Dacia Maraini – writer

Long career of a feminist novelist and playwright

Dacia Maraini spent part of her childhood
as a prisoner in wartime Japan

Novelist and short story writer Dacia Maraini was born on this day in 1936 in Fiesole in Tuscany.

An Italian writer who is widely recognised abroad, Dacia Maraini is also a respected critic, poet, journalist and playwright. She established la Maddalena, the first Italian theatrical group composed exclusively of women.

The themes of limitation and oppression in Maraini’s writing have their roots in her childhood years, which she spent in a concentration camp in Japan. She then went to live in Sicily, which she has also described as an oppressive setting.

Her writing expresses the concerns of the Italian feminist movement, focusing on issues such as abortion, sexual violence, prostitution and the mother/daughter relationship.

Many of her works are autobiographical and are written in the form of diaries and letters.

Maraini lived with the writer Alberto Moravia from 1962 until 1983 and was a close friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas.

She was the daughter of Sicilian princess Topazia Aliata di Salaparuta, who was an artist, and Fosco Maraini, a Florentine ethnologist.

When she was still a young child, Maraini’s family moved to Japan to escape Fascism in 1938. They were interned in a Japanese concentration camp from 1943 to 1946 for refusing to recognise Mussolini’s Republic of Salò.

Dacia Maraini's novels have won her several
prestigious literary prizes

After the war, the family went to live in Sicily, in the town of Bagheria in the province of Palermo, a few kilometres from the city centre.

Maraini was educated at a boarding school in Florence. After her parents separated and her father moved to Rome, Maraini joined him when she was 18.

She married Lucio Pozzi, a Milanese painter, but they separated after four years. She then met Moravia, who became her long-term partner.

In 1966 she formed a theatre company with Moravia to put on new Italian plays, including her own works. This led to her founding Teatro della Maddalena, for women only, a few years later.  Maraini went on to direct films, write screenplays and also to appear in films.

She became a prolific writer, having produced her first novel, La vacanza, in 1963. Forty years later, her novel Chiara di Assisi – Elogio della Disobbedianza, was published in 2013.

Maraini has won many literary prizes, including the Fregene prize in 1985 for her novel, Isolina, and the premio Camiello in 1990 for her historical novel, la Lunga Vita di Marianna Ucria.

She celebrates her 84th birthday today.

Fiesole's cathedral is said to have been built
on the site of the martyrdom of St Romulus

Travel tip:

Fiesole, a town of about 14,000 inhabitants situated in an elevated position about 8km (5 miles) northeast of Florence, has since the 14th century been a popular place to live for wealthy Florentines and even to this day remains the richest municipality in Florence.  Formerly an important Etruscan settlement, it was also a Roman town of note, of which the remains of a theatre and baths are still visible.  Fiesole's cathedral, built in the 11th century, is supposedly built over the site of the martyrdom of St. Romulus. In the middle ages, Fiesole was as powerful as Florence until it was conquered by the latter in 1125 after a series of wars.

The Villa Palagonia is a great example of
Baroque architecture in Sicily

Travel tip:

Bagheria, where Maraini lived with her family in Sicily, was the subject of her book, Bagheria, published in 1995, which condemns the destruction of Sicily’s artistic and architectural treasures in its transition into a modern city. From the 17th century, when Giuseppe Branciforti, Prince of Butera and former Viceroy of Sicily, built a large villa there, the area, about 10km east of the centre of Palermo, became a preferred location for the vacation homes of the city’s elites.  The Villa Valguarnera and Villa Palagonia, both designed by the architect Tommaso Napoli, were two of the most striking Baroque residences, while the Villa Villarosa were built on more neoclassical lines. Unregulated building in the 20th and 21st centuries has rather diminished the town’s former splendour.

Also on this day:

1868: The death of composer Gioachino Rossini

1894: The death of Sister Agostina Livia Pietrantoni, a nurse murdered by a patient later made a saint

1907: The birth of Princess Giovanna of Italy - Tsaritsa of Bulgaria

1914: The birth of film director Alberto Lattuada

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12 November

Giulio Lega – First World War hero

Flying ace survived war to look after health of Italy’s politicians

Credited with five aerial victories during the First World War, the pilot Giulio Lega was born on this day in 1892 in Florence.  After the war he completed his medical studies and embarked on a long career as physician to Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.  Lega had been a medical student when he was accepted by the Italian army for officer training in 1915.  Because he was unusually tall, he became an ‘extended infantryman’ in the Grenadiers. He made his mark with them at the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo, for which he was awarded the War Merit Cross for valour. The following year he won a Bronze Medal for Military Valour in close-quarters combat, which was awarded to him on the battlefield.  Lega volunteered to train as a pilot in 1916 and was sent to Malpensa near Milan. After gaining his licence he was sent on reconnaissance duty during which he earned a Silver Medal for Military Valour. After completing fighter pilot training he joined 76a Squadriglia and went on to fly 46 combat sorties with them.  His first two victories in the air, near Col d’Asiago and over Montello, were shared with two other Italian pilots. During the last Austro-Hungarian offensive he downed a Hansa-Brandenburg C1 over Passagno single-handedly.  Read more…

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Silvio Berlusconi resigns as PM

Financial crisis brings down 'untouchable' premier 

Silvio Berlusconi resigned as Prime Minister of Italy on this day in 2011. A controversial, polarising figure, he had dominated Italian politics for 17 years.  With Italy in the grip of the economic crisis that had brought severe consequences to other parts of the Euro zone, Berlusconi lost his parliamentary majority a few days earlier and promised to resign when austerity measures demanded by Brussels were passed by both houses of the Italian parliament.  The Senate had approved the measures the day before. When the lower house voted 380-26 in favour, Berlusconi was true to his word, meeting president Giorgio Napoletano within two hours to tender his resignation.  His last journey from the Palazzo Chigi to the Palazzo Quirinale, the respective official residences of the prime minister and the president, was not a dignified one.  When he arrived at the Quirinale, he was booed by a large and somewhat hostile crowd that had gathered, entering the building to shouts of 'buffoon' and 'mafioso'.  A gathering of musicians and singers serenaded him with a version of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.  After the meeting concluded, he left by a side entrance to avoid further barracking.  Read more…

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Umberto Giordano - opera composer

Death of the musician remembered for Andrea Chenier

Composer Umberto Giordano died on this day in 1948 in Milan at the age of 81.  He is perhaps best remembered for his opera, Andrea Chenier, a dramatic work about liberty and love during the French Revolution, which was based on the real life story of the romantic French poet, André Chenier.  The premiere of the opera was held at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1896. At the time, its success propelled Giordano into the front rank of up-and-coming Italian composers alongside Pietro Mascagni, to whom he is often compared, and Giacomo Puccini.  Another of Giordano’s works widely acclaimed by both the public and the critics is the opera Fedora.  This had its premiere in 1898 at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. A rising young tenor, Enrico Caruso, played the role of Fedora’s lover, Loris. The opera was a big success and is still performed today.  Some of Giordano’s later works are less well-known but they have achieved the respect of the critics and music experts and are occasionally revived by opera companies.  Giordano was born in Foggia in Puglia in August 1867. He studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples.  Read more…

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Treaty of Rapallo 1920

Agreement solves dispute over former Austrian territory

The Treaty of Rapallo between Italy and the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was signed on this day in 1920 in Rapallo near Genoa in Liguria.  It was drawn up to solve the dispute over territories formerly controlled by Austria in the upper Adriatic and Dalmatia, which were known as the Austrian Littoral.  There had been tension between Italy and the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes since the end of the First World War when the Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved.  Italy had claimed the territories assigned to it by the secret London Pact of 1915 between Italy and the Triple Entente.  The Pact, signed on 26 April 2015, stipulated that in the event of victory in the First World War, Italy was to gain territory formerly controlled by Austria in northern Dalmatia.  These territories had a mixed population but Slovenes and Croats accounted for more than half.  The London Pact was nullified by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the war after pressure from American President Woodrow Wilson. Therefore the objective of the Treaty of Rapallo two years later was to find a compromise.  Read more…

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11 November

Victor Emmanuel III

Birth of the King who ruled Italy through two world wars

Italy’s longest reigning King, Victor Emmanuel III (Vittorio Emanuele III di Savoia), was born on this day in Naples in 1869.  The only child of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy, he was given the title of Prince of Naples. He became King of Italy in 1900 after his father was assassinated in Monza.  During the reign of Victor Emmanuel III, Italy was involved in two world wars and experienced the rise and fall of Fascism.  At the height of his popularity he was nicknamed by the Italians Re soldato (soldier King) and Re vittorioso (victorious King) because of Italy’s success in battle during the First World War. He was also sometimes called sciaboletta (little sabre) as he was only five feet (1.53m) tall.  Italy had remained neutral at the start of the First World War but signed treaties to go into the war on the side of France, Britain and Russia in 1915. Victor Emmanuel III enjoyed popular support as a result of visiting areas in the north affected by the fighting while his wife, Queen Elena, helped the nurses care for the wounded.  But the instability after the First World War led to Mussolini’s rise to power. Read more…

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Luca Zingaretti - actor

Found fame as TV detective Inspector Montalbano

The actor Luca Zingaretti, best known for his portrayal of Inspector Montalbano in the TV series based on Andrea Camilleri's crime novels, was born on this day in 1961 in Rome.  The Montalbano mysteries, now into a 10th series, began broadcasting on Italy's RAI network in 1999 and has become a hit in several countries outside Italy, including France, Spain, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.  Zingaretti has played the famously maverick Sicilian detective in all 28 feature-length episodes to date, each one based on a novel or short story collection by the Sicilian-born author Camilleri, now in his 92nd year but still writing.  Although he had established himself as a stage actor and had appeared in a number of films, it was the part of Montalbano that established Zingaretti's fame.  Yet he had hoped to become a star on another kind of stage as a professional footballer.  Growing up in the Magliana neighbourhood in the south-west of Rome, he spent as much time as he could out in the streets kicking a ball and played for a number of junior teams.  Read more…

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Andrea Zani – violinist and composer

Musician who ushered in the new classical era

Andrea Teodora Zani, one of the earliest Italian composers to move away from the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1696 in Casalmaggiore in the province of Cremona in Lombardy.  Casalmaggiore, nicknamed ‘the little Venice on the Po’, was a breeding ground for musical talent at this time and Zani was an exact contemporary of Giuseppe Guarneri, the most famous member of the Guarneri family of violin makers in Cremona. He was just a bit younger than the violinist composers, Francesco Maria Veracini, Giuseppe Tartini and Pietro Locatelli.  Zani’s father, an amateur violinist, gave him his first violin lessons and he later received instruction from Giacomo Civeri, a local musician, and Carlo Ricci, who was at the time court musician to the Gonzaga family at their palace in Guastalla.  After Zani played in front of Antonio Caldara, who was Capellmeister for the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles in nearby Mantua, he was invited to go to Vienna to be a violinist in the service of the Habsburgs.  A lot of Zani’s work has survived in both published and manuscript form, some of it having been recovered from European libraries. His early works show the influence of Antonio Vivaldi. Read more…

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Germano Mosconi – sports writer and presenter

Short-tempered journalist who became the news

Germano Mosconi, who became a well-known television personality, was born on this day in 1932 in San Bonifacio in the Veneto.  Mosconi became notorious for his short temper and swearing on air and was regarded as a bit of a character on local television. But he became known all over Italy and throughout the world after a video of him someone posted anonymously on the internet went viral.  In the 1980s Mosconi delivered sports reports on Telenuovo in Verona and in 1982 he received the Cesare d’Oro international award for journalistic merit.  But he later became known for his excessive swearing and blaspheming. The anonymous video showed his irate reactions to various problems he encountered while broadcasting, such as people unexpectedly entering the studio, background noises and illegible writing on the news sheets he received.  His use of swear words, blasphemy and insults in both Italian and Venetian dialect and his other humorous antics made the video compulsive viewing all over the world.  Read more…

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10 November

Lord Byron in Venice

Romantic English poet finds renewed inspiration

Aristocratic English poet Lord Byron and his friend, John Cam Hobhouse, arrived in Venice for the first time on this day in 1816.  They put up at the Hotel Grande Bretagne on the Grand Canal and embarked on a few days of tourism.  But it was not long before Byron decided to move into an apartment just off the Frezzeria, a street near St Mark's Square, and settled down to enjoy life in the city that was to be his home for the next three years.  Byron has become one of Venice’s legends, perhaps the most famous, or infamous, of all its residents.  Tourists who came afterwards expected to see Venice through his eyes. Even the art critic, John Ruskin, has admitted that on his first visit he had come in search of Byron’s Venice.  Byron once wrote that Venice had always been ‘the greenest island of my imagination’ and he never seems to have been disappointed by it.  He also wrote in a letter to one of his friends that Venice was ‘one of those places that before he saw them he thought he already knew’. He said he appreciated the silence of the Venetian canals and the ‘gloomy gaiety’ of quietly passing gondolas.  Read more…

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Ennio Morricone - film music maestro

Composer who scored some of cinema's greatest soundtracks

Ennio Morricone, who composed some of the most memorable soundtracks in the history of the cinema, was born on this day in 1928 in Rome.  Morricone has written more than 500 film and television scores, winning countless awards.  Best known for his associations with the Italian directors Sergio Leone, Giuseppe Tornatore and Giuliano Montaldo, he has also worked among others with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Brian de Palma, Roland Joffé, Franco Zeffirelli and Quentin Tarantino, whose 2015 Western The Hateful Eight finally won Morricone an Oscar that many considered long overdue.  Among his finest soundtracks are those he wrote for Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy in the 1960s, for the Leone gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America two decades later, for Joffé's The Mission and De Palma's The Untouchables.  He composed the score for Tornatore's hauntingly poignant Cinema Paradiso and for Maddalena, a somewhat obscure 1971 film by the Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz that included the acclaimed Come Maddalena and Chi Mai, which later reached number two in the British singles chart after being used for the 1981 TV series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George.  Read more…

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Vanessa Ferrari - gymnast

First Italian woman to win a World Championship gold

The gymnast Vanessa Ferrari, who in 2006 became the first Italian female competitor to win a gold medal at the World Championships of artistic gymnastics, was born on this day in 1990, in the town of Orzinuovi in Lombardy.  Ferrari won the all-around gold - consisting of uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise - at the World Championships in Aarhus in Denmark when she was only 15 years old. It remains the only artistic gymnastics world title to be won by an Italian woman.  Earlier in 2006, Ferrari had picked up her first gold medal of the European Championships at Volos in Greece as Italy won the all-around team event.  Naturally small in stature, Ferrari was inspired to take up gymnastics by watching the sport on television as a child, when the sport was dominated by Russian and Romanian athletes.  With the help of her Bulgarian-born mother, Galya, who made many sacrifices to help her daughter fulfil her ambitions, Ferrari joined the Brixia gym in the city of Brescia. Brixia was co-founded by Enrico Casella, a former rugby player who was technical director of the Italian women’s gymnastics team at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.  Read more…

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Gaetano Bresci - assassin

Anarchist who gunned down a king

Gaetano Bresci, the man who assassinated the Italian king Umberto I, was born on this day in 1869 in Coiano, a small village near Prato in Tuscany.  He murdered Umberto in Monza, north of Milan, on July 29, 1900, while the monarch was handing out prizes at an athletics event.  Bresci mingled with the crowd but then sprang forward and shot Umberto three or four times with a .32 revolver.  Often unpopular with his subjects despite being nicknamed Il Buono (the good), Umberto had survived two previous attempts on his life, in 1878 and 1897.  Bresci was immediately overpowered and after standing trial in Milan he was given a life sentence of hard labour on Santo Stefano island, a prison notorious for its anarchist and socialist inmates.  He had been closely involved with anarchist groups and had served a brief jail term earlier for anarchist activity but had a motive for killing Umberto.  A silk weaver by profession, he was living in the United States, where he had emigrated in the 1890s and had settled in New Jersey with his Irish-born wife.  Working as a weaver in a mill in Paterson, New Jersey, Bresci and others set about propagating anarchist ideas among the large local Italian immigrant population. Read more…

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Charles Ferdinand - Prince of the Two Sicilies

The heir presumptive whose marriage earned him exile

Charles Ferdinand, the Bourbon Prince of the Two Sicilies and Prince of Capua and heir presumptive to the crown of King Ferdinand II, was born on this day in 1811 in Palermo.  Prince Charles, the second son of King Francis I of the Two Sicilies and Maria Isabella of Spain, gave up his claim to the throne when he married a commoner, after his brother, King Ferdinand II, issued a decree upholding their father’s insistence that blood-royal members of the kingdom did not marry beneath their status.  In 1835, at which time Ferdinand II had not fathered any children and Charles therefore held the status of heir presumptive, Charles met and fell in love with a beautiful Irish woman, Penelope Smyth, who was visiting Naples.  Penelope Smyth was the daughter of Grice Smyth of Ballynatray, County Waterford, and sister of Sir John Rowland Smyth. Ferdinand II forbade their union, in accordance with his father’s wishes, but the lovers would not be parted.  On January 12, 1836 the couple eloped. Two months later, Ferdinand II issued the decree that forbade their marriage but three weeks after that Charles and Penelope reached Gretna Green, the town just over the border between England and Scotland.  Read more…

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9 November

NEW - The rebuilding of Cervia

Historic town is now a popular seaside resort

Pope Innocent XII, as Head of the Papal States, signed a document ordering the rebuilding of the town of Cervia in the Emilia-Romagna region, on this day in 1697.  It was the second time in its history that Cervia had been moved and rebuilt and therefore it has become known as ‘the town of three sites’.  Present day Cervia, in the province of Ravenna, is a popular seaside resort with a 9km (5.5 miles) stretch of sandy beaches along the Adriatic coast, about 30km (19 miles) north of Rimini. The town was originally known as Ficocle and was probably of Greek origin. It lay near the coast halfway between what is often referred to as New Cervia and the city of Ravenna.  However, the town of Ficocle was completely destroyed in 709 as punishment for being an ally of Ravenna and therefore against Byzantium. It was later rebuilt in a safer location.  Cervia became a strong city with three protected entrances, a Prior’s Palace, seven churches and a fortress. It was during this period that the name of the city was changed from Ficocle to Cervia.  There is a legend that the Bishop of Lodi was walking in the pine forest surrounding the town one day and a deer (cervo), recognising him as a representative of God, knelt before him.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Panini - entrepreneur

News vendor who started football sticker craze

Giuseppe Panini, the entrepreneur and businessman who created an international craze for collecting football stickers, was born on this day in 1921 in the village of Pozza in Emilia-Romagna, not far from Modena.  Since the stickers’ first appearance in Italy in the 1960s and the first World Cup sticker album in 1970 took the concept into an international marketplace, Panini has grown into a publishing company that in 2017 generated sales in excess of €536 million ($643 million US) in more than 120 countries, employing more than 1000 people worldwide.  Giuseppe Panini, who died in 1996, grew immensely wealthy as a result, selling the business in 1989 for a sum said to be around £96 million, the equivalent of £232 million (€266 million; $303 million US) today, after which he spent the remaining years of his life building on an already established reputation for philanthropy.  He came from humble working-class origins and left school at the age of 11. His father, Antonio, worked at the military academy in the city of Modena. Life changed for the family, however, when in 1945 they acquired the license to operate the popular newsstand near the cathedral in the centre of the city.  Read more…

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Niccolò III d’Este – Marquis of Ferrara

Soldier who built up the importance of Ferrara

The military leader - condottiero in Italian - Niccolò III d’Este was born on this day in 1383 in Ferrara.  He was the son of Alberto d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara, and became ruler of the city when he was just ten years old on the death of his father, under the protection of Venice, Florence and Bologna.  A relative, Azzo d’Este, who was working for Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, tried to attack Ferrara, but Venice, Florence and Bologna helped Niccolò see off the challenge to his rule.  In 1403 Niccolò joined the league formed against the Duke of Milan and was appointed Captain General of the Papal Army by Pope Boniface IX.  At the age of 13, Niccolò was married for the first time, to Gigliola da Carrara, the daughter of Francesco II da Carrara, Lord of Padua.  Although his first marriage was childless, he fathered an illegitimate son, Ugo, in 1405.  After the death of his wife, he was married for a second time to Parisina Malatesta, the daughter of Andrea Malatesta, and they had three children.  In 1425, Niccolò had Parisina and Ugo executed on charges of adultery, accusing them of having an affair.  Read more…

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Alessandro Del Piero – World Cup winner

Former striker is all-time record goalscorer for Juventus

The retired footballer Alessandro Del Piero, who won the World Cup with Italy in 2006 and holds the club records for most goals (290) and most appearances (705) for Juventus, was born on this day in 1974 in Conegliano in the Veneto.  Regarded as one of Italy’s greatest players, his overall goals tally of 346 in Italian football in all competitions has been bettered only once in history, by Silvio Piola, who was a member of Italy’s winning team in the 1938 World Cup and who scored 390 goals in his career.  Del Piero also finished his career having scored at least one goal in every competition in which he took part.  Del Piero was a member of six Serie A title-winning Juventus teams between 1995 and 2012 and would have had eight winner’s medals had the club not been stripped of the 2005 and 2006 titles due to the so-called Calciopoli corruption scandal.  He also won a Champions League medal in 1996 after Marcello Lippi’s team beat Ajax on penalties to lift the trophy in Rome.  Del Piero played in three World Cups but was never able to reproduce his club form more than fleetingly in any of them.  He started only one match in the 2006 triumph of the Azzurri in Germany.  Read more…

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Enrico De Nicola - politician

Italy’s ‘reluctant’ first president

The man who was to become the first president of the Republic of Italy was born on this day in Naples in 1877.  Enrico De Nicola studied law at Naples University and went on to become one of the most esteemed criminal lawyers in Italy. He also worked as a journalist writing about legal issues.  He later joined the Italian liberal party and was elected to the Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies) in 1909.  He held minor government posts until the advent of Fascism when he retired from public life to concentrate on his legal career.   De Nicola took an interest in politics again after Mussolini’s fall from power in 1943.  At first King Victor Emmanuel III tried to extricate the monarchy from its association with the Fascists and his son Umberto became Lieutenant General of the Realm and took over most of the functions of the Sovereign. Victor Emmanuel later abdicated and his son became King Umberto II.  But after a constitutional referendum was held in Italy, the country became a republic in 1946.  Umberto went into exile and Enrico De Nicola was elected head of state on 28 June 1946 with 80 per cent of the votes.  He is remembered by his colleagues as a modest man who was unsure at the time whether to accept the nomination.  Read more…

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The rebuilding of Cervia

Historic town is now a popular seaside resort

A copy of the plan for the new Cervia that was
commissioned by Pope Innocent XII in 1697

Pope Innocent XII, as Head of the Papal States, signed a document ordering the rebuilding of the town of Cervia in the Emilia-Romagna region, on this day in 1697.

It was the second time in its history that Cervia had been moved and rebuilt and therefore it has become known as ‘the town of three sites’.

Present day Cervia, in the province of Ravenna, is a popular seaside resort with a 9km (5.5 miles) stretch of sandy beaches along the Adriatic coast, about 30km (19 miles) north of Rimini.

The town was originally known as Ficocle and was probably of Greek origin. It lay near the coast halfway between what is often referred to as New Cervia and the city of Ravenna.

However, the town of Ficocle was completely destroyed in 709 as punishment for being an ally of Ravenna and therefore against Byzantium. It was later rebuilt in a safer location.

Cervia became a strong city with three protected entrances, a Prior’s Palace, seven churches and a fortress. It was during this period that the name of the city was changed from Ficocle to Cervia.

Cervia's Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta was
built in accordance with the 1697 plan

There is a legend that the Bishop of Lodi was walking in the pine forest surrounding the town one day and a deer (cervo), recognising him as a representative of God, knelt before him as a sign of devotion. However, another theory is that the town got its name from the enormous piles of salt (acervi) gathered from the salt pans located there.

Cervia’s coat of arms has an image of a golden deer kneeling on the ground, which is an indication that the story of the bishop and the deer is the most popular theory.

By the 17th century the salt pans had turned into marshland and the air had become unhygienic, killing off many of Cervia’s inhabitants.

Therefore, on 9 November 1697, Pope Innocent XII signed a document containing the order and regulations for the building of a new Cervia in a location that would be healthier for the residents at a cost of 40,000 scudi.

The document stipulated the exact number of houses to be built, and the position of the Cathedral, the Bishop’s Palace and the prisons. There were also plans for huge silos for the storing of the salt produced in the town.

Cervia boasts a long stretch of wide, sandy
beaches extending for 9km 

Travel tip:

Cervia has grown from being just a fishing and salt producing town into one of the major seaside resorts on the Adriatic coast, with excellent beaches at outlying Milano Marittima, Pinarella and Tagliata. All building in the town has been governed by strict regulations in order to conserve the natural pine forests. Nightclubs and outdoor dance venues have been banned from the historic centre out of consideration for the residents. A typical local dish served in the restaurants is Tortelli Verdi stuffed with ricotta and served with butter and sage.

Cervia's San Michele Tower, next to the salt
museum, predates the new town

Travel tip:

In the centre of the town, the Duomo di Cervia, or Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, is a Baroque building begun in 1699 and consecrated in 1702. It was designed by Francesco Fontana, son of the Roman architect, Carlo Fontana, but the marble veneer he had planned for the façade was never added. The San Michele Tower in Via Arnaldo Evangelisti dates back to 1691, before the rebuilding of the new Cervia, when it was erected to defend the town from Turks and Saracens. Its design was based on an old drawing by Michelangelo, who had sketched a prototype for a defensive building to protect the coastal areas of the Papal States. You can also visit an old tower housing a Salt Museum, (MUSA) in Via Nazario Sauro, which was founded by the Salt Workers Association to keep the memory of working in Cervia’s salt pans alive by displaying old tools, documents and photographs.

Also on this day:

1383: The birth of military leader Niccolò III d’Este

1877: The birth of Enrico De Nicola, the first president of Italy

1921: The birth of football stickers pioneer Giuseppe Panini

1974: The birth of footballer Alessandro Del Piero

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8 November

NEW - Sandro Mazzola - footballer

Tragedy instilled determination to succeed

The footballer Sandro Mazzola, widely regarded as one of Italy’s greatest players after a glittering career with Internazionale of Milan and the Italian national team, was born on this day in 1942 in Turin.  A forward or attacking midfield player with all the attributes of the world’s best players, Mazzola won four Serie A titles and two European Cups for Inter-Milan, largely under the coaching of Helenio Herrero. His goals tally in Serie A games alone was 116 in 417 appearances. He was capped 70 times by the national team, part of the side that won the 1968 European championships and reached the World Cup final in 1970.  Mazzola always saw his success as a tribute to his father, Valentino, a brilliant player who was captain of the Torino team that was almost entirely wiped out in the Superga air disaster of 1949, when a plane carrying the team back from a friendly in Portugal crashed in thick fog into the rear wall of the Basilica of Superga, which overlooks the city of Turin.  His parents had divorced in 1946 but Valentino won custody of his son and instilled in him a love of football, as well as teaching him the basic skills.  Read more…

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Francesco Molinari – golfer

Second win in Italian Open gave him unique status

Francesco Molinari, one of two golfing brothers who have advanced the cause of the sport in Italy more than anyone in the modern era, was born on this day in 1982 in Turin.  He and Edoardo, who is 21 months’ his senior, won the Mission Hills World Cup in China in 2009, the first time Italy had won the two-player team event.  And when he sank a 5ft (1.5m) putt to beat the Masters champion Danny Willett to win the Italian Open in Monza in September last year, Francesco became the first Italian to win his country’s open championship twice since it became part of the European tour in 1972.  He had won it for the first time in 2006 at the Castello di Tolcinasco course just outside Milan, which gave him his first European tour victory at the age of 23 and made him the first Italian to win the tournament since Massimo Mannelli in 1980.  The success made such an impact in Italy, and in Turin in particular, that Francesco was asked to be one of the official torch carriers on behalf of the host nation at the 2006 Winter Olympics, which were staged in Turin. Francesco had yet to win a major at the time this was originally posted but went close in the 2017 PGA Championship at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, before winning the Open Championship at Carnoustie in Scotland in 2018.  Read more…

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Virna Lisi - actress

Screen siren turned back on glamour roles to prove talent

The actress Virna Lisi, born on this day in 1936, might have become the new Marilyn Monroe if she had allowed Hollywood to shape her career in the way the movie moguls had planned.  She was certainly blessed with all the physical attributes to fulfil their commercial ambitions - no less a screen goddess than Brigitte Bardot called her 'the most beautiful woman in the world' - but decided she was too good an actress to be typecast as mere window dressing or eye candy and ultimately rejected their advances.  In time she proved to herself that she made the right decision when her portrayal of the manipulative Catherine de' Medici, the Italian who was Queen of France between 1547 and 1559, in Patrice Chéreau’s 1994 film La Reine Margot won her three awards - Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, a César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) and the Italian film critics' award, the Nastro d'Argento (Silver Ribbon).  Born Virna Pieralisi in the town of Jesi, in the province of Ancona  in Marche, where her father had a marble importing business, she moved with her family to Rome in the early 1950s.  Read more…

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Francis I of the Two Sicilies

Death of the king who failed to impress Lady Blessington 

Francis I died in Naples on this day in 1830 after having been King of the Two Sicilies for five years.  The Two Sicilies was the largest of all the Italian states before unification, originally formed as a union between the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples.  It lasted until 1860 when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, which became Italy in 1861.  The Two Sicilies originated when the Kingdom of Sicily was divided in 1283. The King at the time lost the island of Sicily but kept control of his part of southern Italy, which was also referred to as Sicily. The Two Sicilies had capitals in Palermo and Naples.  After Francis succeeded his father Ferdinand I in 1825 he took little part in government and lived with his mistresses in constant fear of assassination.  He is remembered for getting the Austrian occupation force removed from Naples, where it had been billeted at the expense of the treasury, and for founding the Royal Order of Francis I to reward civil merit.  We are fortunate to have been left with an impression of him by Lady Blessington, an English aristocrat, who lived in Naples between 1823 and 1826 and kept a fascinating diary of her time there.   In July 1823 she encountered Francis while he was still Prince of Salerno and heir presumptive to the throne.  Read more…

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Paolo Taviani - film director

Half of a successful partnership with brother Vittorio

The film director Paolo Taviani, the younger of the two Taviani brothers, whose work together won great acclaim and brought them considerable success in the 1970s and 80s in particular, was born on this day in 1931 in San Miniato, Tuscany.  With his brother Vittorio, who was two years his senior and died in April of this year, he wrote and directed more than 20 films.  Among their triumphs were Padre Padrone (1977), which won the Palme d’Or and the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) prize at the Cannes Film Festival, La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars, 1982), which won the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes, and Caesar Must Die (2012), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.  The brothers famously would work in partnership, directing alternate scenes, one seldom criticising the other, if ever. The actor Marcello Mastroianni, who starred in their 1974 drama Allonsanfàn, is said to have addressed the brothers as “Paolovittorio.”  They were both born and raised in San Miniato by liberal, anti-Fascist parents who introduced them to art and culture.  Read more…

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