Giorgio Chinaglia - footballer

Centre-forward from Carrara became a star on two continents

Giorgio Chinaglia, wearing the blue shirt
of Lazio. embroidered with the Scudetto

The footballer Giorgio Chinaglia, who would start his career in Wales before enjoying stardom in his native Italy and then the United States, was born on this day in 1947 in Carrara in Tuscany.

A powerful centre forward and a prolific goalscorer, Chinaglia scored more than 100 goals for Lazio. His 193 for New York Cosmos made him the all-time leading goalscorer in the North American Soccer League.

Chinaglia left Italy at the age of nine after his father, Mario, decided that his family would enjoy a more prosperous future abroad given the state of Italy's economy in the immediate wake of the Second World War.  Jobs at a Cardiff steelworks were advertised in the employment office in Carrara and Mario successfully applied.  He would eventually leave the steelworks to train as a chef, building on his experience as a cook in the army, and ultimately opened his own restaurant.

The catholic schools Chinaglia attended tended to favour rugby as their principal winter game and his teachers saw in him a potential second-row forward.  But rugby was an alien game to him and he much preferred football.  Ultimately he was picked for Cardiff Schools, for whom he scored a hat-trick in an English Schools Shield match, in doing so earning a trial at Swansea Town.

The Second Division club - now playing in the Premier League as Swansea City - signed him as an apprentice in 1962 but he was criticised for poor timekeeping, for having a casual attitude to training and being more interested in drinking, gambling and women.  He had to wait until 1965 to make his league debut and after just six appearances - and one goal - in a 15-month period, he was released.

Giorgio Chinaglia celebrates a goal for New York Cosmos

National service then compelled Chinaglia to return to Italy.  The experience was perfect for him, enabling him to train hard and develop discipline.

On returning to civilian life, he was barred from playing for a Serie A club for three years because he had been a professional in another country.  But he was able to play for Massese, a Serie C club in the neighbouring town to Carrara, before moving to Naples to play for another Serie C team, Internapoli, for whom he scored 26 goals in 66 games.

Lazio gave him his chance in Serie A and although he was not an elegant player - more a big, bustling centre forward in the classic English style - he was a deadly finisher, scoring 122 goals in 246 appearances for the Rome club.

Nicknamed 'Long John' for his resemblance to John Charles, the Wales striker who had starred for Juventus a generation before, he helped Lazio win the first Scudetto in their history in 1974, when his 24 goals included the title-winning penalty against Foggia.

Giorgio Chinaglia made 14 appearances for
the Azzurri - Italy's national team

He made 14 appearances in the Italy national team but his international career ended abruptly in 1974 when was substituted in a game against Haiti in the World Cup finals in West Germany and reacted by arguing with head coach Ferruccio Valcareggi and kicking down a dressing-room door.

Subjected to abuse back home, he took the bold decision to quit Italy for America. Married to an American girl he had met in Italy, he had already bought a house in Englewood, New Jersey and in 1976 joined New York Cosmos.

The wealthy NASL franchise had signed up the Brazilian great Pelé the year before and Chinaglia would soon be joined in by former West Germany captain Franz Beckenbauer and other big-name stars such as Carlos Alberto of Brazil and Johan Neeskens of The Netherlands.

But whereas these players were nearing the end of their careers, Chinaglia was a player in his prime.  Coaches and team officials found him difficult, but the Cosmos were NASL champions four times during his seven seasons and he was the league's top scorer on four occasions, including three of the title-winning years. In all competitions, including the indoor league, he scored 262 goals.

Aware of his star quality, Chinaglia would hold court for the media after games in the locker room wearing a brocaded dressing gown.

He became an American citizen in 1979, but was tempted back to Italy in 1983 to become president of Lazio. His temperament was not suited to being a club official, however. and he was banned from football for eight months for threatening a referee.

He died in 2012 in Naples, Florida, having suffered a heart attack.

The mountains above Carrara are famous for the blue-grey
marble used for many buildings in Italy and worldwide

Travel tip:

Carrara, a small city in Tuscany just inland from the Ligurian Sea coastline, is famous for its blue-grey marble, which is quarried in the mountains nearby and has been used since the time of ancient Rome.  The Pantheon and Trajan's Column were both constructed using Carrara marble, which was also the material used for many Renaissance sculptures.  Carrara is home to many academies of sculpture and fine arts and a museum of statuary and antiquities.  The exterior of the city's own 12th century duomo is almost entirely marble.

Travel tip:

Società Podistica Lazio - Lazio Athletics Club - was founded in January 1900 in the Prati district of Rome, making it the oldest Roman football team currently active. Keen to attract players and supporters from outside the city of Rome, the club took the name of the region, Lazio.  It might have gone out of existence in 1927, when the Fascist government proposed merging all the city's teams into one under the umbrella of AS Roma. However, Giorgio Vaccaro, a general in the Fascist regime and a Lazio fan, defended the club's right to keep its own identity, thereby creating one of Italian football's fiercest rivalries as the two battle each year to be the city's number one club.

More reading:

How Luigi Riva became the darling of Cagliari and Italy's greatest goalscorer

Salvatore 'Toto' Schillaci - the golden boy of Italia '90

Gigi Radice - the coach who brought joy back to Torino

Also on this day:

1916: Birth of actor Arnaldo Foà

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Muzio Clementi – composer and pianist

Musician is remembered as ‘father of the piano’

Muzio Clementi, the Italian composer who helped
found England's Royal Philharmonic Society

Composer Muzio Clementi, whose studies and sonatas helped develop the technique of the early pianoforte, was born on this day in 1752 in Rome.

He moved to live in England when he was young, where he became a successful composer and pianist and started a music publishing and piano manufacturing business. He also helped to found the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.

Clementi was baptised Mutius Philippus Vincentius Franciscus Xaverius the day after his birth at the Church of San Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome.

His father was a silversmith, who soon recognised Clementi’s musical talent and arranged for him to have lessons from a relative, who was maestro di cappella at St Peter’s Basilica.

By the time he was 13, Clementi had already composed an oratorio and a mass and he became the organist at his parish church, San Lorenzo in Damaso, at the age of 14.

Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy Englishman, was so impressed with Clementi’s musical talent and his skill with the harpsichord when he visited Rome in 1766 that he offered to take him to England and sponsor his musical education until he was 21.

The interior of the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso in
Rome, where Clementi was baptized and was later organist

In return, Clementi was to provide musical entertainment for Beckford and his guests. The musician lived for seven years at Beckford’s country estate practicing on the harpsichord, composing sonatas and performing.

Mozart used the opening of one of Clementi’s sonatas in the overture for The Magic Flute. Although this was meant as a compliment, Clementi made sure he put it on record that his sonata had been written ten years before Mozart’s opera.

Clementi moved to live in London when he became an adult, playing the piano, composing, conducting and teaching music.

He began publishing music in 1798, taking over a firm in Cheapside, which was then the most prestigious shopping street in London. Ludwig van Beethoven gave him full publishing rights to all his music in England and in later life Beethoven started to compose chamber music specifically for the British market because of his connection with Clementi.

The house in Kensington Church Street where
Clementi lived in London

In 1813 Clementi was part of a group of prominent musicians who founded the Philharmonic Society of London, which became the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1912.

Bartolomeo Cristofori from Padua has been widely credited with creating the first piano as a development of the harpsichord in 1700.

The oldest surviving Cristofori piano is a 1720 model, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The piano had been slow to catch on, but after composers, such as Clementi, started writing for it, the piano became more popular and by the late 18th century it had become a leading musical instrument.

The piano was probably more of a success in England than anywhere else and Clementi carefully studied its features in order to make the best use of the instrument’s capabilities.

Many of his compositions have been lost or are incomplete, but his chief claims to fame are thought to be his piano sonatas and his studies, such as Gradus ad Parnassum - Steps Towards Parnassus - which he composed in 1817.

Clementi started a business manufacturing pianos in London and, as it flourished, he made important improvements to the construction of the instrument, some of which have become standard in the pianos manufactured today.

At a banquet held in his honour in London in 1827, one of the organisers noted in his diary afterwards that Clementi ‘improvised at the piano on a theme by Handel’.

The tomb of Muzio Clementi can be
found in Westminster Abbey

The musician made his last public appearance at a Philharmonic Society concert in 1828 and then retired and moved to live in Staffordshire.

Clementi died in Evesham in 1832 at the age of 80. He was buried in Westminster Abbey and on his tombstone inscription he is remembered as ‘father of the piano’.

Clementi had been married three times and had five children.

Among his descendants are the British Colonial administrators, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith and his nephew, Sir Cecil Clementi, Air Vice Marshall Cresswell Clementi of the RAF and a deputy governor of the Bank of England, Sir David Clementi.

Travel tip:

The Basilica of San Lorenzo in Damaso, the church where Clementi was baptised and also played the organ, is in the southern part of the historic centre of Rome between the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and the Tiber. It may once have been the site of a pagan temple, but a church was built there in about 380 by Pope Damasus I. This building was demolished in the time of Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned the construction of the Palazzo della Cancelleria in 1489. The new church of San Lorenzo in Damaso, where Clementi would have played the organ, was incorporated into the side of the palace.

The Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome

Travel tip:

The Palazzo della Cancelleria, the Papal Chancellery, is believed to be the earliest Renaissance palace in Rome. It is a property of the Holy See and has been designated a World Heritage Site. Just to the south of the square named after the palace, Piazza della Cancelleria, is the Campo dè Fiori, the site of a market in Rome for centuries, which has plenty of bars and restaurants and is a popular nightspot when the markets stalls have all been packed away.

More reading:

Bartolomeo Cristofori - the inventor of the piano

Why Lorenzo Perosi chose sacred music over opera

How Nicolò Amati created the world's finest violins

Also on this day:

1980: The death of car designer Giovanni Michelotti, the man behind the Triumph Spitfire

(Picture credits: San Lorenzo interior by antmoose; London house by Simon Harriyott; tombstone by oosoom; Palazzo della Cancelleria by Lalupa)




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Carlo Orelli – soldier

The last trench infantryman

Carlo Orelli with President Ciampi, at the
 awards ceremony on his 109th birthday

Carlo Orelli, the last surviving Italian soldier to have served at the start of Italy's involvement in the First World War, died on this day in 2005 at the age of 110.

Orelli had signed up for active duty at the age of 21 and joined the Austro-Hungarian front after Italy joined in the war on the side of Britain, France and Russia in May 1915.

He took part in combat operations near Trieste, experiencing the brutality of trench warfare and seeing many of his friends die violent deaths, but after receiving injuries to his leg and ear he spent the rest of the war in hospital.

Orelli was born in Perugia in 1894, but his family moved to Rome, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life living in the Garbatella district.

He came from a military background and had a grandfather who had helped to defend Perugia against Austrian mercenaries in 1849. His father had served in the Italian Abyssinian campaign in the 1880s and his elder brother had fought in Libya during the war between Italy and Turkey in 1911.

Orelli pictured in his Italian military
uniform in the First World War

The wounds Orelli suffered during a confrontation with Austrian soldiers ended his military career and he spent the rest of the war recovering from an infection in hospital.

When the war was over he resumed his occupation as a mechanic and got married and had six children.

Despite his opposition to Fascism, he was sent to Gaeta to direct artillery during World War II, but he returned to his job as a mechanic afterwards and continued to live in Garbatella.

In later life he often talked about his experiences in the First World War and implored people not to forget the sacrifice his fellow soldiers had made.

In 2003, on the occasion of his 109th birthday, he was made a Grand Officer in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Carlo Orelli in a TV documentary about his
life and wartime experiences

He became known as ‘The Last Infantrymen’, which was chosen as the title for his wartime memoirs when they were published.

After his death in 2005, he was talked about as ‘the last Italian World War I veteran,’ which was incorrect.

He was, in fact, Italy’s oldest survivor of the First World War, the last trench infantryman and the last survivor from the time Italy entered the war in 1915.

Travel tip:

Perugia, where Orelli was born, and which was defended by his grandfather against the Austrians, is the capital city of the region of Umbria. It has a history that goes back to Etruscan times, when it was one of the most powerful cities in the area. A stunning sight on a hilltop, Perugia is also home to two universities, the 14th century University of Perugia and another University for foreign students learning Italian.

The Centrale Montemartini museum is in the Garbatella
district of Rome, where Orelli spent most of his life

Travel tip:

The Garbatella district, where Orelli lived for most of his life, is to the south of the centre of Rome. It is now a lively area with an unusual museum, the Centrale Montemartini in Via Ostiense, a former electricity power plant that now houses hundreds of pieces of Roman sculpture. Nearby, in Piazzale San Paolo, is the Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, one of Rome’s four ancient churches, which was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I over the burial place of St Paul. The site had been marked with a memorial by some of the apostle’s followers after his execution.

More reading:

Francesco Chiarello - combatant in both world wars who lived until 2008

How General Armando Diaz masterminded Italy's victory at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto

The Villa Giusti armistice and the end of the First World War in Italy

Also on this day:

1506: The founding of the Papal Swiss Guard


(Picture credit: Centrale Montemartini by Lalupa via Wikimedia Commons)

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Pietro Rava - World Cup winner

Defender was the last survivor from Azzurri of 1938

Pietro Rava, pictured at around the time
of his Juventus debut in 1935

Pietro Rava, who was the last survivor of Italy's 1938 World Cup-winning football team when he died in December 2006, was born on this day in 1916 at Cassine in Piedmont.

A powerful defender who could play at full back or in a central position, Rava won 30 caps for the national team between 1935 and 1946, finishing on the losing side only once and being made captain in 1940.

He was also a member of the Italy team that won the gold medal in the football competition at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  At club level, he spent most of his career with Juventus, forming a formidable defensive partnership with Alfredo Foni, alongside whom he also lined up in the national side.

Rava won a Championship medal in 1949-50, his final season at Juventus, although by then he had fallen out of favour with Jesse Carver, the Turin club's English coach, and made only six appearances, moving to Novara the following year.

At the time of his birth, Rava's family were living in Cassine, a small town near Alessandria, about 100km (62 miles) south-east of Turin, because of his father's job with a railway company.  Soon they moved back to the Piedmont capital, settling in the Crocetta district.

The Juventus team of 1940-41: Rava is second from the left
in the back row alongside Alfredo Foni, to his left

He studied to be a surveyor and although he had made his debut for Juventus in 1935 he was still attending university when he was selected for the Berlin Olympics.  Indeed, Italy were dubbed 'the team of students' by the Italian press.

Italy had won the World Cup on home turf in 1934 but none of the players in the Olympic team had any international experience.  It showed as they scraped past the United States 1-0 in their opening match and coach Vittorio Pozzo took them to task for failing to follow his instructions.

Much improvement followed.  Italy then beat Japan 8-0 and Norway 2-1 before defeating Austria 2-1 in the final.

Vittorio Pozzo coached the Azzurri to
two World Cups and Olympic gold

For Rava, Foni and the forwards Ugo Locatelli and Sergio Bertoni it was a winning start to a successful international career.  All four went to France in 1938 to defend Italy's World Cup crown. Three of them started the final against Hungary in Paris, which Italy won 4-2, with Bertoni among the reserves.

Rava was known not only for his physical power but for his strength of will and somewhat fiery temperament.  He was sent off in the opening match of the 1936 Olympics - the first Italian player to be expelled during a competitive match - and stunned officials at Juventus after the 1938 World Cup by effectively going on strike after the club refused his request for a pay rise.

He began his protest during a match at Modena, when at one point he stood with his arms folded rather than attempting to tackle an opponent and deliberately played poorly for the remainder of the match.  He was left out of the side for subsequent matches and stand-off between him and the club was ended only by the mediation of the Italian Federation, who convinced Rava to accept that the club was in straitened times following the sudden death of its benefactor, the FIAT heir Eduardo Agnelli.

Rava (left) moved to Alessandria,
where he played against Juventus

After helping Juventus win the Italian Cup in 1942, Rava interrupted his career to help the Italian war effort, volunteering to join the Russian campaign as an army official.  He returned after six months and was quickly reinstated in the first team.

His temperament surfaced again in 1946.  After being told that Juventus were planning to replace him with a young Croatian full back, he demanded a transfer and moved to Alessandria, his local team, who had been newly promoted to Serie A.

Appointed captain, he was so successful in helping Alessandria avoid relegation that he won back his place in the national team after an absence of four years and rejoined Juventus at a fee that gave little Alessandria a profit of four million lire.  In his second season back in Turin, Juventus won their first Scudetto for 15 years.

After his playing career ended in 1952, Rava spent 13 years in coaching, including a brief spell on the coaching staff at the national team's headquarters at Coverciano.  Away from football, his business interests included a sports shop in Turin and a driving school in Rivoli, just outside the city.

He survived a heart attack in 1998 but succumbed to Alzheimer's disease and died in 2006 at the age of 90, failing to recover from surgery for a broken leg after a fall.

This shot from the air shows how the Cittadella
di Alessandria remains almost unchangred

Travel tip:

The historic city of Alessandria became part of French territory after the army of Napoleon defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in 1800.  It was ruled by the Kingdom of Sardinia for many years and is notable for the Cittadella di Alessandria, a star-shaped fort and citadel built in the 18th century, which today it is one of the best preserved fortifications of that era, even down to the surrounding environment.  Situated across the Tanaro river to the north-west of the city, it has no buildings blocking the views of the ramparts, or a road bordering the ditches.

Hotels in Alessandria by Expedia

Travel tip:

Turin's Crocetta district is just to the south of the historic centre and contains some of the most exclusive addresses in the city, with many fine examples of neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau residential properties, particularly around Corso Trieste, Corso Trento and Corso Duca D’Aosta. In the northern part of Crocetta, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna stands in front a huge monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, perched on top of a 128-foot high column. Next to the gallery, in another elegant building, can be found the head office of Juventus.

Hotels in Turin by Hotels.com

More reading:

Marcello Lippi - coach of Italy's 2006 World Cup winners

How Paolo Rossi's goals won the 1982 World Cup for the Azzurri

Giuseppe Meazza - Italian football's first superstar

Also on this day:

1939: The birth of the chef Gennaro Contaldo






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Marco Simoncelli - motorcycle world champion

Young rider whose career ended in tragedy

Marco Simoncelli in 2010, busy signing
autographs for his many fans

The motorcycle racer Marco Simoncelli, who was part of an illustrious roll call of Italian world champions headed by Giacomo Agostini and Valentino Rossi, was born on this day in 1987 in Cattolica on the Adriatic coast.

Simoncelli, who was European 125cc champion in 2002 in only his second year of senior competition, became 250cc world champion in 2008 when he won six races riding for Gilera.

He had dreams of emulating Rossi, winner of the 250cc world title in 1999, in going on to be a force in the premier MotoGP category, in which the latter has been world champion seven times, just one fewer than Agostini's record eight titles.

But after stepping up to MotoGP in 2010, Simoncelli suffered a fatal crash at the Malaysian Grand Prix in October the following year, killed at the age of just 24.  On only the second lap of the Sepang circuit, he lost control of his Honda at a corner and appeared to be heading for the gravel run-off area but suddenly veered back across the congested track.

With the bike almost on its side, Simoncelli was struck by two other competitors.  One of them, with chilling irony, was Rossi, who was entirely blameless but unable to prevent his front wheel from striking his compatriot's head.

Simoncelli salutes his victory in Japan in
2008 on the way to the 250cc world title

Although born in Cattolica, Simoncelli's home town was really Coriano, which is situated about halfway between the coast and the Republic of San Marino.

His parents, Paolo and Rossella, ran an ice cream parlour.  Paolo was a fan of all motor sports but loved motorcycles in particular and when Marco took an interest his father was only too keen to indulge his son, buying him his first 50cc 'pocket bike' - a scaled down racing motorcycle, which he would ride in the fields near the family home.

Marco began to ride competitively at the age of nine and was Italian Minimoto champion two years running in 1999 and 2000, graduating to 125cc class in 2001 and becoming Italian champion in that category at the first attempt.  He began to compete in world championship races in 2002 and won his first GP in Spain in 2004.

Flamboyant, powerfully built and with his mop of hair worn in a distinctive Afro style, Simoncelli was an instantly recognisable figure who acquired an enthusiastic following of supporters, who knew him by his nickname of Sic or SuperSic.

Following the accident at Sepang, a devastated Rossi remained in Malaysia after other members of the MotoGP circus had left to prepare for the next race.  He accompanied Simoncelli's father and the rider's fiancée in returning the body to Italy and spent much of the following days with the family, of whom he was already a friend.

A huge crowd turned out for Simoncelli's funeral at the
church of Santa Maria Assunta in Coriano

Italy was deeply moved by Simoncelli's death.  On the day of the accident, a minute's silence was held before every Serie A football match on the instruction of Gianni Petrucci, president of the Italian National Olympic Committee.  The players of AC Milan, the team he supported, wore black arm bands.

Petrucci was at the airport to receive Simoncelli's body as it was brought home before being transferred to Coriano, where it was placed in an open coffin in a theatre, alongside his 250cc world championship-winning Gilera and his MotoGP Honda, to allow thousands of fans to pay their respects.

At the Formula One motor racing grand prix in India the following week, several drivers had the number 58 - Simoncelli's racing number - painted on their helmets by way of a tribute, while at the MotoGP of Valencia, the final race of the season, the riders assembled for a lap in his honour, led on Simoncelli's bike by the American former world champion Kevin Schwantz, whom he idolised as a boy.

Valentino Rossi pictured at Simoncelli's funeral with one of
the two motorcycles placed either side of the coffin

His funeral at the Church of Santa Maria Assunta took place with a crowd estimated at 20,000 gathered outside.  The service itself was broadcast live on national television.

Subsequently, Paolo Simoncelli announced the formation of a racing team in honour of his son that would help young riders to achieve their dream of becoming world champion. A monument was erected in Coriano bearing his race number, 58.

Simoncelli was inducted to the MotoGP Hall of Fame in 2014 and in 2016 it was announced his number would be retired from all classes of Grand Prix racing and reinstated only at the discretion of his family.

Travel tip:

Coriano was once the site of one of seven castles grouped closely together in the area of Rimini province in which it stands, which in the 12th century was regarded as of such importance strategically that the armies of the Malatesta and Borgia families, and of the Venetian Republic, Spain and the Papal States, all went to war in a bid to win control.  Eight centuries later it was the scene of a deadly battle in the Second World War, which cost the lives of so many Allied soldiers that a British cemetery was established just outside the town.

The Church of Santa Maria Assunta
dominates the town of Coriano

Travel tip:

The Coriano skyline is dominated by the Church of Santa Maria Assunta, which was built after the town had suffered heavy damage from bombing in the Second World War and consecrated in 1956.  It has a large dome and a bell tower that rises to 47m (154ft).  Nearby there is a museum, La Storia del Sic, in Via Garibaldi, which is dedicated to the memory of Marco Simoncelli.  In a garden behind the museum is the Simoncelli monument, part of which consists of an exhaust pipe enclosed in a cage which emits a three-metre flame for 58 seconds every Sunday evening.

More reading:

The record breaking career of Giacomo Agostini

Bruno Ruffo - Italy's first world champion on two wheels

Enrico Piaggio - creator of Italy's iconic Vespa scooter

Also on this day:

1920: The birth of brilliant filmmaker Federico Fellini

(Picture credits: Simoncelli top picture by Ranpie; Simoncelli on bike by Tomohiko Tanabe; Church of Santa Maria Assunta by Anna pazzaglia; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Paolo Borsellino - anti-Mafia judge

Magistrate slain by Mafia 57 days after colleague Giovanni Falcone

Paolo Borsellino

Paolo Borsellino, the judge who was helping to wage a successful war against the Sicilian Mafia when he was murdered in 1992, was born on this day in 1940 in Palermo.

He and his boyhood friend, Giovanni Falcone, became the most prominent members of a pool of anti-Mafia magistrates set up in the 1980s to investigate organised crime and share information.

They made considerable progress in weakening the Sicilian Mafia, also known as Cosa Nostra, in particular through the so-called Maxi Trial of 1986-87, which resulted in 360 convictions and prison sentences totalling 2,665 years.

Yet both were killed within the space of two months, Falcone on May 23 by a bomb placed under the motorway between Sicilian capital Palermo and the city's airport, Borsellino on July 19 by a car bomb as he left his mother's house in the centre of the city.

The two were born and raised within a few streets of one another in the Kalsa district of Palermo, not far from the tree-lined Foro Italico Umberto I, the broad thoroughfare that runs along the city's waterfront.

It was a middle class neighbourhood that suffered severe damage in air raids as the Allies prepared to invade Sicily in 1943.  The Borsellino house in Via della Vitriera, next door to the pharmacy his parents ran, was eventually declared unsafe, although the family lived in it until 1956.

He and Falcone would sometimes play football together in the nearby Piazza Mangione, where the group of boys joining in the games included several future mafiosi, including Tommaso Spadaro, who would play a key role in the so-called Pizza Connection drug trafficking racket that distributed heroin through pizza restaurants in the United States.

This famous picture of Falcone (left) and Borsellino,
sharing a joke, was published by Time magazine

They met again at Palermo University.  They had different political leanings, Borsellino joining a right-wing student group affiliated with the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, while Falcone, despite a middle-class conservative background, attended meetings of communist sympathisers. Paradoxically, though their political ideologies were diametrically opposed, they were united in opposition to the Mafia and both decided to become magistrates.

Borsellino left with an honours degree in Law.  After working in several Sicilian cities through the 1960s and 70s he returned to Palermo in 1975 and achieved a noteworthy success when he identified and arrested the killer of a Caribinieri captain.

Soon he was seconded, along with Falcone and three others, to the anti-Mafia pool created by a senior magistrate, Rocco Chinnici.  Their investigations into Mafia activities and links between organised crime and prominent political and business figures quickly made them potential targets for assassination and a life of secret meeting places, armoured vehicles and police bodyguards became the norm.

In 1986, soon after the Maxi Trial, Borsellino became head of the Public Prosecution Office in Marsala, the port at the most westerly point of the island, about 126km (80 miles) from Palermo, but continued to work closely with Falcone, even though the Pool had essentially been broken up.

A commemorative tree has been planted in
Via d'Amelio, where Borsellino was killed

Some of the academics who have studied the Mafia believe the two were close to bringing Cosa Nostra to its knees when they were murdered and there has been speculation that alleged links between the organisation and the state prompted their killings because they knew too much about corruption at high levels.

Borsellino, who left a wife and daughter, is considered as one of the most important figures in the fight against the Mafia, not least because the Maxi Trial established for the first time that Cosa Nostra was a real, functioning organisation, rather that a word coined merely to describe a mentality shared by criminals who were otherwise unconnected.

The Palermo International Airport is now known as Falcone-Borsellino Airport and there is a Velodromo Paolo Borsellino multi-use stadium in Palermo. In 2006, he and Falcone were named in a list of 'Heroes of the Last 60 Years' by Time Magazine.

Travel tip:

The Foro Italico Umberto I takes its name from the wide area of lawned public space between the road and the sea, established on the site of a coastal path created in the 16th century which became popular in the 17th and 18th centuries as a leisure area for wealthy Palermo families.  Covering approximately 40,000 square metres, it encompasses a network of paths, lit up at night, plus trees and flowers, benches and ceramic statues and a scenic walk along the sea front. It was named the Foro Italico with Italian unification, with Umberto I added as an emotional response to the murder of the monarch by an anarchist in 1900.

The Baroque Chiesa del Purgatorio is an
historic church in Marsala

Travel tip:

As a tourist destination, Marsala is somewhat overshadowed by nearby Trapani and the Greek city of Selinunte, which has the remains of five temples.  Yet the town has plenty of history of its own and its archaeological museum is considered worth a visit. It is also well known for its fortified wine and as the port where Garibaldi landed in 1860 with his Expedition of the Thousand, an integral part of the sequence of events that culminated in the unification of Italy.

More reading:

How Giovanni Falcone turned his life into a crusade 
against the Mafia

Giuseppe Impastato - born into the Mafia and murdered for speaking out

Lucky Luciano - the Palermo gangster who organised New York's mobs

Also on this day:

1853: The opera Il Trovatore is performed for the first time


(Picture credits: Commemorative tree by Dedda71; Marsala church by Archenzo; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster – Cardinal

Blessed monk who tried to preach humility to Mussolini

Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster: a
photograph taken in 1930

Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, who was a Benedictine monk and served as Cardinal and Archbishop of Milan during World War II, was born on this day in 1880 in Rome.

Towards the end of the war, Schuster attempted to arrange a truce between Mussolini and the partisans, but failed because Mussolini refused to accept the demands for total surrender made by the partisan delegates.

More than 40 years after his death, Cardinal Schuster was beatified on 12 May 1996 by Pope John Paul II.

Schuster was the son of a Bavarian tailor who had moved to live in Rome and he served as an altar boy at a German Church near St Peter’s Basilica.

In 1898 he joined the Order of Saint Benedict and took the name Ildefonso before entering the monastic community of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

He studied while he was a monk and graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy in 1903, later receiving a Doctorate in Theology.

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Schuster was ordained as a priest in Rome in 1904 and then returned to his community of Saint Paul Outside the Walls where he became Master of Novices.

The statue of St Paul at the church of
St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome

He held various pontifical offices between 1914 and 1928 and toured the country visiting Catholic seminaries.

After being elected Archbishop of Milan in 1929 he took the oath of loyalty to the Italian state in front of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, the first Italian bishop to be required to do so by the Lateran Treaty.

He was created Cardinal Priest by Pope Pius XI in 1929, receiving the Church of Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti. He was consecrated in the Sistine Chapel by Pope Pius XI personally.

Despite claims during the process for Schuster’s beatification that he had been sympathetic to Italian Fascism, he had in fact denounced the anti-Christian element of Fascism. He is reported to have refused to participate in any ceremonies involving Mussolini and to have condemned racist legislation during the period.

He had supported the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 by asking God to protect the Italian troops, ‘as they opened the door of Ethiopia to the Catholic faith’.

Benito Mussolini rejected Schuster's attempt
to broker a truce with partisans

But in 1938, after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Schuster’s views changed sharply.

During the unsuccessful meeting between Mussolini and the partisans in the Archbishop’s Palace in Milan, Schuster is reported to have made an attempt to preach humility to the Fascist leader.

After the war, Cardinal Schuster frequently emphasised the danger of totalitarianism, whether inspired by fascism or communism.

Schuster died in 1954 at Venegono Inferiore near Milan. Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, celebrated his funeral and afterwards Schuster was buried in the Cathedral of Milan.

Travel tip:

The Sistine Chapel, where Schuster was consecrated as Cardinal Priest by Pope Pius XI, is in the Apostolic Palace, where the Pope lives, in Vatican City. The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, the uncle of Pope Julius II, who had it restored during his papacy. Between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo painted the ceiling at the request of Pope Julius II.  His amazing masterpiece, now a popular tourist attraction, is in bright colours, easily visible from the floor, and covers more than 400 square metres.

The carving over the Altar of the Madonna at the Duomo
in Milan, beneath which Schuster was buried

Travel tip:

Schuster was buried in the Duomo of Milan, Milan’s cathedral, which is the largest church in Italy and the fifth largest in the world. Construction of the Duomo began in 1386 using marble brought into the city along Milan’s Navigli canals. Although it was consecrated as a Cathedral in 1418, building work on the Duomo was not finally completed until the 19th century when Napoleon organised the façade to be finished before his coronation there.

More reading:

How the Lateran Treaty recognised the Vatican as an independent state

Overthrown Mussolini meets his fate at the hands of the partisans

Angelo Roncalli - the farmer's son who became pope

Also on this day:

1543: The birth of madrigal composer Alfonso Ferrabosco


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