31 May 2017

Angelo Moriondo - espresso machine pioneer

Bar and hotel owner invented way to make coffee faster


Angelo Moriondo owned a hotel and a prestigious  bar in the centre of Turin
Angelo Moriondo owned a hotel and a prestigious
bar in the centre of Turin
Angelo Moriondo, the man credited with inventing the world’s first espresso coffee machine, died on this day in 1914 in Marentino, a town in Piedmont, about 20km (12 miles) east of Turin.

Moriondo, who was 62 when he passed away, was the owner of the Grand-Hotel Ligure in Turin’s Piazza Carlo Felice and the American Bar in the former Galleria Nazionale on Via Roma.

He came up with the idea of a coffee machine essentially in the hope of gaining an edge over his competition at a time when coffee was a hugely popular beverage across Europe and in Italy in particular, but which still depended on brewing methods that required the customer to wait five minutes or more to be able to raise a cup to his mouth.

Moriondo figured that if he could find a way to make multiple cups of coffee simultaneously he would be able to serve more customers more quickly. He hoped that word would then get round in Turin’s commercial district that his bars were the ones to go if the pressures of business did not allow time for leisurely breaks.

The design for his machine for which Moriondo  was granted a patent in 1884
The design for his machine for which Moriondo
was granted a patent in 1884
He never contemplated industrial-scale production of his invention, his ambitions never extending beyond the needs of his own businesses and, unlike later espresso machines, his device was not designed for making individual cups.

But experts say that his invention was undoubtedly the first to use water and pressurised steam to accelerate the coffee-making process and it was therefore reasonable to declare it to be the world’s first espresso machine.

Moriondo was delighted with it but missed a fantastic opportunity to become the person whose name is synonymous with coffee machines.

He presented his invention at the General Expo of Turin in 1884, where it was awarded the bronze medal.  It was awarded a patent for a period of six years on May 16, 1884 under the title of "New steam machinery for the economic and instantaneous confection of coffee beverage, method ‘A. Moriondo’."

The machine consisted of a large boiler that pushed heated water through a large bed of coffee grounds, with a second boiler producing steam that would flash the bed of coffee and complete the brew.

One of Desiderio Pavoni's early espresso machines
One of Desiderio Pavoni's early espresso machines
Conceiving and creating this matchine was an unprecedented achievement. Yet Moriondo did nothing to commercialise the idea and it was left to two others, the Milanese duo Luigi Bezzerra and Desiderio Pavoni, to tweak his method and repackage it for the market place.

Moriondo limited himself to the construction of a few hand-built, machines which he jealously kept under lock and key at one house or another, convinced that advertising them was a bad idea.

Within a couple of years, Bezzerra and Pavoni had developed a machine that could produce up to 1,000 cups an hour, brewing an individual shot of espresso.

Moriondo made a comfortable living from his business ventures, following in the family’s footsteps as an entrepreneur, but could have been both wealthier and more famous had he seen the potential in what he had created.

The Via Roma in modern Turin
The Via Roma in modern Turin
Travel tip:

Turin was once the capital of Italy and its shopping streets reflect its former prestige, with 18km (11 miles) of arcades. A key shopping area is around Via Roma.  As well as the high street names, shops feature specialists in chocolate, fashion, and antiquarian books and records.

Travel tip:

The small town of Marentino really consists of three ancient villages – Marentino, Avuglione and Vernone. It is well known for its locally produced honey.  Marentino is built on a hill with the church of Maria Vergine, which has a baroque façade and a substantial bell tower, at its pinnacle. An interesting feature of the town is the number of houses whose walls are decorated with colourful murals, the result of a project in 2005 involving 20 artists from all over Italy.






30 May 2017

Giovanni Gentile – philosopher

The principal intellectual spokesman for fascism


Giovanni Gentile wrote part of The Doctrine of Fascism for Benito Mussolini
Giovanni Gentile wrote part of The Doctrine
of Fascism for Benito Mussolini
Giovanni Gentile, a major figure in Italian idealist philosophy, was born on this day in 1875 in Castelvetrano in Sicily.

Known as ‘the philosopher of Fascism’, Gentile was the ghostwriter of part of Benito Mussolini’s The Doctrine of Fascism in 1932. His own ‘actual idealism’ was strongly influenced by the German philosopher, Georg Hegel.

Gentile's rejection of individualism and acceptance of collectivism helped him justify the totalitarian element of Fascism.

After a series of university appointments, Gentile became professor of the history of philosophy at the University of Rome in 1917.

While writing The Philosophy of Marx – La filosophia di Marx – a Hegelian examination of Karl Marx’s ideas, he met writer and philosopher Benedetto Croce. The two men became friends and co-editors of the periodical La Critica until 1924, when a lasting disagreement occurred over Gentile’s embrace of Fascism.

Gentile was Minister of Education in the Fascist government of Italy from October 1922 to July 1924 carrying out wide reforms, which had a lasting impact on Italian education.

In 1925 he served as president of two commissions on constitutional reform, helping to lay the foundations of the Fascist corporate state.

Gentile is buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
Gentile is buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
After acting as president of the Supreme Council of Public Education and as a member of the Fascist Grand Council between 1925 and 1929, he saw his political influence steadily decline.

His most important achievement was the Enciclopedia Italiana, which he began to plan in 1925 and edited until 1943 and he also wrote prolifically on the subjects of philosophy and education.

After the fall of Benito Mussolini in 1943, Gentile supported the Fascist Social Republic established by the Germans at Salò. He served as president of the Academy of Italy, Italy’s foremost intellectual institution, until his death.

In 1944 a group of anti-Fascist partisans shot Gentile dead as he returned from the prefecture in Florence. Ironically he had been there arguing for the release from prison of anti-Fascist intellectuals.

The church of Santa Maria Assunta, also known as the Chiesa Madre - mother church - in Castelvetrano
The church of Santa Maria Assunta, also known as the
Chiesa Madre - mother church - in Castelvetrano
Travel tip:

Castelvetrano, the birthplace of Giovanni Gentile, is in the province of Trapani in Sicily. It is first mentioned in historical records dating from the 12th century. The Church of St John, which is just outside the city walls, was founded in 1412. The mother church, Chiesa Madre, which dates back to the 16th century, is in the town’s main square, Piazza Tagliavia. The remains of Selinunte, an ancient Greek city, are just outside the city, on a site overlooking the sea.

The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
Travel tip:

Gentile was living and working in Florence when he was shot dead by anti-Fascists on 15 April, 1944. He is buried in the church of Santa Croce beside the remains of Galileo and Machiavelli. The Basilica of Santa Croce is the principal Franciscan Church in Florence and is the burial place of some of the most illustrious Italians. It is also known to Italians as the Temple of the Italian Glories.

More reading:


Why Luigi Einaudi signed the Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals 

Benito Mussolini and the Founding of the Italian Fascists

How the Republic of Salò was Mussolini's last stand

Also on this day:


1924: The anti-Fascist speech that cost a socialist politician his life






29 May 2017

Franca Rame – actress, writer and politician

Artistic collaborator and wife of Dario Fo


Franca Rame in a publicity shot from a brief but unsuccessful movie career
Franca Rame in a publicity shot from a
brief but unsuccessful movie career
The actress and writer Franca Rame, much of whose work was done in collaboration with her husband, the Nobel Prize-winning actor, playwright and satirist Dario Fo, died in Milan on this day in 2013 at the age of 83.

One of Italy's most admired and respected stage performers, her contribution to Dario Fo’s work was such that his 1997 Nobel prize for literature probably should have been a joint award. In the event, on receipt of the award, Fo announced he was sharing it with his wife.

Rame was also a left-wing militant. A member of the Italian Communist Party from 1967, she was elected to the Italian senate in 2006 under the banner of the Italy of Values party, a centre-left anti-corruption grouping led by Antonio di Pietro, the former prosecutor who had led the Mani Pulite (“Clean Hands”) corruption investigation in the 1990s.

Later she was an independent member of the Communist Refoundation Party.  Her political views often heavily influenced her writing, in which her targets tended to be the Italian government and the Roman Catholic Church.  She was also an outspoken champion of women’s rights.

Her politics made her some enemies, however.  In 1973, she was kidnapped at gunpoint on a Milan street by a group of neo-Fascist men who raped and tortured her. When she was released, the group said it was revenge against her and Fo for their political activism.

Franca Rame in 1952, when she began her relationship with Dario Fo after they met through work
Franca Rame in 1952, when she began her relationship
with Dario Fo after they met through work
Born in Parabiago, a town of almost 30,000 people in the north-western quarter of the Milan metropolitan area, Rame was the daughter of an actor and a militant socialist father and a strict Catholic mother. She was almost born on the stage, appearing in a performance with her mother when she was only eight days old.

At the age of 18, and with the photogenic looks of a 1950s blonde bombshell, she began a theatre career in Milan. She met Dario Fo when they were members of the same company. Fo was smitten from an early stage and to his surprise and delight the attraction was mutual. They married in 1954 and their son Jacopo, now himself a writer, was born in 1955.

Rame had a brief but only modestly successful movie career before switching her focus to the theatre. As a professional partnership, she and Fo's first hit, Gli Arcangeli non Giacano a Flipper – Archangels Don’t Play Pinball – played at the Odeon theatre in Milan in 1959, where they were subsequently invited to write and perform a new play every year. 

Subsequent successes included Isabella, Tre Caravelle e un Cacciaballe – Isabella, Three Sailing Ships and a Con Man – set in Spain in the early years of the inquisition, in which Rame played Queen Isabella.

Dario Fo with Franca Rame and their son Jacopo
Dario Fo with Franca Rame and their son Jacopo
In time, however, they gave up commercial theatre in favour of forming co-operative groups and in 1970 founded their own militant theatre group, La Comune, based at the Palazzina Liberty, an abandoned pavilion. It was there that Rame starred in Fo’s acclaimed Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga! (Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!) and that she wrote and performed in a one-woman show Tutta Casa, Letto e Chiesa (It’s All Bed, Board and Church).

Their relationship was turbulent at times and at one stage she announced their separation. Yet they patched up their differences and even sent themselves up in a play, Coppia Aperta (The Open Couple).

Rame and Fo were particularly despairing of Italy’s support for Silvio Berlusconi when the country shifted to the right in the 1990s, even more when he was granted a return to power in 2001. Their play L’Anomalo Bicefalo (The Two Headed Anomaly), a satire about a political rally in Sicily which features an assassination attempt on Berlusconi and the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, infuriated Berlusconi when Rame’s performance in a comic scene as his wife, Veronica, was praised by Veronica herself.

Her opposition to Berlusconi was part of her motivation for joining forces with Di Pietro, for whom Berlusconi’s scorn had been undisguised during the Mani Pulite trials, prior to her election to the senate.

Rame is buried at the Monumental Cemetery in Milan.

The Prepositurale church in Parabiago
The Prepositurale church in Parabiago
Travel tip:

Parabiago grew as an industrial centre in the 1960s, when its footwear industry, established in the late 19th century, enjoyed a boom. It became known as The City of the Shoe. Notable churches include the Prepositurale church dedicated to saints Gervasio and Protasio, built in 1610 on the orders of the Bishop of Milan, San Carlo Borromeo. The neoclassical façade, added between 1780 and 1781, was designed by Giuseppe Piermarini. Parabiago is also home to Villa Maggi-Corvini , or simply Villa Corvini, located at the beginning of the historic Via Santa Maria. The villa is part of the Parco Corvini municipal park, which is open to the public.

The Palazzina Liberty used to be the cafeteria-restaurant at the Verziere market in Milan
The Palazzina Liberty used to be the cafeteria-restaurant
at the Verziere market in Milan
Travel tip:

The Palazzina Liberty in Milan’s Parco Vittorio Formentano, on the eastern side of the city centre, was built in 1908 to house the cafeteria-restaurant in the Verziere fruit and vegetable market but fell into disuse when the market moved to a different location. Dario Fo took it over in the 1970s and in 1980 it became home to Milan’s civic orchestra before being renovated in 1992 and opened as a cultural and recreational facility for the city, hosting orchestral concerts, film festivals and poetry events among other things.


28 May 2017

Leandro Jayarajah - cricketer

Father was a pioneer of game in Italy


Leandro Jayarajah
Leandro Jayarajah
Leandro Jayarajah, the captain and head coach of Roma Capannelle Cricket Club, was born on this day in 1987 in Rome.

His father, Francis Alphonsus Jayarajah, usually known as Alfonso, is a Sri Lankan national who founded what became the Capannelle club in 1978 and was one of the pioneers of organised cricket in Italy.

Alfonso was co-founder in 1980 of the Federazione Cricket Italiana, under whose auspices an Italian cricket championship has been played since 1983.

Capannelle, which takes its name from the racecourse in Rome, the Ippodromo Capannelle, where the club plays its home matches, have been Serie A champions on five occasions, most recently under Leandro’s leadership in 2013. 

The club began life as the Commonwealth Wandering Giants Cricket Club, changing its name when the chance to use the green space in the middle of the racecourse as a permanent home presented itself in 1983.

Alfonso Jayarajah, founder of Roma Capannelle Cricket Club
Alfonso Jayarajah, founder of Roma
Capannelle Cricket Club
Leandro, a right-handed batsman who bowls off spin and occasionally keeps wicket has followed his father into international cricket as a member of the Italy team, which is currently 28th in the world rankings. In club cricket he made a top score of 80 not out during Capannelle's 2013 title-winning season. He has also played club cricket in England and Australia.

His Italian mother, Franca Maria Beranger, who died in 2015, was president of Capannelle from 1988 to 2014, having helped her husband with the running of the club since its inception.

Leandro – nicknamed Mati – made his debut for Italy in 2010 and, as a qualified coach, is part of the national team’s coaching staff, looking after specifically the Under-17s.

His father arrived in Italy in 1968 to study at the Sapienza University of Rome and remained in the city, working for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He played for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cricket Club against British and Australian Embassies in 1975 for what was dubbed the Rome Ashes.

He became captain of the Italian national cricket team in 1984 and was the first captain to lead the cricketing Azzurri on an international tour when they visited England the same year.

Cricket did not capture the imagination of Italians the same way that football did when British traders introduced the game in the early years of the 20th century but was revived in the 1960s when embassy teams began to play each other.

Recently, the popularity of the game has been boosted by immigrants from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, with more Italians taking up the game than at any stage.

The six teams in Serie A must have a quota of Italians but teams made up entirely of foreign-born players are allowed in the lower divisions.

Leandro is a delegate for Lazio on Italy’s national Olympic committee. A graduate in political science, away from cricket  he is a property manager.

Rome's Ippodromo Capannelle, home of the Derby Italiano
Rome's Ippodromo Capannelle, home of the Derby Italiano
Travel tip:

The Ippodromo Capannelle first staged horse racing in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1926 to a design by Paolo Vietti Violi, the notable architect whose speciality was race tracks. Capannelle was among more than 33 circuits he designed, including tracks in Asia, South America and Africa. Situated about 15km (9 miles) south-east of Rome city centre close to Via Appia, it is currently the home of three Group 1 flat races – the Premio Presidente della Repubblica, the Premio Lydia Tesio and the Premio Roma. The track also hosts the most valuable flat race in Italy, the Derby Italiano.


The Baths of Caracalla in Rome
The Baths of Caracalla in Rome
Travel tip:

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Stations, where Leandro’s father, Alphonso worked after arriving in Rome from Sri Lanka, is a modern building on the busy Via delle Terme di Caracalla, which links the Circus Maximus with the Baths of Caracalla, two of the city’s foremost Roman ruins. The Baths of Caracalla were thermal baths built  between AD 211/212 and 216/217, during the reigns of emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla. A year-round tourist attraction, the ruins have been the venue for a number of music concerts, notably including the historic Three Tenors concert, featuring Luciano Pavarotti, José  Carreras and Plácido Domingo, staged during the 1990 World Cup finals, hosted by Italy.




27 May 2017

Lucrezia Crivelli – lady in waiting

Mystery of the beautiful woman in painting by Leonardo


For many years, it was assumed the woman in Da Vinci's La belle Ferronnière was Sforza's mistress, Lucrezia Crivelli
For many years, it was assumed the woman
in Da Vinci's La belle Ferronnière was
Sforza's mistress, Lucrezia Crivelli
Lucrezia Crivelli, mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, who was for a long time believed to be the subject of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, died on this day in 1508 in Canneto sull’Oglio in Lombardy.

Crivelli served as a lady in waiting to Ludovico Sforza’s wife, Beatrice d’Este, from 1475 until Beatrice’s death in 1497.

She also became the Duke’s mistress and gave birth to his son, Giovanni Paolo, who went on to become the first Marquess of Caravaggio and a celebrated condottiero.

Crivelli lived for many years in the Castello of Canneto near Mantua under the protection of Isabella d’Este, the elder sister of Beatrice, until her death in 1508.

Coincidentally, her former lover, Ludovico Sforza, is believed to have died on the same day in 1508 while being kept prisoner in the dungeons of the castle of Loches in Touraine in France, having been captured by the French during the Italian Wars.

It was never proved, but it was assumed for many years that Crivelli may have been the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting La belle Ferronnière, which is displayed in the Louvre in Paris. Another theory was that either Beatrice d’Este or Isabella of Aragon could have been the subject.

It is now thought LucreziaCrivelli was the subject of Da Vinci's Profile of a Young Lady
It is now thought LucreziaCrivelli was the subject
of Da Vinci's Profile of a Young Lady
It was originally believed to be Crivelli because da Vinci had painted another of Ludovico Sforza’s mistresses, Cecilia Gallerani, in his painting Lady with an Ermine.

Eventually the theory was disproved when a painting of Lucrezia Crivelli, also by da Vinci and which had been kept by her family for centuries, was put on display in Germany in 1995. The woman in this painting, Profile of a Young Lady, is thought not to be the same woman who featured in La belle Ferronnière.

The real Crivelli painting has been examined by the man who restored The Last Supper, Pinin Barcillon Brambilla, who found some pigments to be the same as those of the Milanese mural.

The Castello Sforzesco in Milan
The Castello Sforzesco in Milan
Travel tip

One of the main sights in Milan is the impressive Sforza castle, Castello Sforzesco, built in the 15th century by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan. After Ludovico Sforza became Duke of Milan in 1494 he commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to fresco several rooms. The castle now houses some of the city’s museums and art galleries. For more information visit www.milanocastello.it

Travel tip

Canneto sull’Oglio, where Lucrezia Crivelli died, is in the province of Mantua in Lombardy, about 100 km (62 miles)  south of Milan. It is home to the restaurant Dal Pescatore, which has three Michelin stars. Run by the Santini family, the restaurant is famous for its pumpkin-stuffed tortelli.





26 May 2017

Alberto Ascari - racing driver

F1 champion killed amid eerie echoes of father's death


Alberto Ascari (centre), pictured a few weeks before his fatal crash with his friends Luigi Villoresi (left), Eugenio  Castellotti (right) and the famous engineer Vittorio Jano.
Alberto Ascari (centre), pictured a few weeks before his fatal
crash with his friends Luigi Villoresi (left), Eugenio
 Castellotti (right) and the famous engineer Vittorio Jano.
Racing driver Alberto Ascari, who was twice Formula One champion, died on this day in 1955 in an accident at the Monza racing circuit in Lombardy, just north of Milan.

A hugely popular driver, his death shocked Italy and motor racing fans in particular. 

What many found particularly chilling was a series of uncanny parallels with the death of his father, Antonio Ascari, who was also a racing driver, 30 years previously.

Alberto had gone to Monza to watch his friend, Eugenio Castellotti, test a Ferrari 750 Monza sports car, which they were to co-drive the car in the 1000 km Monza race.

Contracted to Lancia at the time, although he had been given dispensation to drive for Ferrari in the race, Ascari was not supposed to test drive the car, yet he could not resist trying a few laps, even though he was dressed in a jacket and tie, in part to ensure he had not lost his nerve after a serious accident a few days earlier.

Ascari on the cover of a magazine in  Argentina, where he was very popular
Ascari on the cover of a magazine in
Argentina, where he was very popular
When he emerged from a fast curve on the third lap, however, the car inexplicably skidded, turned on its nose and somersaulted twice. Ascari was wearing Castellotti’s white helmet but he suffered multiple injuries nonetheless when he was thrown out of the car and survived for only a few minutes, pronounced dead at the scene.

There were several eerie similarities between the deaths of Alberto and his father.

Alberto Ascari died on May 26, 1955, at the age of 36, the same age as his father, Antonio, who was killed in the French Grand Prix, on July 26, 1925. Alberto was only four days older than his father had been.

That both should die on the 26th of the month at the same age was a strange coincidence, yet it did not end there.

Even more weirdly, both were killed four days after surviving serious accidents, Antonio having crashed while practising ahead of the Grand Prix in which he died, Alberto having lost control of his car during the Monaco Grand Prix and gone into the harbour.

Both suffered fatal crashes at the exit of fast left-hand corners, both had won 13 championship Grand Prix events and both left behind a wife and two children.

Alberto’s accident occurred on the Curva del Vialone, one of the Monza track's most challenging high-speed corners. The corner was renamed in his honour but has subsequently been replaced with a chicane, now called Variante Ascari.

He was laid to rest next to the grave of his father in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan. His death was considered to be a factor in the withdrawal of Lancia from motor racing in 1955, just three days after his funeral, although it was also a fact that the company was in financial trouble.

Ascari, in his Lancia, chases the legendary Argentina Juan Manuel Fangio, in a Mercedes, in a 1954 race
Ascari, in his Lancia, chases the legendary Argentina Juan
Manuel Fangio, in a Mercedes, in a 1954 race
Born in Milan, Alberto was only seven when he lost his father yet was not put off his desire to become a racing driver.

He was one of the best drivers around when Formula One launched in 1950, with a string of victories in Grand Prix events over 1948 and 1949. His success continued in 1950, although his nine race wins did not include any in the inaugural Formula One series, won by another Italian, Giuseppe Farina.

The 1951 season brought seven more victories and this time two of them counted as he finished second to the legendary Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio.

He went one better and won the drivers’ championship in 1952, winning the final six rounds after Fangio dropped out midway through the season, and defended his title successfully in 1953.

After his death, a street in Rome was named in his honour, while both the Autodromo Nazionale Monza and Autodromo Oscar Alfredo Gálvez in Buenos Aires, which staged the Argentine Grand Prix between 1953 and 1998, have chicanes named after him.

Monza' s Duomo, the striking Basilica of San  Giovanni Battista
Monza's Duomo, the striking Basilica of San
 Giovanni Battista
Travel tip:

Apart from the motor racing circuit, Monza is notable for its 13th century Basilica of San Giovanni Battista, often known as Monza Cathedral, which contains the famous Corona Ferrea or Iron Crown, bearing precious stones.  According to tradition, the crown was found on Jesus's Cross.  Note also the Villa Reale, built in the neoclassical style by Piermarini at the end of the 18th Century, which has a sumptuous interior and a court theatre.

Travel tip:

The Cimitero Monumentale is one of the two largest cemeteries in Milan, the other one being the Cimitero Maggiore. Designed by the architect Carlo Maciachini (1818–1899), it was planned to consolidate a number of small cemeteries that used to be scattered around the city into a single location.  It can be found in the northern part of the city, adjacent to Chinatown and Porta Volta.  As well as Ascari and his father, it is the resting place of the tenor Franco Corelli, the conductor Arturo Toscanini, the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – who founded the futurist movement - the novelist and writer Alessandro Manzoni, and the founder of AC Milan football club, the Englishman Herbert Kilpin.






25 May 2017

Stefano Baldini - Olympic marathon champion

Won gold medal over historic course in Athens


Stefano Baldini, Italy's fastest marathon runner to date
Stefano Baldini, Italy's fastest
marathon runner to date
Stefano Baldini, the marathon runner who was Olympic champion in Athens in 2004 and twice won the European marathon title, as born on this day in 1971 in Castelnovo di Sotto, about 14km (nine miles) north-west of the city of Reggio Emilia.

Although Baldini’s class was not doubted, his Olympic gold was slightly tarnished by an incident seven kilometres from the finish when a spectator broke through the barriers and attacked the Brazilian runner, Vanderlei de Lima, who was leading the field.

The spectator, an Irishman called Conelius Horan who had disrupted the British Grand Prix motor race the previous year, was wrestled off de Lima by another spectator but the incident cost the Brazilian 15 to 20 seconds and much momentum. He was passed subsequently by Baldini and finished third.

Baldini finished the race, which followed the historic route from Marathon to Athens, in two hours 10 minutes and 55 seconds, although this was not the fastest time of his career.

His best was the 2:07:56 he clocked at the 1997 London Marathon, when he finished second, in what is still the fastest time by an Italian over the marathon distance.

Baldini comes from a family of 11 children, among whom he has two brothers who were distance runners, Marco once achieving a time of 2:16:32 in the marathon. Throughout his career he has run in the colours of the Calcestruzzi Corradini Rubiera club, based in the town of Rubiera, midway between Reggio Emilia and Modena.

Stefano Baldini (left) passes the Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima on the way to winning the 2004 Olympic marathon in Athens
Stefano Baldini (left) passes the Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima
on the way to winning the 2004 Olympic marathon in Athens
He began racing over long distances even as a teenager. Initially his specialities were the 5,000m and 10,000m and he was 24 before he took on his first marathon, when he finished sixth in the Venice Marathon in 2:11:01.

Before winning his Olympic gold in Athens had already taken part in the marathon in Sydney in 2000, having competed at 5,000m and 10,000m at the Atlanta Games in 1996, making the semi-finals in the former.

He took the gold medal in the half-marathon at the World championships in 1996 in Palma de Mallorca.

His first important marathon victory came at the European championships in 1998 in Budapest.  He won the Rome Marathon in the same year.

Baldini won a second European gold eight years later in Gothenburg. His best performances over the marathon distance in the World championships came in Edmonton in 2001 and Paris in 2003, taking the bronze medal on each occasion.

Stefano Baldini in action in the  New York marathon
Stefano Baldini in action in the
New York marathon
He went to Beijing in 2008 to defend his Olympic title but after finishing 12th he announced his retirement, having the same year competed in his ninth London Marathon, in which he also came home 12th.  By then Baldini was 37, although he did attempt a comeback in 2010 before announcing that he would be giving up for good and concentrating on his work with the Italian Athletics Federation.

In 2014, by which time he had become established as the technical director for youth athletics in Italy, Baldino took part in a charity event to mark the 10th anniversary of his Athens victory, which made him the second Italian, after Gelindo Bordin, to win an Olympic marathon gold.

Married to the former 400m runner Virna de Angeli, he lives today in Rubiera with his wife and three children, Alessia, Laura and Lorenzo.

The Via Appia forms Rubiera's porticoed main street
The Via Appia forms Rubiera's porticoed main street
Travel tip:

The town of Rubiera was established in around 1200 when a castle was built to protect the city of Modena. It sits alongside the Secchia river and flanks the Via Appia. The castle became a prison at the time the town was owned by the Este family. It was sold at auction in 1873, half becoming private property and half taken on by the municipal authorities.  Today very little remains of the original structure.  The town itself is characterised by streets lined with porticoes.  Notable buildings include the 15th century Palazzo Sacrati and the art nouveau Teatro Herberia.

Travel tip:

Castelnovo di Sotto, a community of around 8,000 people in the Po Valley, is famous as the home of one of Italy’s most ancient carnivals, dating back to the 16th century, and the birthplace of Luigi Melegari, one of the founders of the Young Italy movement alongside Giuseppe Mazzini and an important figure in the Risorgimento.