Giuseppe ‘del Gesù’ Guarneri – violin maker

Luthier’s surviving instruments are now worth millions

Guarneri made violins in 
18th century Cremona

Bartolomeo Giuseppe ‘del Gesù’ Guarneri, who is regarded as the greatest of the Guarneri family of violin makers, was born on this day in 1698 in Cremona in Lombardy.

He was the son of Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri and the grandson of Andrea Guarneri, who were both respected violin makers in the city. He learned the craft of violin making in his father’s shop, who in turn had learned from his father, Andrea, who had worked alongside the celebrated violin-maker Antonio Stradivari in the workshop of Niccolò Amati.

Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri became known as Giuseppe ‘del Gesù’ Guarneri because of the religious symbols on the labels he used on the instruments he produced late in his career.

Although Giuseppe ‘del Gesù’ was younger than Stradivari, he became his rival because of the respect and reverence accorded to the violins he produced. These instruments have now become the most coveted of all by violinists and collectors.

Giuseppe ‘del Gesù’ diverged from the family tradition and created instruments in his own style, which were said to have a darker, more robust and sonorous tone than the violins produced by Stradivari.

The violin known
as Il Cannone

Fewer than 200 of the violins he produced have survived and because of their quality they sell for millions of pounds when they come on to the market.  In March this year, a 292-year-old Guarneri violin sold for  $9.44 million (£7.71 million; €8.68 million) at a saleroom in New York, making it the third most expensive instrument to ever be sold at auction.

Guarneri's instruments date from the 1720s, but instruments bearing his ‘del Gesù’ label did not appear until after 1731. His famous ‘King Joseph’ violin was produced in 1737 when he was at the peak of his craftsmanship and his later instruments display the most characteristic qualities of his unique vision.

The violinist Niccolò Paganini was one of the most celebrated players of Guarneri’s instruments. He owned a famous violin known as Il Cannone, the Cannon, which Guarneri had made in 1743, and he played it for most of his career. The name Il Cannone was Paganini's invention, bestowed upon the instrument, which had been a gift to him from an admirer, because of its power and resonance. 

Giuseppe ‘del Gesù’ Guarneri died in Cremona in 1744, at the age of just 46.

In Paganini’s Ghost, a 2009 crime novel by Paul Adam, a fictitious retired Cremonese luthier has to mend Il Cannone for a young virtuoso violinist who is due to play it in the city. He later finds himself caught up in a murder investigation after a scrap of sheet music by Paganini is found in the murder victim’s wallet.

The Piazza del Comune in Cremona is one of 
Italy's best-preserved mediaeval squares

Travel tip:

Cremona is an historic city in Lombardy that claims to be the birthplace of the modern violin, invented in 1566 by Andrea Amati from the viol, or medieval fiddle. The composer Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona in 1567 and the composer Amilcare Pochielli was born there in 1834. The bell tower of the Cathedral of Cremona, the Torrazzo di Cremona, which measures 112.54 metres in height is the third tallest brickwork bell tower in the world.  The cathedral overlooks the Piazza del Comune, the city's historic main square, sometimes known as Piazza del Duomo, which is among the best-preserved mediaeval squares in Italy. Next the the cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, is the beautiful octagonal Romanesque baptistry. Opposite are the Palazzo Comunale - the town hall - and the Loggia dei Militi, once a meeting place for important figures from the city and surrounding countryside.

Genoa's Palazzo Doria-Tursi
houses Paganini's Cannone

Travel tip:

Giuseppe ‘del Gesù’s’ famous Cannone violin, which was played by Paganini for most of his career, was donated to Paganini's his home city of Genoa in the violinist’s will and is now on display in the Paganini Rooms in the Palazzo Doria-Tursi in Genoa, part of the Strada Nuova Museums in the city. The violin is used in concerts, when the honour of playing it is bestowed on the winner of the international Paganini prize, a competition for young violinists.The Palazzo Doria-Tursi is in Via Giuseppe Garibaldi in the centre of the city.  The palazzo's large loggias facing the street were added in 1597, when the building was acquired by Giovanni Andrea Doria for his younger son Carlo, Duke of Tursi, giving the palazzo its present name.

Also on this day: 

1862: The birth of adventure novelist Emilio Salgari

1943: The birth of actor Lino Capolicchio

1969: The death of footballer Giuseppe Meazza 

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20 August

Carla Fracci – ballerina

Brilliant Romantic dancer brought ballet to the people

Destined to become one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century, Carolina ‘Carla’ Fracci was born on this day in 1936 in Milan.  Carla became a leading dancer of the La Scala Theatre Ballet in her home town and then worked with the Royal Ballet in London, Stuttgart Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, becoming known for her interpretations of leading characters in Romantic ballets such as Giselle, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.  As a small child during World War Two, she had been sent to live with relatives in the countryside, but after the war ended, she returned to Milan and her mother took her and her sister to sit the La Scala Theatre ballet school entrance exam.  She has said of her early days at the school that she found it boring and a terrible chore, but after performing alongside Margot Fonteyn in The Sleeping Beauty when she was 12, Carla changed her mind about ballet training and started working hard to make up for lost time.  After joining La Scala Theatre Ballet on graduating, Carla was promoted to a soloist within a year. In 1958 she was asked to fill in for the French ballerina, Violette Verdy, in Cinderella.  Read more…

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Pope Pius X

Good hearted pontiff was made a saint

Pope Pius X, who chose to live in poverty and devote his life to the Blessed Virgin Mary, died on this day in 1914 in the Apostolic Palace in Rome.  His body was exhumed from its tomb nearly 30 years later and was found to be miraculously incorrupt and Pius X was made a saint in 1954.  Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto in 1835 in Riese in the province of Treviso, which was then part of the Austrian Empire.  He was the second son of the ten children born to the village postman and his seamstress wife. Although the family were poor, they valued education and, as a young boy, Sarto walked six kilometres (3.7 miles) to attend school every day.  In 1850 he was given a scholarship to attend the seminary in Padua, where he completed classical, philosophical and theological studies with distinction.  After being ordained a priest, he continued to study while carrying out the duties of a parish pastor. He then became an arch priest, a vicar capitular and was appointed Bishop of Mantua and Patriarch of Venice.  Pope Leo XIII made Sarto a Cardinal in 1893 and he progressed to become one of the most prominent preachers in the Catholic Church.  Read more…

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Stelvio Cipriani – composer

Musician wrote some of Italy’s most famous film soundtracks

Stelvio Cipriani, an award-winning composer of film scores, was born on this day in 1937 in Rome.  One of his most famous soundtracks was for the 1973 film, La polizia sta a guardare (also released as The Great Kidnapping). The main theme was used again by Cipriani in 1977 for the film, Tentacoli, and also featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof in 2007.  Although Cipriani did not come from a musical background, he was fascinated with the organ at his church when he was a child.  His priest gave him music lessons and then Cipriani went to study piano and harmony at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome at the age of 14.  His first job was playing in a band on a cruise ship and then he became the accompanist for the popular Italian singer, Rita Pavone.  Stelvio wrote his first movie soundtrack for the 1966 spaghetti western, The Bounty Killer. This was followed by a score for The Stranger Returns in 1967, starring Tony Anthony. He wrote for other films starring Anthony, as well as for many poliziotteschi - Italian crime films - a type of film popular in the 1970s.  Read more…

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Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel – poet and revolutionary

Noblewoman who sacrificed her life for the principle of liberty

A writer and leader of the movement that established the Parthenopean Republic in Naples, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel was hanged on this day in 1799 in a public square near the port.  A noblewoman, she would have expected her execution to be carried out by beheading, but had given up her title of marchioness when she became involved with the Jacobins, founded by supporters of the French Revolution, who were working to overthrow the monarchy.  Pimentel had asked to be beheaded anyway, but the restored Bourbon monarchy showed her no mercy, reputedly because she had written pamphlets denouncing Queen Maria Carolina as a lesbian. On the day of her execution, Pimentel was reputed to have stepped calmly up to the gallows, quoting Virgil by saying: ‘Perhaps one day this will be worth remembering.’ She was 47 years of age.  Pimentel was born in Rome in 1752 into a noble Portuguese family. As a child she wrote poetry, read Latin and Greek and learnt to speak several languages.  Her family had to move to Naples because of political difficulties between Portugal and the Papal States, of which Rome was the capital.  Read more…

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Jacopo Peri – composer and singer

Court musician produced the first work to be called an opera

The singer and composer Jacopo Peri, also known as Il Zazzerino, was born on this day in 1561 in Rome.  He is often referred to as the ‘inventor of opera’ as he wrote the first work to be called an opera, Dafne, in around 1597.  He followed this with Euridice in 1600, which has survived to the present day although it is rarely performed. It is sometimes staged as an historical curiosity because it is the first opera for which the complete music still exists.  Peri was born in Rome to a noble family but went to Florence to study and then worked in churches in the city as an organist and a singer.  He started to work for the Medici court as a tenor singer and keyboard player and then later as a composer, producing incidental music for plays.  Peri’s work is regarded as bridging the gap between the Renaissance period and the Baroque period and he is remembered for his contribution to the development of dramatic vocal style in early Baroque opera.  Peri began working with Jacopo Corsi, a leading patron of music in Florence, and they decided to try to recreate Greek tragedy in musical form. They brought in a poet, Ottavio Rinuccini, to write a text.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Passo dopo passo: La mia storia, by Carla Fracci (in Italian)

Giselle, Giulietta, Cinderella, Medea, Swanilda, Francesca da Rimini... there are more than two hundred characters interpreted by Carla Fracci, more than two hundred roles, interpretations, stories staged with extreme variety and exasperated feeling, because " ballet has a more penetrating language than the theatrical one, perhaps it is precisely the absence of the word that makes it so". In an intimate autobiography, of which the title translates in English as Step by Step: My Story, Carla Fracci recounts her childhood spent in the Lombardy countryside and her entrance to the ballet school of the Teatro alla Scala, the Farewell Pass of the dismissed students and her triumphs with the American Ballet Theater and on the most important stages of the world - Los Angeles, Moscow, Havana, Tokyo, London - opposite stars such as Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mario Pistoni and Paolo Bortoluzzi. 

Carla Fracci, who died in May 2021, was an Italian prima ballerina assoluta, actress and ballet director. She was considered one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century.

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19 August

Andrea Palladio - world's favourite architect

Humble stonecutter became his profession's biggest name

Andrea Palladio, the humble stonecutter who became the most influential architect in the history of his profession, died on this day in 1580, aged 71.  The cause of his death is not clear but some accounts say he collapsed while inspecting the construction of the Tempietto Barbaro, a church in Maser, a town in the Veneto not far from Treviso.  He was initially buried in a family vault in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza, the city in which he spent most of his life, but later re-interred at the civic cemetery, where a chapel was built in his honour.  Examples of Palladio's work can be found all over the region where he lived and in Venice, where he was commissioned to build, among other architectural masterpieces, the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the focal point of the view across the lagoon from St Mark's Square through the Piazzetta.  He built a substantial number of villas for wealthy clients across the Veneto region, some of them lining the Brenta Canal that links the lagoon of Venice with Padua. Others such as the Villa Capra, otherwise known as La Rotonda, famous for its symmetrically square design with four six-columned porticoes, can be found in open countryside near Vicenza.  Read more…

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Salomone Rossi - violinist and composer

Leading Jewish musician of the late Renaissance 

The composer and violinist Salomone Rossi, who became a renowned performer at the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and is regarded as the leading Jewish musician of the late Renaissance, is thought to have been born on this day in 1570.  Jews had periodically been the subject of persecution in the Italian peninsula for hundreds of years. At around the time of Rossi’s birth, Pope Pius V expelled all Jews from all but two areas of the papal states and Florence established a ghetto, in which all Jews within the city and the wide Grand Duchy of Tuscany were required to live.  The Mantua of Rossi’s day was much more enlightened than many Italian cities, however. Jews were not only tolerated but they were often allowed to mix freely with non-Jews. The liberal atmosphere allowed Jewish writers, musicians and artists to have an important influence on the culture of the day.  The court of Mantua was not only renowned for its royal luxury but as a centre of artistic excellence. At the end of the 15th century the duchess Isabella d’Este Gonzaga actively sought out the finest musicians in Italy, bringing them to Mantua.  Read more…

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Nanni Moretti - film director

Award winning filmmaker helped shape politics

Giovanni ‘Nanni’ Moretti, film director, producer, screenwriter and actor, was born on this day in 1953 in Brunico in South Tyrol.  Moretti has been a prominent opponent to Silvio Berlusconi’s governments and policies in Italy. In his 2006 film, Il Caimano, a comedy drama focusing on allegations about Berlusconi’s lifestyle, he played the role of Berlusconi himself.  Moretti’s parents, who were both teachers, were from Rome but he was born while they were on holiday in Trentino-Alto Adige. His father, Luigi Moretti, taught Greek at Sapienza University in Rome.  While growing up Moretti developed a passion for the cinema and water polo. He started making films as a hobby and played in the junior national water polo team in 1970.  His first feature film, Io sono un autarchico - I am Self-sufficient, was released in 1976.  Two years later he wrote, directed and starred in the film Ecce Bombo, which was screened at the Cannes film festival. This is still a cult film for many Italians.  His film Sogni d’Oro won the Silver Lion at the 38th Venice International film festival.  He is perhaps best known for the films Caro Diario - Dear Diary, in 1993 and La stanza del figlio - The Son’s Room, in 2001, which won the Palme D’Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.  Read more…

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Cesare Prandelli – football coach

Led Italy to the final of Euro 2012

The former head coach of the Italian national football team, Cesare Prandelli, was born on this day in 1957 in Orzinuovi, near Brescia.  Under Prandelli’s guidance, the azzurri finished runners-up in the European Championships final of 2012 and qualified for the finals of the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.  Despite winning a two-year extension to his contract, he quit after Italy’s elimination at the group stage in Brazil, which he considered was the honourable course of action after a very disappointing tournament in which the azzurri beat England in their opening match but then lost to Costa Rica and Uruguay.  As a player, Prandelli had been a member of a highly successful Juventus team in the early 1980s, winning Serie A three times and the European Cup in 1985 – albeit on a night overshadowed by tragedy at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels.  After beginning his coaching career as youth team coach with Atalanta in Bergamo, his last club as a player, he twice achieved promotion from Serie B, with Hellas Verona in 1999 and Venezia in 2001.  But it was his achievements in Serie A with Fiorentina that impressed the Italian Football Federation (FIGC).  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Palladio, by James Ackerman

Palladio (1508-80) combined classical restraint with constant inventiveness. In this study, Professor Ackerman sets Palladio in the context of his age - the Humanist era of Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Veronese - and examines each of the villas, churches and palaces in turn and tries to penetrate to the heart of the Palladian miracle. Palladio's theoretical writings are important and illuminating, he suggests, yet they never do justice to the intense intuitive skills of "a magician of light and colour". Indeed, as the photographs in this book reveal, Palladio was "as sensual, as skilled in visual alchemy as any Venetian painter of his time", and his countless imitators have usually captured the details, but not the essence of his style. There are buildings all the way from Philadelphia to Leningrad which bear witness to Palladio's "permanent place in the making of architecture", yet he also deserves to be seen on his own terms.

James S. Ackerman is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard University and a Fellow and former Trustee of the American Academy in Rome. Professor Ackerman has lived for several years in Italy, beginning with service during the last war, and is the author of many studies on Italian architecture, including The Cortile del Belvedere (1954), and The Architecture of Michelangelo (1961).

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18 August

Beatrice Borromeo - journalist and model

Glamorous aristocrat who specialises in gritty real-life stories

The journalist Beatrice Borromeo, a descendant of one of Italy’s oldest aristocratic families and married to a member of the Monegasque royal family, was born on this day in 1985 in Innichen in the German-speaking province of South Tyrol in northeast Italy.  Although born into wealthy high society, Borromeo was driven by her political and humanitarian beliefs from an early age, taking part in demonstrations in Milan against the government of Silvio Berlusconi in her teenage years and deciding to pursue a career in journalism, working full time for the Italian daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.  Since marrying long-time boyfriend Pierre Casiraghi - grandson of Prince Rainier III and the actress Grace Kelly - and having two children, she has devoted much of her energy towards making documentary films, but always on hard-hitting topics such as climate refugees, the women of ‘Ndrangheta - the Calabrian mafia - and the slum children of Caivano, an impoverished area northeast of Naples.  Her looks and family connections have also helped her to have a parallel career in modelling, in her early days as a catwalk model for high-end fashion houses.  Read more…

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Antonio Salieri - composer

Maestro of Vienna haunted by Mozart rumours

Antonio Salieri, the Italian composer who in his later years was dogged by rumours that he had murdered Mozart, was born on this day in 1750 in Legnago, in the Veneto.  Salieri was director of Italian opera for the Habsburg court in Vienna from 1774 to 1792 and German-born Mozart believed for many years that “cabals of Italians” were deliberately putting obstacles in the way of his progress, preventing him from staging his operas and blocking his path to prestigious appointments.  In letters to his father, Mozart said that “the only one who counts in (the emperor’s eyes) is Salieri” and voiced his suspicions that Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the poet and librettist, were in league against him.  Some years after Mozart died in 1791 at the age of just 35, with the cause of death never definitively established, it emerged that the young composer - responsible for some of music’s greatest symphonies, concertos and operas - had told friends in the final weeks of his life that he feared he had been poisoned and suspected again that his Italian rivals were behind it. Salieri was immediately the prime suspect.  Read more…

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Gianni Rivera - footballer and politician

Milan legend served in the Italian Parliament and as MEP

Gianni Rivera, a footballer regarded as one of Italy's all-time greats, was born on this day in 1943 in Alessandria, a city in Piedmont some 90km east of Turin and a similar distance south-west of Milan.  Rivera played for 19 years for AC Milan, winning an array of trophies that included the Italian championship three times, the Italian Cup four times, two European Cup-Winners' Cups and two European Cups.  He won 63 caps for the Italian national team, playing in four World Cups, including the 1970 tournament in Mexico, when Italy reached the final.  Later in life, he entered politics, sitting in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament from 1987 to 2001 and serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 2005 to 2009.  Rivera had a tough upbringing in Alessandria, which suffered heavy bombing during the later stages of the Second World War, with hundreds of residents killed.  His family were not wealthy but Rivera found distraction playing football with his friends in the street and it was obvious at an early age that he had talent.  His father, a railway mechanic, arranged for him to have a trial with the local football club.  Read more…

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Umberto Guidoni - astronaut

First European to step on to the International Space Station

The astronaut Umberto Guidoni, who spent almost 28 days in space on two NASA space shuttle missions, was born on this day in 1954 in Rome.  In April 2001, on the second of those missions, he became the first European astronaut to go on board the International Space Station (SSI).  After retiring as an active astronaut in 2004, Guidoni began a career in politics and was elected to the European Parliament as a member for Central Italy.  Although born in Rome, Guidoni’s family roots are in Acuto, a small hilltown about 80km (50 miles) southeast of the capital, in the area near Frosinone in Lazio known as Ciociaria.  Interested in science and space from a young age, Guidoni attended the Gaio Lucilio lyceum in the San Lorenzo district before graduating with honours in physics specialising in astrophysics at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1978, obtaining a scholarship from the National Committee for Nuclear Energy, based outside Rome in Frascati.  He worked in the Italian Space Agency as well as in the European Space Agency. One of his research projects was the Tethered Satellite System, which was part of the payload of the STS-46 space shuttle mission.  Guidoni moved to Houston, Texas and trained for a year as an alternate payload specialist for that mission, for which he was part of the group of scientists coordinating the scientific operations of the Space Shuttle Atlantis from the ground.  Read more…

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Francesco Canova da Milano – lutenist and composer

Brilliant virtuoso performed for popes and noblemen

Lute player and composer Francesco Canova da Milano was born on this day in 1497 in Monza near Milan in Lombardy.  Nicknamed il Divino by his contemporaries, Francesco Canova da Milano was known throughout Europe as the leading composer of his time for the lute. More of his work has been preserved than that of any other lutenist from the period and he influenced the work of other composers for more than a century after his death.  Francesco’s father, Benedetto, and his older brother, Bernardino, were also talented musicians.  Francesco studied the lute as a child and by 1514 he was known to be a member of the papal household in Rome. He and his father became private musicians to Pope Leo X in 1516.  His father was employed until 1518, but Francesco stayed with Leo X till the pope’s death in 1521. Francesco was still in Rome in 1526, when he and another lutenist performed for Pope Clement VII. At the time he was considered one of the greatest virtuoso performers on the lute.  In 1528 he obtained a position at a church in Milan and between 1531 and 1535 he was in the service of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. He became lute teacher to Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, the grandson of Pope Paul III, in 1535.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Mozart in Vienna: The Final Decade, by Simon P Keefe

Mozart's greatest works were written in Vienna in the decade before his death (1781–1791). Mozart in Vienna: The Final Decade focuses on Mozart's dual roles as a performer and composer and reveals how his compositional processes are affected by performance-related concerns. It traces consistencies and changes in Mozart's professional persona and his modus operandi and sheds light on other prominent musicians, audience expectations, publishing, and concert and dramatic practices and traditions. Giving particular prominence to primary sources, Simon P. Keefe offers new biographical and critical perspectives on the man and his music, highlighting his extraordinary ability to engage with the competing demands of singers and instrumentalists, publishing and public performance, and concerts and dramatic productions in the course of a hectic, diverse and financially uncertain freelance career. This comprehensive and accessible volume is essential for Mozart lovers and scholars alike, exploring his Viennese masterpieces and the people and environments that shaped them.

Simon P. Keefe, the J.R. Hoyle Chair of Music at the University of Sheffield, England since 2008, is one of the leading experts on Mozart's life and on his music.  He was elected a life member of the Academy for Mozart Research at the Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg in 2005, and won the Marjorie Weston Emerson award from the Mozart Society of America in 2013 for his book on Mozart's Requiem.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all entries were factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living, some of the information may need updating.)

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17 August

Cesare Borgia – condottiero

Renaissance prince turned his back on the Church

Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, became the first person in history to resign as a Cardinal on this day in 1498 in Rome.  Cesare was originally intended for the Church and had been made a Cardinal at the age of 18 after his father’s election to the Papacy. After the assassination of his brother, Giovanni, who was captain general of the Pope’s military forces, Cesare made an abrupt career change and was put in charge of the Papal States.  His fight to gain power was later the inspiration for Machiavelli’s book The Prince.  Cesare was made Duke of Valentinois by King Louis XII of France and after Louis invaded Italy in 1499, Cesare accompanied him when he entered Milan. He reinforced his alliance with France by marrying Charlotte d’Albret, the sister of John III of Navarre.  Pope Alexander encouraged Cesare to carve out a state of his own in northern Italy and deposed all his vicars in the Romagna and Marche regions.  Cesare was made condottiero - military leader - in command of the papal army and sent to capture Imola and Forlí.  He returned to Rome in triumph and received the title Papal Gonfalonier from his father.  Read more...

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The Milan-Monza railway

First line in northern Italy sparked industrial growth 

The first railway line laid in northern Italy was opened on this day in 1840. The line, authorised by Ferdinand I of Austria, within whose empire the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia fell at the time, connected the city of Milan with the smaller city of Monza, covering a distance of 12.8km (eight miles).  It was the second railway line to be built on the Italian peninsula, following on from the shorter Naples-Portici line, which had been opened in October of the previous year.  Italy was a little behind in developing railways. The first steam-powered railway engine had completed its maiden journey some 56 years earlier, in England.   But once Milan-Monza was operational, quickly followed by the first section of what would become a Milan-Venice line, the rest of Italy awoke to their potential.  By the end of the 1840s, there were nine or 10 routes, mainly in the north; by unification in 1861, the network had expanded to more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) and by the early 1870s, there were some 7,000km (4,340 miles) of track, enabling travel from the outposts of Susa in the northwest, close to the border with France, and Udine in the northeast, all the way down to Maglie, south of Lecce, and Cariati, east of Cosenza, in the south.  Read more…

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Franco Sensi - businessman

Oil tycoon who rescued AS Roma football club

The businessman Francesco ‘Franco’ Sensi, best known as the businessman who transformed a near-bankrupt AS Roma into a successful football club, died on this day in 2008 in the Gemelli General Hospital in Rome.  He was 88 and had been in ill health for a number of years. He had been the longest-serving president of the Roma club, remaining at the helm for 15 years, and it is generally accepted that the success the team enjoyed during his tenure - a Serie A title, two Coppa Italia triumphs and two in the Supercoppa Italiana - would not have happened but for his astute management.  His death was mourned by tens of thousands of Roma fans who filed past his coffin in the days before the funeral at the Basilica of San Lorenzo al Verano, where a crowd put at around 30,000 turned out to witness the funeral procession. The then-Roma coach Luciano Spalletti and captain Francesco Totti were among the pallbearers.  Sensi, whose father, Silvio, had helped bring about the formation of AS Roma in 1927 in a merger of three other city teams, grew up supporting the club and followed his father into a business career.  Read more…

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Pope Benedict XIV

Erudite, gentle, honest man was chosen as a compromise

Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini began his reign as Pope Benedict XIV on this day in 1740 in Rome.  Considered one of the greatest ever Christian scholars, he promoted scientific learning, the baroque arts and the study of the human form.  Benedict XIV also revived interest in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, reduced taxation in the Papal States, encouraged agriculture and supported free trade.  As a scholar interested in ancient literature, and who published many ecclesiastical books and documents himself, he laid the groundwork for the present-day Vatican Museum.  Lambertini was born into a noble family in Bologna in 1675. At the age of 13 he started attending the Collegium Clementinum in Rome, where he studied rhetoric, Latin, philosophy and theology. Thomas Aquinas became his favourite author and saint. At the age of 19 he received a doctorate in both ecclesiastical and civil law.  Lambertini was consecrated a bishop in Rome in 1724, was made Bishop of Ancona in 1727 and Cardinal-Priest of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in 1728.  Following the death of Pope Clement XII, Lambertini was elected pope on the evening of August 17, 1740.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Borgias: Power and Fortune, by Paul Strathern

The Borgias have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthlessness, avarice and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. But the story of this remarkable family is far more than a tale of sensational depravities - it also marks the golden age of the Italian Renaissance and a decisive turning point in European history.  From the family's Spanish roots and the papacy of Rodrigo Borgia, to the lives of his infamous offspring, Lucrezia and Cesare - the hero who dazzled Machiavelli, but also the man who befriended Leonardo da Vinci - Paul Strathern tells the captivating story of this great dynasty and the world in which they flourished. The Borgias: Power and Fortune is a “history of ruthlessness, intrigue and men broken on Fortune's Wheel - a wickedly entertaining read” -  The Times.

Paul Strathern was born in London, and studied philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. One of his five novels, A Season in Abyssinia, won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1972. His other books about Italian history include The Medici: Power, Money and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance, The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo, Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City, and The Spirit of Venice: From Marco Polo to Casanova.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all entries were factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living, some of the information may need updating.)

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16 August

Tonino Delli Colli – cinematographer

Craftsman who shot Life is Beautiful and Italy's first colour film

Antonio (Tonino) Delli Colli, the cinematographer who shot the first Italian film in colour, died on this day in 2005 in Rome.  The last film he made was Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, shot on location in Arezzo in Tuscany, for which he won his fourth David di Donatello Award for Best Cinematography.  Delli Colli was born in Rome and started work at the city’s Cinecittà studio in 1938, shortly after it opened, when he was just 16.  By the mid 1940s he was working as a cinematographer, or director of photography, who is the person in charge of the camera and light crews working on a film. He was responsible for making artistic and technical decisions related to the image and selected the camera, film stock, lenses and filters. Directors often conveyed to him what was wanted from a scene visually and then allowed him complete latitude to achieve that effect.  Delli Colli was credited as director of photography for the first time in 1943 on Finalmente Si (Finally Yes), directed by László Kish.  In 1952 Delli Colli shot the first Italian film to be made in colour, Totò a colori. He had been reluctant to do it but was given no choice by his bosses.  Read more…

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Umberto Baldini – art restorer

Saved hundreds of artworks damaged by Arno floods

Umberto Baldini, the art historian who helped save hundreds of paintings, sculptures and manuscripts feared to have been damaged beyond repair in the catastrophic flooding in Florence in 1966, died on this day in 2006.  Baldini was working as director of the Gabinetto di Restauro, an office of the municipal authority in Florence charged with supervising restoration projects, when the River Arno broke its banks in the early hours of November 4, 1966.  With the ground already saturated, the combination of two days of torrential rain and storm force winds was too much and dams built to create reservoirs in the upper reaches of the Arno valley were threatened with collapse.  Consequently thousands of cubic metres of water had to be released, gathering pace as it raced downstream and eventually swept into the city at speeds of up to 40mph.  More than 100 people were killed and up to 20,000 in the valley left homeless. At its peak the depth of water in the Santa Croce area of Florence rose to 6.7 metres (22 feet).  Baldini was director of the conservation studios at the Uffizi, the principal art museum in Florence.  Read more... 

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Vincenzo Coronelli – globe maker

Friar whose globes of the world were in big demand

Vincenzo Coronelli, a Franciscan friar who was also a celebrated cartographer and globe maker, was born on this day in 1650 in Venice.  He became famous for making finely-crafted globes of the world for the Duke of Parma and Louis XIV of France.  This started a demand for globes from other aristocratic clients to adorn their libraries and some of Coronelli’s creations are still in existence today in private collections.  Coronelli was the fifth child of a Venetian tailor and was accepted as a novice by the Franciscans when he was 15. He was later sent to a college in Rome where he studied theology and astronomy.  He began working as a geographer and was commissioned to produce a set of globes for Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma. Each finely crafted globe was five feet in diameter.  After one of Louis XIV’s advisers saw the globes, Coronelli was invited to Paris to make a pair of globes for the French King.  The large globes displayed the latest information obtained by French explorers in North America. They are now in the François-Mitterand national library in Paris.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Dark Water: Art, Disaster, and Redemption in Florence, by Robert Clark

Birthplace of Michelangelo and home to untold masterpieces, Florence is a city for art lovers. But on November 4, 1966, the rising waters of the Arno threatened to erase over seven centuries of history and human achievement. In Dark Water, Robert Clark explores the Italian city's most catastrophic flood and its aftermath through the voices of its witnesses. Two American artists wade through the devastated beauty; a photographer stows away on an army helicopter to witness the tragedy first-hand; a British "mud angel" spends a month scraping mold from the world's masterpieces; and, through it all, an author asks why art matters so very much to us, even in the face of overwhelming disaster.

Robert Clark is an American novelist and writer of nonfiction. He has received the Edgar, James Beard and Julia Child awards, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and the Washington State Book Award. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, he lives in New York City.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all entries were factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living, some of the information may need updating.)

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15 August

NEW - Ferragosto

A chance to enjoy quieter cities while Italians take a holiday

Italy, San Marino and the Italian speaking region of Switzerland all celebrate Ferragosto on this day every year with a public holiday.  This day of celebration originated during Roman times, when Feriae Augusti, the festival of the Roman Emperor Augustus, took place on 1 August. It was a day of rest for working people to signal the culmination of weeks of hard work by labourers on the land.  The month of August itself is named after Augustus. Its original name was sextilis, as it was the sixth month in the Roman calendar. Just as Julius Caesar had previously renamed quintilis - the fifth month - Iulius after himself, it was only natural for Augustus, as Julius Caesar’s chosen heir, to follow suit.  Over the centuries, it became traditional for workers to wish their employers ‘Buon Ferragosto, and to receive a bonus of extra money from their bosses in return. During the Renaissance, this tradition actually became law throughout the Papal States.  The Catholic Church moved the date for Ferragosto to 15 August to coincide with the celebrations for the Feast of the Assumption, a day of worship to mark the ascendance of the Virgin Mary into Heaven.  Read more…

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Gianfranco Ferré - fashion designer

Sought to create clothes for real women 

Gianfranco Ferré, who became one of the biggest names in Italian fashion during the 1980s and 1990s, was born on this day in 1944 in Legnano, a town in Lombardy north-west of Milan, between the city and Lake Maggiore, where in adult life he made his home.  Ferré was regarded as groundbreaking in fashion design in the same way as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in that his clothes were created with real people rather than catwalk models in mind, yet without compromise in terms of aesthetic appeal.  At the peak of his popularity, his clients included Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Jordan, Paloma Picasso, Sophia Loren and the late Diana, Princess of Wales.  Ferré first trained to be an architect, placing emphasis on the structure of his garments in which strong seams were often a prominent feature. He was once dubbed the Frank Lloyd Wright of fashion, which was taken to be a reference to the powerful horizontals in his designs.  His staff addressed him as "the architect". He was also well known for inevitably including variations of white dress shirts in his collections, adorned with theatrical cuffs or multiple collars.   Read more…

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Carlo Cipolla - economic historian

Professor famous for treatise on ‘stupidity’

Carlo Maria Cipolla, an economic historian who for many years was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and taught at several Italian universities, was born on this day in 1922 in Pavia.  He was one of the leading economic historians of the 20th century and wrote more than 20 academic books on economic and social history but also on such diverse subjects as clocks, guns and faith, reason and the plague in 17th century Italy.  Yet it was for his humorous treatise, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, that he became famous. The book, written very much tongue in cheek, became a bestseller in Italy after it was published in 1976.  In it, Cipolla produced a graph that divided the human species into four types, each sharing one characteristic of another type.  He proposed that there are (a) bandits, whose actions bring benefits for themselves but losses for others; (b) intelligent people, whose actions bring benefits for themselves and for others; (c) naive or helpless people, whose actions bring benefits for others but who tend to be exploited and therefore incur losses for themselves; and (d) stupid people, whose actions result not only in losses for themselves but for others too.  Read more…

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Francesco Zuccarelli - landscape painter

Tuscan-born artist appealed to English tastes

Francesco Zuccarelli, who was considered to be the most important landscape painter to emerge from Venice in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1702.  Zuccarelli’s picturesque Arcadian landscapes were especially appealing to English buyers, and he was more famous in England even than his contemporary, Canaletto.  His fame in England prompted Zuccarelli to spend two periods of his life there. He settled in London for the first time at the end of 1752 and remained for 10 years, enjoying great success.  After returning to Italy after being elected to the Venetian Academy, he went back to England from 1765 to 1771, during which time he was a founding member of the Royal Academy and became one of George III’s favourite painters.  Born in Pitigliano, a mediaeval town perched on top of a tufa ridge in southern Tuscany, Zuccarelli received his early training in Florence, where he engraved the frescoes by Andrea del Sarto in SS Annunziata.  Zuccarelli’s father Bartolomeo owned several local vineyards. With considerable income at his disposal, he sent Francesco to Rome at the age of 11 or 12 to begin an apprenticeship.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Italian Festival Food: Recipes and Traditions from Italy′s Regional Country Food Fairs, by Anne Bianchi

Italy is a nation that likes nothing as much as an extravagant party with wonderful food. Throughout its twenty regions, people celebrate with feste patronale, religious festivals, as well as sagre, which are secular events paying tribute to specific foods. The region of Gubbio boasts of a festival dedicated to the enjoyment of truffles. The festival in Piediluco, which sits on a lake of the same name in Lazio, takes the local bounty of fish to new culinary heights. There are many other festivals that celebrate everything from crabs to chestnuts to soups - as well as popular Italian favourites like risotto and polenta. Anne Bianchi's Italian Festival Food is a celebration of the foods from these wonderful gatherings with more than 200 recipes representing the best of these festivals, with chapters organised by course, from appetisers and salads to desserts. The book also features nine insightful and fascinating essays, highlighting specific festivals and the people involved in their success.

Anne Bianchi is a New York City-based food writer of Italian heritage who spends half of each year in her ancestral home in Tuscany. She is the author of several Italian cookbooks, including From the Tables of Tuscan Women, Zuppa!, and The Book of Tuscan Desserts.

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