Bianca Maria Visconti – Duchess of Milan

Ruler fought alongside her troops to defend her territory

Bianca Maria Visconti

Bianca Maria Visconti, the daughter of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, was born on this day in 1425 near Settimo Pavese in Lombardy.

A strong character, her surviving letters showed she was able to run Milan efficiently after becoming Duchess and even supposedly donned a suit of armour and rode with her troops into battle, earning herself the nickname, Warrior Woman.

Bianca Maria was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Milan, and was sent to live with her mother in comfortable conditions in a castle where she received a good education.

At the age of six she was betrothed for political reasons to the condottiero, Francesco I Sforza, who was 24 years older than her.

Despite the political situation changing many times over the years, Bianca Maria and Francesco Sforza did get married in 1441 when she was 16. The wedding took place in Cremona, which was listed as part of her dowry. The celebrations lasted several days and included a banquet, tournaments, a palio and a huge cake made in the shape of the city’s Torrazzo, the bell tower.

Bianca Maria quickly proved her skills in administration and diplomacy and at the age of 17 was named Regent of the Marche.

Il Torrazzo, the tallest bell tower in Italy

After the death of her father, Bianca Maria and Francesco set off for Milan with their armies and Francesco spent three years trying to reconquer the cities that had declared independence from Milan after Filippo Maria Visconti’s death.

In 1448, while Francesco was away fighting in Pavia, the Venetians attacked Cremona and it is claimed Bianca Maria put on a suit of armour and went with her troops to defend the city.

When Bianca and Francesco were welcomed to Milan as the new duke and duchess they refused to travel in the triumphal wagon and instead chose to ride to the Duomo on horseback.

With Francesco constantly occupied with his army, Bianca Maria devoted herself to the administration of the Duchy and to public works.

After the death of Francesco, Bianca Maria moved back to live in Cremona. She was in the process of returning to Milan to attend her son’s marriage when she fell ill. She died in Cremona a few months later at the age of 43 and was buried in the Duomo in Milan alongside her husband.

Travel tip:

Cremona has the tallest bell tower in Italy, il Torrazzo, which measures more than 112 metres in height. The city is also famous for producing torrone, a type of nougat. It is thought this concoction, of almonds, honey and egg whites, was first created in the shape of il Torrazzo to mark the marriage of Bianca Maria to Francesco in 1441. To sample the many different types of torrone now made, visit Negozio Sperlari in Via Solferino in the centre of the city.

The Museo Stradivariano in Cremona is
dedicated to the violin maker Stradivari

Travel tip:

Cremona is also famous as the birthplace of Antonio Stradivari, who is considered to be the greatest ever violin maker. He is believed to have produced more than 1,100 instruments, some of which have achieved millions of pounds when sold at auction in modern times. There is a Museo Stradivariano in Cremona in Via Ugolani Dati, housed in the elegant rooms of a former palace. Visitors can see more than 700 relics from Stradivari’s workshop, which date back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

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The Sicilian Vespers

How the French lost control of the island they were ruling

Women fleeing from the violent uprising
known as the Sicilian Vespers, as depicted
by the artist Domenico Morelli

As the citizens of Palermo walked to vespers - evening prayers - in the church of Santo Spirito on this day in 1282, a French soldier grossly insulted a pretty young Sicilian woman.

The girl’s enraged fiancé immediately drew his dagger and stabbed the soldier through the heart.

The violence was contagious and the local people exploded in fury against the French occupying forces. More than 200 French soldiers were killed at the outset and the violence spread to other parts of Sicily the next day resulting in a full-scale rebellion against French rule.

This bloody event, which led to Charles of Anjou losing control of Sicily, became known in history as the Sicilian Vespers.

King Charles was detested for his cold-blooded cruelty and his officials had made the lives of the ordinary Sicilians miserable.

After he was overthrown, Sicily enjoyed almost a century of independence.

There have been different versions given of the events that led to the rebellion against the French and it is not known exactly how the uprising started.

But to many Italians the story of the Sicilian Vespers has always been inspirational and Guiseppe Verdi even created an opera about it in 1855.

The 12th century Chiesa dello Spirito Santo in Palermo
(Photo: Enzian44 CC BY-SA 3.0)

Travel tip:

The 12th century Church of the Holy Spirit (Chiesa dello Spirito Santo), where the violence known as the Sicilian Vespers exploded, used to be in a park outside the city walls but it is now part of the Sant’Orsola cemetery in Palermo.

Travel tip:

The Teatro Regio in Parma was the setting in 1855 for the premiere of Verdi’s five-act opera, I Vespri Siciliani, which was loosely based on the story of the Sicilian Vespers. The theatre had been built with a 1,400 seat auditorium and inaugurated in 1829. It now honours Verdi, who was born at nearby Busseto, with a festival every October. 

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Terence Hill – actor

Film star progressed from playing cowboys to become a popular parish priest

Terence Hill was born as Mario Girotti on this day in 1939 in Venice.

He became an actor as a child and went on to have many starring roles in films, particularly spaghetti westerns.

Terence Hill (left), born Mario Girotti, in his most famous
role as the parish priest Don Matteo

It was when he began acting in that genre that he changed his name to Terence Hill at the suggestion of one of his producers, who told him that Italian-made westerns were better received in English-speaking countries if the names in the credits sounded American. 

He is said to have settled on Hill after the first name of his German-born mother, Hildegard, and Terence after the name of a Roman poet and playwright he admired.

Terence Hill later became a household name in Italy as the actor who played the lead character in the long-running television series, Don Matteo.

Hill lived in Germany as a child but then his family moved to Rome, the capital of Italy’s film industry. When he was 12 years old, Hill was spotted by director Dino Risi and given a part in Vacanze col gangster, an adventure movie in which five youngsters help a dangerous gangster escape from prison.

Other film parts quickly followed and at the height of his popularity, Hill was said to be among the highest-paid actors in Italy.

Hill had a leading role in Il Gattopardo
(The Leopard) under his real name

 
His most famous films are They Call Me Trinity and My Name is Nobody, in which he appeared with Henry Fonda. Another of his films, Django, Prepare a coffin was featured at the 64th Venice film festival in 2007.

Hill also had a major role in Luchino Visconti’s film, The Leopard along with Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, in which he was listed in the cast under his real name.

Since 2000, on Italian television, Hill has portrayed Don Matteo, an inspirational parish priest who assists the Carabinieri to solve crimes that affect his community in Gubbio.

Hill received an international ‘Outstanding Actor of the Year’ award for this role at the 42nd Monte Carlo television festival.

The next episode of Series 10 of Don Matteo will be shown on Thursday, 31 March at 21.20 Italian time on Rai Uno.

The Piazza della Signoria in Gubbio
(Photo: Lisa1963 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Travel tip:

Gubbio in Umbria, where Don Matteo is filmed, is a small medieval town perched on the lower slopes of Mount Ingino in the Apennines. Via della Repubblica, the main street, leads to Piazza della Signoria where there is a magnificent 14th century palace, Palazzo dei Consoli, which houses the Tavole Eugubine, bronze tablets written in an ancient Umbrian language. From the square there are wonderful views over the town and surrounding countryside.

Travel tip:

Cinecittà in Rome, the hub of the Italian film industry, is a large studio complex to the south of the city, built during the fascist era under the personal direction of Benito Mussolini and his son, Vittorio. The studios were bombed by the Allies in the Second World War but were rebuilt and used again in the 1950s for large productions, such as Ben Hur. These days a range of productions, from television drama to music videos, are filmed there and it has its own dedicated Metro stop.

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Alberto Grimaldi - film producer

Spaghetti Western trilogy gave Naples producer his big break

Alberto Grimaldi

Film producer Alberto Grimaldi, who celebrates his 91st birthday today, boasts an extraordinary list of credits that includes Last Tango in Paris, The Canterbury Tales, Man of La Mancha, Fellini's Casanova, 1900, Ginger and Fred and Gangs of New York.

Born in Naples on this day in 1925, Grimaldi trained as a lawyer and it was in that capacity that he initially found work in the cinema industry in the 1950s.

However, he could see the money-making potential in production and in the early 1960s set up his own company, Produzioni Europee Associate (PEA).

His first three productions, cashing in on the popularity in Italy of westerns, enjoyed some success but it was a meeting with Sergio Leone, the Italian director, that earned him his big break.

Leone, whose first venture into the western genre, A Fistful of Dollars, had been an unexpected hit both for him and the young American actor, Clint Eastwood, was busy planning the sequel when a dispute arose with his producers over the cost of the movie.

Movie poster advertising Scorsese's
epic Gangs of New York

As it happened, Grimaldi's first production, The Shadow of Zorro, had been filmed, like A Fistful of Dollars, on location in Spain.  Leone knew of Grimaldi's legal background and initially sought his advice on settling the dispute.  Ultimately, they agreed to collaborate and the Leone classics, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, also starring Eastwood, were PEA productions.

Both were considerable box office hits and established Grimaldi's name, opening many doors.

By the 1970s, Grimaldi was in a position to produce movies by many of Italy's top directors, including Federico Fellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as supporting the artistic aspirations of other Italian directors, such as Gillo Pontecorvo, Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi.

He became more selective in his projects in the 1980s, notably turning down the chance to work with Leone again on Once Upon a Time in America. After producing Fellini's comedy drama Ginger and Fred, a 1986 film about two Italian impersonators of the American dance movie legends, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, it was 16 years before his name was attached to the $100 million Martin Scorcese epic, Gangs of New York, which was released in 2002.  By then Grimaldi was aged 77.

Via Partenope in 1935

Travel tip:

Grimaldi's home city of Naples has changed little in his lifetime.  The black and white postcard image shows the Via Partenope, bordering the waterfront in the Santa Lucia district of the city, in 1935, when Grimaldi was a 10-year-old boy.  It is scarcely different today, 81 years on.

Over the rooftops of Naples towards Mergellina and
Posillipo, as seen from Castel Sant'Elmo

Travel tip:

Visitors to Naples who crave a more peaceful side to the city away from the chaos of the Spaccanapoli or the Spanish Quarter should venture north from Piazza del Plebiscito and the Royal Palace on to the long promenade of Via Francesco Caracciolo towards Mergellina and the residential quarter of Posillipo, the traditional home of the more wealthy Neapolitans.



More reading:

Sergio Leone - Spaghetti western creator

Federico Fellini's cinematic legacy

How Franco Zeffirelli became a household name

Also on this day:

1472: The birth of the great Renaissance painter Fra Bartolommeo

1918: The birth of opera star Anselmo Colzani

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