Gabriele Corcos - celebrity cook

YouTube recipe blog led to TV fame in US

Gabriele Corcos and his wife, the actress Debi
Mazar, in a scene from their TV show

The TV cook and author Gabriele Corcos, whose show Extra Virgin on the Cooking Channel has given him celebrity status in the United States, was born on this day in 1972 in Fiesole, a town in the Tuscan hills just outside Florence.

He was invited to produce and host the show - the first original cookery programme to go out on the network when it launched in 2010 - after his YouTube channel, in which he prepared traditional Tuscan dishes, attracted a large following of devoted fans.

The Cooking Channel show was so successful it ran for five seasons, with 68 episodes, spawning a best-selling book of Tuscan recipes and a further show, Extra Virgin Americana, in which he starred with his wife, the actress Debi Mazar.

Corcos became a star of the kitchen without ever intending it to be his career.

His parents - his father was a surgeon, his mother a schoolteacher - wanted him to achieve his academic potential, while he was eager to find paid employment. He found a compromise by joining the army with the intention of qualifying as a medic, only to realise that the reward for graduating was to be posted to Kosovo, Somalia or Iraq.

Corcos, Mazar and one of their daughters
in action in their TV kitchen

Horrified at the prospect of active service, he abandoned his studies and decided instead to devote himself to his great love, music. Raising money by selling his treasured Ducati motorcycle, he decided to go to Brazil to learn to play the drums.

Everything changed again when, during a trip home, he met his future wife, who at the time was working with the pop megastar Madonna on make-up and dramatic presentation during a tour of Italy.   Within a short time, he had decided to travel back with Debi  to Los Angeles to start a new life in America. They married the following year, in 2002.

It was when he was forced to consider how he might make a living that he realised the thing he knew most about was cooking, having been brought up in the family farmhouse in the Tuscan hills, where the stove was always lit. His grandmother was preparing food almost constantly for the farmers and hunters and members of their families who would drop in most days.

Gabriele learned the basics of cooking when he was only six or seven years old and by the time he left home knew how to cook scores of Italian dishes. Noting how few Italian restaurants in the Los Angeles area served Italian food as he knew it, and struck upon the idea of demonstrating the recipes he had grown up with on his own YouTube channel, with his wife, Debi, as his companion in the kitchen.

Gabriele Corcos is active in helping food charities

Corcos boosted his knowledge while in Los Angeles by working in the kitchens of noted chefs such as Gino Angelini.

He never imagined his YouTube channel would be popular but soon the couple were receiving hundreds of emails congratulating them on their project and were encouraged to continue. The channel eventually ran for about five years.

Now based in Brooklyn, New York, Corcos has participated in both the Food Network New York City and Food Network South Beach Wine and Food Festivals since 2011 as a celebrity chef.

He has become involved too with food charities. While making an appearance on Food Network channel's Chopped in April 2013, he competed on behalf of the charity Feeding America and in 2013, Corcos and his family participated in the Live Below the Line Challenge, in which the family tried to feed themselves on $1.50 each per day, which is the equivalent of the poverty line in America.

In 2014, Corcos became a council member of the Food Bank For New York City and hosted a pop-up dinner series in 2014 where a large portion of the proceeds benefited the Food Bank.

Although married to an American and with two daughters born in the United States, Corcos still hankers after a return to Fiesole and the family farm, surrounded by vines and olive trees and hopes that the Food Network’s availability on Italian television may lead to opportunities to work in Italy.

Fiesole offers panoramic views across Florence

Travel tip:

Fiesole, a town of about 14,000 inhabitants situated in an elevated position about 8km (5 miles) northeast of Florence, has since the 14th century been a popular place to live for wealthy Florentines and even to this day remains the richest municipality in Florence.  Formerly an important Etruscan settlement, it was also a Roman town of note, of which the remains of a theatre and baths are still visible.  Fiesole's cathedral, built in the 11th century, is supposedly built over the site of the martyrdom of St. Romulus. In the middle ages, Fiesole was as powerful as Florence until it was conquered by the latter in 1125 after a series of wars.

A typical landscape in Tuscany's Chianti region

Travel tip:

The Tuscany countryside tends to be associated with Chianti country, the wine-growing area known and appreciated by visitors from across the world. It by no means occupies the whole of the region, although it is a large area.  The borders are not clearly defined but in general it extends over the provinces of Florence and Siena, covering all of the area in between, extending to the east toward the Valdarno and to the west to the Val d'Elsa. It is further defined as Chianti Fiorentino, which includes towns such as Barberino Val d’Elsa, Greve in Chianti, San Casciano in Val di Pesa and Tavarnelle in Val di Pesa, and Chianti Sienese, which includes Radda, Gaiole, Castellina and Castelnuovo Berardenga.

More reading:

How Gino D'Acampo rebuilt his life to become a star cook and TV presenter

The chef from Riccione and his American dream

Gennaro Contaldo's passion for Amalfi

Also on this day:

The Feast of Saint Giustina of Padua

1675: The birth of famed Venetian portrait painter Rosalba Carriera



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Ottavio Bianchi - football coach

The northerner who steered Napoli to first scudetto

Ottavio Bianchi was Napoli's coach for
four seasons from 1985 to 1989

Ottavio Bianchi, the coach who guided Napoli to their first Serie A title in the Italian football championship, was born on this day in 1943 in the northern Italian city of Brescia.

Napoli, who had been runners-up four times in Italy's elite league, broke their duck by winning the scudetto in the 1986-87 season, when Bianchi built his side around the forward line consisting initially of the World Cup-winning Argentina star Diego Maradona, the Italy strikers Bruno Giordano and Andrea Carnevale.  After the arrival of the Brazilian forward Careca to partner Maradona and Giordano, the trio become collectively known as MaGiCa. 

Bianchi’s team began the 1986-87 season with a 13-match unbeaten run. It came to an end with an away defeat against Fiorentina but Napoli lost only two more matches all season, winning the title by three points from Juventus to spark wild celebrations in Naples.

It is a reflection of how defensively-minded Italian football coaches were at the time that Napoli won the title despite scoring only 41 goals in 30 matches, with Maradona (10) the only individual player to reach double figures.

Bianchi, a midfielder, spent five years
 with Napoli as a player

Bianchi’s team also won the Coppa Italia in 1987 and, after finishing second in Serie A in 1987-88, the UEFA Cup in 1989, which is the club’s only European trophy so far.

Napoli won the Serie A title for a second time in 1989-90 but by then Bianchi had left to become coach of AS Roma.

Bianchi was born in the Borgo Trento area of Brescia, a city in Lombardy about 90km (56 miles) east of Milan, about halfway between the lakes of Iseo and Garda.

He joined the Brescia youth system and worked his way through the ranks to make his debut in the senior side in the Serie A in 1965.

A midfielder, he went on to enjoy an 18-year career in which me made 330 league appearances for six clubs, a third of which were in the colours of Napoli during a five-season spell at the Stadio San Paolo, as well as winning two caps for the Italy national team.

In addition, Bianchi had stints with Atalanta, AC Milan and Cagliari and finished his playing career with Ferrara-based SPAL.

Bianchi began his coaching career at lower division clubs such as Siena, Mantova, Triestina and Atalanta, where he won the Serie C1 championship.

Ottavio Bianchi, front row, centre, with his 1986-87
Serie A title-winning Napoli squad

He moved south for the first time in 1983-84 when he accepted an offer from Avellino, with whom he finished in 11th place in the Serie A. From there he returned to the north and newly-promoted Como where again he managed to reach a mid-table position.

The chance to join Napoli came a year after the arrival of Maradona, who was then in his early 20s and reaching his physical peak. The young South American, who had cost £6.9 million (15.87 billion lire) - at the time a world record fee - from Barcelona, had made an immediate impact, scoring 14 goals in his debut season as Napoli finished eighth in the Serie A table.

Bianchi’s success made him a coach in demand.  After four seasons, he moved to Roma, where he again won the Coppa Italia, and reached the final of the UEFA Cup, where they were beaten by domestic rivals Inter-Milan.

The fabled MaGiCa forward line - Diego Maradona (right),
Bruno Giordano (left) and Careca (centre)

Then came a return to Napoli in 1992 to replace Claudio Ranieri. Again he was successful, managing to transform a relegation-threatened team into one challenging for a UEFA Cup place. He remained as technical director, with Marcello Lippi as coach, but the lost important players such as Gianfranco Zola, Careca and Giovanni Galli due to financial difficulties as the club’s fortunes began to wane.

The following season Bianchi returned to the bench as coach of Inter-Milan. But he was not able to generate the success the Milan club had hoped for and he lost his job there in 1995, ironically sacked after a defeat against Napoli.

Since then, apart from a brief spell as Fiorentina’s coach in 2002, Bianchi’s involvement with football has been limited. He lives in Bergamo, which he made his home during his time with Atalanta, the city’s team, and confines his football watching largely to matches on TV.

The Piazza della Loggia, with the Torre dell'Orologio, is
at the centre of the historic city of Brescia

Travel tip:

The city of Brescia tends not to attract many tourists compared with nearby Bergamo or Verona, partly because of the counter-attraction of the lakes.  Yet it has plenty of history, going back to Roman times, and many points of interest, including two cathedrals – the unusually-shaped Duomo Vecchio and its neighbour, the Duomo Nuovo – and the attractive Piazza della Loggia, with a Renaissance palace, the Palazzo della Loggia, which is the town’s municipal centre.  The Torre dell’Orologio clock tower bears similarities to the one in St Mark’s Square in Venice, a reflection of the town becoming a protectorate of Venice in the 15th century.

Napoli's Stadio San Paolo has a capacity of more than
60,000, making it Italy's third largest football ground

Travel tip:

The home of SSC Napoli is the Stadio San Paolo, built in the Fuorigrotta neighbourhood on the north side of the city and completed in 1959, more than 10 years after work began.  It is the third largest football ground in Italy with a capacity of 60,240, and hosted the 1990 World Cup semi-final between Italy and Argentina. The local council wanted to rename the ground Stadio Diego Maradona but Italian law prohibits the naming of a public building after any person who has not been dead at least 10 years.

More reading:

Gianfranco Zola, the Napoli favourite who became a great in England

Walter Mazzarri and the return of fallen giants Napoli

How Marcello Lippi won the World Cup in Germany

Also on this day:

1888: The birth of wartime nurse Saint Maria Bertilla Boscardin

1935: The birth of champion wrestler Bruno Sammartino


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Alberto Sughi - painter

20th century artist who was unwitting victim of plagiarism

Alberto Sughi's work was copied by a Japanese artist
who had visited his studio in Cesena

The artist Alberto Sughi, an acclaimed  20th century painter whose style was defined as “existential realism”, was born on this day in 1928 in Cesena in Emilia-Romagna.

Sughi was regarded as one of the greatest artists of his generation but is often remembered mainly for his unwitting part in a famous case of plagiarism.

It happened in 2006 when a Japanese painter, Yoshihiko Wada, was awarded the prestigious Art Encouragement Prize, the Japanese equivalent of the Turner Prize, for a series of paintings depicted urban life in Italy - one of Sughi’s specialities.

A month after the award was announced in March of that year, the Japan Artists Association and Agency for Cultural Affairs received an anonymous tip-off questioning the authenticity of Wada's work, which then sparked an investigation into possible plagiarism.

The anonymous accuser had noted that several pieces of Wada’s art in an exhibition before the award was decided bore striking similarities to paintings by Sughi. Two examples were Wada’s Boshi-zo (Mother and Child), which looked almost exactly like Sughi’s Virgo Laurentana, even in tiny details, and Wada’s Muso (Reverie), which appeared to be a near-identical copy of Sughi’s Piano Bar Italia.

One of the paintings Wada passed off as his own was one of
Sughi's many works depicting women in bars

Wada initially denied plagiarism. He claimed he he had known Sughi since he studied in Italy in the 1970s, and had been influenced by him while studying with him.

Later, Wada changed his story, saying he had painted with Sughi "in collaboration" and therefore the paintings were not plagiarised. He described his own paintings as "an homage to Sughi".

However, when contacted by the Japanese embassy in Italy in early May, Sughi denied the pair had worked together and said he was unaware Wada was even an artist. According to Sughi, Wada had introduced himself merely as a fan and had visited him as many as five times, always asking if he could photograph his work.

Subsequently, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs took the decision to strip Wada of the award, the first time such a decision had been taken since the Art Encouragement Prize was inaugurated in 1950.  Sughi considered suing but later revealed he had received a visit from Wada shortly before the decision to disqualify him was announced, after which he had concluded that the shame he would suffer was punishment enough.

Sughi painted a number of works in which his theme was
the relationship between man and nature

Self-taught, Sughi began drawing before he could write, inspired by an uncle who painted as a hobby. He worked as an illustrator for the newspaper Gazzetta del Popolo in Turin in the 1940s and began to paint at the same time, choosing the realism of figurative art over the abstract styles that were fashionable. His paintings often depicted moments from daily life, with no attempt to moralise.

It was a visit to the Venice Biennale in 1948, where he was captivated by a still life by the French painter André Fougeron, that did most to influence the style he favoured. Later that year, Sughi moved to Rome where he remained until 1951. There he met several artists, including Marcello Muccini and Renzo Vespignani who were part of the Gruppo di Portonaccio, an affiliation of like-minded painters who would meet and work in Portonaccio, a poor, industrialised suburb.

He returned to Cesena, where he would be based until the early 1970s, when he left his studio in the city for a country house in the hills.

Sughi was still active as a painter well into
his eighth decade of life

Sughi’s work followed thematic cycles, beginning with his so-called 'green paintings', which examined the relationship between man and nature (1971–1973), followed by the Cena - Supper - cycle (1975–1976), in which his focus was on bourgeois society. This preceded Imagination and Memory of the Family, dating from the early 1980s, and Evening or Reflection, from 1985.  In 2000 he exhibited a series of large canvases entitled Nocturnal.

The director Ettore Scola chose as poster for his 1980 film La terrazza one of Sughi’s paintings from his Cena series.

Sughi’s standing in the art world was such that galleries and museums not only in Italy but in Russia and South America staged regular exhibitions of his work.

Between December 2005 and January 2006, a large retrospective exhibition of Sughi’s work was held at the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma, containing 642 of his works, including paintings, tempera, drawings, and lithographs, made between 1959 and 2004.

Sughi died in Bologna in March 2012 at the age of 83.  Today, his works are held in the collections of the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore in Bologna, among others.

The Piazza del Popolo is the main square of Cesena

Travel tip:

Cesena, where Alberto Sughi was born, is an historic city in Emilia-Romagna, about 38km (24 miles) south of Ravenna and a similar distance northwest of Rimini. The city found fame of an unwanted kind in 1377 when Pope Gregory’s legate ordered the murder of thousands of citizens for revolting against the papal troops, in the so-called ‘Cesena bloodbath’. The city recovered and prospered under the rule of the Malatesta family in the 14th and 15th centuries, who rebuilt the castle, Rocca Malatestiana, and founded a beautiful library, Biblioteca Malatestiana, which has been preserved in its 15th century condition and still holds valuable manuscripts.

A pair of giant hands reaching from the water to prop up the
Ca' Sagredo Hotel was an exhibit at the 2017 Venice Biennale

Travel tip:

The Venice Biennale is an international art exhibition featuring architecture, visual arts, cinema, dance, music, and theatre that is held at various venues in the Castello district of Venice every two years during the summer. It was founded in 1895 as the International Exhibition of Art of the City of Venice to promote “the most noble activities of the modern spirit without distinction of country.” The festival expanded in 1932 to include the Venice International Film Festival and again in 1934 with the addition of the International Theatre Festival. After World War II it became the leading showcase for contemporary and avant-garde art and in 1998 it expanded again to include architecture and dance. It typically attracts more than 300,000 visitors to the city.

More reading:

Giorgio Morandi - the 20th century master of still life

How Giorgio de Chirico founded the scuola metafisica

The man who invented Concrete Art

Also on this day:

1658: The birth of Mary of Modena

1712: The birth of the great Venetian artist Francesco Guardi



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Francesco Solimena - painter

Neapolitan artist who influenced a generation

Francesco Solimena - a section from a self-portrait
painted in around 1730

Francesco Solimena, a prolific painter in the Baroque style who became one of the wealthiest and most influential artists in Europe, was born on this day in 1657 in Canale di Sereno, a village in Campania about 14km (9 miles) southeast of Avellino.

He spent most of his working life in Naples yet his fame spread far beyond and his work was in such demand among his wealthy patrons, including Prince Eugene of Savoy, Louis XIV of France and Pope Benedict XIII, that he acquired a considerable fortune, was given the title of baron and lived in a palace.

His workshop became effectively an academy, at the heart of the Naples cultural scene. Among many who trained there were the leading painters Francesco de Mura, Giuseppe Bonito, Corrado Giaquinto and Sebastiano Conca.

The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay was a pupil in his studio in around 1737-38.

Solimena’s own training came initially from his father, Angelo, a revered painter of frescoes, with whom he worked at the cathedral of Nocera in the province of Salerno, and at the church of San Domenico at Solofra, not far from his home village.  He often worked in Nocera later in life.

Solimena's spectacular Expulsion of Heliodorus from the
Temple can be seen in the church of Gesù Nuovo in Naples

By the time he was 17, however, he had settled in Naples, where he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po. Cardinal Vincenzo Orsini - the future Pope Benedict XIII - became his patron at an early stage of his career and encouraged him to become an artist rather than take religious orders.

He modeled his art on the exuberant style of the Roman Baroque master Luca Giordano, whose work he admired while he was engaged in decorating the Sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore. His classical influences are attributed to Pietro da Cortona. Others whose techniques he adopted include Massimo Stanzione, Giovanni Lanfranco and Mattia Preti.

Solimena painted many frescoes and altarpieces in Naples, and was in demand for celebrations of weddings and courtly occasions.  He favoured simple settings so that attention would be concentrated on the figures in his paintings and their dress, often highlighted by his placing of those figures in pools of light. His representation of figures often derived from the work of Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, and Raphael.

The Madonna and Child with San
Gennaro that sold for $33,000 in 2017

He painted frescoes in many of the city's most important churches, including the vast and spectacular Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple (1725) in the church of Gesù Nuovo.

He became the unchallenged head of the Neapolitan school of painting during the first half of the 1700s, following the death of Giordano, and his influence remained in the aesthetic of Naples for many years.

Before his death at age of 89, in 1747 in Barra, then an area of grand villas to the east of Naples, Solimena had become very wealthy and had influenced a vast new generation of painters.

Today, his works are held, among other places, in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, and the Louvre Museum in Paris.

A Madonna and Child with San Gennaro by Solimena sold at auction in Rome in 2017 for $33,000 (about €28,700).

The Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo in Solofra

Travel tip:

The villages of Serino and neighbouring Canale di Serino fall into an area of Campania that produces wines from the Aglianico grape, notably Taurasi, Aglianico del Taburno and Falerno del Massico. The production of chestnuts is also a strong part of the local economy. The area was badly hit by the earthquake in 1980 that brought devastation to the region, but the richly decorated 17th century Baroque church - the Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo - in nearby Solofra, which contains 21 framed canvases painted by Giovanni Tommaso Guarino, has survived, following a number of reconstructions, as has the church of San Domenico, where a painting by Solimena can still be seen.

The Basilica of San Paolo Maggiore is a church that
can be found on the bustling Via dei Tribunali

Travel tip:

The Baroque-style basilica of San Paolo Maggiore, the burial place of Gaetano Thiene, known as Saint Cajetan, is located in the centre of Naples on Piazza Gaetano, just off Via dei Tribunali, the narrow, straight thoroughfare known as Spaccanapoli. The church was built on the site of the 1st-century temple of the Dioscuri. The decoration of the church in the early 18th century fell largely to Solimena and Domenico Antonio Vaccaro. The church suffered considerable bomb damage in the Second World War, sadly, with some frescoes by Massimo Stanzione almost completely destroyed.

More reading:

How the work of Annibale Carraci illuminates Rome

The prolific output of Luca Giordano

Why Domenichino's talent rivals Raphael

Also on this day:

The Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

1720: The birth of artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi


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Alessandro Mazzinghi - boxing champion

Tuscan fighter held world title twice

Sandro Mazzinghi won the world light
middleweight crown in 1963 and 1968

The boxer Alessandro 'Sandro' Mazzinghi, who won the world light middleweight championship twice in his 64-fight career, was born on this day in 1938 in Pontedera in Tuscany.

Mazzinghi won the title for the first time at the Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan in September 1963, defeating the American Ralph Dupas, defending his title successfully in a rematch in Sydney, Australia in December of the same year.

He lost the crown to fellow Italian Nino Benvenuti in 1965 at the San Siro football stadium in Milan but regained it at the same venue in May 1968, defeating  the South Korean Ki-Soo.

He did so after recovering from an horrific car crash in January 1964 that claimed the life of his young wife, Vera, only 12 days after they were married.

The couple had been on their way home to Pontedera from a gala dinner in Montecatini Terme in Tuscany when their car slid off a muddy road in heavy rain and collided with a tree.  Vera was killed instantly and Mazzinghi, who was thrown from the car, suffered a fractured skull.

He was in a critical condition for several days but recovered. Amazingly, though, he was back in the ring within weeks and by the end of that year had made two more successful defences of his world title, against the American Tony Montano in Genoa in October and an Italian fighter, the European welterweight champion Fortunato Manca, in Rome in December.

Sandro Mazzinghi (right) in the ring with Nino
Benvenuti in the 1964 title fight in Milan

This created a clamour in the Italian sporting press for him to be matched with Benvenuti, an Olympic champion in Rome in 1960 who would go on to be regarded as one of the greatest Italian boxers of all time.

Mazzinghi resisted, claiming he had not been allowed enough time to recover from his accident to take on a fight of such magnitude, but Benvenuti pointed out that he had been in the ring 10 times since the crash and therefore must be fit.

The fight took place on a scorching June night in front of a sell-out crowd of at least 60,000 at the San Siro stadium, home of AC Milan and Internazionale football clubs.  The fight was close until Benvenuti connected with a right uppercut in the sixth round and Mazzinghi could not make the count. In the rematch in Rome it seemed Mazzinghi would exact revenge but Benvenuti came back strongly in the final rounds to win on points.

Nonetheless, Mazzinghi battled back to regain the title three years later on a split decision after a titanic struggle against Ki-Soo Kim, having won the European light middleweight title in 1966 against the Frenchman Yoland Leveque, a title he successfully defended four times in the next 18 months.

Mazzinghi during a TV interview to
mark his 70th birthday in 2008

His world title defence against the fearsome American Freddie Little ended with his retirement with cuts to both eyebrows and a controversial ‘no contest’ verdict which allowed Mazzinghi to keep the title. However, the decision was overturned by a tribunal and the fight awarded to Little.

Mazzinghi was trained as a young man by his brother, Guido, who had been an Olympic medallist in Helsinki in 1952.  He turned professional in 1960 and fought without a break for 10 years, retiring in 1970 and making a brief comeback in 1977 before being obliged to quit for good, having reached the mandatory age limit.

He was married for a second time to Marisa, with whom he had two sons, and after boxing had a short career as a singer. He subsequently wrote several books after boxing and his life.  Nowadays he lives with his family at a villa in Tuscany, where he produces wine and olive oil.

Mazzinghi remains a celebrity in Pontedera, where there is a bronze statue of him in front of the municipal sports centre.

Pontedera's Palazzo Pretorio on the main square

Travel tip:

Pontedera, the birthplace of Alessandro Mazzinghi, is in the province of Pisa in Tuscany in the Arno valley. Nowadays it houses the Piaggio motor vehicle company, the Castellani wine company and the Amedei chocolate factory. It was the seat of some notable historical battles. In 1369, the Milanese army of Barnabo Visconti was defeated by Florentine troops and in 1554 an army representing the Republic of Siena defeated the Florentines.  The area was badly hit when the Arno flooded in 1966, causing catastrophic damage in Florence in particular.

The Stadio Giuseppe Meazza is instantly recognisable for
its distinctive spiralling walkways to the upper tiers

Travel tip:

The San Siro Stadium was built in 1925 as one of Italy’s only purpose-built football stadiums, without the athletics track between the stands and the pitch which was a feature of most publicly-owned arenas.  Originally a stadium for AC Milan, it has been the home of both major Milan clubs since Inter moved from the Arena Civica in central Milan in 1947. Its capacity when it opened was 35,000. It was extended between 1948 and 1955 to accommodate 100,000 spectators with the addition of two extra tiers and the construction of the spiralling ramps to the upper tiers that give it its distinctive appearance today. Renamed the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in 1980, it has hosted matches at two World Cups (1930 and 1990) and the 1980 European championships.

More reading:

How Vito Antuofermo rose from toiling in the fields to riches in the ring

Giuseppe Curreri - the Sicilian kid who became Johnny Dundee

The Calabrian childhood of bodybuilder Angelo Siciliano, better known as Charles Atlas

Also on this day:

1858: The birth of actress Eleonora Duse

1941: The birth of opera star Ruggero Raimondi


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Joe Profaci - Mafia boss

Sicilian who influenced profile of Mario Puzo’s Godfather

Giuseppe 'Joe' Profaci hid his criminal empire
behind his 'front' as an olive oil importer

The Mafia boss Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Profaci, one of the real-life gangsters who influenced the author Mario Puzo as he created the character of his fictional mob boss Vito Corleone in The Godfather, was born in Villabate in Sicily on this day in 1897.

It was after studying Profaci’s crime career that he decided that Corleone, who is thought to have been based largely on one of Profaci's fellow mob bosses, Carlo Gambino, should hide his criminal activities behind his ‘legitimate’ identity as an olive oil importer, mirroring what Profaci did in real life in New York.

Profaci is believed to have started importing olive oil before he became heavily involved in crime but chose to keep the business going as one of a network of legitimate companies, so that he could mask the proceeds of his crime empire and satisfy the authorities that he was paying his taxes.

In fact, the olive oil business became a hugely lucrative concern, particularly when shortages in the Second World War enabled him to sell the product at premium prices. The irony of Profaci’s criminal life was that his legitimate companies, of which he had as many as 20, actually provided work for hundreds of New Yorkers.

Little is known about Profaci’s early life in Sicily, although he was at one time convicted on theft charges and spent perhaps a year in prison. He emigrated to the United States in 1921, undertaking a 17-day journey across the Atlantic, a month before his 24th birthday.

Vincent Mangano helped
Profaci become established

Initially he settled in Chicago, where he ran a grocery store, before moving to New York in 1925 to begin his olive oil business, based on Long Island.

Becoming involved with organised crime was always his intention, however, and in 1927 he used his relationship with Vincent Mangano, who had been on the same ship that took him from Palermo to the United States in 1921, to get a foot on the ladder. Mangano, who would go on to be head of the Gambino crime family, had arrived in New York from Sicily on the same boat as Profaci.

Although Profaci at that stage had no experience of organised crime, it is thought his family contacts in Sicily helped him become established in the New York underworld, where his extortion, bootlegging and counterfeiting rackets grew rapidly. He was recognised as one of the city’s most important crime bosses at a meeting in Cleveland in 1928, attended by Chicago mob boss Al Capone, where he was given control of crime operations in Brooklyn following the murder of Salvatore D’Aquila during the Castellammarese War.

By 1931 he was one of the most powerful figures in the New York crime scene, involved in prostitution, drug trafficking, loan sharking and illegal bookmaking. The Profaci family was one of New York’s original Five Families and Joe Profaci had a seat on the Commission, the ‘governing body’ set up by Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano to foster communication and avoid damaging wars between the different Cosa Nostra families in New York, Chicago and Buffalo.

Mobsters' cars outside the meeting in Apalachin, New York
State, where Profaci was arrested in 1957

More than once, the authorities tried to find a way to jail Profaci. He was arrested on charges of drug trafficking after 90 hollowed out Sicilian oranges containing heroin were discovered being unloaded at the docks in New York but police did not have enough evidence to link the crime directly to him.

A move to revoke his US citizenship on account of his failure to declare his jail sentence in Sicily was overturned on appeal, while a bill for $1.5 million dollars in overdue taxes simply went unpaid.

He was also arrested during the famous police swoop on the so-called 'Apalachin Conference', a national mob meeting that took place in 1957 at the farm of mobster Joseph Barbara in Apalachin, in upstate New York. Profaci was convicted with 21 others on conspiracy charges but the verdict was overturned on appeal.

Joseph Colombo eventually took over
Profaci's Brooklyn crime family

At the height of his power, in addition to houses in Brooklyn and Miami Beach, Florida, Profaci acquired a 328-acre estate near Hightstown, New Jersey, that previously belonged to President Theodore Roosevelt. The estate had its own airstrip and Profaci added a chapel with an altar that was a copy of one in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

A devout Catholic, Profaci made generous cash donations to Catholic charities but it was his rather less generous treatment of family employees that ultimately led to his downfall.

One practice that provoked discontent among his criminal employees was his insistence that they should each pay him a monthly tithe, in line with an old Sicilian gang custom. The money generated by this practice was meant to support the families of jailed gang members, but Profaci pocketed much of the cash himself.

Ultimately, a Profaci bookmaker, Frank Abbatemarco, refused to pay, standing his ground despite numerous threats. Profaci eventually ordered him dead. He asked Joe Gallo, a family member, to carry out the killing, promising that he could take over Abbatemarco’s rackets as a reward, but then reneged on the deal.

It sparked an all-out conflict, in which there were several kidnappings and murders, known as the Profaci-Gallo war. Rival bosses Gambino and Tommy Lucchese pleaded with Profaci to end the war, which was not good for business, but Profaci trusted neither and refused.

The fighting ended only when Profaci, by then in the later stages of liver cancer, died in hospital in 1962. His brother-in-law and closest ally, Joseph Magliocco, assumed control of Profaci’s empire but the Commision decided to remove him, installing Joseph Colombo as Brooklyn boss, after which the Profaci family became the Colombo family.

The town of Villabate, which overlooks the Gulf of Palermo 

Travel tip:

The town of Villabate, which can be found about 10km (6 miles) southeast of Palermo, takes its name from the abbot of Santo Spirito di Palermo, Giovanni de Osca, who had a tower built there in the late 15th century, together with some houses and other buildings. Villabate used to be an agricultural town but in the 1960s the local economy suffered a huge blow as many hectares of orange trees were removed to make way for new houses, to provide permanent accommodation people still homeless after their original houses had been flattened by Allied bombers in the Second World War.

The Teatro Massimo in Palermo became a symbol of the
city's fight back against the Mafia

Travel tip:

Palermo’s Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, opened in 1897, has become a symbol of the city’s fight back against the grip of the Mafia. The largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna, originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, it was closed for supposedly minor refurbishments in 1974. But at a time when local government was at its most corrupt and when the Mafia controlled almost everything in the city there was little money in the public purse and the theatre, which once attracted all the great stars from the opera world, would remain dark for 23 years.

More reading:

Was Carlo Gambino the mobster who inspired The Godfather?

How Charles 'Lucky' Luciano brought order among warring crime gangs

The Castellammarese War and the emergence of the Five Families

Also on this day:

1538: The birth of Catholic reformer Saint Charles Borromeo

1950: The birth of corruption-busting magistrate Antonio di Pietro


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Walter Mazzarri - football coach

Former Watford manager with outstanding record in Italy

Walter Mazzarri has coached nine
teams in Italy and England

The football coach Walter Mazzarri, whose disappointing spell in English football as Watford manager contrasts with a fine record as a coach in his native Italy, was born on this day in 1961 in San Vincenzo, a resort on the coast of Tuscany.

Mazzarri won promotion to Serie A with his local club Livorno and kept tiny Calabrian team Reggina in Serie A against the odds for three consecutive seasons, on the last occasion despite an 11-point deduction for involvement in an alleged match-fixing scandal.

He subsequently had two seasons as coach of Sampdoria, qualifying for the UEFA Cup by finishing sixth in the first of those campaigns and then reaching the final of the Coppa Italia with a team that included the potent attacking duo Antonio Cassano and Giampaolo Pazzini.

After that he returned to Napoli, where he had previously been assistant to Renzo Ulivieri, to be appointed head coach in 2009, guiding the azzurri to sixth place - their best Serie A finish for 25 years - to qualify for the Europa League in his first season in charge, and doing even better in his second season, when Napoli were third, their highest placing since the golden days of the late 1980s, when Diego Maradona inspired them to win the scudetto twice in four seasons.

They qualified for the Champions League for the first time as a result and won the Coppa Italia, beating Juventus in the final - Napoli’s first major silverware since 1989-90 at the end of the Maradona era.

The striker Edinson Cavani became
a star under Mazzarri at Napoli

He moved to Internazionale for the 2013-14 season but could not replicate his success with Napoli. After finishing fifth in his first season at the helm he won a contract extension but was sacked in November 2014 after a disappointing run of results.

Mazzarri’s move to England came in July 2016 as Watford, the English team acquired by Serie A club Udinese’s owner Giampaolo Pozzo, appointed him as their sixth head coach in four years, his predecessors having included fellow Italians Gianfranco Zola and Giuseppe Sannino.

He replaced the Spaniard Quique Sanchez Flores, who was dismissed despite reaching the semi-finals of the FA Cup and finishing 13th in the Premier League.  He argued that he had a successful season in that his brief had been to keep Watford in the division despite being a small club, which he seemed to have achieved comfortably by reaching his target of 40 points - a total that in most years is proof against relegation - with six fixtures still to play.

But the Hornets, the club once owned by the pop music superstar Elton John, lost all of those matches and Mazzarri was dismissed even before the season concluded with a 5-0 home defeat to Manchester City.

Mazzarri's spell in charge at Napoli saw the club achieve
its most successful period since the days of Diego Maradona

Mazzarri’s biggest triumph so far has undoubtedly been with Napoli. Under Mazzarri, Napoli become renowned for lightning counter-attacks and a 3–4–3 formation in which the Uruguayan striker Edinson Cavani was supported by Argentine winger Ezequiel Lavezzi and creative Slovakian star Marek Hamšík.

They finished second in their group in their debut Champions League campaign, behind Germany's Bayern Munich and ahead of Manchester City and Villareal of Spain. But in the last 16 they suffered a difficult exit against another English side, Chelsea, who overturned a 3-1 defeat at Napoli’s Stadio San Paolo in the first leg with a stunning 4–1 win after extra time in the return leg in England.

Napoli recovered from the disappointment to end the season with a trophy as they won the Coppa Italia final, inflicting Serie A champions Juventus's only defeat of the season, and finished second in Serie A the following season, their highest position in over 20 years.

Since January of this year, Mazzarri, a former midfielder who played more than 250 matches in a fairly low-key career on the pitch, has been coach of Torino in Serie A, his ninth team since he took his first head coach position at the minor Sicilian club Acireale in 2001.

Sand dunes in the beautiful Rimigliano nature park,
which is next to the resort of San Vincenzo

Travel tip:

Mazzarri’s home town of San Vincenzo is a coastal resort at the southern end of the Ligurian Sea, roughly 50km (31 miles) south of Livorno, almost level with the northern tip of the island of Corsica.  The resort is notable for the long stretches of soft, sandy beaches that are characteristic of the area. It is also adjacent to the Rimigliano nature park, which covers the shoreline between San Vincenzo and the Gulf of Baratti, where visitors can admire sea lilies and juniper-covered sand dunes or explore forests of cork and pine trees.

The elegant Piazza Duomo in the centre of the Sicilian
town of Acireale, north of Catania

Travel tip:

Acireale, where Mazzarri played for a while and began his coaching career, is an elegant town rich in Baroque architecture, built on a series of lava terraces that drop to the sea about 17km (11 miles) north of Catania on the southeast coast of Sicily.  It has a beautiful cathedral dedicated to Maria Santissima Annunziata, located in Piazza Duomo in the historic centre. Built in the fifth century, it was reconstructed after the 1693 earthquake. The nearby fishing village of Santa Maria la Scala has some charming restaurants at the harbour’s edge.

More reading:

How Gianfranco Zola 'learned everything' from Diego Maradona

The three-times Champions League winner now in charge of Napoli

The founding of Milan giants Internazionale

Also on this day:

1450: The death of Leonello d'Este, patron of Ferrara's artistic heritage

1910: The birth of Olympic cycling champion Attilio Pavese


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