Claudia de’ Medici – Archduchess of Tyrol

Medici daughter who was born to rule

Lorenzo Lippi's portrait of  Claudia
de' Medici, painted in around 1626

Claudia de’ Medici, who ruled the Tyrol region of Austria while her son was still a minor, was born on this day in 1604 in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

Claudia was the daughter of Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his wife Christina of Lorraine.

She was destined for a marital alliance with someone equally aristocratic and became engaged at just four years old to Federico Ubaldo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino.

She was educated in a convent where, in addition to piety, she learned to play the harp and paint pictures.

At the age of 16, she married Federico, Duke of Urbino and was initially disappointed when she found out he had his mistress installed in the ducal palace.

But two years later she had a daughter with him, Vittoria della Rovere. Her husband died a year later in 1623 leaving her a widow at the age of 19.

Claudia remarried in 1626 to Leopold V, Archduke of Austria, and became the Archduchess consort of Austria. She had five children by Leopold before his death six years later in 1632.

She assumed the regency of Tyrol in the name of her son, Ferdinand Charles, and held it until 1646 when Ferdinand became 18 and was able to rule for himself.

Joseph Heintz the Elder's 1604
portrait of Leopold V

During that time she arranged for a reform of the militia, built up fortifications and concluded an alliance with Spain and the Emperor Ferdinand II. She also reformed the criminal justice system to make it less cruel.

Claudia died on Christmas Day in 1648 at the age of 44 in the Palace of Innsbruck.

Her daughter, Vittoria della Rovere, married Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Of her children by Leopold V, her son, Ferdinand Charles of Austria, married Anne de’ Medici. 

Her daughter, Isabella Clara of Austria, married Charles III Duke of Mantua.  Her second son, Sigismund Francis of Austria, married Countess Palatine Maria Hedwig Auguste of Sulzbach.

Her youngest daughter, Maria Leopoldine of Austria, married the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III. The couple had one other child, which died in infancy.

The Palazzo Pitti in Florence was the main residence
of the Medici family from 1550

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Pitti, where Claudia was born, was originally built for the banker, Luca Pitti, in 1457 in the centre of Florence, to try to outshine the Medici family. The Medici family later bought it from his bankrupt heirs and made it their main residence in 1550. Today visitors can look round the richly decorated rooms and see treasures from the Medici collections.

Urbino's magnificent Ducal Palace is the focal point of
the city in the Marche region

Travel tip:

Urbino which is about 35km (22 miles) inland from the Adriatic resort of Pesaro, in the Marche region, is a majestic city on a steep hill.  It was once a centre of learning and culture, known not just in Italy but also in its glory days throughout Europe. The Ducal Palace, a Renaissance building made famous by The Book of the Courtier by Castiglione, is one of the most important monuments in Italy and is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site.

Also on this day:

1966: The birth of opera singer Cecilia Bartoli

1970: The birth of Olympic skiing champion Deborah Compagnoni

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Domenico Antonio Vaccaro - painter, sculptor and architect

Creative genius whose legacy is still visible around Naples

The beautiful Palazzo dell'Immacolatella at the waterfront
of the Port of Naples is a famous Vaccaro palace

The painter, sculptor and architect Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, who created some notable sculptures and designed some of the finest churches and palaces around Naples in the early 18th century, was born in the great southern Italian city on June 3, 1678.

Vaccaro was also an accomplished painter, but it is his architectural legacy for which he is most remembered.

Among the famous churches attributed to Vaccaro are the Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo, which overlooks Piazza Dante, and the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione a Montecalvario, which can be found in the Spanish Quarter, while he completed the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Stella in the district of the same name.

His notable palaces included the Palazzo Spinelli di Tarsia, just off Via Toledo, and the beautiful late Baroque palace, the Palazzo dell’Immacolatella, built on the water’s edge in the 1740s and now dwarfed by the enormous ocean-going ships that dock either side of it.

Vaccaro's obelisk in the Piazza di San
Domenico Maggiore in the heart of Naples

Vaccaro was also responsible for finishing the carved obelisk topped by a bronze statue in Piazza di San Domenico Maggiore.

He sculpted a statue of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, in the city’s cathedral, a Guardian Angel in the nearby church of San Paolo Maggiore, a Moses in the church of San Ferdinando, and the statues of Penitence and Solitude for the former monastery of San Martino, now a museum.

Vaccaro was the son of another accomplished painter, Lorenzo Vaccaro, who encouraged him to study for a legal career.  However, he would often forego his studies in order to make drawings and in time his father accepted his passion could not be quelled.  He began to work alongside his father and trained in the workshop of Francesco Solimena, a prolific painter of the Baroque era.

He focussed largely on painting in his early years but gave evidence of the breadth of his talent when he was asked to redesign the church of San Michele Arcangelo in Anacapri, on the island of Capri, which was noted for its majolica floor.

Vaccaro would later be responsible for the majolica cloister at the Basilica of Santa Chiara in Naples.

Vaccaro's Guardian Angel in the church
of San Paolo Maggiore

He did less painting and more sculpture and design following the shocking murder of his father in 1706 at the family farm in Torre del Greco, seemingly by two paid assassins, although it was not established who had hired them.

Vaccaro reached his artistic maturity following his father’s death and the commission to build the small church of Santa Maria della Concezione in Montecalvario came in 1718.

The Palazzo dell’Immacolatella is widely recognised as one of the most interesting historical and artistic buildings in Naples.

Commissioned by the Bourbon king Charles III, it was built as part of a restoration of the sea front between Castel Nuovo and Porta di Massa, and and initially stood on a peninsula connected to the mainland by two bridges.

The building, which was to serve as a quarantine station, is characterized by the statue of the Virgin Mary at the front of the building at the top, attributed to Francesco Pagano.  There are plans to restore the building, which currently does not have a purpose, as a museum.

For a brief period in the 19th century, the palace was embellished with the Fountain of the Immacolatella, designed by Michelangelo Naccherino. It was relocated and now stands on the seaside road, via Nazario Sauro, near the Castel dell'Ovo, and is known now as the Fountain of the Giant.

Vaccaro married to Giuseppina Pierro, with whom he had 10 children. From 1724 until his death in 1745 he lived in the Palace of Magnocavallo, in Via Francesco Girardi, near the Parco dei Quartieri Spagnoli.

The beautiful interior of the church of San Domenico
Maggiore, founded by Dominican friars

Travel tip:

The Piazza di San Domenico Maggiore takes its name from the nearby church of San Domenico, founded by friars of the Dominican Order, built around another church on the same site dating back to the 10th century. The square is bordered by the long narrow street popularly known as Spaccanapoli, one of the three original east-to-west streets of the Greek city of Neapolis. The adjoining monastery was the original seat of the University of Naples, where Saint Thomas Aquinas, a former member of the Dominican community, taught theology in 1272.

The Port of Naples, with two cruise ships dwarfing the
Palazzo dell'Immacolatella in the centre of the picture

Travel tip:

The Port of Naples is one of the largest Italian seaports and one of the largest on the Mediterranean, with an annual cargo traffic capacity of around 25 million tons and 500,000 container units, plus passenger traffic of some nine million people.  As well as a regular procession of passenger  cruise ships calling at Naples, the port provides ferry services for various destinations around the Bay of Naples, including the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida, plus services to destinations further afield such as Sicily and Sardinia, the Aeolian Islands and Ponza.

Also on this day:

1751: The birth of the blessed Vincent Romano, priest dedicated to helping poor of Naples

1977: The death of film director Roberto Rossellini

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Roberto Visentini - cyclist

One half of the Giro d’Italia’s most controversial duel

Roberto Visentini had the reputation of a
playboy in a working-class sport

Roberto Visentini, the Italian road racing cyclist who won the 1986 Giro d’Italia but the following year was a central figure in the most controversial race since the historic tour of Italy began, was born on this day in 1957 in Gardone Riviera.

The son of a wealthy undertaker from Brescia, Visentini had been an Italian and a world champion at junior level in 1975 and won the Italian national time-trial championship in 1977 as an amateur, before turning professional in 1978. Despite his success, he was not universally respected by his peers, some of whom felt his penchant for fast cars and a playboy lifestyle were not in keeping with what was traditionally a working-class sport.

The Giro was always his focus. Riding for the Inoxpran team, he was runner-up in the 1983 edition behind his fellow countryman Giuseppe Saronni and looked set to win the event two years later, holding the race leader’s pink jersey for nine consecutive stages to the half-way point, only to become unwell, dropping back to finish 49th overall behind the Frenchman Bernard Hinault.

In 1986, now with the Carrera team, Visentini finally claimed the prize as his own, taking the lead at stage 16 as he turned the tables on Saronni, with the 1984 winner Francesco Moser, another Italian, in third place.

Visentini was the 1986
Giro d'Italia champion

Come 1987, he felt he should begin the Giro, naturally, as team leader, and if he found himself positioned in the race well enough to have a chance of defending his title successfully, expected his teammates to do all they could to support him, as did the team management.

But one member of the team, the ambitious Irishman Stephen Roche, had other ideas. A high-profile signing in 1986, he had endured a wretched first year wrecked by a knee injury. He arrived at the Giro fresh from winning the Tour de Romandie in Switzerland and was in great form. He felt he also had a claim to be team leader.

Much to Visentini’s chagrin, Davide Boifava, the Carrera team manager, was reluctant to name a team leader when the race began in San Remo, announcing that “the road would decide”.

In the event, Visentini won the prologue but Roche claimed the overall lead on the third stage, a time trial between Lerici on the Ligurian coast and Camaiore, just over the border in Tuscany, and defended it for the next nine stages until the race reached Rimini, on the Adriatic coast.

Yet Visentini was never far behind and as the pair prepared for the uphill time trial from Rimini to San Marino, Roche’s lead over the defending champion was just 25 seconds. What’s more, he was suffering some pain after a crash a couple of days earlier.

Stephen Roche was an ambitious rider who failed to see
why he should not try to win the Giro in his own right

Now Visentini made his move and beat Roche decisively in the 46km climb, finishing 2 min 47 sec ahead of his teammate, taking the pink jersey as race leader in the process. He reasoned that with that the road had ‘decided’ and that the Giro was as good as his.

However, Roche was having none of it. There had been an assumption among the journalists reporting the race and the fans watching that an agreement had been reached where Roche would support Visentini in the Giro and the Italian would return the favour in the Tour de France the following month.

But Roche says he saw Visentini give an interview on the night of the San Marino stage in which he said he was not planning to ride in the Tour, something the Italian later denied.

Either way, on stage 15, which took the riders through the Dolomites, Roche broke away from the Carrera group, forming a new leading group with two other riders on the descent of Monte Rest. Despite Boifava sending his second-in-command to drive alongside Roche and tell him to abandon the move, he continued with the move, scrambling down the hill at speeds he admitted later were too fast.

The upshot was that though he did not win the stage his 12th place was enough for him to reclaim the pink jersey.  Encouraged by his Italian supporters, some of whom spat at or attempted to strike Roche as he went past them, Visentini tried to fight back on stage 16, between Sappada in the province of Belluno and Canazei, in Trento, but could not pass Roche. He ultimately faded and abandoned his race after a crash on the penultimate lap.

By the end, despite the opprobrium of the Italian newspapers, many supporters were applauding the Irishman as the stronger rider. Indeed, he went on to win the Tour de France and the road race at the World Championships, the first rider to win all three in the same year.

The career of Visentini, by contrast, went the other way. He never won another significant race and retired in 1990 to take over the running of the family firm, and thereafter had little to do with the sport, pointedly staying away from Carrera team reunions.

Sappada enjoys a picturesque setting in the foothills of
the Alps, developed largely by Germans 

Travel tip:

The small town of Sappada, also known as Bladen, is in an area of rich natural beauty in the Dolomites located at 1,245m (4,085ft) above sea level at the northeastern end of the range, on the border between Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Austria.  A tourist destination in winter and summer, despite being only 130km (81 miles) north of Venice it is largely German-speaking, with a Bavarian dialect known as Sappadino in Italian or Plodarsich in the local vernacular.

Gardone Riviera is an elegant resort on Lake Garda

Travel tip:

Gardone Riviera is a small resort about one third of the way along the western shore of Lake Garda, in the province of Brescia. Several hotels can be found along the waterfront, as well as a small piazza providing a peaceful lakeside setting to eat lunch or dinner or enjoy an ice cream at an outdoor table. The town was the home of the poet, soldier and revolutionary Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938), who built the extravagant monument named Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, an estate in the hills above Gardone Riviera, which he planned with the help of Giancarlo Maroni. It now houses a military museum and library.

More reading:

The launch of the Giro d'Italia

How Attilio Pavesi became Italy's first Olympic cycling champion on the road

The cycling champion who was a secret war hero

Also on this day:

1882: The death of unification hero Giuseppe Garibaldi

The Festa della Repubblica, commemorating Italy becoming a republic in 1946

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Iolanda of Savoy - banished princess

Sister of Italy’s last monarch lived quiet life in seaside villa

A photograph of Princess Iolanda of
Savoy as a young woman 

Princess Iolanda of Savoy, the eldest daughter of Italy’s wartime king Vittorio Emanuele III, was born on this day in 1901 in Rome.

Along with the other members of the Italian royal family, she left the country in 1946 after a referendum over whether to turn Italy into a republic gained the support of 54 per cent of those who voted.

The new constitution specifically banned the male heirs of the House of Savoy from setting foot on Italian soil.  Her brother, Umberto II, who had been made king when his father abdicated in May 1946, shortly before the vote, had the crown for just 27 days. He left for Portugal, never to return to his homeland.

The decision to send male members of the family into exile was essentially the new republic’s punishment for Vittorio Emanuele having allowed the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini to run the country as a dictator.

Vittorio Emanuele, who was king for 46 years, was tainted in particular by his approval of Mussolini's anti-semitic race laws by which all Jewish students were expelled from schools and Jews were banned from public office and forbidden to marry outside their race.

The collapse of the monarchy meant a dramatic change of lifestyle for Iolanda, who was one of five children born to her mother, Queen Elena of Montenegro.

The King and his young family: from the left Iolanda, Queen
Elena, Maria Francesca, Mafalda and Umberto

There were once plans to put her forward as a suitable match for the Crown Prince of England, the future Edward VIII.  In the event, Edward VIII gave up his throne for Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee, and Iolanda, a sporty girl who excelled at swimming and riding, was courted by Count Giorgio Carlo Calvi of Bergolo, a cavalry officer who would go on to become a general in the Italian army.

They were married at the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome in 1923 and lived in a Savoy residence in the town of Pinerolo, southwest of Turin, where they raised a family of five children.

Calvi was one of the officers closest to Vittorio Emanuele during the Second World War and was placed in control of Rome as it became an “open city” following the armistice the Italians signed with the Allies in 1943.

He was arrested by the Germans towards the end of the War and interned in a hotel in Austria before being allowed to join Iolanda and the family, who had by then moved to the relative safety of Switzerland.

Giorgio Carlo Calvi of Bergolo, who
was married to Iolanda in 1923

After the constitution was announced, Iolanda, Calvi and their children joined her father in exile in Egypt, where Vittorio Emanuele died in 1947.

Unlike the male descendants, who would remain in exile until Umberto II’s son, also called Vittorio Emanuele, and grandson Emanuele Filiberto, were allowed back in 2002, the female descendants were able to return to Italy without restriction.

There was no public role for Iolanda, but she and her husband were able to start a new life at a maritime villa on the coast of Lazio on the Copacotta estate, formerly owned by the Savoy family before being taken over by the state. She died in a clinic in Rome in 1986

Fate took Iolanda’s sisters on very different paths. Mafalda, who was a year and a half younger, married a grandson of the German Emperor Frederick III and went to live in a castle not far from Frankfurt.

Her husband was a member of the Nazi party, yet she was suspected by Hitler of being a spy, or at best a subversive, and after Italy’s surrender in 1943 she was arrested and placed in a concentration camp, where she died the following year from wounds suffered in an Allied bombing raid on a nearby armaments factory.

Iolanda's sister, Mafalda, whose life
was to end tragically in 1944

Giovanna survived but was possibly lucky to do so.  Born in 1907, she married Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria and while living in Sofia she helped facilitate the escape of many Jews from the country after Bulgaria announced they were siding with the Axis powers in the War.

After her husband died in 1943, suffering unforeseen heart problems soon after a meeting with Hitler, she remained in Sofia until the end of the conflict, only to be told by the new Communist government in 1946 that she had 48 hours to leave. She too went to Egypt, and from there to Madrid and finally Portugal, where she lived with her exiled brother, Umberto, who kept a house there for 37 years.

The youngest sibling, Maria Francesca, married Prince Luigi Carlo of Bourbon-Parma and lived in Cannes, France. Although she and her husband were briefly imprisoned by the Germans before the Allies liberated France, their life was relatively uneventful.

The Cathedral of San Donato at the heart of Pinerolo

Travel tip:

Nestling in an attractive setting among hills and valleys with an Alpine backdrop, Pinerolo is about 50km (31 miles) southwest of Turin. Positioned on what was an important trade route between Italy and France, the small city has a well preserved medieval centre and several important museums. The Cathedral of San Donato is an interesting church, having a symmetrical facade in three parts, featuring rose windows and a gothic style entrance with two statues. The city has a strong sporting tradition. It was a base for the Winter Olympics in 2006 and is a frequent stage in the Giro d'Italia cycle race.

The beach at Copacotta is a rare stretch of unspoilt sand

Travel tip:

The old Savoy hunting estate of Copacotta, which can be found only 25km (16 miles) or so to the southwest of Rome, not far from Ostia, is now part of the presidential estate of Castelporziano, one of the three residences of the President of the Italian Republic, together with the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome and Villa Rosebery in Naples. Adjoining the estate is Copacotta beach, a long sweep of natural, undeveloped shoreline that includes the best preserved unspoilt area of sand dunes in the whole of Italy.

More reading:

Vittorio Emanuele III abdicates

Umberto II, the last king of Italy

Mussolini's last stand

Also on this day:

1675: The birth of the great dramatist Francesco Scipione

1819: The birth of Francis V, the last reigning Duke of Modena

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