphili, as auditor (judge) of the Roman Rota, the most important court in the ecclesiastical legal system.

Under Pope Gregory XV, he became nuncio (ambassador) to the court of the Kingdom of Naples, and was sent by Urban VIII to accompany his nephew, Francesco Barberini, whom he had accredited as nuncio, first to France and then Spain.

In May 1626, he was made apostolic nuncio to the court of Philip IV of Spain, an appointment that led to a lifelong association with the Spaniards. He was made a cardinal in 1627 at the age of 53.

He was elected pope in 1644 after a long and stormy conclave to find a successor to Urban VIII, undermined by the difficult relations between the Spanish and the French.  Pamphili was put forward as a compromise candidate, despite his sympathies towards Spain.  Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the de facto ruler of France, travelled to Rome to veto the appointment but arrived too late.

Soon after his accession, having given himself the name of  Innocent X, he began a legal action against the Barberini family, long-time rivals of the Pamphili, for alleged misappropriation of public funds.

It led the brothers, Francesco, Antonio and Taddeo Barberini, to flee to Paris, where they found a powerful protector in Cardinal Mazarin.  Innocent X confiscated their property and issued a bull (decree) that all cardinals who might leave the Papal States for six months without express papal permission would be deprived of their benefices and eventually cease to be cardinals.

A painting by an unknown artist believed
to show Olimpia Maidalchini

France refused to recognise the papal ordinance but it was only when Mazarin prepared to send troops to Italy that Innocent X yielded. Papal policy towards France became softer and in time the Barberini brothers were rehabilitated.

Innocent X’s destruction of the ancient city of Castro in Lazio seems to have been an act of revenge against Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, over a defeat suffered by Urban VIII and the humiliation that seemed to hasten his demise.

His intervention in the English Civil War was to send the archbishop of Fermo, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, to Ireland as nuncio extraordinary, along with a large quantity of arms, gunpowder and money, to support the foundation of an independent Catholic-ruled Ireland, only for Oliver Cromwell to hold sway and restore Ireland to his side.

Innocent X's decision to side with Spain over Portugal’s bid for independence was consistent with his general policy of supporting Spanish ambitions and, as an extension of that position, opposing France.

Although his papacy was dominated by political matters, he did not entirely neglect ecclesiastical issues. The most important in his time concerned the condemnation of Jansenism, an interpretation of the teachings of St. Augustine about grace and free will that he decreed was heretical.

He was cautious financially, although he did commission the completion of the interior of St. Peter’s as well as the transformation of Piazza Navona into the artistic masterpiece we see today, and the restoration of Palazzo Pamphili, the home of Pope Urban VIII, which looks out on the piazza.

Innocent X was pope for 11 years until his death in Rome at the age of 80. Religious historians are divided on his legacy, some believing he weakened the papacy, others that he increased its power. He was succeeded by Alexander VII, from the Chigi family.

Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

Travel tip:

Built on the site of the Roman Stadium of Domitian, Piazza Navona became a public open space in the 15^th century, when Rome’s main market moved there from Campidoglio. It already contained the Fontana del Moro (Moors Foutain) and the Fontana del Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune), sculpted by Giacomo della Porta between 1574 and 1575, but Innocent X commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to create its magnificent centrepiece, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers) in 1651, which is topped by the Obelisk of Domitian, moved from the Circus of Maxentius.

A typical staircase in medieval Gubbio

Travel tip:

Gubbio, the town in Umbria from which Innocent X’s family originated, is one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Italy, partly because, perched on the side of Monte Ingino, it is not accessible easily enough to attract hordes of visitors.  Full of narrow streets, alleyways and staircases, most of them dramatically steep, it has been dubbed La Città del Silenzio – the City of Silence – for its sometimes eerie serenity and calm. 

Home

Adriano Celentano – singer and actor

Italy’s biggest-selling recording artist of all time

Adriano Celentano on stage in 2012

The pop singer and movie actor Adriano Celentano, who is estimated to have sold in the region of 200 million records in a career spanning 60 years, was born on this day in 1938 in Milan.

One of the most important and influential figures in Italian pop culture, Celentano enjoys such enduring popularity that when he gave his first live performance for 18 years at the Arena di Verona in 2012, screened on the Canale 5 television channel, it attracted an audience of more than nine million viewers.

He has recorded more than 40 albums, the latest of which, Tutti le migliori (All The Best) reviving his collaboration with another veteran Italian star, Mina, was released only last year and included new material.

Celentano’s biggest individual hits include Stai lontana di me (Stay away from me, 1962), Si è spento il sole (The sun has gone out, 1962), Pregherò (I will pray, 1962), Il ragazzo della via Gluck (The boy from Gluck Street, 1966), La coppia più bello del mondo (The most beautiful couple in the world, 1967), Azzurro (Blue, 1968), Sotto le lenzuola (Under the sheets, 1971), Ti avrò (I will have you, 1978) and Susanna (1984).

He also had an unexpected worldwide hit in 1972 with Prisencolinensinainciusol – a made-up word that Celentano sung in such a way as to demonstrate what American English – the language of most pop songs – sounds like to a non-English speaking Italian.

Celentano, centre, with his 1950s band The Rock Boys

Celentano also appeared in more than 30 films and countless TV shows, mainly comedies, in which he developed a character with comic facial expressions and a distinctive way of walking. It was no surprise that he was a great fan of the zany American comic actor Jerry Lewis.

One of his earliest parts was in Federico Fellini’s classic La Dolce Vita, in which he played a rock musician, while his most acclaimed role was in Pietro Germi’s Serafino, in which he played a simple shepherd who inherits a fortune from a wealthy art and squanders it all before returning to his old life in the mountains.

Born in Milan in Via Cristoforo Gluck, in a modest neighbourhood near Milano Centrale station, Celentano grew up obsessed with the American rock and roll scene.  His early music was pure rock and roll, heavily influenced by Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Bill Haley, whose iconic track Rock Around the Clock was part of the soundtrack of Blackboard Jungle, the film that captured the imagination of Celentano and his fellow teenagers when it was released in 1955.

He and a group of friends formed a group The Rock Boys, who recorded covers of Rip It Up, Jailhouse Rock, Blueberry Hill and Tutti Frutti.  They are credited now with having introduced Italy to the rock and roll genre.

Celentano with his wife, actress Claudia Mori, on the
set of a TV show in 1972

As his career developed, he won the Sanremo Music Festival in 1970 with Chi non lavora non fa l’amore (Who does not work does not make love), in which he partnered his wife, Claudia Mori.

He had met Claudia, a beautiful actress and singer from Rome, on the set of a film in 1963 and they married secretly in Grosseto the following year.  

Mori, who appeared with her husband in several films as well as accompanying him in several duets, is the manager of his record company, Clan Celentano. They have three children – Rosita, Giacomo and Rosalinda, all born in the 1960s.

In the 1970s, Celentano was so popular and the demand for tickets for his concerts so great he began to stage events at football stadiums, playing to 65,000 at the San Paolo stadium in Naples and 50,000 at the football stadium in Rimini.

He has several times taken long breaks from performing live, in order to focus on other projects. After 14 years without going on stage, he made a comeback of sorts in 2008 at the Giuseppe Meazza Stadium in Milan – home of his beloved Internazionale – as part of the celebrations for the club’s centenary.

Scene at the Arena di Verona for Celentano's 2012 concert

It set the seed for him to plan his 2012 show in Verona, where he demonstrated that his voice had lost none of its power and sophistication, reeling off a string of his greatest hits from six decades of music.

Increasingly a political figure – many of his songs carry strong messages – he is a supporter of the centre-right Five Star Movement, led by his long-time friend Beppe Grillo.

The Palazzo del Ghiaccio now stages events such as banquets
in a uniquely striking setting 

Travel tip:

Adriano Celentano made his performing debut in 1957 at the Palazzo del Ghiaccio (The Ice Palace), a beautiful Art Nouveau building in Via Piranesi, in the Porta Vittoria area of the city. Opened in 1923, covering 1,800 square metres, it was once the major covered ice rink in Europe and one of the largest in the world. The building was seriously damaged during the Second World War but was restored and reopened and remained an active venue for skating events until 2002. It has also hosted boxing, fencing and basketball among other sports, as well as entertainment events such as the Italian Festival of Rock and Roll at which Celentano took his first bows. His contemporary Mina played there for the first time in 1959. The Palazzo is still an important venue today for fashion shows, exhibitions, business conventions, concerts and other events.

The Piazza Cinque Giornate in Milan

Travel tip:

Porta Vittoria was formerly known as Porta Tosa, the eastern gate of the Spanish walls of the city in the 16^th century. It was renamed Porta Vittoria with Italian unification in 1861 in respect of its historical significance, having been the seen of a battle between Milanese rebels and the occupying Austrian forces during the so-called Five Days of Milan in 1848.  The actual gate was demolished in 1881 and its location in what is now Piazza Cinque Giornate is marked with an obelisk designed by Giuseppe Grandi.

Home

Dr Michele Navarra – physician and Mafia boss

Hospital doctor who headed Corleone clan

Michele Navarra was an eminent
physician in Corleone

Michele Navarra, an extraordinary figure who became the leading physician in his home town of Corleone while simultaneously heading up one of the most notorious clans in the history of the Sicilian Mafia, was born on this day in 1905.

Dr Navarra was a graduate of the University of Palermo, where he studied engineering before turning to medicine, and became a captain in the Royal Italian Army. He could have had a comfortable and worthy career as a doctor.

Yet he developed a fascination with stories about his uncle, Angelo Gagliano, who had until he was murdered when Navarra was a boy of about 10 years old been a member of the Fratuzzi – the Brothers – a criminal organisation who leased agricultural land from absentee landlords and then sublet it to peasant farmers at exorbitant rates, enforcing their authority by extorting protection money, as well as by controlling the hiring of workers.

As the son of a land surveyor, Navarra already enjoyed privileges inaccessible to most of the population and his medical qualifications only further lifted his standing in the community. Somehow, though, it was not enough.

After the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, having co-operated with the Anglo-American forces, Navarra took advantage of his relationship with Angelo di Carlo, a Sicilian cousin in the American marines who had used his Mafia connections to become a vital go-between for the Office of Strategic Services (precursor of the CIA) in obtaining intelligence ahead of the invasion.

Navarra, along with a fellow doctor, was killed in his
 car in an ambush on a country road

The occupying army were determined to remove Fascist party members from power on the island, so Navarra presented himself as an anti-Fascist and, with Di Carlo’s help, secured the right to round up and take possession of all military vehicles abandoned by the Italian army.

He used some of these to set up a regional bus service but others became vital to his cattle rustling operations, which enabled him to establish himself as an important figure in the criminal underworld, to the extent that, when Corleonese clan boss Cologero Lo Bue died in 1944 – from natural causes – Navarra was able to fight off a challenge from Vincenzo Collura, a Sicilian-born American gangster, to take over as Lo Bue’s succssor.

At the same time, remarkably, Dr Navarra was advancing his medical career.  In 1946, he was appointed the lead physician at Corleone’s local hospital (after his predecessor was mysteriously murdered) and enjoyed enormous respect in the community for his skill and diligence, and his generosity in waiving fees for those in financial hardship. Often, he would be invited to be godfather to the children of grateful patients.

When Corleone people spoke of him, they called him 'u patri nostru - Sicilian dialect for 'our father'.

Luciano Leggio, Navarra's former lieutenant,
ultimately betrayed his boss

Yet it was his criminal activity that was the real source of his wealth and power. The Corleonese clan controlled not only cattle rustling but all manner of other activities, legitimate or otherwise, thanks to Dr Navarra’s influence in the award of local government contracts.

As a member of the Christian Democrat party, he did what he could to keep the party in power locally and was duly rewarded, even if his methods were somewhat unusual.  Voters were often escorted into the polling booths by gang members to ensure they voted the right way, Dr Navarra having issued certificates to say they were blind had to be assisted at the ballot box.

More sinisterly, he despatched his young lieutenant, Luciano Leggio, to murder Placido Rizzotto, a trade union leader who was gaining popularity for the Socialist party.

Navarra exploited his standing to develop powerful political allies, who in turn handed him prestigious positions.  For a while, for example, he was the official medical adviser to Ferrovie dello Stato, the state rail network.

He was always well dressed, genteel even, yet almost every week he would issue the order for someone to be killed, either an opponent or an individual who in some way was an impediment to his progress.

Navarra was careful to keep his own hands clean, always commissioning murders through a third party. Seldom could a killing be traced back to him, although he was sent into exile in Reggio Calabria after being accused of personally silencing, though a lethal injection, the only witness to the Rizzotto murder.

It was during his exile that his former underling, Leggio, developed his own rackets and tried to seize power. Navarra tried to have him killed in the summer of 1958 but the plot failed and it was only a few months later that Navarra's car was ambushed on an isolated country road and he died, along with an innocent colleague from the hospital, in a hail of machine gun fire.

Among the suspected killers were two notorious future bosses of the Corleonese clan, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.

The Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri

Travel tip:

The University of Palermo, founded in 1806 but with roots in learning traceable to the 15^th century, when medicine and law were first taught on the site, is home to about 50,000 students.  It is notable among other things for the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri, the 14^th century palace that was once the home of the powerful Sicilian ruler Manfredi III Chiaramonte, which now houses the rector’s office and a museum, and the 30-acre Orto Botanico (Botanical Gardens).

The Palazzo Comunale overlooks the Piazza Garibaldi
at the heart of Corleone

Travel tip:

Although the town of Corleone was immortalised in fiction by Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather and the film of the same name, its Mafia past is only too real and citizens lived an oppressed life for many years, fearful of even admitting that the secret society existed.  Nowadays, there are organisations that are proudly anti-Mafia and the confiscated home of one-time leader Bernardo Provenzano has been turned into an anti-Mafia museum and art gallery in memory of Paolo Borsellino, the anti-Mafia magistrate who was murdered in 1992.

Home