Giovanni Battista Morgagni - anatomist

The father of modern pathological anatomy

Giovanni Battista Morgagni taught at the
University of Padua for 56 years

Anatomist Giovanni Battista Morgagni, who is credited with turning pathology into a science, was born on this day in 1682 in Forlì in Emilia-Romagna.

Morgagni was professor of Anatomy at the University of Padua for 56 years and taught thousands of medical students during his time there.

He was sent by his parents to study philosophy and medicine at the University of Bologna when he was 18 and he graduated as a doctor from both faculties.

In 1706 he published his work, Adversaria Anatomica, which was to be the first volume of a series and helped him become known throughout Europe as an accurate anatomist.

He succeeded to the chair of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua in 1712 and was to teach medicine there until his death in 1771.

Morgagni was promoted to the chair of anatomy after his first three years in Padua, following in the footsteps of many illustrious scholars. He brought out five more volumes of his Adversaria Anatomica during his early years in Padua.

Morgagni's Adversaria Anatomica helped
establish his reputation

In 1761, when he was nearly 80, he brought out the work that was to make pathological anatomy into a science – De Sedibus et causis morborum per anotomem indagatis (Of the seats and cause of diseases investigated through anatomy). This work, which contained the records of 646 dissections, was later reprinted several times in its original Latin and translated into French, English and German.

Morgagni was the first anatomist to understand and to demonstrate the absolute necessity of basing diagnosis, prognosis and treatment on an exact and comprehensive knowledge of anatomical conditions. His precision, thoroughness and freedom from bias are modern scientific qualities and he was also a widely respected clinician who maintained an active practice. His treatise was to lead to steady progress in pathology and practical medicine.

Morgagni had married a noble lady from Forlì during his early years in Padua who bore him three sons and 12 daughters. He died at the age of 89 in Padua.

He is today regarded as the father of modern pathological anatomy as his works helped to make it into an exact science.

Forlì's Palazzo Poste e Telegrafi in Piazza Saffi

Travel tip:

Forlì, where Morgagni was born, is today a prosperous city with a beautiful main square, Piazza Saffi, named after Aurelio Saffi, a radical republican who was a prominent figure in the Risorgimento. The square is dominated by the monumental Palazzo Poste e Telegrafi, designed by Cesare Bazzani in 1932 to celebrate the Fascist regime. Benito Mussolini was born in nearby Predappio and blatantly favoured the area of his birth with imposing new buildings.

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Palazzo del Bò in the centre of the city is the
main building of the University of Padua

Travel tip:

The University of Padua, where Morgagni taught for most of his life, was established in 1222 and is one of the oldest in the world, second in Italy only to the University of Bologna. The main university building, Palazzo del Bò in Via VIII Febbraio in the centre of Padua, used to house the medical faculty. You can take a guided tour to see the pulpit used by Galileo when he taught at the university between 1592 and 1610.


More reading:

Paolo Mascagni, the first physician to map the human lymphatic system

How Gabriele Falloppio made key discoveries about human reproduction

Hieronymus Fabricius, the father of embyology

Also on this day:

1707: The birth of playwright Carlo Goldoni

1873: The birth of the great operatic tenor Enrico Caruso

2003: The death of comic actor Alberto Sordi


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Cesare “Caesar” Cardini – restaurateur

Italian emigrant who invented Caesar salad

Cesare 'Caesar' Cardini with the
ingredients for his famous salad

The restaurateur who history credits with inventing the Caesar salad was born on this day in 1896 in Baveno, a small town on the shore of Lake Maggiore.

Cesare Cardini was one of a large family, with four brothers and two sisters.  In common with many Italians in the early part of the 20^th century, his brothers Nereo, Alessandro and Gaudenzio emigrated to the United States, hoping there would be more opportunities to make a living.

Nereo is said to have opened a small hotel in Santa Cruz, California, south of San Francisco, while Alessandro and Guadenzio went to Mexico City.

Cesare left Italy for America in 1913. Records indicate he disembarked at Ellis Island, New York on May 1, having endured the transatlantic voyage as a steerage passenger, sleeping in a cargo hold equipped with dozens of bunk beds, which was the cheapest way to travel but came with few comforts.

He is thought then to have returned to Italy for a few years, working in restaurants in Milan, but ventured back to the United States in 1919.  This time he settled, first in Sacramento, then in San Diego, on the Pacific Ocean and close to the border with Mexico.

During the Prohibition Era, from 1920 to 1933, when alcoholic drinks were illegal in the US, many restaurateurs in San Diego crossed the border in Tijuana, where there were no restrictions, and attracted streams of American diners.

Cardini had many thriving restaurants in California and, for
a while, in Tijuana, just over the Mexican border

The story is that Cesare – by now known as Caesar – opened a business in Tijuana, probably with his brother, Alessandro, who was calling himself Alex.  They were always busy on the major public holidays and Cesare’s daughter, Rosa, claimed that Caesar salad came into being on Independence Day, 1924. With a packed restaurant, her father suddenly found himself running short of ingredients.

Whenever a diner found his choice of dish was no longer available, Cesare is said to have offered to make them a special salad, made with such a mouthwatering combination of ingredients they would be delighted they opted to try it.

In fact, the only salad ingredient he had left was some romaine lettuces. Yet with great theatre, he is said to have arrived at the table with a bowl of lettuce leaves, into which he tossed raw eggs, olive oil, garlic, parmesan cheese and Worcestershire sauce, mixed them all together and invited diners to savour the flavour by eating the coated leaves by holding the stem with their fingers.

Needless to say, the combination of sweet lettuce and the creamy, tangy dressing proved a big hit. The restaurant became even more popular and over the next few years the recipe rapidly spread across America.

The Cardini brand is still on sale today

Wallis Simpson, the Socialite for whom the English king, Edward VIII, so controversially gave up the throne in 1936, is said to have introduced the salad to Europe by insisting that her French chef learned how to make it.

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, a change in the gambling laws caused tourism to Tijuana to go into decline, and Cesare Cardini, with wife, Camille, and daughter Rosa, moved back to the United States, first to San Diego in 1935, and then to Los Angeles in 1938.

Demand for the salad dressing continued, and friends began asking for bottles and jars to be filled with it so they might enjoy it at home.  In time, Rosa began to sell bottles of the dressing on a market stall and was so successful her father decided it was worth producing on a commercial scale.

In 1948, he patented the recipe and established Caesar Cardini Foods, which gradually expanded its range of dressings and became an established name on tables across America and beyond.

Cardini died in 1956 after suffering a stroke at his Los Angeles home but Rosa took over the running of the company and developed the business to the extent that, at its peak, one in every four bottles of dressing on US tables had Cardini’s name on it.

She retired in 1988, although the name lives on. The licence to use the brand name is currently held by T Marzetti and Company, a business also founded by Italian emigrants, Teresa and Giuseppe Marzetti.

Rosa Cardini’s version of the origins of Caesar salad is not universally accepted.  Paul Maggiora, a partner of the Cardinis, claimed to have tossed the first Caesar salad in 1927 for American airmen from San Diego and called it Aviator's Salad.

Alessandro Cardini also claimed ownership of the recipe, which he also called Aviator's Salad, while Livio Santini, who worked in the kitchen at Cesare’s Tijuana restaurant, said that he made the salad from a recipe of his mother, and that Cesare borrowed the recipe from him.

The waterfront at Baveno, Cardini's home town on the
western shore of Lake Maggiore

Travel tip:

The lakeside town of Baveno, where Cesare Cardini was born, lies on the western shore of Lake Maggiore, just a few kilometres from its better known neighbour, Stresa. Both look out over the Borromean Islands, famous for their beautiful cultivated gardens.  The attractions of Baveno include its mineral water springs, the pink granite that is quarried nearby and a series of opulent villas dotted along the nearby coastline, including the Villa Henfrey-Branca, noticeable for its castle-like turrets, where Queen Victoria was a regular visitor from Britain as a guest of the engineer Charles Henfrey.

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The island of Isola Bella is a major tourist attraction

Travel tip:

Although smaller in area than Lake Garda, Lake Maggiore is the longest of the Italian lakes, stretching for 65km (40 miles) from Arona in Lombardy to its northern extreme in Locarno in Switzerland.  It is also extremely deep, plunging 179m (587ft) at its deepest.  Because of its length, it has a different character at the Swiss end, where the scenery has an alpine feel, compared with the southern tip, which is at the edge of the Lombardy plain. The Borromean islands are the lake's biggest draw for tourists, with three of them - Isola Bella, Isola Madre and Isola dei Pescatori are accessible to the public.

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More reading:

A chef from the Adriatic coast who opened a restaurant in New York

The Emilian entrepreneur who founded an American pasta brand

The chef from a cinema family who found TV fame on America's Food Network 

Also on this day: 

1607: The first performance of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, the oldest opera still regularly staged

1934: The birth of politician Bettino Craxi

1934: The birth of soprano and opera director Renata Scotto

1990: The death of former president Sandro Pertini

(Picture credits: Cardini restaurant from San Diego History Center; Baveno view by Abxbay via Wikimedia Commons)

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Giovanni Battista de Rossi - archaeologist

Excavations unearthed massive Catacomb of St Callixtus

Grave niches were carved out of the rock in the
passageways of the Roman catacombs

Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the archaeologist who revealed the whereabouts of lost Christian catacombs beneath Rome, was born on this day in 1822 in the Italian capital.

De Rossi’s most famous discovery – or rediscovery, to be accurate – of the Catacomb of St Callixtus, thought to have been created in the 2^nd century by the future Pope Callixtus I, at that time a deacon of Rome, under the direction of Pope Zephyrinus, established him as the greatest archaeologist of the 19th century.

The vast underground cemetery, located beneath the Appian Way about 7km (4.3 miles) south of the centre of Rome, is estimated to have covered an area of 15 hectares on five levels, with around 20km (12.5 miles) of passageways.

It may have contained up to half a million corpses, including those of 16 popes and 50 Christian martyrs, from Pope Anicetus, who died in 166, to Damasus I, who was pontiff until 384. Nine of the popes were buried in a papal crypt.

The archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi

The complex steadily fell into disuse thereafter and the most important relics were removed over the centuries and relocated to churches around Rome.  The last wave of removals took place in the 9^th century, after which the entrances became overgrown, and new buildings were constructed or land cultivated on the site. 

De Rossi, however, whose fascination with Rome’s underground history had begun when he was a boy, felt their whereabouts needed to be known.

He devoted his life to expanding his knowledge, assembling a network of friends and contacts among archaeologists and museum curators across Europe to collate everything that was known from ancient discoveries and ultimately identified the probable location of several catacombs.

In 1849, he was given permission to tramp round a vineyard off the Appian Way, where he found a broken marble slab bearing an incomplete inscription “NELIUS. MARTYR”. Aware from his research that Pope St. Cornelius had been buried in the area he asked the incumbent pope, Pius IX, to buy the vineyard so that he could begin an excavation.

It was not long before he found the other half of Pope St Cornelius’s marble tombstone and through a painstaking process over the next few years De Rossi gradually revealed the wealth of history he had known for so long was waiting to be found.

The entrance to the Catacomb of St Callixtus as it is today

De Rossi had been born in the Campo Marzio area of the 4th Rione and was baptized at the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Academically gifted, he attended the Collegio Romano, the Jesuit college in Rome, where he studied philosophy, before graduating in law from the Sapienza University of Rome.

His interest in Roman history, and in particular of what lay beneath the ground, had been piqued at an early age, his father giving him a copy of Antonio Bosio’s vast history, La Roma Sotterranea - Underground Rome -  for his 11^th birthday. As a teenager, he befriended Giuseppe Marchi, the city’s Superintendent of Sacred Relics and Cemeteries.

Marchi, who showed him inside one of the catacombs – of which there are thought to have been at least 40 around the city – taught De Rossi the value of studying archaeological finds in situ rather than removing them, so as not to lose sight of their context.

In his career, De Rossi also explored the catacombs of Praetextus, Thrason and Priscilla.

A plate from De Rossi's book shows a
reconstruction of the Crypt of the Popes

De Rossi’s travels around Europe were made easier by managing to secure for himself an important although not particularly time-consuming position as Scriptor of the Vatican Library upon completing his degree studies, an appointment that required him to catalogue manuscripts in the library but allowed him plenty of opportunities to continue his private study.

Among his other discoveries was the Codex Amiatinus, the earliest surviving manuscript of the complete Bible in the Latin Vulgate version. He also made a substantial contribution to the literature of archaeological study.

He produced a four-volume work, of which the final manuscript was completed just before he died, entitled La Roma Sotterranea Cristiana, which was an updated Christian version of Bosio’s masterpiece that he had found so inspiring as a boy, and left details of much of his work to posterity in the regularly updated Bulletino di archeologia cristiana.

De Rossi died in 1894 at Castel Gandolfo, one of the Castelli Romani in the Alban Hills south of Rome, and where a summer residence allowed the popes to escape the city during the oppressively hot months of July and August.

Richard Meier's Museum of the Ara Pacis

Travel tip:

The Campo Marzio area of Rome, where De Rossi grew up, is a small section of the 4^th Rione of the city, extending roughly from the Palazzo del Quirinale to the Piazza del Popolo, and bordering the Tiber river.  Among other buildings, it is the home of something rare in the historic centre of the city – a modern edifice. The Museum of the Ara Pacis was built in glass, travertine and steel to house the 1^st century Ara Pacis of Augustus, a Roman altar dedicated to Pax, the goddess of peace, that was discovered under 13 metres of silt before being result in its present location in 1938.  The museum, which replaced a structure built to protect the arch in the Fascist era, was designed by the American architect Richard Meier.

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Castel Gandolfo sits atop a hill overlooking Lago Albano

Travel tip:

Castel Gandolfo, which overlooks Lago Albano from its wonderful position in the hills south of Rome, is one of the towns within the regional park of the Castelli Romani. It owes its fame to being the home of an Apostolic Palace, built in the 17^th century by Carlo Maderno on behalf of Urban VIII, that was traditionally the incumbent pope’s summer residence, with commanding views over the lake. The palace ceased to be a papal residence in 2016 at the behest of Pope Francis, and visitors can now go inside and enjoy a guided tour of the papal apartments and grand reception rooms.

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More reading:

Giuseppe Fiorelli - the archaeologist who saved Pompeii

Edward Gibbon's moment of inspiration

The Vesuvius eruption of AD79

Also on this day:

1507: The death of Venetian Renaissance painter Gentile Bellini

1806: The birth of military general Manfredo Fanti

1821: The death of Romantic poet John Keats

1834: The birth of Sicilian banker Emanuele Notarbartolo

1910: The birth of painter Corrado Cagli

Books:

The Roman Catacombs: A History of the Christian City Beneath Pagan Rome

The Roman Catacombs: The History and Legacy of Ancient Rome’s Most Famous Burial Grounds

(Picture credits: Catacomb by GerardM; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Mario Pavesi – entrepreneur

Biscuit maker who gave Italian motorists the Autogrill

Mario Pavesi began making
biscuits in 1934

Italy lost one of its most important postwar entrepreneurs when Mario Pavesi died on this day in 1990.

Pavesi, originally from the town of Cilavegna in the province of Pavia in Lombardy, not only founded the Pavesi brand, famous for Pavesini and Ringo biscuits among other lines, but also set up Italy’s first motorway service areas under the name of Autogrill.

Always a forward-thinking businessman, Pavesi foresaw the growing influence American ideas would have on Italy during the rebuilding process in the wake of the Second World War and the way that Italians would embrace road travel once the country developed its own motorway network.

He was one of the first Italian entrepreneurs to take full advantage of advertising opportunities in the press, radio, cinema and later television. 

Born in 1909 into a family of bakers, Pavesi moved to Novara in 1934, opening a pastry shop in Corso Cavour, where he sold a range of cakes and confectionery and served coffee. During the next few years, until Italy became embroiled in the war, he expanded the business in several ways.

By the time hostilities interrupted normal life, he had gone into production with Biscottini di Novara, a traditional biscuit made from eggs, flour and sugar that had been around since the 16^th century but had never before been produced as a commercial product.

The company's famous ad, proclaiming that
"It's always Pavesini time".

Pavesi took an interest in American tastes at the end of the conflict and in the immediate aftermath, when the occupying US military used to share supplies. It was after comparing traditional Italian biscuits with the ones the soldiers were handing round that he decided to travel to the United States on a fact-finding mission.

On his return, he devised a product that was based on the same traditional ingredients but was lighter and easier to digest, which he called Pavesini.  The product became a huge success, based on an advertising campaign that used the slogan: “It’s always Pavesini time".

As well as Pavesini, the company made crackers. In time, Pavesi introduced more winning lines such as his Ringo biscuits – one plain biscuit, one cocoa-flavoured, with a sweet filling – and the chocolate-covered Togo.

Pavesi’s ideas for roadside refreshment outlets grew from what he had encountered in America too, although he was not so much thinking of the needs of motorists so much as selling his biscuits that he decided, in 1947, to open a bar and café next to the A4 Turin-Milan highway, which passed close to the outskirts of Novara, not far from his factory.

Pavesi's Autogrill, straddling the motorway near Novara

Car ownership in Italy was small at the time – only one vehicle for every 100 people – so turnover was modest initially, but as the post-War economic recovery began to take hold, so more cars began passing his kiosk, and more of them stopped. Pavesi added more tables, a bigger covered area, and designated part of it as a restaurant, serving hot meals. Italy’s first Autogrill was born.

Far-sighted as ever, Pavesi knew he was on to a winner and began to look for other locations along the country’s highway network, which began to grow at a rapid rate in the 50s and 60s as the car manufacturers concentrated on the mass production of affordable, economy cars for ordinary Italians to drive.

Pavesi enlisted the help of architects, in particular the urban designer Angelo Bianchetti, who conceived the idea of restaurants that straddled both lanes of the motorway, great glass and steel structures supported by enormous girders, which had the advantage of being accessible to drivers on both sides of the highway.

The first of these, opened at Fiorenzuola d'Arda, between Parma and Piacenza, in 1959, was the first of its kind in Europe.  On many occasions, particularly lunchtime on Sundays, it would see every table taken, not just by passing travellers but by local people intrigued by the idea of cars racing beneath them as they ate.

Mario Pavesi (left), with the architect Angelo
Bianchetti, who designed many of the Autogrills

The original restaurant outside Novara, at Veveri, was transformed along similar lines in 1962.

In the 1970s, Pavesi found competition from Motta and Alemagna in a rapidly expanding market, and by then there were more than 200 rest areas across the 3,900km (2,450 miles) network of motorways.

The boom was threatened by the oil crisis of the 1970s, which plunged all three companies into crisis, but state intervention saved the day, with the catering sections of all three companies becoming part of a new state-run entity, Autogrill SpA.

The Pavesi brand is now owned by the Barilla group.

Pavesi passed away after a heart attack in Rocca di Papa, one of the Castelli Romani towns in the Alban Hills, some 25km (16 miles) southeast of Rome.

The enormous cupola of the Basilica of San
Gaudenzio dwarfs the ball tower

Travel tip:

The city of Novara, where Pavesi opened his first bakery and store, a little more than 20km (12 miles) from his home town of Cilavegna, is the second largest city in Piedmont after Turin, with a population of just over 100,000. It is notable for its attractive historic centre, at the heart of which is the Piazza della Repubblica, where visitors can find the Broletto, an arcaded courtyard around which are clustered a number of palaces housing a civic museum and art gallery and the town hall, as well as the 19^th century neo-classical cathedral designed by Alessandro Antonelli, who was responsible also for the city’s major landmark, the Basilica of San Guadenzio, with its tall multi-tiered cupola, which stands 121m (397ft) high.

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Rocca di Papa from Piazza della Repubblica

Travel tip:

Rocca di Papa, where Pavesi died, is a town of around 16,000 people and one of a group of communities in the Alban Hills southeast of Rome known as the Castelli Romani – the Roman Castles.  Built on a rocky outcrop, it is the site of a papal fortress once the home of Pope Eugene III, on top of which is built the Royal Geodynamic Observatory.  The town suffered considerable damage during bombing in the Second World War, after it was used as a strategic stronghold by the occupying German army, but has undergone substantial reconstruction since.

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More reading:

The former peasant farmer who founded the Lavazza coffee company

How Karl Zuegg made his name synonymous with jam and juice

Francesco Cirio - Italy's canning pioneer

Also on this day:

1905: The birth of Enrico Piaggio: the man behind the Vespa scooter

1914: The birth of Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Renato Dulbecco

1921: The birth of Giulietta Masina - the actress who married Fellini

(Picture credits: Basilica of San Gaudenzio by Umby; Rocca di Papa by Gugganij; via Wikimedia Commons)

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