Tina Anselmi - ground-breaking politician

Former partisan became Italy’s first female cabinet minister

Tina Anselmi was the first Italian woman to
hold a position inside an Italian cabinet

The politician Tina Anselmi, who made history in 1976 as the first woman to hold a ministerial position in an Italian government and later broke new ground again when she was appointed to chair the public inquiry into the infamous Propaganda Due masonic lodge, was born on this day in 1927 in Castelfranco Veneto.

Anselmi was chosen as Minister for Labour and Social Security and then Minister for Health in the government led by Giulio Andreotti from 1976 to 1979.

In 1981, she became the first woman to lead a public inquiry in Italy when she was asked to head the commission looking into the clandestine and illegal P2 masonic lodge, which had among its members prominent journalists, members of parliament, industrialists, and military leaders and was suspected of involvement in many scandals in pursuit of an ultra-right agenda.

Anselmi’s political views were heavily influenced by her upbringing in the Veneto during the years of Mussolini and war. She was from a comfortable background - her father was a pharmacist in Castelfranco Veneto, while her mother ran an osteria with her grandmother - but became aware of the threat to freedom posed by the Fascist system when he father was persecuted by Mussolini’s supporters for expressing socialist views.

The Via dei Martiri in Bassano del Grappa
celebrates the memory of the massacred partisans

The defining moment came in 1944, by which time she had finished high school in Castelfranco and was attending a Teaching Institute in nearby Bassano del Grappa. On September 26 of that year, aged 17, she and her fellow pupils were summoned to the town’s main square to witness the hanging of 31 young partisans, many of them not much older than her, by soldiers of the occupying German army.

The executions were intended to strike fear into anyone thinking of joining the growing resistance movement. On Anselmi, it had the opposite effect.

Under the nom de guerre Gabriella, she became a courier for the partisans, making journeys by bicycle of up to 70 miles (113km) a day on behalf of the Cesare Battisti brigade - named after the Italian patriot hanged by the Austrians in 1916 - smuggling weapons and ammunition and delivering messages.

It was extremely dangerous work. Her commander had told her that if she were caught, the best she could hope for was that she would be killed at once.

The experience made her understand what democracy meant and she resolved to spend her life defending the values it enshrined and the rights of the individual, especially those of women.

When the Second World War had ended, she studied literature at the Catholic University of Milan and became a primary school teacher. She held positions in Christian trade unions, including the primary teachers' union from 1948-55.

Anselmi chaired the inquiry into
the illegal P2 masonic lodge

Her career in politics began in earnest in 1959. Unlike other partisans drawn towards communism, Anselmi had joined the Christian Democracy Party at the end of the war and in 1959 she became a member of the party’s national council as head of youth programmes.

Re-elected five times as a deputy for the Venice-Treviso district, Anselmi served three times as under-secretary to the Department of Work and Social Services, and in 1976 she became the first woman to be a member of an Italian cabinet.

She is best known for having been the main proposer of Italian laws on equal opportunities. She passed a bill which recognised fathers as primary caregivers for their children and supported legislation on gender parity in employment conditions. She played a significant role in the introduction of Italy's National Health Service.

Throughout her career, Anselmi earned respect as a straight-talking campaigner, but also as a politician whose first thought was for her responsibility to the public, rather than the direction of her career.

When she was appointed to lead the P2 enquiry, it soon became clear that she had every intention of disturbing the established order and with so many high-profile and well-connected individuals under suspicion she found herself variously followed, threatened - dynamite was found at her house in Rome - and spied on as part of several attempts to warn her off.

Yet after four years and almost 500 sessions, the inquiry reported in 1984 and concluded that P2’s network of power represented a clear threat to democracy. It was a triumph for Anselmi, although much to her frustration and disappointment, her proposed reforms were left to gather dust.

In the broader picture, however, the work of Anselmi’s commission was an important part of the process of exposing corruption in the Italian political system, which would reach a conclusion a decade later with the dismantling of both the Christian Democrats and the Italian Socialist Party, along with the Social Democrats and the Liberals, with new groups emerging in their place.

After her retirement, Anselmi was mooted as a potential candidate for the presidency of Italy, although ill health counted against her. She died in Castelfranco in 2016 at the age of 89.

Travel tip:

Bassano del Grappa is an historic town at the foot of Monte Grappa in the Vicenza province of the Veneto, famous for inventing grappa, a spirit made from the grape skins and stalks left over from wine production, which is popular with Italians as an after dinner drink to aid digestion. The town’s main attraction is the Ponte degli Alpini, also known as the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge across the Brenta river designed in 1569 by Andrea Palladio. It has been rebuilt several times after being damaged or destroyed by wars but always to the original design. The painter Jacopo Bassano was born in Bassano del Grappa and took his name from the town.

Hotels in Bassano del Grappa by Booking.com

The walls of Castelfranco Veneto have been providing
protection for the old city since 1211

Travel tip:

Castelfranco Veneto, a small town midway between Treviso and Vicenza in the Veneto region, is notable for its fortified old city, which lies at the centre of the town surrounded by high walls and a moat. Inside are a number of streets and the old city’s Duomo, which contains an altarpiece by the town’s most famous son, the High Renaissance artist Giorgione, thought to have been painted between 1503 and 1504. Next to the Duomo is the Casa Giorgione, thought to have been the artist’s home, which is now a museum.

Search Tripadvisor for a hotel in Castelfranco Veneto

More reading:

How Giulio Andreotti became the great political survivor

Which names were on the P2 list?

Cesare Battisti - the patriot who fought to reclaim Trentino from Austrian rule

Also on this day:

1541: The birth of Francesco I, the Florentine ruler at the heart of a Medici murder mystery

1940: The birth of pop singer Mina, Italy's all-time best-selling female recording artist


Home

24 March

Guido Menasci - poet, librettist and biographer

Respected writer and historian who found fame from an opera

The writer Guido Menasci, who is best known as a co-author of the libretto for composer Pietro Mascagni’s successful opera Cavalleria rusticana but was also a respected historian, was born on this day in 1867 in the Tuscan port of Livorno. Menasci, a law graduate from the University of Pisa and briefly a prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Lucca, wrote for a number of literary magazines in Italy and beyond and produced a biography of the German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang Goethe that is considered a definitive work. Alongside fellow librettist Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, he collaborated with Mascagni on a number of operas, the most famous of which by some way was Cavalleria rusticana, which was performed for the first time in 1890, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Read more...

_________________________________________________________________

Dario Fo – writer and actor

Prolific playwright put the spotlight on corruption

Playwright and entertainer Dario Fo was born in Leggiuno Sangiano in Lombardy on this day in 1926. His plays have been widely performed and translated into many different languages. He is perhaps most well known for Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997. Fo’s early work is peppered with criticisms of the corruption, crime, and racism that affected life in Italy at the time. He later moved on to ridicule Forza Italia and Silvio Berlusconi. The writer’s most celebrated solo piece, Mistero Buffo, which he presented as though he were a travelling player in medieval times, was denounced as blasphemous by the Vatican because of material relating to the life and times of Christ. He wrote Accidental Death of an Anarchist, a play first performed in 1970, after the so-called 'accidental' fall from the window of a Milan police station of a man being questioned about a bomb attack on a bank. Read more...

__________________________________________________________________

Luigi Einaudi - politician and winemaker

Composer's grandfather was President of the Republic

The politician and winemaker Luigi Einaudi was born on this day in 1874 in Carrù, in what is now Piedmont. Einaudi, who is the grandfather of the musician and composer Ludovico Einaudi and the father of publisher Giulio Einaudi, was President of the new Italian Republic between 1948 and 1955, the second person to occupy the post. Initially a socialist, in 1919 he became co-founder of the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), which helped Mussolini win the 1924 general election. But after the socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti was murdered in 1924, Einaudi distanced himself from the Fascists and was among the signatories of the 1925 Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. Einaudi became part of Italy's governing National Council prior to the formation of the Republic in 1946, in which he served in several ministerial positions before his election as President.  He entered the wine business in 1897 at the age of 23 when he acquired an 18th century farmhouse called San Giacomo outside Dogliani, his mother's home town. Read more…

__________________________________________________________________

Mimmo Jodice - photographer

Camera work with shades of metaphysical art

Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Jodice, who has been a major influence on artistic photography in Italy for half a century, was born on this day in 1934 in Naples. Jodice, who was professor of photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli from 1969 to 1996, is best known for his atmospheric photographs of urban scenes, especially in his home city. Often these pictures reflected his fascination with how Italian cities habitually mix the present and the future with echoes of the past in their urban landscapes, with the incongruous juxtapositions of ancient and modern that were characteristic of metaphysical art occurring naturally as part of urban evolution. His books Vedute di Napoli (Views of Naples) and Lost in Seeing: Dreams and Visions of Italy have been international bestsellers and he has exhibited his work all over the world. Read more…

Home

Guido Menasci - poet, librettist and biographer

Respected writer and historian who found fame from an opera

Guido Menasci (right) with fellow librettist Giovanni
Targioni-Tozzetti, flanking composer Pietro Mascagni

The writer Guido Menasci, who is best known as a co-author of the libretto for composer Pietro Mascagni’s successful opera Cavalleria rusticana but was also a respected historian, was born on this day in 1867 in the Tuscan port of Livorno.

Menasci, a law graduate from the University of Pisa and briefly a prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Lucca, wrote for a number of literary magazines in Italy and beyond and produced a biography of the German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang Goethe that is considered a definitive work.

Fluent in French as well as Italian, he published books and gave lectures in Paris, often on the subject of art history, which was another of his fascinations.

Yet he was most famous for his work with Mascagni and his fellow librettist, Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, whom he met through his involvement with literary and cultural societies in Livorno, where all three grew up.

They collaborated on a number of operas, the most famous of which by some way was Cavalleria rusticana, which was performed for the first time in 1890, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.

The tenor Roberto Stagno and soprano
Gemma Bellincioni in the premiere
of Cavalleria rusticana in Rome

Based on a novella of the same name by Giovanni Verga, Cavalleria Rusticana is a simple story of betrayal and revenge involving two men and two women in a Sicilian village. Its success turned Mascagni, a modest music teacher, into a composer of international fame, not least for the beautiful intermezzo that has become a popular piece standing alone from the opera.

Menasci inherited his gift for writing from his father, who was a shopkeeper but also a published author of a number of books of verse and was a councillor in Livorno involved with education.

He began to write poetry at the same time as he was studying law, amusing his fellow students by composing summaries of lectures in verse.

Soon, his poetry was appearing regularly in the pages of publications such as Lettere e arti, a well-known Bolognese magazine founded by Enrico Panzacchi, others in Italy and in foreign periodicals such as the French daily Le Siècle , the Austrians Neue Freie Presse and Neue Wiener Tagblatt, and the English monthly The English Illustrated Magazine.

His collaboration with Targioni-Tozzetti, whose father, Ottaviano, had taught him literary studies at high school, began in 1899 and included the libretti for several other operas in addition to Cavalleria rusticana, including I Rantzau and Zanetto, also by Mascagni, and Umberto Giordano’s Regina Diaz. He and Targioni-Tozzetti also edited an Italian version of Werther by Jules Massenet.

At the same time, Menasci was working independently for other composers, such as the Germans August Scharrer and Ignaz Brüll. During a lengthy stay in Germany he compiled his biographical study of Goethe (1899), which was considered remarkable even among the many works dedicated to the German poet.

Menasci devoted much time to the study of other German writers and to figures in French literary and civil history. He wrote elegantly in French and was able to address conferences and deliver lectures in Paris with full confidence in his command of the language.

His versatility extended to writing stories for children and numerous studies devoted to the history of art.

In his later years, he returned to Livorno and became a professor at the prestigious Naval Academy. He died in Livorno in 1925 after a period of declining health.

Livorno's elegant promenade Terrazza Mascagni was
named after the composer Pietro Mascagni

Travel tip:

The port of Livorno is the second largest city in Tuscany after Florence, with a population of almost 160,000. Although it is a large commercial port with much related industry, it has many attractions, including an elegant sea front – the Terrazza Mascagni - an historic centre – the Venetian quarter – with canals, and a tradition of serving excellent seafood.  The Terrazza Mascagni is named after the composer Pietro Mascagni, who was born in Livorno. Menasci is commemorated rather less grandly in the name of a fairly nondescript street in a residential area close to the city’s main railway station.

Find a Livorno hotel with Booking.com

The Teatro Costanzi, in Via del Viminale, a short distance from
Piazza della Repubblica, is now known as Teatro dell'Opera

Travel tip:

Known today as the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma - Rome’s main opera house - the Teatro Costanzi was built in 1879-80. Financed by Domenico Costanzi, a contractor, it was designed by the Milanese architect Achille Sfondrini, a specialist in the building and renovation of theatres. Built on the site of the house of the Roman emperor Elagabalus, the theatre was inaugurated in November 1880 with a performance of Semiramide by Gioachino Rossini.  Sfondrini paid particular attention to the acoustics of the theatre, the dome of which was adorned with frescoes by Annibale Brugnoli. As well as the world premiere of Cavalleria rusticana, the theatre staged the first production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini in January 1900 and introduced Roman audiences to Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, Turandot and Il trittico, Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov among other compositions that would become famous.

More reading:

How one opera was the making of Mascagni

Why Leoncavallo's Pagliacci is one of the world's favourite operas

Hooligans wreck the Rome premiere of The Barber of Seville

Also on this day:

1874: The birth of politician and winemaker Luigi Einaudi

1926: The birth of controversial playwright Dario Fo

1934: The birth of photographer Mimmo Jodice

(Picture credit: Teatro Costanzi by Lalupa)

Home

23 March

Benito Mussolini and the birth of the Italian Fascists

Milan rally in 1919 launched the National Fascist Party

Italy's notorious dictator Benito Mussolini officially formed what would become known as the National Fascist Party on this day in 1919 at a rally in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro. A war veteran and former socialist activist who had moved towards a more nationalist political stance, Mussolini initially drew his followers together as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group). This group evolved into the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) two years later, sweeping to power in 1922 when King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war after 30,000 of Mussolini's supporters, the Blackshirts, marched on Rome, asked Mussolini to form a government.
The son of a blacksmith, Mussolini had been a leading figure in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and edited the left-wing newspaper Avanti. But he was expelled by the PSI because of his opposition to the party's neutral stance on the First World War and became disillusioned with orthodox socialism. Read more…

__________________________________________________________________

Ugo Tognazzi - comic actor

Achieved international fame through La Cage aux Folles

Ugo Tognazzi, the actor who achieved international fame in the film La Cage aux Folles, was born on this day in 1922 in Cremona. Renowned for his wide repertoire in portraying comic characters, Tognazzi made more than 62 films and worked with many of Italy's top directors. Along with Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi and Nino Manfredi, Tognazzi was regarded as one of the four top stars of commedia all'Italiana - comedy the Italian way - in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1981 he won the award for best actor at the Cannes International Film Festival for his role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Tragedia di un Uomo Ridicolo (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man). His work was widely acclaimed in Italy, but it was not until he was cast in the role of homosexual cabaret owner Renato Baldi in the French director Édouard Molinaro's 1979 movie La Cage Aux Folles that he became known outside Italy. Read more...

__________________________________________________________________

Lorenzino de’ Medici - assassin

Mystery over motive for killing cousin

Lorenzino de’ Medici, who became famous for the assassination of his cousin, the Florentine ruler Alessandro de’ Medici, was born on this day in 1514 in Florence. The killing took place on the evening of January 6, 1537, after Lorenzino had lured Alessandro to his apartments in Florence on the promise of a night of passion with a woman who had agreed to meet him there. Lorenzino, sometimes known as Lorenzaccio, left Alessandro alone, promising to return with the woman in question only to come back instead with his servant, Piero. They attacked Alessandro with swords and daggers and killed him. In a written defence of his crime, Lorenzino claimed he committed the crime out of a love of liberty, ridding Florence of a leader generally acknowledged as a tyrant, but some historians believe he had other, less noble motives. Read more...

Home

22 March

'La Castiglione' – model and secret agent

Beautiful woman helped the cause of Italian unification

Virginia Oldoini, who became known as La Castiglione, was born on this day in 1837 in Florence. At the age of 17 she married the Count of Castiglione, who was 12 years older than her. Her cousin was Camillo, Count of Cavour, who was the prime minister to Victor Emmanuel II, the King of Sardinia, later to become the first King of a united Italy. When the Countess travelled with her husband to Paris in 1855, Cavour asked her to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoleon III. In time, she became Napoleon III’s mistress and as his confidante was able to influence Franco-Italian political relations. After their relationship ended, she settled in France, where she modelled for photographers and formed liaisons with aristocrats, financiers and politicians while cultivating the image of a mysterious femme fatale, even persuading the German leader Otto Von Bismarck not to occupy Paris. Read more…

___________________________________________________________________

Michele Sindona - fraudster and killer

Failed banker ordered murder of investigating lawyer

The shadowy banker Michele Sindona, who had links to underworld figures in Italy and America as well as prominent politicians, died in hospital in the Lombardy town of Voghera on this day in 1986. His death in his prison cell, attributed to cyanide poisoning, came four days after he had been sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the killing of a lawyer investigating the collapse of his $450 million financial empire. His own lawyer claimed he had been murdered but the circumstances of his death pointed towards suicide. During his chequered career, which also saw him sentenced to 25 years' jail in America for fraud following the failure of the Franklin National Bank on Long Island, Sindona had links with Mafia bosses in Sicily and New York, with the illegal Propaganda Due masonic lodge, the controversial head of the Vatican Bank, Paul Marcinkus, and Roberto Calvi, whose body was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1980 following the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, of which he was president. Read more...

___________________________________________________________________

Nino Manfredi - actor and director

Totò fan became maestro of commedia all’Italiana

The actor and director Saturnino ‘Nino’ Manfredi, who would become known as the last great actor of the commedia all’Italiana genre, was born on this day in 1921 in Castro dei Volsci in Lazio. Manfredi made more than 100 movies, often playing marginalised working-class figures in the bittersweet comedies that characterised the genre, which frequently tackled important social issues and poked irreverent fun at some of the more absurd aspects of Italian life, in particular the suffocating influence of the church. As a favourite of directors such as Dino Risi, Luigi Comencini, Ettore Scola and Franco Brusati, he realised his dream of following in the footsteps of his boyhood idol Totò, the Neapolitan comic actor whose eccentric characters took enormous liberties in mocking Italian institutions. Along with Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi he was seen as a true maestro of commedia all’Italiana. Read more...

Home

21 March

Alberto Marvelli - Rimini's Good Samaritan

Heroic deeds helped victims of bombing raids

Alberto Marvelli, who came to be seen as a modern day Good Samaritan after risking his life repeatedly to help the victims of devastating air raids in the Second World War, was born on this day in 1918 in Ferrara. He died in 1946 at the age of only 28 when he was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle but in his short life identified himself to many as a true hero. Marvelli's acts of heroism occurred mainly in Rimini, his adopted home town, which suffered heavy bombing from the Allies due to its proximity to the German defensive fortifications known as the Gothic or Green Line. As well as giving aid and comfort to the wounded and dying and to those whose homes and possessions had been destroyed, Marvelli also rescued many Rimini citizens from trains destined for concentration camps. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004. Read more…

_________________________________________________________________

Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello – Educator

Nun who promoted the rights of girls to a quality education

The Feast Day of Saint Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello, who founded the Benedictine Sisters of Providence, is celebrated on this day, the anniversary of her death in 1858. Benedetta carried out pioneering work by rescuing poor and abandoned girls and promoting their rights to a good education. She was made a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2002. Benedetta was born in 1791 in Genoa but her family later moved to Pavia. She dedicated herself to the education of young girls who had been abandoned or who were at risk in the area, eventually opening a school. She later founded the Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Providence, which concentrated on the education of young girls. Read more...

_________________________________________________________________

Angela Merici – Saint

Nun dedicated her life to educating girls

Angela Merici, who founded the monastic Ursuline Order, was born on this day in 1474 in Desenzano del Garda. The Ursulines are the oldest order of women in the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to teaching and were the first to work outside a convent in the community. Merici became deeply religious after she was orphaned at 15. It is claimed she became suddenly blind on the island of Crete on her way to the Holy Land but was cured of her blindness on her return, while praying at exactly the same place.  where she had been afflicted. Merici and 28 of her followers formed the Company of St Ursula, named after a fourth century martyr, in 1535. Their idea was to provide for the Christian education of girls in order to restore the family and, through the family, the whole of Christian society. Merici was beatified in 1768 and canonised in 1807. Read more…

Home

Pope Pius VII crowned

Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Pope Pius VII,
which is kept at the Louvre in Paris

Last papal conclave to take place outside Rome

Barnaba Niccolo Maria Luigi Chiaramonti was crowned Pope Pius VII on this day in 1800 in Venice.

A papier-mâché version of the papal tiara had to be used as the French Revolutionary army had taken the original with them when they took the previous pope, Pius VI, to France as a prisoner.

French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte had invaded Rome in 1796 and seized Pius VI, who was taken to Valence, where he died in 1799.

The conclave to elect his successor met on 30 November that year in the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio in Venice. This was because Pius VI had issued an ordinance in 1798 saying that the city where the largest number of cardinals were to be found at the time of his death was to be the scene of the subsequent election. When he died there were 34 cardinals in Venice and others soon joined them.

After the conclave had lasted three months and the cardinals had been unable to agree on a successor, Chiaramonti was suggested as a compromise candidate and was elected. It was the last conclave to be held outside Rome.

The arrest of Pius VII in Rome in 1809, after which
he remained in exile until 1814

He was crowned in Venice on March 21 and then left the city by sea to return to Rome.

Chiaramonti was born in 1742 in Cesena, then part of the Papal States. He became a Benedictine and later was made Cardinal and Bishop of Imola by Pius VI, who was one of his relatives.

After his election, Pius VII wanted to make peace with Napoleon and negotiated the Concordat of 1801, which established reorganisation of the dioceses and declared Roman Catholicism as France’s chief religion.

But it was not long before his relationship with Napoleon deteriorated. Rome was occupied by French troops in 1808 and Napoleon declared the Papal States annexed to France.

Pius VII excommunicated the invaders in 1809 but was then taken prisoner by them and remained in exile until 1814.

After his release, Pius VII was greatly acclaimed on his journey back to Rome. The Congress of Vienna held between 1814 and 1815 restored nearly all the Papal States, including Rome, to him.

Pius VII died in 1823 after fracturing his hip in a fall in the papal apartments. After being briefly interred in the Vatican grottoes, Pope Pius VII was buried inside a tomb in St Peter’s Basilica.

In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI granted Pius VII the title, Servant of God.

The Basilica and former monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore
is one of the most famous features of the Venetian lagoon

Travel tip:

The San Giorgio monastery, where the election of Pius VII took place, was a Benedictine monastery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. It stands next to the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. The monastery building currently serves as the headquarters of the Cini Foundation, a cultural foundation set up in 1951 in memory of Count Giorgio Cini. The church itself was designed by Andrea Palladio, and built between 1566 and 1610 in the classical Renaissance style. Its brilliant white marble gleams above the blue water of the lagoon.

The reading room at the Biblioteca Maltestiana in Cesena,
which was the first public library in Europe

Travel tip:

Cesena, the birthplace of Pope Pius VII, is a city in Emilia-Romagna, south of Ravenna and west of Rimini. One of the main sights in the town is the 15th century Biblioteca Maltestiana, which houses many valuable manuscripts and was the first public library in Europe. It is now a listed UNESCO World Heritage site. The city's castle, the Rocca Malatestiana, was used by Cesare Borgia as a jail for Caterina Sforza. It is octagonal, with two main towers.



More reading:

The papal appointment that sparked the Western Schism

The pope who excommunicated Henry VIII

How ruthless Sixtus V cleaned up Rome's criminal underworld

Also on this day:

The Feast Day of Saint Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello

1474: The birth of Saint Angela Merici

1918: The birth of Alberto Marvelli, Rimini's wartime 'Good Samaritan'

(Picture credits: San Giorgio by Nau Kofi; Cesena library by Boschetti marco 65; via Wikimedia Commons)

Home