2 August

Bologna railway station bombed

Biggest terrorist atrocity in Italy's history killed 85

Italy suffered the most devastating terrorist outrage in its history on this day in 1980 with the bombing of Bologna's main railway station.   A massive 23kg (51lbs) of explosive packed into a suitcase left in a crowded waiting room was detonated at 10.25am, creating a blast that destroyed much of the main building of the station and badly damaged a train on one of the platforms.  Many people, locals and tourists, Italians and foreign nationals, were caught up in the explosion. Some were killed instantly, others died as a result of the roof of the waiting room collapsing on to the victims. There were 85 deaths and more than 200 other people were wounded.  The bomb was clearly placed to cause mass casualties. It was the first Saturday in the traditional August holiday period, one of the busiest days of the year for rail travel, and the explosive-laden suitcase was left in a room with air conditioning, then still relatively rare in Italy. On a hot day, the room was naturally full of people.  The attack was the deadliest of several during a bleak period of 10-12 years in Italian history that became known as the Years of Lead, when the ideological struggle between the left and right in Italian politics was at its height.  Read more…

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Pietro Mascagni – composer

One opera was enough to build reputation of musician

Pietro Mascagni, the creator of the opera Cavalleria rusticana, died on this day in 1945 in Rome, at the age of 81.  Cavalleria rusticana was an outstanding success when it was first performed in Rome in 1890 and was said to have single-handedly brought the Verismo movement, in which the characters were ordinary people rather than gods, mythological figures or kings and queens, into Italian opera.  The beautiful intermezzo from the opera was used in the soundtrack of the 1980 film Raging Bull and a production of the opera was used as the setting for the climax of the 1990 film The Godfather Part III, with Michael Corleone’s son Anthony playing Turridu, the opera’s male protagonist. The film ends with the intermezzo playing.  In 2001 Andrea Bocelli recorded a song entitled Mascagni on his Cieli di Toscana album and had an excerpt from Cavalleria rusticana incorporated into the music.  The opera has been so successful that it has led to Mascagni sometimes being dismissed as a one-opera composer, but, in fact, the composer wrote 15 operas, as well as orchestral and piano music and songs.  Read more…

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Carlo Savina - film composer and musical director

Worked on major scores including The Godfather and Fellini’s Amarcord

Musical director Carlo Savina, who arranged soundtracks written by such luminaries of the film music industry as Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, was born on this day in 1919 in Turin.  Savina was also a prolific film composer in his own right and is credited with writing or arranging the scores of at least 200 movies in a career spanning more than 35 years. He won a David di Donatello award for Best Music for the 1985 crime drama The Pizza Connection, directed by Damiano Damiani and starring Michele Placido, a version of which was released in the United States as The Sicilian Connection.  Yet Savina is more frequently remembered for his work with Rota on the multi-award winning soundtrack of the first film in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy in 1972 and with Federico Fellini the following year on Amarcord, the maestro’s semi-autobiographical film about growing up in a village in the Fascist Italy of the 1930s.  He worked with Fellini and Rota on many projects, including La dolce vita (1960), which remains their most famous collaboration.  Read more…

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Francis Marion Crawford – author

Novelist found inspiration while living in Sorrento

The American writer Francis Marion Crawford was born on this day in 1854 in Bagni di Lucca in Tuscany.  A prolific novelist, Crawford became known for the vividness of his characterisations and the realism of his settings, many of which were places he had visited in Italy.  He chose to settle in later life in the coastal resort of Sorrento in Campania where he even had a street named after him, Corso Marion Crawford.  Crawford was the only son of the American sculptor, Thomas Crawford. He spent his childhood going backwards and forwards between Italy and America and studied at various American and European Universities.  He spent some time in India where he found the inspiration for his first successful novel, Mr Isaacs, which was published in 1882.  In 1883 he returned to Italy to settle there permanently. He lived at the Hotel Cocumella in the village of Sant’Agnello just outside Sorrento to begin with. He then bought a nearby farmhouse, from which he developed the Villa Crawford, an impressive clifftop residence easily identifiable from the sea by the tall buttresses Crawford added as a safeguard against erosion.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy, by Richard Drake

What drives terrorists to glorify violence? In The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy, Richard Drake seeks to explain the origins of Italian terrorism and the role that intellectuals played in valorising the use of violence for political or social ends.  Drake argues that a combination of socio-economic factors and the influence of intellectual elites led to a sanctioning of violence by revolutionary political groups in Italy between 1969 and 1988. Drake explores what motivated Italian terrorists on both the Left and the Right during some of the most violent decades in modern Italian history and how these terrorists perceived the modern world as something to be destroyed rather than reformed.  In 1989, The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy received the Howard R Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies. It was awarded for the best book that year on Italian history. The book is reissued now with a new introduction for the light it might shed on current terrorist challenges. The Italians had success in combating terrorism. We might learn something from their example. 

Richard Drake is the Lucile Speer Research Professor in Politics and History at the University of Montana. His other book publications include Byzantium for Rome: The Politics of Nostalgia in Umbertian Italy, 1878-1900; The Aldo Moro Murder Case; and Apostles and Agitators: Italy's Marxist Revolutionary Tradition.

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1 August

NEW - Kaspar Capparoni - actor

Found fame co-starring with crime-fighting dog

The actor Kaspar Capparoni, an accomplished performer on stage and screen whose fame received its biggest boost after he starred alongside a German Shepherd dog in the TV crime series Il Commissario Rex, was born in Rome on this day in 1964.  Capparoni played the part of Commissioner Lorenzo Fabbri, a homicide detective who is accompanied in his work by an unusually talented police dog known as Rex, whose ever-growing range of skills are often key to solving the crimes Fabbri is charged with investigating.  Il Commissario Rex, which was screened by Italian national broadcaster Rai between 2008 and 2015, revived a show previously shown on TV in Austria but which had ceased production in 2004 after 11 years.  Capparoni portrayed Commissioner Fabbri for four seasons, working alongside two different German Shepherds in the Rex role. The action, which had been set in Vienna in the original version, was switched to Rome for the Italian revival.  Capparoni decided to leave after the show’s producers proposed a return to its former setting in Austria.  Nonetheless, the popularity of Rex with Italian audiences brought Capparoni a much higher profile.  Read more…

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Francesca Scanagatta - soldier

Woman pretended to be a man to join Austrian army

Francesca Scanagatta, an Italian woman who served in the Imperial Austrian army for seven years while pretending to be a man, was born on this day in 1776 in Milan.  Scanagatta – sometimes known as Franziska – was a small and apparently rather plain girl, who was brought up in Milan while the city was under Austrian rule. She admired the Austrian soldiers to the extent of wishing she could join the army, yet knew that as a girl she would not be allowed to.  Even so, it did not stop her dreaming and throughout her childhood and teenage years she worked on becoming physically stronger through exercise while reading as much literature as she could about the army.  By contrast, her brother Giacomo hated the idea of joining up. He was rather effeminate in nature and the very thought of becoming a soldier filled him with dread.  Yet his father wanted him to serve and arranged for him to attend a military school in Vienna.  Giacomo confided his fears in Francesca and she suddenly realised she had an opportunity to fulfil her dreams by signing up in his place.  So, in June 1794, dressed as a man, the 17-year-old travelled with Giacomo to Austria.  Read more…

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Paolo De Poli – enameller and painter

Artist devoted his life to an ancient technique

A painter who became fascinated with the ancient art of enamelling, Paolo De Poli was born on this day in 1905 in Padua.  At first De Poli experimented with enamelling small, decorative objects but after he mastered his craft he moved on to creating large panels for the interiors of ships, hotels and public buildings.  De Poli trained in drawing and embossing on metal at the art school Pietro Selvatico of Padua and then studied oil painting in Verona. He embarked on a career as a portrait and landscape painter.  In 1926 he participated for the first time in the Biennale di Venezia with the oil painting Still Life.  While travelling in the 1930s he visited art museums and archaeological sites and became interested in the traditional art of working with vitreous enamel.  From 1933 onwards, he devoted himself to creating enamel works on metal, experimenting with refined objects of many shapes in brilliant colours. He continued to improve his technique, reaching the highest level of skill.  In the 1940s, he collaborated with Milanese architect Gio Ponti in the production of furniture and decorative panels.  Read more…

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The Arab conquest of Sicily

Fall of Taormina put island in Muslim control

The Arab conquest of Sicily, which began in 827, was completed on this day in 902 with the fall of Taormina, the city in the northeast of the island that was the last stronghold of the Byzantine Empire, which had been in control for more than 350 years.  The island had been coveted by powers around the Mediterranean for centuries and raids by Saracens, as the Muslim Arabs from Roman Arabia became known, had been taking place since the mid-7th century without threatening to make substantial territorial gains.  However, in 827 the commander of the island's fleet, Euphemius, led a revolt against Michael II, the Byzantine Emperor, and when he and his supporters were at first driven from the island by forces loyal to Michael II, he turned to the Aghlabids, the rulers of Ifriqiya, the area of north Africa now known as Tunisia, for help.  The Aghlabids saw this as a strategic opportunity too good to miss and, with Euphemius’s forces to supplement their own, completed a successful landing on the southern coast and began to establish fortresses.  An attempt to capture Syracuse, which was then the capital, was beaten back, but when they turned their attention to Palermo it was a different story.  Read more…

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Cosimo de' Medici

Banker who founded the Medici dynasty

The first of the Medici rulers of Florence, Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici, died on this day in 1464 in Careggi in Tuscany.  Cosimo had political influence and power because of the wealth he had acquired as a banker and he is also remembered as a patron of learning, the arts and architecture.  Cosimo, who is sometimes referred to as Cosimo the Elder (il Vecchio) was born into a wealthy family in Florence in 1389. His father was a moneylender who then joined the bank of a relative before opening up his own bank in 1397.  The Medici Bank opened branches in Rome, Geneva, Venice and Naples and the Rome branch managed the papal finances in return for a commission.  The bank later opened branches in London, Pisa, Avignon, Bruges, Milan and Lubeck, which meant that bishoprics could pay their money into their nearest branch for the Pope to use.  In 1410, Baldassarre Cossa, who was on one side of a power struggle within the Catholic Church, borrowed money from the bank to buy himself into the office of Cardinal and in return put the Medici in charge of all the papal finances.   This gave the Medici family the power to threaten defaulting debtors with excommunication.  Read more…

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Antonio Cotogni – baritone

Singer who moved the composer Verdi to tears

Antonio ‘Toto’ Cotogni, who achieved international recognition as one of the greatest male opera singers of the 19th century, was born on this day in 1831 in Rome.  Cotogni’s fine baritone voice was particularly admired by the composer Giuseppe Verdi and music journalists wrote reviews full of superlatives after his performances.  Cotogni studied music theory and singing from an early age and began singing in churches and at summer music festivals outside the city.  He made his opera debut in 1852 at Rome’s Teatro Metastasio as Belcore in Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore.  After that he did not sing in public for a while, concentrating instead on building up his repertoire.  After singing in various Italian cities outside Rome he was signed up to sing at Rome’s Teatro Argentina in 1857 in Lucia di Lammermoor and Gemma di Vergy, also by Donizetti. Later that year he performed in Verdi's I due Foscari and Sanelli's Luisa Strozzi at Teatro Rossini in Turin. He met the soprano Maria Ballerini there and married her the following year.  His major breakthrough came in 1858 when he was asked to take the place of the famous baritone Felice Varesi in Nice.  Read more…

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Recording of the Day: Inspector Rex: A Cop's Best Friend - Series Nine - 2-DVD Set 

Produced in Australia, where Il Commissario Rex was repackaged for Australian audiences by the SBS network as Inspector Rex: A Cop's Best Friend, this DVD contains the first series made for Italian television, with subtitles in English. Investigating an unsolved murder case, Rome's Police Inspector Lorenzo Fabbri travels to Vienna, where he meets Rex, the renowned police dog. Though officially in early retirement, Rex has no desire to rest on his laurels. Fabbri recognizes Rex's value as a fellow investigator and takes him back to Rome with him,where he is greeted warmly by Lorenzo's colleagues at the police headquarters; only Lorenzo's boss Filippo Gori seems sceptical. Rex also has to get used to his new environment and a new cuisine: instead of the traditional ham rolls he was fed by his handlers in Austria, he now gets suckling pig! Rome's new four legged crimefighter follows his new master everywhere and is actively involved in Lorenzo's cases. This is a Region 0 DVD, intended to be played worldwide.

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Kaspar Capparoni - actor

Found fame co-starring with crime-fighting dog

Kaspar Capparoni with his German Shepherd
co-star in the crime drama Il Commissario Rex

The actor Kaspar Capparoni, an accomplished performer on stage and screen whose fame received its biggest boost after he starred alongside a German Shepherd dog in the TV crime series Il Commissario Rex, was born in Rome on this day in 1964.

Capparoni played the part of Commissioner Lorenzo Fabbri, a homicide detective who is accompanied in his work by an unusually talented police dog known as Rex, whose ever-growing range of skills are often key to solving the crimes Fabbri is charged with investigating.

Il Commissario Rex, which was screened by Italian national broadcaster Rai between 2008 and 2015, revived a show previously shown on TV in Austria but which had ceased production in 2004 after 11 years.

Capparoni portrayed Commissioner Fabbri for four seasons, working alongside two different German Shepherds in the Rex role. The action, which had been set in Vienna in the original version, was switched to Rome for the Italian revival.  Capparoni decided to leave after the show’s producers proposed a return to its former setting in Austria.

Nonetheless, the popularity of Rex with Italian audiences brought Capparoni a much higher profile. His acting ability was already well regarded within his profession but thanks to Rex he acquired a large following among the public.

Capparoni and his dance partner Julija Musichina
won the 2011 edition of Ballando con le Stelle

Invited to take part in the 2011 edition of Ballando con le Stelle - the Italian equivalent of the UK’s Strictly Come Dancing and the US show Dancing with the Stars - he was paired with the Russian dancer Julija Musichina, the couple emerging from 10 weeks of competition to be crowned champions.

Born Gaspare Capparoni, his father was a surgeon, his mother a German teacher, originally from Sexten - Sesto in Italian - a German-speaking village in Alto Adige, also known as South Tyrol. Kaspar attended Rome’s German School - the Deutsche Schule - and is fluent in German as well as Italian.

After some early work as a model in advertising campaigns, he enrolled for acting lessons at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, where his work came to the attention of the writer and director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, who gave him his stage debut at the age of 18.

It was the beginning of a relationship that would last 20 years and see Capparoni appear under Griffi’s direction in a host of classic stage plays, including works by Molière, Shakespeare, Goldoni, Ceckhov, Pirandello, Ibsen and Tennessee Williams among others.

Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, who
nurtured Capparoni's stage career

Capparoni’s big screen debut came in 1985 when he was cast in a small role in the horror film Phenomena, directed by Dario Argento and with a cast that included Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasance. 

Although he subsequently starred in a number of movies, notably opposite Valeria Golino in Il Sole Nero (2007) and with Claudio Amendola and Elisabetta Rocchetti in Il ritorno del Monnezza (2005), it for his work in television that he has become best known.

In addition to Il Commissario Rex, he is well known for his roles in the drama series such as Solo per amore and Capri, soaps such as Incantesimo and the period drama Elisa di Rivombrosa.

Capparoni has been married twice, first to the former Tunisian model Ashraf Ganouchi, with whom he had two children - Sheherazade, born in 1993, and Joseph, born in 2000 - before a traumatic divorce in 2003, and subsequently to Veronica Maccarone, who was best known for her appearances on Quelli che il calcio, a sports-themed entertainment show. She is the mother of Alessandro, born in 2008, and Daniel (2013).

He recently appeared with Alessandro - a student at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome - in Mothers, Fathers, Sons and Daughters, a production of words and dance, on stage at the Teatro Municipale in Piacenza.

Rome's Teatro Argentina has staged
a number of important premieres 

Travel tip:

The Teatro Argentina, where Capparoni enrolled for acting lessons as a teenager, is one of the oldest theatres in Rome. Located in Largo di Torre Argentina the Teatro Argentina was built over the remains of the curia section of the Theatre of Pompey, where Julius Caesar was murdered in 44BC. It was commissioned by the Sforza-Cesarini family, designed by the architect Gerolamo Theodoli and inaugurated in 1732. In the 19th century, it staged the premieres of Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville as well as Giuseppe Verdi's I due Foscari and La battaglia di Legnano. Several plays by Luigi Pirandello, Henrik Ibsen and Maxim Gorky were performed for the first time there in the 20th century. The auditorium is set out in the traditional horseshoe shape, with seats for 696 people, including 344 in the stalls, and 40 boxes on five levels seating an additional 352.

Sexten (Sesto) enjoys a picturesque setting in 
the Puster Valley in the Alto Adige region

Travel tip:

Sexten - known as Sesto in Italian - is the home village of Capparoni’s mother, who taught German to Italian students. A centre for both winter and summer sports, it is situated in a branch of the Puster Valley, near Innichen (It: San Candido) and Toblach (It: Dobbiaco). Just 3km (1.88 miles) from the Austrian border, it has a population of just under 2,000, 95 per cent of whom speak German as their first language, yet is part of the Alto Adige region. The nearest substantial Italian cities are Bolzano, which is 113km (70 miles) to the west by road, and Belluno, 86km (53 miles) south. Damaged during World War One, when it was on the front line as the Italian army battled against the forces of Austria-Hungary, it is now a thriving centre for skiing in the Dolomite mountains in the winter months and for trekking and mountain biking in the summer. Its most famous sporting product is the tennis player Jannik Sinner, who was born in Innichen but grew up in Sexten.

Also on this day:

902: Arab forces complete their conquest of Sicily

1464: The death of Cosimo de’ Medici, the banker who founded the Medici dynasty

1776: The birth of soldier Francesca Scanagatta

1831: The birth of baritone Antonio Cotogni

1905: The birth of painter and enameller Paolo De Poli

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31 July

Salvatore Maranzano - crime boss

Sicilian ‘Little Caesar’ who established New York’s Five Families

The criminal boss Salvatore Maranzano, who became the head of organised crime in New York City after the so-called Castellammarese War of 1930-31, was born on this day in 1886 in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily.  Maranzano’s position as ‘capo di tutti capi’ - boss of all bosses - in the city lasted only a few months before he was killed, but during that time he came up with the idea of organising criminal activity in New York along the lines of the military chain of command established in ancient Rome by his hero, Julius Caesar.  His fascination with and deep knowledge of the Roman general and politician led to him being nicknamed 'Little Caesar' by his Mafia contemporaries in New York.  Installing himself and four other survivors of the Castellammarese War as bosses, he established the principle of replacing the unstructured gang rivalry in New York with five areas of strictly demarcated territory to be controlled by criminal networks known as the Five Families.  Originally the Maranzano, Profaci, Mangano, Luciano and Gagliano families, they are now known by different names - Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese to be precise - but are essentially based on the same structure.  Read more…

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Antonio Conte - football coach

Southern Italian roots of the former boss of Chelsea

Antonio Conte, the coach who led Italy to the quarter-finals of Euro 2016 and later became head coach of Tottenham Hotspur, having previously managed Chelsea in the English Premier League, was born on this day in 1969 in Lecce, the Puglian city almost at the tip of the heel of Italy.  As a midfield player for Juventus, he won five Serie A titles and a Champions League. He also played in the European Championships and the World Cup for the Italy national team.  After returning to the Turin club as head coach, he won the Serie A title in each of his three seasons in charge before succeeding Cesare Prandelli as Italy's head coach.  Conte hails from a close-knit family in which his parents, Cosimino and Ada, imposed strict rules, although as a child Antonio was allowed to spend many hours playing football and tennis in the street with his brothers, Gianluca and Daniele.  He began to play organised football with Juventina Lecce, an amateur team coached by his father, but it was not long before US Lecce, the local professional club, recognised his potential and offered him an opportunity.   Juventina received compensation of 200,000 lire - the equivalent of about €300 or £250 in today's money - plus eight new footballs.  Read more…

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Mario Bava - filmmaker

‘Master of Italian Horror’ had far-reaching influence

Mario Bava, whose near-50 year career in the film business saw him become a pioneer for horror and other genres in Italian cinema, was born on this day in 1914 in Sanremo.  At various times a screenwriter, director, cinematographer and special effects artist, Bava’s work was largely on low-budget productions, yet with his imagination and artistic flair he created films that would have far-reaching influence in the movie industry.  Although the content tended towards the macabre, Bava is credited as the driving force behind the first Italian science fiction film in The Day the Sky Exploded (1958), the first big-screen giallo - the Italian murder mystery genre - in The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), and the first Italian horror film in I Vampiri - The Vampires - in 1957.  His 1960 movie La maschera del demonio - The Mask of the Devil - was Italy’s first Gothic horror, his 1964 production Six Women for the Assassin is considered one of the earliest examples of the so-called ‘slasher’ movies, featuring mass murder. Steve Miner’s 1981 cult ‘slasher’ movie Friday the 13th Part II was directly inspired by Bava’s A Bay of Blood, which appeared a decade earlier.  Read more…

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Alessandro Algardi – sculptor

Baroque works of art were designed to illustrate papal power

Alessandro Algardi, whose Baroque sculptures grace many churches in Rome, was born on this day in 1598 in Bologna.  Algardi emerged as the principal rival of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the field of portrait sculpture and although Bernini’s creations were known for their dynamic vitality and penetrating characterisation, Algardi’s works were appreciated for their sobriety and surface realism. Many of his smaller works of arts, such as marble busts and terracotta figures are now in collections and museums all over the world.  Algardi was born in Bologna, where he was apprenticed in the studio of Agostino Carracci from a young age.  He soon showed an aptitude for sculpture and his earliest known works, two statues of saints, were created for the Oratory of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna.  After a short stay in Venice, he went to Rome in 1625 with an introduction from the Duke of Mantua to the late pope’s nephew, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who employed him to restore ancient statues.  Although it was a time for great architectural initiatives in Rome, Algardi struggled for recognition at the start as Bernini was given most of the major sculptural commissions.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Mafia: The First 100 Years, by William Balsano and George Carpozi Jr

Tracing its beginnings as an underground society which sprang up in Sicily, to the Mob which went on to run organised crime throughout Italy and America, The Mafia: The First 100 Years tells the gripping story of the most mythical and misunderstood criminal organisation.  How did the Mob evolve from a gang of bumbling killers into the smooth-running international 'corporation' of today? Drawing on nearly two decades of research, William Balsamo - great-nephew of the original godfather - and George Carpozi Jr. reveal the Mafia's coalescence into an organisation whose insidious influence reached across the Atlantic and into a presidential administration. Delving behind the headlines to uncover the true extent of the Mafia's influence, The Mafia: The First 100 Years reads like the most compelling crime fiction, yet is the terrifying, deadly truth.

William Balsamo is the great-nephew of Don Giuseppe 'Battista' Balsamo, the original godfather. George Carpozi Jr is a journalist, biographer and writer who has worked on the New York Journal-American and the New York Post.

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30 July

Adriano Galliani - entrepreneur and football executive

Businessman was CEO of AC Milan in golden era 

The entrepreneur Adriano Galliani, who was chief executive of AC Milan for 21 years, was born on this day in 1944 in Monza, the Lombardy city a little under 20km (12 miles) north of Milan.  With Galliani at the helm, Milan won the Serie A title eight times and were five-times winners of the Champions League in what was a golden era for the club.  Galliani became CEO at the club in 1986 when the ownership transferred to Silvio Berlusconi, the businessman and future prime minister with whom he had created the commercial TV company Mediaset.  He was responsible for some of the club’s most spectacular player signings, persuading such global stars as Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit, George Weah, Andriy Shevchenko and Kaka to sign for the club.  All five won the Ballon D’Or, the annual award given to the player judged to the best player in all the European leagues, during their time with the club.  Since 2018, Galliani has held a seat in the Senate of the Italian parliament as a representative of Forza Italia, the political party founded by Berlusconi.  Galliani hailed from a middle class family in Monza. His father was an official on the local council.  Read more…

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Michelangelo Antonioni - film director

Enigmatic artist often remembered for 1966 movie Blowup

The movie director Michelangelo Antonioni, sometimes described as “the last great” of Italian cinema’s post-war golden era, died on this day in 2007 at his home in Rome.  Antonioni, who was 94 years old when he passed away, was a contemporary of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.  Remarkably, three of that trio’s most acclaimed works - Fellini’s La dolce vita, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Antonioni’s L’avventura - appeared within a few months of one another.  Antonioni’s genius lay in the way he challenged traditional approaches to storytelling and drama and the way people viewed the world in general.  His characters were often intentionally vague, his most favoured themes being social alienation and bourgeois ennui, reflecting his view that life left many people emotionally adrift and unable to find their bearings.  His movies often had no strong plot in a conventional sense, were dotted with unfinished conversations and seemingly disconnected incidents. His style was seen as a rejection of neorealism, his films more a metaphor for human experience, rather than a record of it.  Read more…

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Vittorio Erspamer - chemist

Professor who first identified the neurotransmitter serotonin

Vittorio Erspamer, the pharmacologist and chemist who first identified the neurotransmitter serotonin, was born on this day in 1909 in the small village of Val di Non in Malosco, a municipality of Trentino.  Serotonin, also known as 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT), is found in the gastrointestinal tract, blood platelets and central nervous system of animals, including humans.  It is popularly thought to be a contributor to feelings of well-being and happiness. A generation of anti-depressant drugs, including Prozac, Seroxat, Zoloft and Celexa, have been developed with the aim of interfering with the action of serotonin in the body in a way that boosts such feelings.  The name serotonin was coined in the United States in 1948 after research doctors at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio discovered a vasoconstrictor substance - one that narrows blood vessels - in blood serum. Since it was a serum agent affecting vascular tone, they named it serotonin.  However, in 1952 it was shown that a substance identified by Dr Erspamer in 1935, which he named enteramine, was the same as serotonin.  Dr Erspamer made his discovery when he was working as assistant professor in anatomy and physiology at the University of Pavia.  Read more…

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Naples earthquake of 1626

Devastating tremor and tsunami killed 70,000

The region around Naples, one of the most physically unstable areas of high population in the world with a long history of volcanic activity and earthquakes, suffered one of its more devastating events on this day in 1626.  An earthquake that it has been estimated would register around seven on the modern Richter scale struck the city and the surrounding area.  Its epicentre was about 50km out to sea, beyond the Bay of Naples and the island of Capri to the south, but the shock waves were strong enough to cause the collapse of many buildings in the city and the destruction of more than 30 small towns and villages.  A tsunami followed, in which according to some reports the sea receded by more than three kilometres (two miles) before rushing back with enormous force, towering waves engulfing the coastline.  In total, it is thought that approximately 70,000 people were killed by the quake itself and the tsunami.  Naples at the time was a thriving city, still under Spanish rule.  It had a population of around 300,000, which made it the largest port city in Europe and the second largest of all European cities apart from Paris.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Immortals: How My Milan Team Reinvented Football, by Arrigo Sacchi

When Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan destroyed Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the 1989 European Cup final, everything changed. Studded with the world-class talents of their legendary three Dutchmen - Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten and Frank Rijkaard – they threw off the shackles of Italian football’s defensive traditions to pioneer a modern, high-pressing and boldly attacking approach. Sacchi revolutionised football and altered the DNA of the next generation of coaches, including Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp. This is the story of the crowning achievement of one of football’s greatest-ever teams – told by the man who built it. This is the story of The Immortals.

Arrigo Sacchi is one of the most innovative and successful coaches in the history of football. His high-pressing, attacking style has echoed through the generations and is reflected in the philosophies of many leading modern coaches, including Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp.

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29 July

Teresa Noce - activist and partisan

Anti-Fascist who became union leader and parliamentary deputy

Teresa Noce, who became one of the most important female campaigners for workers’ rights in 20th century Italy, was born on this day in 1900.  A trade union activist as young as 12 years old, Noce spent almost 20 years in exile after the Fascists outlawed her political activity, during which time she became involved with the labour movement and in Paris and subsequently led a French partisan unit under the code name Estella.  After she returned to Italy in 1945 she was elected to the Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies) as a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).  Working with the Unione Donne Italiane (Italian Women’s Union), she secured changes to the law to protect working mothers and provide paid maternity leave.  Born in one of the poorest districts of Turin, she and her older brother were brought up in a one-parent family after her father abandoned their mother while they were both young. Because of her mother’s poor income, they were seldom able to keep the same home more than a few weeks before being evicted for non-payment of rent.  Teresa was a bright girl who taught herself to read the newspapers.  Read more…

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Pope Urban VIII

Pontiff whose extravagance led to disgrace

The controversial Pope Urban VIII died on this day in 1644 in Rome.  Urban VIII – born Maffeo Barberini – was a significant patron of the arts, the sponsor of the brilliant sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whose work had a major influence on the look of Rome.  But in his ambitions to strengthen and expand the Papal States, he overreached himself in a disastrous war against Odoardo Farnese, the Duke of Parma, and the expenses incurred in that and other conflicts, combined with extravagant spending on himself and his family, left the papacy seriously weakened.  Indeed, so unpopular was Urban VIII that after news spread of his death there was rioting in Rome and a bust of him on Capitoline Hill was destroyed by an angry mob.  His time in office was also notable for the conviction in 1633 for heresy of the physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei, who had promoted the supposition, put forward by the Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus, that the earth revolved around the sun, which was directly contrary to the orthodox Roman Catholic belief that the sun revolved around the earth.  Read more…

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Benito Mussolini  - Fascist leader

Future dictator inspired by his father's politics

Benito Mussolini, who would become Italy's notorious Fascist dictator during the 1920s, was born on this day in 1883 in a small town in Emilia-Romagna known then as Dovia di Predappio, about 17km (11 miles) south of the city of Forlì.  His father, Alessandro, worked as a blacksmith while his mother, Rosa was a devout Catholic schoolteacher.  Benito was the eldest of his parents' three children. He would later have a brother, Arnaldo, and a sister, Edvige.  It could be said that Alessandro's political leanings influenced his son from birth.  Benito was named after the Mexican reformist President, Benito Juárez, while his middle names - Andrea and Amilcare - were those of the Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani.  Working in his father's smithy as a boy growing up, Mussolini would listen to Alessandro's admiration for the protagonists of the Italian unification movement, such as the nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, and the military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi. But he also heard him speak with approval about the socialist thinker Carlo Pisacane and anarchist revolutionaries such as Carlo Cafiero and Mikhail Bakunin.  Read more…

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Agostino Depretis – politician

Premier stayed in power by creating coalitions

One of the longest serving prime ministers in the history of Italy, Agostino Depretis died on this day in 1887 in Stradella in the Lombardy region.  He had been the founder and main proponent of trasformismo, a method of making a flexible centrist coalition that isolated the extremists on the right and the left.  Depretis served as Prime Minister three times between 1876 and his death.  He was born in 1813 in Mezzana Corti, a hamlet that is now part of Cava Manara, a municipality in the province of Pavia.  After graduating from law school in Pavia, Depretis ran his family’s estate.  In 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe, he was elected as a member of the first parliament in Piedmont.  He consistently opposed Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, the Prime Minister of Piedmont Sardinia.  A disciple of the pro-unification activist Giuseppe Mazzini, Depretis was nearly captured by the Austrians while smuggling arms into Milan, but he did not take part in the 1853 uprising planned by Mazzini in Milan. It is thought he predicted it would fail.  Depretis briefly served as Governor of Brescia in Lombardy after Cavour’s resignation in 1859.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Lost Wave: Women and Democracy in Postwar Italy, by Molly Tambor

The first women entered national government in Italy in 1946, and represented a "lost wave" of feminist action. They used a specific electoral and legislative strategy, "constitutional rights feminism," to construct an image of the female citizen as a bulwark of democracy. Mining existing tropes of femininity such as the Resistance heroine, the working mother, the sacrificial Catholic, and the "mamma Italiana," they searched for social consensus for women's equality that could reach across religious, ideological, and gender divides. The political biographies of women politicians intertwine throughout the book with the legislative history of the women's rights law they created and helped pass: a Communist who passed the first law guaranteeing paid maternity leave in 1950, a Socialist whose law closed state-run brothels in 1958, and a Christian Democrat who passed the 1963 law guaranteeing women's right to become judges. Women politicians navigated gendered political identity as they picked and chose among competing models of femininity in Cold War Italy. In so doing, they forged a political legacy that in turn affected the rights and opportunities of all Italian women. Their work is compared throughout The Lost Wave to the constitutional rights of women in other parts of postwar Europe.

Molly Tambor is Associate Professor of History at Long Island University, specialising in 20th century European history and the history of women and gender. She is chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Modern Italian Studies.

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28 July

Vittorio Valletta - industrialist

Agnelli lieutenant who turned Fiat into an auto giant

The industrialist Vittorio Valletta, whose diplomatic and deal-making skills helped him turn Fiat into the beacon of Italy’s postwar recovery, was born on this day in 1883 in Sampierdarena, a port suburb of Genoa famous for shipbuilding.  He joined Fiat in 1921, quickly rising to the top and became effectively the right-hand man to founder and president Giovanni Agnelli, as CEO practically steering the company single-handed through the turmoil of the Second World War.  After Agnelli’s death in 1945 he became president and remained in control of the company until 1966, when he finally handed over to Gianni Agnelli, the founder’s grandson, at the age of 83. Under his leadership, Fiat grew to such a position of dominance in postwar Italy that at one stage 80 per cent of cars bought in Italy were made by Fiat. The company’s factories employed almost 100,000 people, fulfilling Giovanni’s ambition, which he handed to Valletta almost on his deathbed, to "make Fiat greater, giving more working opportunities to the people, and producing cheaper and better cars".  Valletta also pulled off one of the greatest business coups of the postwar years when he secured a contract with the government of Russia to produce 600,000 cars per year.  Read more…

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Luigi Musso - racing driver

Wealthy Roman who found expectations hard to bear

Luigi Musso, who for a period of his life was Italy’s top racing driver, was born on this day in 1924 in Rome.  Musso competed six times for the world drivers’ championship, three times for Maserati and three times for Ferrari. He finished third in the 1957 season, driving for Ferrari.  His solitary Formula One Grand Prix victory came in 1956 in Argentina, although he had to content himself with a half-share of the points after being forced to hand over his car to Juan Fangio, the local hero and Ferrari team leader, after 29 of the 98 laps, when Fangio’s car failed.  Sadly, two years later he was killed in an accident at the French Grand Prix in Reims, which his girlfriend, Fiamma Breschi, blamed on the ferocity of his rivalry with his fellow Ferrari drivers Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins.  Born into a wealthy Roman family – his father was a diplomat – Musso grew up in a luxurious palazzo off the Via Veneto. He acquired his love of cars from his brothers, who were also racing drivers.  He began to compete in 1950 in a car he bought himself, a 750cc Giannini sports car. He made an inauspicious start, his first race ending when he left the track and collided with a statue of the national hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi.  Read more…

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Riccardo Muti - conductor

Celebrated maestro of the baton

The brilliant conductor and musical director Riccardo Muti was born on this day in 1941 in Naples.  Until 2023, Muti was conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and is still the director of the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, a training ensemble for talent from Italian and other European music schools, based in Ravenna and Piacenza, which he founded in 2005.  Previously, Muti held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.  He was named principal conductor and music director for the Maggio Musicale when he was only 28 and stayed there 12 years.  He was at La Scala for 19 years from 1986 to 2005, his tenure ending amid rancour following a conflict with the theatre's general manager, Carlo Fontana.  Muti spent his childhood years largely in the Puglian port city of Molfetta, near Bari. He entered the world in Naples, he says, at the insistence of his mother, Gilda, herself a Neapolitan, who travelled across the peninsula by train in the later stages of each of her five pregnancies in order that her children would also grow up as Neapolitans.  Read more…

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San Marino’s liberation from Fascism

The day the people demonstrated against their government

San Marino residents celebrate the anniversary of their liberation from Fascism on this day every year.  The Sammarinese Fascist Party had been founded in 1922 by Giuliano Gozi, a veteran of the First World War who came from a rich and powerful family.  The party was modelled on the Fascist party of Italy and used violence and intimidation against its opponents.  Gozi took the roles of both foreign minister and interior minister, which gave him control over the military and the police. He continued to serve as foreign minister, leading the cabinet, until 1943.  In 1923 Gozi was elected as San Marino’s Captain Regent. The Fascists retained this post for 20 years as they banned all other political parties, although some independent politicians continued to serve in the Grand and General Council of the Republic.  But in the early 1940s a group of Socialists started up a clandestine anti-fascist movement and the opposition to the Fascist regime grew stronger in the republic.  On July 28, 1943 the Socialists held a successful political demonstration against Fascism and as a result new elections were called.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Italy Since 1945: Short Oxford History of Italy, by Patrick McCarthy

The Short Oxford History of Italy series, in seven volumes, will offer a complete History of Italy from the early middle ages to the present and, in each period, will present the most recent historical perspectives on Italian history. This means setting Italian history in the broader context of European history as a whole. It also means questioning accepted interpretations of Italian history in each of these periods and, in particular, the idea that Italy's history has been significantly different from that of the rest of Europe. Each volume will emphasise how developments in Italy in each period are best understood as variants on broader European patterns of political, economic, social and cultural change.  Italy Since 1945 sets in context the tremendous changes that Italy has undergone in the last 55 years. In place of the land of pizza, sunshine and soccer, McCarthy describes a developing nation: an economy that has found its own road to success via the piccole imprese with an increasingly strong stock market and more sophisticated banking; a dynamic, traditional, family centred society; and a political system struggling to modernise after 40 years of Christian Democrat rule and Communist opposition. McCarthy also looks at the role of the Church, including Pius XII's wartime activities and the 'foreign pope', John-Paul II before finally turning to sport in Italy - the only country to have three daily newspapers devoted to the subject. Authoritative, accessible and absorbing, the book examines modern Italy through the eyes of 10 leading commentators and explores the Italian experience in the wider context of both the nation's past and its wider contemporary European position.

Patrick McCarthy was Professor of European Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Bologna.

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