Carmine Crocco - soldier and brigand

Bandit seen by peasants as Italy’s ‘Robin Hood’

Carmine Crocco nurtured a hatred
for people of wealth and nobility

Carmine Crocco, whose life of brigandry was driven by a hatred of what he saw as the bourgeois oppressors of the poor, was born on this day in 1830 in the town of Rionero in Vulture, in Basilicata.

Crocco fought in the service of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Expedition of the Thousand but was no supporter of Italian Unification and spent much of his life thereafter fighting on the side of the ousted Bourbons and of the peasant people of the south, many of whom were as poor after unification as they had been before, if not poorer.

He assembled his own private ‘army’, including many other fearsome brigands, which at one point numbered more than 2,000 men.

For this reason, he is regarded as something of a folk hero in southern Italy, where there is a popular belief that he robbed the rich to give to the poor in the manner of the legendary English outlaw, Robin Hood.

Nonetheless, when he was arrested for the final time he was tried and convicted of 67 murders and seven attempted murders among many crimes, having led a life of violence.

After his initial death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment with hard labour, which he served partly on the island of Santo Stefano, off the coast between Naples and Rome, and later on the island of Elba, off the Tuscan coast, Crocco wrote his memoirs.

He described how his hatred for the wealthy upper classes stemmed from an incident he witnessed as a boy, when his brother, Donato, killed a dog that was attacking the family’s chickens and was then beaten by the dog’s owner, a young lord called Don Vincenzo. When his pregnant mother tried to defend her son, she too was violently attacked, losing her unborn child as a result.

An 1864 arrest warrant for Crocco
and two of his accomplices

Soon afterwards, after Don Vincenzo was threatened with a shotgun, Crocco’s father was arrested and convicted of his attempted murder. Some years later, it was proved that he was not the person with the gun, although by the time his father was released he was old and sick.

Carmine's antipathy towards the privileged classes was hardened further by an incident that occurred when he was an adult. He had been serving in the army of Francis II, the bourbon King of The Two Sicilies, but deserted after killing another soldier in a brawl.

Returning to Rionero, he found that his sister, Rosina, was the subject of slanderous stories spread by a nobleman, Don Peppino, whose advances she had declined. He sought out Don Peppino, who responded to Crocco’s questioning by hitting him with a whip, at which Crocco drew a knife and killed him.

He hid in nearby woods, where he met other outlaws. They formed a gang and began to carry out robberies. Crocco was caught and sentenced to 19 years in prison in 1855 but escaped from the jail, in Bari, four years later.

His decision to join up with Garibaldi was purely out of self-interest, inspired by the Sardinian general’s promise to grant amnesty to any deserter who joined his cause.  Crocco fought bravely, taking part in the important Battle of Volturno, but was denied his pardon. He was arrested and imprisoned again.

He was released after intervention by a noble family from Rionero in Vulture who argued his case, but felt badly betrayed by the Sardinians driving the push for unification. When the new Kingdom of Italy imposed heavy taxes on the peasants while maintaining the privileges of the elite, who had switched their loyalty from the Bourbons to the new country, Crocco called on other former soldiers and fellow outlaws and was able to form an army of 2,000 men, their goal to support Francis II and to aid and encourage peasant uprisings.

Telemaco Signorini's painting of a visit to the prison at
 Portoferraio on Elba. Crocco is on the end of the right-hand row

With the help of the Spanish general José Borjes, sent by the exiled Bourbon government to provide tactical input, they enjoyed considerable success, recapturing many towns across Basilicata and conquering parts of Campania and Apulia. Many noblemen and some politicians were killed, quite a few by Crocco himself.  This gave him a reputation as “a liberator” but his motives were those rooted in his own past.

The ultimate target was to recapture the city of Potenza, which had become an Italian army stronghold. But it was here that the campaign began to go wrong. First, Crocco broke his alliance with Borjes, distrustful of his promise of Spanish reinforcements. Then Borjes, en route to see Francis II in Rome, was captured and killed by Piedmontese soldiers.

Crocco went back to robbery and extortion to raise funds but his army had been weakened by numerous battles.  He was invited to surrender by the Italian Army but refused, going into hiding with the aim of using guerilla tactics.  Ultimately, though, his whereabouts were betrayed by a traitor within his own ranks, the Italian Army brought in reinforcements and he was defeated. Many of his lieutenants were captured and executed.

His own reaction was to flee to Rome, hoping for help from Pope Pius IX, whom he knew had expressed his support for the southern uprisings and his opposition to unification.  But he was detained by papal troops at Veroli, 100km (62 miles) southeast of Rome and handed over to the Italian authorities. This time there would be no escape.

The natural amphitheatre of the Grancia forest park

Travel tip:

The life of Carmine Crocco is celebrated each year in the village of Brindisi Montagna, in the province of Potenza, with an open-air musical drama entitled La Storia Bandita, staged in the natural amphitheatre of the Grancia forest, featuring more than 400 actors and dancers, plus horses, donkeys, oxen and ducks among other animals and multiple special effects, including the illusion of lightning created by more than 600 reflectors.  Among a number of famous actors who have taken part is Michele Placido, who claims to be descended from Crocco through his father, who was born in Rionero in Vulture.

The Palazzo Fortunato in Rionero in Vulture

Travel tip:

The most important building in Rionero in Vulture is undoubtedly the Palazzo Fortunato, built in the early 18th century, when Carmelo Fortunato, an ancestor of the anti-Fascist politician Giustino Fortunato, moved to the area. It was subsequently extended by other members of the family.  Notable people to have stayed in the palace include, in April 1807, the sovereign Giuseppe Bonaparte - brother of Napoleon - Ferdinand II of Bourbon in 1846 and prime minister Giuseppe Zanardelli in 1902. The building currently houses the municipal library.

Also on this day:

1412: The birth of condottiero Ludovico Gonzaga

1898: The birth of shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo

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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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Andrew Grima - royal jeweller

Rome-born craftsman favoured by the Queen of England

Andrew Grima was the Rome-born son of a Maltese
lace-maker and an Italian mother

The jewellery designer Andrew Grima, whose clients included the British Royal Family, was born on this day in 1921 in Rome.

Grima, whose flamboyant use of dramatically large, rough-cut stones and brilliant innovative designs revolutionised modern British jewellery, achieved an enviable status among his contemporaries.

After the Duke of Edinburgh had given the Queen a brooch of carved rubies and diamonds designed by Grima as a gift, he was awarded a Royal Warrant and rapidly became the jeweller of choice for London’s high society, as well as celebrities and film stars from around the world.

He won 13 De Beers Diamonds International Awards, which is more than any other jeweller, and examples of his work are kept by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.

When a private collection of Grima pieces was sold at auction by Bonhams in London in September 2017, some 93 lots realised a total of more than £7.6 million (€8.6m), with one pear-shaped blue diamond alone making £2.685m (€3.034m).

Grima’s father, John Grima, was the Maltese owner of a large international lace-making business, designing his products as well as marketing them. His mother, Leopoldina Farnese, could trace her ancestry to the powerful Farnese family of the Renaissance, who left their mark on Roman art and architecture in several ways.

Three pictures showing Queen Elizabeth II wearing the ruby
and diamond Grima brooch give to her by Prince Philip

The family moved to London when Andrew, their first-born, was five. After going to school in southeast London, Grima studied mechanical engineering at Nottingham University, from which he joined the Royal Engineers, serving in Burma and India during the Second World War.

His move into the jewellery business came purely by chance.  His plans to attend art school after he was demobbed had to be put on hold because few art schools had reopened. Instead, he took a secretarial course and began going out with a classmate, Helène Haller, whose Viennese father owned a small jewellery workshop.

The relationship blossomed and they were married in 1947, after which Helène’s father gave Grima a job supervising his accounts. He was desperate for an opportunity to unleash his artistic talents.  It came, finally, when a pair of dealers arrived at the workshop one day with a suitcase of large stones imported from Brazil, including aquamarines, citrines, tourmalines and amethysts. 

Grima persuaded his father-in-law to buy them all and though he had no training he set about creating his own radical designs, experimenting with abstract shapes, different textural effects and making casts from nature, such as leaves, lichen and volcanic lava, to reproduce in gold.  The pieces he made were a great success.

Grima's created this unusual gold and diamond brooch
by making a cast from pencil shavings

In 1952, his father-in-law died and he inherited the business, which went from strength to strength.  After he was invited to exhibit at an exhibition of modern jewellery in London in 1961, he began to win awards, including the Duke of Edinburgh Award for Elegant Design, which was awarded to him in 1966 as the first jeweller to win the accolade.

The curator of the exhibition, Graham Hughes, introduced Grima to rich potential clients, although he made a smart move of his own when he invited Lord Snowdon to visit his workshop after reading a magazine interview in which Snowdon had complained about what he saw as a paucity of exciting jewellery available. In the event, Snowdon was so impressed he chose presents for his then wife Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister.

It was not long afterwards that Grima received the Duke of Edinburgh award from Prince Philip in person, the Duke taking a brooch of carved rubies and diamonds from the winning collection as a gift for the Queen, who wore it on many different occasions in the years that followed, including her televised 2007 Christmas speech, coincidentally broadcast the day before Grima passed away at his home in Switzerland.

The Queen soon commissioned Grima to make state gifts and it was not long that he had the Royal Warrant and the Queen's Award for Industry as well as the Duke of Edinburgh's prize.

Snowdon, meanwhile, would some years later open Grima’s new shop at 80 Jermyn Street in London's St. James's, designed by his architect brothers, George and Godfrey, featuring an extraordinary and starkly eye-catching shopfront made from slabs of slate bolted to a steel framework, dotted with small, rectangular showcases, designed by sculptor Bryan Kneale.

Grima went on to open galleries in Zurich, New York, Tokyo and Sydney. As well as many of the British royals, Jacqueline Onassis was a fan of his pieces, as were many movie stars.

In 1977, Grima divorced Helène and married JoJo Maughan-Brown, the daughter of the diamond magnate, Sir Thomas Cullinan. After a planned business expansion failed, he decided to relinquish his royal warrant and in 1986 moved to Switzerland to work only on private commissions, living first in Lugano and then in Gstaad.  His daughter, Francesca, continued to design after his death.

The Palazzo Farnese in Rome is currently the home of
the French embassy in Italy

Travel tip:

The Farnese were among the great aristocratic families who turned Rome into a communal work of art from the 14th to the 17th centuries, along with the Barberini, the Colonna, the Chigi and the Borghese. Their most significant contributions was the Palazzo Farnese, the High Renaissance palace designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in 1517, which is now owned by the Italian republic and currently serves as the French embassy. It can be found in Piazza Farnese, a short distance from the Tiber, which features two identical decorative fountains, on granite bases thought to have been brought from the Roman Baths of Caracalla.

The view across from the Janiculum Hill

Travel tip:

Another Farnese monument worth visiting is the Villa Aurelia, which sits on top of the Janiculum Hill, the highest point within Rome's ancient city walls. Built in the 17th century by a Farnese cardinal named Girolamo, because of its elevated position it was commandeered by Garibaldi as his headquarters when he came to Rome to defend the republic of 1849 from the invading French. It was severely damaged by French artillery but restored three decades later when it was bought by a Philadelphia heiress,  Clara Jessup Heyland.

Also on this day:

1594: The death of the great Renaissance artist Tintoretto

1914: The death of Angelo Moriondo, inventor of the world's first espresso machine

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Andrea Verga - anatomist and neurologist

Professor among founding fathers of Italian psychiatry

Andrea Verga was one of the first to see how criminal
behaviour could be driven by insanity

The anatomist and neurologist Andrea Verga, who was one of the first Italian doctors to carry out serious research into mental illness, was born on this day in 1811 in Treviglio in Lombardy.

Verga’s career was notable for his pioneering study of the criminally insane, for some of the first research into acrophobia - the fear of heights - which was a condition from which he suffered, and for the earliest known experiments in the therapeutic use of cannabis.

For a number of years, he held the post of Professor of Psychiatry at the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan. He also founded, in conjunction with another physician, Serafino Biffi, the Italian Archives for Nervous Disease and Mental Illness, a periodical in which research findings could be shared and discussed.

Verga also acquired an in-depth knowledge of the anatomy of the bone system and the nervous system, and was the first to identify an anomaly of the brain that occurs in only one in six people, which became known as ‘Verga’s ventricle’.

The son of a coachman, Verga was an enthusiastic student of classics whom his parents encouraged to pursue a career in the church, yet it was medicine that became his calling.  He went to the University of Pavia, graduating in 1832 and becoming assistant to Bartolomeo Panizza, whose previous students had included Italy’s first Nobel Prize winner, Camillo Golgi.

Verga was a driving force behind Milan's Provincial
Psychiatric Hospital at Mombello 

Verga spent much of his working life with sight in only one eye, the consequence, it might be said, of his failing to remember to take literally the biblical proverb ‘physician heal thyself’. During an outbreak of cholera, in which he attended many sick patients, he developed a serious eye infection, which he neglected to treat, and went blind in the affected eye.

Nonetheless, steering himself towards the field of psychiatry and mental illness, in 1843 he moved to Milan, where he worked at the private hospital of San Celso, which cared for mental patients from the city’s wealthier classes.

While working at San Celso, he is thought to have participated with other physicians in experiments on the therapeutic use of cannabis in mental health conditions. The plant had a history of medical use in a number of ancient civilisations.

In 1848, amid the chaos of the first Italian War of Independence, he became the director of the Pia Casa della Senavra, Milan’s first public mental hospital. For several years his movements came under the scrutiny of the occupying Austrians, yet in 1852 he was offered the chance to lead psychiatric research at the city’s Ospedale Maggiore.

Andrea Verga's tomb at the Monumental Cemetery in Milan

There he pushed for reforms that fundamentally improved the service of medicine and surgery in Milan. With Biffi he helped construct a more accurate definition of the symptoms of mental illness and the concept of insanity, and its recognition as grounds for a different interpretation, in some cases, of criminal behaviour.

Also, along with Biffi and Cesare Castiglioni, he argued the need for a more modern mental hospital in Milan. His arguments were rewarded when Senevra was closed and replaced, in 1878, by the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital of Milan at Mombello. 

Devoted to his work throughout his life, Verga never married. He did find time to become involved in local politics, however, as a councillor and in 1876 was appointed a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy.

He died in 1895 and was buried in the Monumental Cemetery in Milan.

The Basilica of San Martino in Treviglio

Travel tip:

The small city of Treviglio in Lombardy, where Verga was born, is about 20km (13 miles) south of Bergamo and 41km (26 miles) northeast of Milan. It developed from a fortified town in the early Middle Ages and, having been at times controlled by the French and the Spanish, became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1860.  Its most visited attraction is the Basilica of San Martino, originally built in 1008 and reconstructed in 1482, with a Baroque façade from 1740, which is in Piazza Luciano Manara. Opposite the basilica is the historic Caffè Milano, founded in 1896, which retains the original turn-of-the century furniture and a counter in Art Nouveau style.

The bust of Andrea Verga in Largo
Francesco Richini in Milan

Travel tip:

An enormous white marble bust, dedicated in 1903 to Andrea Verga, can be found in Largo Francesco Richini in the centre of Milan, opposite what was formerly the Ospedale Maggiore, which is now part of the campus of the University of Milan, created by the Milan sculptor Giulio Branca. The Ospedale Maggiore moved early in the 20th century to a vast new site not far away, opposite the university buildings on the other side, bordered by Via Francesco Sforza.

Also on this day:

1875: The birth of Giovanni Gentile, the so-called 'philosopher of Fascism' 

1924: The day tragic politician Giacomo Matteotti spoke out against Fascist thugs

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