Fabrizio Giovanardi – racing driver

Touring car specialist has won 10 titles

Fabrizio Giovanardi has been racing
for more than 30 years

One of the most successful touring car racers in history, the former Alfa Romeo and Vauxhaul driver Fabrizio Giovanardi, was born in Sassuolo, not far from Modena, on this day in 1966.

Giovanardi has won the European Championship twice, the European Cup twice, the British Championship twice, the Italian Championship three times and the Spanish touring car title once.

His best season in the World Championship came in 2005, when he finished third behind the British driver Andy Priaulx.

At the peak of his success, Giovanardi won a title each season for six consecutive years.

Like many drivers across the motor racing spectrum, Giovanardi had his first experience of competition in karting, winning Italian and World titles in 125cc karts in 1986, before graduating to Formula Three and Formula 3000.

He was hoping from there to step up to Formula One but although he won a number of races the opportunity to drive competitively for an F1 team did not come about.

It was during the 1991 season that he tried his luck in touring cars and met with immediate success, winning five class S2 races in a Peugeot 405, prompting him to focus on touring cars in the 1992 season. He remained at class S2 level and won his first title, the Italian Superturismo Championship, finishing first in 12 races for a commanding lead of 68 points over British driver Gary Ayles.

The Vauxhall Vectra in which Giovanardi won the
2007 British Touring Car Championship

He moved into the main class of the championship with Peugeot in 1993, finishing in the top three overall twice before moving to Nordauto Engineering Alfa Romeo in 1995.

In his début season with Alfa, Giovanardi again finished in third. He continued in the Italian series in 1996 while simultaneously contesting the four-race Campeonato de España de Turismo, which would give him his second touring car title in 1997, when he was also runner-up in the Italian series.

It began a run of six titles in as many seasons for the Nordauto team, comprising consecutive Italian titles in 1998 and 1999, the European Super Touring Cup in 2000, the European Super Touring Championship in 2001 and the European title in 2002.

Giovanardi’s career stalled when Alfa Romeo decided to pull out of touring but he put himself back on track when he joined Vauxhall Racing to compete in the British Touring Car Championship.

Giovanardi finished third in the 2005 World Championship
in this Honda Accord

He finished fifth in the 2006 season in an Astra before finding that the new Vectra suited him very well, winning the 2007 title after a season-long battle with SEAT Sport’s Jason Plato.

Giovanardi successfully defended his title in 2008 and finished third in 2009, but suffered another blow when Vauxhall decided that would be their last season in touring car racing, citing the economic downturn for their withdrawal.

At 44 years old, Giovanardi had one more triumph, winning the European Touring Car Cup for Hartmann Honda Racing, but after moving from one team to another in search of the right car he effectively retired after the 2014 season.

His guest appearance at the Vallelunga round of the Italian championship in September 2017, when he drove a SEAT León for BF Motorsport and finished fourth, was his first competitive drive for three years.

Away from the track, Giovanardi is a keen pilot and has a passion for renovating houses.  He is married with one son, Luca.

The Palazzo Ducale in Sassuolo

Travel tip:

Sassuolo is a town in Emilia-Romagna, some 17km (11 miles) southwest of Modena.  With a population of just over 40,000 Sassuolo is a major centre for the production of ceramics, with more than 300 factories producing 80 per cent of all Italy’s ceramic tiles, making it one of the most important ceramic centres in the world.  At the centre of town, Piazza Garibaldi is a pleasant square and the 17^th-century Palazzo Ducale, designed by Bartolomeo Avanzini, is a handsome building. Sassuolo’s football club made history in 2013 when they were promoted to Serie A for the first time in their 93-year existence.

The Vallelunga racing circuit from the air

Travel tip:

The Vallelunga motor racing circuit – the Autodromo Vallelunga Piero Taruffi – can be found 32km (20 miles) north of Rome, close to the town of Campagnano di Roma. Owned by the Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI), the 4.1km (2.5 miles) track has held the Rome Grand Prix since 1963.  The track is used by the FIA as a test circuit for Formula One teams and has also hosted the Six Hours of Vallelunga endurance event.  In autumn of each year, Vallelunga hosts a vast flea-market specialising mainly in vintage automotive spare parts.

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La Festa di Santa Lucia

Much loved saint was immortalised in song

Fireworks over the harbour at Syracuse during
celebrations of the Festa di Santa Lucia

La festa di Santa Lucia - St Lucy’s Day - will be celebrated all over Italy today.

According to tradition, Santa Lucia comes down from the sky with a cart and a donkey and distributes gifts to all the children who have been good, while all the naughty children receive only a piece of coal.

Santa Lucia is the patron saint of the city of Syracuse in Sicily. Today, a silver statue of the saint containing her relics will be paraded through the streets before being returned to the Cathedral.

In Sicilian folklore there is a legend that a famine ended on Santa Lucia’s feast day when ships loaded with grain entered the harbour.

Santa Lucia is also popular with children in parts of northern Italy. In Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Lodi and Mantua in Lombardy, and also parts of the Veneto, Trentino, Friuli and Emilia-Romagna, the children will have been expecting the saint to arrive with presents during the night.

A silver statue of Santa Lucia is borne through the
streets of Syracuse on December 13 each year

According to tradition she arrives with her donkey and her escort, Castaldo. Children leave coffee for Santa Lucia, a carrot for the donkey and a glass of wine for Castaldo and they believe they must not watch the saint delivering her gifts.

Santa Lucia is believed to have been a third century Christian woman who took food to other Christians hiding in the catacombs in Rome. She wore a candle-lit wreath on her head to light her way in order to leave her hands free to carry as much food to them as possible. It is believed she died as a martyr on 13 December 304 AD.

An inscription dating from the fourth century was found in Syracuse mentioning the Festa di Santa Lucia. There it is believed she was a Sicilian noble woman who was killed for refusing to renounce her Christian beliefs.

Children in Bergamo leave letters for Santa Lucia
in the way British children write to Santa Claus 

Travel tip:

A pre-Christmas tradition for children in Bergamo is to visit the church of the Madonna dello Spasimo in the Città Bassa, lower town, with letters detailing what they would like to receive for Christmas. The Church of San Spasimo, in Via XX Settembre at the hub of the shopping area, is also known locally as the church of Santa Lucia because the local children lay letters containing their Christmas wish lists next to the altar containing the statue of the Blessed Virgin of Spasimo, also known as Santa Lucia. 

The Castel dell'Ovo and the harbour at Santa Lucia in Naples

Travel tip:

An area in the centre of Naples, between the Royal Palace and Borgo Marinari, the site of the Castel dell’Ovo, is known as Santa Lucia. The first settlement there was established by the Greeks, but nowadays the area is known for good hotels, fish restaurants and sailing clubs. The famous Neapolitan song, Santa Lucia, was about a boatman issuing an invitation to go out in his boat to enjoy the cool of the evening. The song made the picturesque waterfront district of Naples famous when it was recorded at the beginning of the 20th century by Enrico Caruso, an opera singer from Naples.

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Piazza Fontana bombing

Blast at Milan bank killed 17 and wounded 88

The office and counter area inside the Banca Nazionale
dell'Agricoltura in Milan after the explosion

Italy found itself the victim of an horrific terrorist attack on this day in 1969 when a bomb blast at a Milan bank left 17 people dead and a further 88 injured.

The bomb exploded at 4.37pm in the headquarters of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, just 200m away from the Duomo.  It was caused by a bomb containing about 18lbs of explosives left on the third floor, killing customers and members of staff.

At around the same time, two bombs exploded in Rome, injuring 14 people. Another device, placed in the courtyard of a bank near Teatro alla Scala in Milan, was deactivated by police.

The explosions followed one month after a policeman was killed during a riot of left-wing extremists in Milan and are generally seen as the start of a period of violent social and political unrest in Italy dubbed the Years of Lead.

Over a period of almost 20 years, the Years of Lead resulted in more than 200 deaths, many committed by the left-wing terrorist group Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades), others by far-right organisations such as Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Groups) and Ordine Nuovo (the New Order).

The plaque outside the bank commemorating
the victims of the bomb

Many of the victims died as a result of targeted assassinations, often aimed at policemen, business leaders, members of the judiciary. The highest profile individual killing was of the former prime minister, Aldo Moro, murdered after being kidnapped in Rome and held captive for 54 days.

Others were killed indiscriminately in large-scale bombings, such as Piazza Fontana and the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, which claimed the lives of 85 travellers when a huge bomb hidden in a suitcase exploded in a crowded waiting room.

Decades of investigations into the Piazza Fontana bombing led to a total of 4,000 arrests, three trials and sentences of life imprisonment for six alleged terrorists, all of which were subsequently quashed.

The acquittals of three neo-fascists in the third trial were announced in 2004, almost 35 years after the bombing took place, and meant that those who carried it out were never conclusively identified.

As a result, the conspiracy theories that surround the incident and much of the Years of Lead have persisted.

On the face of it, the Years of Lead was a struggle for supremacy between the ideologies of the left, represented in the mainstream by the Italian Communist Party, and those of the right, who did not have mainstream representation but were propagated by neo-fascist far-right organisations such as Ordine Nuovo and the Italian Social Movement.

Giuseppe Pinelli, a railway worker, who
died while being held by police

But it was suspected that forces on both sides were being manipulated by western secret service agents as part of the so-called “strategy of tension”, designed primarily to ensure that the Italian Communist Party’s growing popularity in post-War Italy went only so far, and that they were never allowed to take power.

In the case of the Piazza Fontana bombing, the theory is that Ordine Nuovo members were responsible but wanted it to appear that it was the work of left-wing extremists committed to the overthrow of the majority Christian Democratic party and were supported in this aim by agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

This theory was backed up by an investigation in 2000 by the left-leaning Olive Tree coalition, which concluded that that US intelligence agents were informed in advance of the bombing but did nothing to stop it, and that clandestine payments were made to Pino Rauti, the founder of Ordine Nuovo, via a US Embassy press officer.

Furthermore, in a newspaper interview in 2000, Paolo Emilio Taviani, the Christian Democrat co-founder of the secret NATO anti-communist force codenamed Gladio, which stayed behind in Italy after the Allies had withdrawn at the end of the Second World War, said that Italian secret services were also aware of the planned bombing in Milan but that rather than send agents to prevent it, they instead despatched another agent, whose mission was to spread stories blaming left-wing anarchists for the attack.

Indeed, in addition to a plaque on the wall of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura building that lists the names of the victims of the bomb, there are memorials in Piazza Fontana to the anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, who was arrested as part of a sweep of known anarchists in the wake of the bombing and died when he fell from a fourth floor window of Milan’s main police station, supposedly as a result of feeling faint during questioning and needing to take some air.

Pinelli’s fate inspired the satirist and playwright Dario Fo to write his famous play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

One of the memorials to Pinelli in Piazza
Fontana, placed by Milan city council

Travel tip:

Piazza Fontana is literally just a few metres from the back of Milan’s Duomo, accessed via Via Carlo Maria Martini.  There are two simple memorials mourning the death of Giuseppe Pinelli placed on a lawn opposite the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura, in front of a police building (although not the one in which he died). One was placed by students and anarchist friends of Pinelli, the other by Milan city council. Only the former refers to him being killed; the other simply says that he “died tragically.”

Travel tip:

On the other side of Piazza Fontana from the Pinelli memorials is Milan’s 16^th-century Archbishop's Palace, partly modified with neoclassical additions in the 18^th century, which is the official residence of the Archbishop of Milan. The palace owes its grandeur to archbishop Carlo Borromeo, who wanted to live permanently in the palace and commissioned Pellegrino Tibaldi to undertake a reconstruction project in 1585. The façade owes its appearance to Giuseppe Piermarini, who restored the palace in 1784.

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Gianni Morandi – actor and pop singer

Veteran entertainer has sold 50 million records 

Gianni Morandi has been in the music
business for 55 years

The singer Gianni Morandi, a Sanremo Festival winner and Eurovision Song Contest contestant who has sold more than 50 million records and had a simultaneous career as a successful TV and film actor, was born on this day in 1944 in a mountain village in Emilia-Romagna.

Morandi, whose longevity has brought comparisons with the British singer Sir Cliff Richard, is still performing today at the age of 73. In fact, he had an unlikely hit this year when he teamed up with 23-year-old rapper and web star Fabio Rovazzi.

Morandi, whose pop-ballad style still has a big following, showed his versatility and willingness to indulge in self-mocking humour this year by co-starring with Rovazzi in an electro-pop track and video called Volare that went to No 1 on iTunes Italy and attracted 2.5 million views in less than 24 hours.

He has also appeared in his 11^th TV drama series, having a few months earlier seen the release of his 18^th movie.

His birthday is being marked today with a late-evening special on Italy’s Canale 5 television station called Amore d’Autore, which celebrates the public and private life of one of Italy’s best-loved entertainers.

Morandi on stage in 2016: He still
performs regularly

Morandi was born in Monghidoro, now a village of almost 4,000 people that sits on a ridge in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines some 840m (2,750ft) above sea level, about 41km (25 miles) south of Bologna.

As a young man he sold drinks and confectionery at his local cinema and worked as an assistant in the workshop of his father, Renato, a cobbler.  Renato was an active member of the Italian Communist Party and Morandi recalls that part of his daily routine was to read aloud passages from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and reports from the party newspaper L’Unità.

But they were also a family who sang to entertain themselves and it was when his father arranged for him to sing at family festivals sponsored by L’Unità that Morandi enjoyed his first commercial success, collecting a princely 1,000 lire as his appearance fee.

In 1958, his rendition of Domenico Modugno’s Sanremo winner Nel blu dipinto di blu – more commonly known as Volare – earned him a place at a singing school in Bologna and after winning good reviews at a number of festivals he released his first single in 1962, with backing from Ennio Morricone’s orchestra.

With a recording contract from RCA, he had a juke-box hit and his first chart success later in the same year before releasing his first album in 1963. 

Throughout the 60s, he was a star of the Italian pop scene. His 1964 single In ginocchio da te (Kneeling before you) was at the top of the Italian singles charts for 17 weeks, selling more than one million copies, and was followed by several more number one successes.

Morandi performing at the Eurovision Song
Contest in Amsterdam in 1970

He courted controversy while at the early peak of his fame by recording a protest song against the Vietnam War which the television networks refused to promote yet which still reached number one in the chart.

Ironically, his career was then interrupted by compulsory national service.

When he returned to civilian life, he was chosen to participate for Italy in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest in Amsterdam, in which he finished eighth behind the young Irish singer Dana’s entry All Kinds of Everything, but thereafter his career went into a decline.

He enjoyed a revival in the 1980s, started by his success as an actor in TV dramas, and by 1987, when he won the Sanremo Festival with Si può dare di più, he was again popular and an album recorded with his friend, the singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla, was very well received.

Since then, Morandi has become something of an icon in the entertainment world in Italy. His concert tours, often marathon affairs lasting more than a year and packing in hundreds of dates, would sell out months in advance, and he has fronted many TV shows.

In 2013, his two Gianni Morandi – Live concerts at the Arena di Verona were broadcast live on Canale 5 with an average audience of 6 million.  Cher and Ennio Morricone were among the artists who made guest appearances.

Morandi (right) in one of his earliest TV dramas, in 1966

Morandi has been married twice – for the first time, from 1966 to 1979, to Laura Efrikian, the daughter of an Armenian conductor, with whom he had three children: Serena (1967), who sadly died after only a few hours, Marianna (1969) and Marco (1974). He has five grandchildren.

In November, 2004 he married Anna Dan, his partner of 10 years and the mother of his son, Pietro, and the couple moved into a renovated house in the regional park of Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi dell'Abbadessa.

Morandi owes his enduring physical fitness to a passion for marathon running. He has raced in 10 marathons, including New York (twice), Berlin, London, Paris, Milan and Bologna.

Away from the entertainment business, he is a lifelong fan of Bologna Football Club, which he helped saved from bankruptcy in 2010 before being appointed honorary president later in the same year, a position he held until the club was sold to an American consortium in 2014.

The Chiostro della Cisterna in Monghidoro

Travel tip:

Occupying a ridge between two river valleys, Monghidoro has historically been a place of strategic importance going back to the time of the Ostrogoths and Lombards in the eighth and ninth centuries and remained so in the Second World War, when it was liberated from the Germans by Allied forces in October 1944. Because of the challenging nature of nearby terrain, it was also a stopping-off place for travellers seeking a passage between the Po Valley and central Italy. Notable sights include the Chiostro della Cisterna, an elegant cloister in the centre of the village that is all that remains of a 16^th century Olivetan monastery. The cultural heart of the village, in the summer it hosts concerts, plays and exhibitions.  The elegant Piazza Armaciotto De Ramazzotti has a romantic atmosphere created by lanterns, which take the place of street lights.

Typical scenery in the Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi
dell'Abbadessa regional park near Bologna

Travel tip:

The Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi dell'Abbadessa regional park, situated just outside the city of Bologna to the southeast, is an area of striking natural beauty characterised by a series of gypsum outcrops creating a landscape of cliffs, caves, rocky hillsides, enclosed basins, chalky ridges and hidden valleys interspersed with rich greenery.  The area has been subjected to intensive mining over the centuries but all activity ceased in the 1970s and the area is now popular with walkers and caving enthusiasts.

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Errico Petrella – opera composer

Sicilian whose popularity drew scorn from rivals

Errico Petrella's operas enjoyed great popularity
in Italy in the 1850s and 1860s

The largely forgotten opera composer Errico Petrella, whose popularity in Italy in the 1850s and 1860s was second only to operatic giant Giuseppe Verdi, was born on this day in 1813 in Palermo.

His composed 25 works, mainly comedic or melodramatic in nature, and had a run of successes in the 1850s, when three of  his productions were premiered at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

However, Petrella attracted the scorn of both Verdi and another contemporary, the German composer Richard Wagner, both of whose careers coincided exactly with Petrella’s, even down to having been born in the same year.

When Il Duca di Scilla had its first performance at La Scala in March 1859, a year on from his hugely successful Jone, which also premiered at the Milan theatre, Wagner’s criticism could have hardly been more unflattering.

Asked his opinion of the work, Wagner said: “It is an unbelievably worthless and incompetent operatic effort by a modern composer whose name I have forgotten.”

Some years earlier, admittedly before Petrella had enjoyed much success at all, Verdi had been similarly scathing in his assessment of the 1951 opera Le Precauzioni, set against the background of the Venice Carnival, which made its debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples.

Verdi claimed that Petrella 'did not
know music' despite his popularity

He wrote: “Petrella does not know music, and his masterpiece, Le Precauzioni, may please the orrechianti [people who love opera but cannot read music] for its several brilliant violin melodies, but as a work of art, it cannot stand up either to the great works or even operas like Crispino, Follia a Roma etc., etc [the latter being comic operas written by the Neapolitan Ricci brothers].”

Verdi was less rude than Wagner, but his words were equally damaging. Opera historians suspect that Verdi’s quarrel was with Petrella’s conception of opera, which had a lot in common with the Neapolitan school in general in that it was less demanding of the singers.

In fact, although born in Palermo, Petrella was effectively a Neapolitan himself, his father having been a naval officer from Naples who was based in Sicily.

Petrella attended the Naples Conservatory and his style almost certainly owed much to his teacher, the conservatory’s director, Nicolo Zingarelli, whose advice was to think first of the audience rather than trying to impress other composers.

Zingarelli told him: “If you sing in your compositions, rest assured that your music will be found pleasing. If you amass harmonies, double counterpoint, fugues, canons, notes, contranotes etc. instead, the musical world may applaud you after half a century or it may not; but the audience will certainly disapprove of you. They want melodies, melodies, always melodies.”

The libretto from Petrella's most
famous work, Jone, published in 1858

Even though there was no argument about Verdi’s primacy among the composers of the day, there were clear signs of jealousy on the part of the northern Italian of his southern rival. Verdi even expressed his annoyance that Petrella wrote to Alessandro Manzoni seeking permission to write an opera based on the novel I promessi sposi and received a flattering letter in response.

However, Petrella’s Jone – set against the background of the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii - was so popular it was produced as many as 600 times, compared with no more than 60 for Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, which premiered only a year earlier.

Petrella had needed to wait a long time to find success after making his theatre debut in 1929.

It was not until he had written half a dozen works to only modest acclaim that he began to attract attention. Il carnevale di Venezia, which had its premier at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in May, 1851, is seen as the opera that put him on the map.

He followed this with Elena di Tolosa, which made its debut at the Teatro Fondo in August 1852, Marco Visconti (San Carlo, Naples, 1854), L'assedio di Leida (La Scala, 1856) and then Jone (La Scala, 1858), the premier of which was a major event in the operatic world, drawing appreciative audiences in Milan and beyond.

It became a regularly performed opera in Italy and remained so well into the 20th century, with productions around the world in venues as far flung as Melbourne, Calcutta, Jakarta, Santiago, Lima, Manila and Tbilisi.  His most critical reviews still derided his unashamed attempts to court popularity rather than treat opera as high art, but had to concede that he could write a good tune.

Petrella suffered from diabetes in later life and died in financial hardship in Genoa in 1877, aged 64.  Despite his outspoken comments, Verdi is said to have felt sorry for the plight of his fellow musician and sent him some money, although reputedly it did not arrive until after he had passed away.

His body was returned to Palermo, where he is buried in the church of San Domenico.

The impressive facade of the church of San Domenico,
the second most important church in Palermo

Travel tip:

The church of San Domenico in Piazza San Domenico is the second most important church in Palermo after the cathedral. Completed in 1770 on the site of previous churches built in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance period.  The current church was designed by Andrea Cirrincione, who conceived the magnificent baroque façade, which was completed in 1726, with the bell tower added later. In 1853 it was declared the “pantheon of illustrious Sicilians” and contains the tombs of many of the island’s most notable figures, including the artist Pietro Novelli, the Risorgimento protagonist Francesco Crispi, the politician and revolutionary Ruggero Settimo and the anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

Via Errico Petrella in Milan

Travel tip:

The memory of Errico Petrella is preserved in Milan in the name of a street linking Via Luigi Settembrini and Corso Buenos Aires in a residential area a few blocks from the central station. There is also a street in Turin that takes his name while there is a Teatro Errico Petrella in the pretty hill town of Longiano in Emilia-Romagna, situated about 30km (19 miles) southeast of Forlì.

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Sonia Gandhi - Indian politician

Widow of ex-PM Rajiv born in pre-Alps of Veneto

Sonia Gandhi overcame her reluctance to become
a major figure in Indian politics

Sonia Gandhi, an Italian who married into a famous political dynasty and became the most powerful woman in India, was born on this day in 1946 in a small town near Vicenza.

In 1965, in a restaurant in Cambridge, England, where she was attending a language school, she met an engineering student from the University of Cambridge. They began dating and three years later were married.

His name was Rajiv Gandhi, the eldest son of the future Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.  They were married in a Hindu ceremony, Sonia moved into her mother-in-law’s house and from then on lived as an Indian. Rajiv became an airline pilot while Sonia looked after their two children, Rahul and Priyanka.

Everything changed when Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh nationalists in 1984, a year after Sonia had been granted Indian citizenship.  Rajiv had entered politics in 1982 following the death of his brother, Sanjay, in a plane crash and was elected to succeed his mother as prime minister.

Sonia wanted to remain in the background, having developed a passionate interest in preserving India’s artistic treasures. Inevitably she became more involved, campaigning on her husband’s behalf, and when Rajiv himself was killed by a suicide bomber in 1991, she was invited to take over as prime minister.

Sonia Gandhi at a meeting with the former US
president Bill Clinton

She declined but then watched her husband’s Indian National Congress Party lose its way over the next few years and was urged to help revive its flagging fortunes. She joined the party in 1997. Within a year she was leader of the opposition in the Indian Parliament and in 2004 won the general election.

Amid controversy over whether a foreigner should be allowed to assume the highest office in the country, she opted not to become prime minister, nominating Manmohan Singh to hold the title instead, a move that was accepted by her political opponents.

Nonetheless, as chair of the 15-party governing coalition, named the United Progressive Alliance, that was charged with running the country, she was the most powerful woman in Indian politics and therefore one of the most powerful women in the world.

How different her life might have been had she not met the young Rajiv Gandhi on that evening in 1965.

The house in Lusiana where Sonia
Gandhi was born in 1946

Born in Lusiana, a town in the Veneto about 20km (12 miles) north of Vicenza, her birth name was Edvige Antonia Albina Maino.  She spent her early years in the Contrada Maini – the Maini quarter – which historically was dominated by people from the Maino family, many of whom spoke a Germanic language called Cimbro.

It was her father, Stefano, who began to call her Sonia. A fervent supporter of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist party, he had fought in Russia alongside the Axis forces during the Second World War and was taken prisoner, but was grateful for the kindness of three Russian women who helped him after he was released.  One was named Sonia, the others Anouchka and Nadia, and he used their names as nicknames for his own three daughters.

When Sonia was nine, the family moved to Orbassano, a town near Turin, where her father started a small business.  He built his family a two-storey villa, with tall iron gates, that remains the family home even today.

He was a strict catholic and sent Sonia and her sisters to a convent, where they were boarders. Sonia was remembered as a lively student who took part in theatre activities and sang.

Later, she attended a Berlitz language school in Turin, eager to learn good English, a command of which was regarded as essential for any Italian with ambition. It was becoming the norm for wealthier Italian parents to send their children to study in England, hence Sonia’s arrival in Cambridge in January, 1965.

She did not care much for English weather nor the food, and the only cuisine resembling Italian that she could find in Cambridge at the time was at the Varsity Restaurant, whose owner was Greek-Cypriot. It was where she met Rajiv.  Some accounts of her life say she took temporary work there as a waitress while studying, although it is not clear whether she was waiting on tables or simply there as a diner on the night she met Rajiv.

Rajiv Gandhi (left) with his mother Indira and brother
Sanjay as a young man in India

Although she was a beautiful girl, never short of male attention, and comfortably off, too, thanks to her father’s generous allowance, it was only after meeting Rajiv that she felt her time in Cambridge became bearable. Rajiv was wealthy but Indians were not allowed to take much money out of the country and he therefore had to live a humble life. He took a part-time job in a supermarket while not studying. 

Sonia met Indira Gandhi in London and it was plain to her that her relationship with Rajiv met with his mother’s approval. But her own parents had reservations about the idea of her marrying a non-Italian, never mind one from a country so far removed from Italy as India, even though Stefano thought Rajiv was sincere and was impressed by his determination to support her by becoming a commercial pilot.

He forbade Sonia to travel to India until she was 18 and even then said he would give their relationship his blessing only after they had lived apart for a year, hoping it might cool.  It did not, and they were married in 1968.

Although her life from then was in India, Sonia returned to Italy from time to time but did so discreetly. When she won the 2004 election, the media descended on Orbassano.  Her father had passed away some years earlier but her mother and sisters still lived in the town. They declined all interviews, however, their reluctance explained by the mayor of Orbassano, who told reporters that they had been upset by the tragedies that had beset the Gandhi family and asked to be left in peace.

Lusiana nestles in the picturesque hills of the northern
Veneto in the shadow of the Alps

Travel tip:

Lusiana is a town of slightly more than 2,500 inhabitants in the picturesque pre-Alps of northern Veneto, about 20km (12 miles) north of Vicenza and about the same distance west of Bassano del Grappa. It is located about 750m (2,450ft) above sea level on the Asiago or Sette Comuni plateau. It is a centre for tourism both in summer and winter. The church of Santa Caterina in the nearby village of the same name contains an altarpiece by the artist Jacopo Bassano.

Piazza Umberto I in Orbassano

Travel tip:

The town of Orbassano is in an area about 20km southwest of Turin that was deforested in Roman times. It grew from a village to a town in the 19^th century when a railway line from Turin and a textile factory was opened, although it remained a relatively small municipality until the 1960s, when its development as an industrial centre saw the population double to around 16,000 in the space of a decade, largely due to Fiat opening a plant at nearby Rivalta. The town, with a pretty central square, Piazza Umberto I, has continued to grow and is earmarked  for a direct metro link to the centre of Turin. A road out of Orbassano is named Via Rajiv Gandhi.

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Johann Maria Farina - perfumier

Emigrant to Germany who invented Eau de Cologne

Johann Maria Farina gave his new
fragrance the name Eau de Cologne

Johann Maria Farina, the Italian perfumier said to have created the world’s first Eau de Cologne, was born on this day in 1685 in the small town of Santa Maria Maggiore in Piedmont.

Farina’s family were masters in the art of distilling alcohol to carry fragrances, which involves different techniques to those used to distil alcohol to drink.

The method was developed in northern Africa, exported to Sicily and then on to the Italian mainland.  Farina’s antecedents brought it with them to Piedmont, where his grandmother established the family workshop in Santa Maria Maggiore, which is located about 130km (81 miles) northeast of Turin, not far from the border with Switzerland.

In his early 20s, Farina emigrated to Germany. Taking the name Johann Maria Farina - his given Italian name was Giovanni - he initially worked for an uncle who had moved to Cologne (Köln) some years earlier.

Feeling homesick, Farina began to dabble in experiments using the distilling techniques he had inherited. 

One day in 1708 he excitedly wrote a letter to his brother, Giovanni Battista Farina, exclaiming that he had produced a scent so pleasing to his nostrils that it was almost dreamlike in its qualities.

He wrote: “I have made a perfume reminiscent of an Italian spring morning, accompanied by a gentle freshness, where the scents of wild narcissus combine with sweet orange blossoms. The fragrance is refreshing and stimulative for my senses and imagination.”

Giovanni Paolo Feminis asked Farina to
market his Aqua Mirabilis

There have been suggestions that the recipe was not actually his but belonged to another product, Aqua Mirabilis, a medicinal mix that was the creation of Giovanni Paolo Feminis, a friend of the Farina family from Santa Maria Maggiore, which Farina had offered to market in Cologne.

Whatever the true story – and it is possible Farina used his distilling skills to give the formula his own twist - Farina was taken with the fragrance and gave it the name “Eau de Cologne” in honour of his adopted city.

In the summer of 1709, Giovanni Battista Farina arrived in Cologne, registered as a new resident at Cologne town hall, under the name of Johann Baptist Farina, and in August 1 of the same year signed a 12-year contract to rent a building opposite the Julichplatz in the street now known as Unter Goldschmeid.

With his brother-in-law, Franz Balthasar Borgnis, he founded Farina & Compagnie, which evolved into Gebrüder Farina & Compagnie - Farina Brothers and Co – after Johann Maria and another brother, Carlo Girolamo, joined the board.

The company is still operating more than 300 years later, from the same premises at the corner of Obenmarspforten, with the red tulip logo that was adopted at the very start.  It is the world’s oldest perfume factory. The current owners are the eighth generation of Giovanni’s family.

The perfume was originally sold in long,
slender bottles called rosali

The business initially sold a wide range of luxury items, such as lace, handkerchiefs, silk stockings, wigs, feathers, tobacco boxes, sealing wax and face powder.  After some wobbles at the start, resulting in the departures of Carlo Girolamo and Giovanni Battista’s brother-in-law and a renaming of the company to Fratelli Farina (Farina Brothers), business began to grow.

It was after the death of Giovanni Battista in 1924 that Johann Maria’s perfume became its focus.

In those days, when personal hygiene standards were a long way removed from those of today, it was normal for women and men to douse themselves liberally in scent and, once word of it spread, Farina’s fragrance became a sensation.

The exact recipe was a closely-guarded secret, naturally, and remains so. It contained a blend of the oils of many citrus fruits and flower essences, but most noticeable was the scent of Bergamot, the exotic citrus the size and shape of an orange with the colour of lime, grown in particular areas of southern Italy, Turkey and southern France.

The company was renamed again, this time simply as Johann Maria Farina, which has remained unchanged since.

From a small start – the first delivery of Eau de Cologne was for just 12 bottles in 1716 – Farina’s list of customers expanded rapidly. Between 1730 and 1739, around 3,700 of its distinctive long, slender bottles – named rosali - were delivered.

The company's Eau di Cologne - Acqua di
Colonia - as packaged today

Vitally, the fragrance soon became a royal and imperial favourite.  Frederick William I of Prussia, Clemens August of Bavaria, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, Maria Theresa of Austria and Louis XV of France were all taken with the unique scent and by 1740 it was being sold in cities all over Europe.

It was the favoured perfume of royal families through the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries. Diana, Princess of Wales, enjoyed its delicate notes and deliveries were regularly made to her home in London. 

Other fans over the centuries included the composers Mozart and Beethoven, British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, the writers Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, the Indian prime minister Indira Gandi and the actresses Marlene Dietrich and Romy Schneider.

Other manufacturers attempted to copy Farina’s formula, some with greater success than others.  The most famous imitation is undoubtedly 4711, named after its location at Glockengasse No. 4711.

The French fragrance manufacturer Roger & Gallet produces a fragrance called Johann Maria Farina, having bought the rights to Eau de Cologne extra vieille when Jean Marie Joseph Farina, a grand grand nephew of Johann, sold the company’s Paris store in 1806.

Johann Maria Farina died in Cologne in 1766.

A wall plaque identifies Farina's
birthplace in Santa Maria Maggiore 

Travel tip:

Visitors to Santa Maria Maggiore, a small town of around 1,200 residents 25km (16 miles) north of Verbania, can look round the Casa del Profumo in Piazza Risorgimento, a new museum set up to celebrate the lives of both Giovanni Paolo Feminis and Johann Maria Farina. The museum has developed a relationship with the perfume museum at the original Farina headquarters in Cologne.

Verbania is the largest town on Lake Maggiore

Travel tip:

Verbania is the largest town on Lake Maggiore, with a population of a little more than 30,000.  It was formed in 1939 by the merger of three smaller towns – Intra, Pallanza and Suna.  Pallanza, the middle of the three, has a pretty harbour. Attractions include the Villa Taranto, which has a magnificent botanical garden, and the Isolino di San Giovanni, a small islet separated from the mainland by a stretch of water no more than 15 metres wide, which was for many years the home of the great conductor and musical director, Arturo Toscanini.

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