Vittorio Jano - motor racing engineer

Genius behind the success of Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari

Vittorio Jano

Born on this day in 1891, Vittorio Jano was among the greatest engine designers in motor racing history. 

Jano's engines powered cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari during a career that spanned four decades, winning numerous Grand Prix races.  The legendary Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio won the fourth of his five Formula One world championships in Jano's Lancia-Ferrari D50, in 1956.

Almost 30 years earlier, Jano's Alfa Romeo P2 won the very first Grand Prix world championship in 1925, while its successor, the P3, scored a staggering 46 race wins between 1932 and 1935.

He worked for Ferrari from the mid-50s onwards, where his greatest legacy was the V-8 Dino engine, which was the staple of Ferrari cars on the track and the road between 1966 and 2004.

Jano's parents were from Hungary, but settled in Italy, where his father worked as a mechanical engineer in Turin.  He was born in the small town of San Giorgio Canavese in Piedmont, about 35 kilometres north of Turin, and was originally called Viktor János.

Following his father into engineering, he joined Fiat at the age of just 20 and by 1921 was head of the design team.  Two years later, partly on the recommendation of Enzo Ferrari, then a young driver, he was hired by Milan-based Alfa Romeo, who were keen to raise their profile by becoming a successful name on the track.

They almost doubled his salary from 1800 lire per year with Fiat to 3500 lire per year but it was money well spent.  Jano's P2 car won its debut race in 1924, driven by Antonio Ascari, and gave the company the Grand Prix world championship the following year.

Its successor, the P3, was the first genuine single-seat racing car in Grand Prix racing.  Like the P2, it made a successful first appearance on the track, winning the 1932 Italian Grand Prix in the hands of the great Italian driver Tazio Nuvolari.  By this time Jano was effectively working for Ferrari.  Enzo had switched roles from driver to team manager and his Scuderia Ferrari had become Alfa Romeo's works team, taking over the racing operation completely when the parent company hit financial troubles in 1933.

Alberto Ascari pictured in the Lancia-Ferrari D50

But before he became a Ferrari employee, Jano returned to Turin in 1937 to join Lancia as chief development engineer. Jano was involved in making aircraft engines during World War II but returned to building cars, launching the successful D24 road racing car and then the D50 Formula One car, again for the Scuderia Ferrari team.

He moved to Ferrari in 1955 after Lancia, stunned by the death at 36 of their main driver, Alberto Ascari, during a test session at Monza, stepped away from racing. Ironically, Alberto's father, Antonio, had died at the wheel of Jano's Alfa Romeo P2 during the French Grand Prix of 1925, also aged 36.

Ferrari took over Lancia’s Grand Prix operations and Jano moved to their headquarters at Maranello, just outside Modena in Emilia-Romagna.

At Ferrari, Jano began working on a V-6 engine for Formula Two cars with Enzo’s son, Dino. Tragically, Dino died in 1956, struck down with muscular dystrophy, a year before the engine's debut.

The V-6 Dino engine was a commercial success, used in many of Ferrari's road-going vehicles before it was superseded in the mid-1960s by the V-8 version, which would eventually become the staple for Ferrari's luxury sports car range, from the 308 GTB produced under the original Dino badge in 1973 to the Berlinettas and Spiders in the 1990s, phased out only after the Modena 360 was discontinued in 2004.

Jano died in 1965, a month short of his 74th birthday, from self-inflicted gunshot wounds after being diagnosed with cancer.

Fiat's extraordinary Lingotto factory in Turin, complete
with its famous rooftop test track

Travel tip:

It was during Vittorio Jano's time at Fiat that the company was building its iconic factory in the Lingotto district of Turin, famous for a production line that progressed upwards through its five floors, with completed cars emerging on to a then-unique steeply banked test track at rooftop level. At the time the largest car factory in the world, built to a starkly linear design by the Futurist architect Giacomo Matte Trucco, it was closed in 1982 but reopened in 1989. Redesigned by the award-winning contemporary architect Renzo Piano, it now houses concert halls, a theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and a hotel, as well as the Automotive Engineering faculty of the Polytechnic University of Turin.  The rooftop track, which featured in the Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job, has been preserved and can still be visited today.

Travel tip:

The town of Maranello, 18 km from Modena, has been the home of the Ferrari car factory since the early 1940s, when Enzo Ferrari moved production from the Scuderia Ferrari Garage and Factory in Modena.  Visitors can sample the rich history of the company at the Museo Ferrari, which not only includes many impressive exhibits but interactive features such as Formula One simulators and an opportunity to take part in a pit lane tyre change, plus the chance to be photographed at the wheel of a Ferrari car.  For more information visit www.museomaranello.ferrari.com

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Cosimo I de' Medici

The grand designs of a powerful archduke

This 1545 portrait of  Cosimo I by Agnolo
 Bronzino is owned by the Art Gallery
of New South Wales

The second duke of Florence and first grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I, died on this day in 1574 at the Villa di Castello near Florence.

Cosimo had proved to be both shrewd and unscrupulous, bringing Florence under his despotic control and increasing its territories.

He was the first to have the idea of uniting all public services in a single building. He commissioned the Uffizi, which meant Offices, a beautiful building that is now an art gallery in the centre of Florence.

Cosimo was the great-great-grandson of Lorenzo the Elder, whose brother was Cosimo the Elder but played no part in politics until he heard of the assassination of his distant cousin, Alessandro.

He immediately travelled to Florence and was elected head of the republic in 1537 with the approval of the city’s senate, assembly and council.

He also had the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. The Emperor’s general defeated an army raised against Cosimo, who then had the principal rebels beheaded in public in Florence.

Cosimo began to style himself as a duke and sidelined the other Government bodies in the city.  As the Emperor’s protégée, he remained safe from the hostility of Pope Paul II and King Francis I of France.

The gallery over the Ponte Vecchio was added by Cosimo I
to link the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace

Cosimo launched an attack on Siena in 1554 and after a long siege the city capitulated to his troops. Having brought many other parts of Tuscany under his control, Cosimo then turned his attention to improving Florence.

He had the interior of Palazzo Vecchio redecorated and adopted the Pitti Palace as his residence, overseeing the design of the Boboli Gardens. He also had the gallery over the Ponte Vecchio built to enable him to move from one palace to the other easily.

Cosimo was deeply affected when his wife, two of his sons and two of his daughters all died within a few years of each other.

In 1564 he handed over the Government of the city to his eldest son, Francis. In 1569 Pope Pius V conferred the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany on Cosimo.

He retired to live at his country residence, the Villa di Castello, where he died in 1574.

Travel tip:

The Ponte Vecchio was built in 1345 and is the oldest bridge remaining in Florence. The medieval workshops inhabited by butchers and blacksmiths were eventually given to goldsmiths and are still inhabited by jewellers today. The private corridor over the shops was designed by the architect, Giorgio Vasari, to link the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, via the Uffizi, allowing the Medici to move about between their residences without having to walk through the streets.

The building that now houses the Uffizi Gallery was
originally designed to house a suite of offices

Travel tip:

Work on the Uffizi began in 1560 in order to create a suite of offices (uffici) for the new administration of Cosimo I. The architect, Vasari, created a wall of windows on the upper storey and from about 1580, the Medici began to use this well-lit space to display their art treasures, starting one of the oldest and most famous art galleries in the world. The present day Uffizi Gallery, in Piazzale degli Uffizi, is open from 8.15 am to 6.50 pm from Tuesday to Sunday.

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Piero di Cosimo - Florentine artist with works in the Uffizi

Niccolò Machiavelli, brilliant but ruthless statesman who served the Medici family

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(Uffizi picture is by Petar Milosevic CC BY-SA 4.0)

Massimo D’Alema – former prime minister

Journalist and politician first Communist to lead Italy

Massimo D'Alema

Massimo D’Alema, who was prime minister of Italy from 1998 to 2000, was born on this day in 1949 in Rome.

He was the first prime minister in the history of Italy, and the first leader of any of the NATO countries, to have been a Communist Party member.

After studying Philosophy at the University of Pisa, D’Alema became a journalist by profession. He joined the Italian Young Communists’ Federation in 1963, becoming its general secretary in 1975.
  
D’Alema became a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), part of which, in 1991, gave origin to the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), and, in 1998, to the Democrats of the Left (DS).

D’Alema has also served as the chief editor of the daily newspaper, L’Unità, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.

In October 1998, D’Alema became prime minister of Italy, as the leader of the Olive Tree centre left coalition.

While his party was making the transition to becoming the Democratic Party of the Left, D’Alema stressed the importance of the party’s roots in Marxism with the aim of creating a modern, European, social-democratic party.

He was appointed deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs by Prime Minister Romano Prodi in 2006 and subsequently became president of a political foundation for Italian Europeans and president of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies.

Travel tip:

Palazzo Chigi, the official residence in Rome of the Prime Minister of Italy, was occupied by D’Alema between 1998 and 2000. It is a 16th century palace in Piazza Colonna, just off Via del Corso and close to the Pantheon.

The Duomo and Leaning Tower in Pisa's Piazza dei Miracoli

Travel tip:

Massimo D’Alema is one of several Italian prime ministers to have attended the University of Pisa. Situated in Lungarno Pacinotti in the centre of Pisa, close to the Duomo and the famous Leaning Tower, the university was founded in 1343 by an edict of Pope Clement VI and is the tenth oldest in Italy.


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Alcide de Gasperi - Prime Minister who rebuilt war-torn Italy

The tragedy of Aldo Moro

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(Massimo D'Alema photo by WeEnterWinter CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Pisa photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro CC BY-SA 3.0)

Antonio Carluccio - chef and restaurateur

TV personality and author began his career as a wine merchant

The chef, restaurateur and author Antonio Carluccio was born on this day in 1937 in Vietri-sul-Mare in Campania. 

An instantly recognisable figure due to his many television appearances, Carluccio moved to London in 1975 and built up a successful chain of restaurants bearing his name.  He wrote 21 books about Italian food, as well as his autobiography, A Recipe for Life, which was published in 2012.

Although born in Vietri, a seaside town between Amalfi and Salerno famous for ceramics, Carluccio spent most of his childhood in the north, in Borgofranco d'Ivrea in Piedmont.  His father was a station master and his earliest memories are of running home from the station where his father worked to warn his mother that the last train of the day had left and that it was time to begin cooking the evening meal.

Antonio Carluccio
(Photo: Andrew Hendo)

Carluccio would join his father in foraging for mushrooms and wild rocket in the mountainous countryside near their home and it was from those outings that his interest in food began to develop, yet his career would at first revolve around wine.  Having moved to Austria to study languages, he settled in Germany and between 1962 and 1975 was a wine merchant based in Hamburg.

The wine business then took him to London, where he specialised in importing Italian wines.  He was already acknowledged among friends as a talented cook and he was persuaded by his partner and future wife, Priscilla Conran, to enter a cookery competition promoted by a national newspaper, in which he finished second.

Carluccio and Priscilla married in 1980, after which his new brother-in-law, the designer and entrepreneur Terence Conran, made him manager of his Neal Street Restaurant in Covent Garden, which launched him on his new career.

He bought Neal Street in 1989 and, two years later, opened a deli next door, called simply Carluccio's. The shop expanded into a mail order business and, in 1998, with Priscilla providing the business brains, he opened the first Carluccio's Caffè.  It was the first step in building a nationwide chain of restaurants, which they eventually sold for around £90 million in 2010.  He now works for the company, which has more than 80 branches in the United Kingdom alone, as a consultant.

Carluccio's television career began in 1983, when he made his first appearance in the BBC2 show Food and Drink, talking about Mediterranean food.  At the same time he was asked to write his first book, An Invitation to Italian Cooking, and soon became a familiar face as the number of cooking programmes on TV soared.  He hosted several of his own series and shared the spotlight with his former assistant at Neal Street, Gennaro Contaldo, in the hugely popular Two Greedy Italians. By coincidence, Contaldo was born in Minori, less than 20 kilometres along the Amalfi Coast from Carluccio's home town of Vietri-sul-Mare.

Carluccio was generally seen as a jolly figure with a zest for life, yet endured difficult times. Although his parents did their best to shield him, he admitted that some of his experiences growing up in wartime Italy were not pleasant. He suffered a family tragedy aged 23 when his younger brother, Enrico, 10 years' his junior, drowned while swimming in a lake. Carluccio was divorced from Priscilla Conran in 2008 and revealed in his autobiography that he had waged a long battle against depression.

In 1988, Carluccio was honoured in Italy by being made Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, the equivalent to a knighthood in Britain, where in 2007 he was made an OBE.

Carluccio died in November 2017 at the age of 80 following a fall at home.

The majolica-clad dome of the Church of St John
the Baptist in Vietri-sul-Mare, Carluccio's birthplace

Travel tip:

Vietri-sul-Mare, which is situated just 12 kilometres from Salerno in Campania, is the first or last town on the Amalfi Coast, depending on the starting point.  It is sometimes described as the first of the 13 pearls of the Amalfi Coast. A port and resort town of Etruscan origins, it has been famous for the production of ceramics since the 15th century. The Church of St. John the Baptist, built in the 17th century in late Neapolitan Renaissance style, has an eyecatching dome covered with majolica tiles.

Travel tip:

Borgofranca d'Ivrea is a village of 3,700 inhabitants situated just north of Ivrea in Piedmont, a town with a population of 23,000 people notable for its 14th century castle, a square structure that originally had a round tower in each corner, one of which was destroyed by an explosion in 1676 after lightning struck an ammunition store.  There is also a cathedral, parts of which date back to the fourth century, that now has an elegant neo-classical faҫade added in the 19th century.

More reading:

Gennaro Contaldo's passion for the cooking of Amalfi

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