Giorgio Amendola - politician and partisan

Anti-Mussolini activist who sought to moderate Italian Communism

Giorgio Amendola was against extremism
on the right or left of politics

The politician Giorgio Amendola, who opposed extremism on the right and left in Italy, was born on this day in 1907 in Rome.

Amendola was arrested for plotting against the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in the 1930s, fought with the Italian resistance in the Second World War and later worked to move the Italian Communist Party (PCI) away from the doctrines of Soviet Communism and Leninism towards a more moderate position acceptable in the mainstream of Italian politics.

Amendola was almost born to be a political thinker. His mother, Eva Kuhn, was an intellectual from Lithuania, his father Giovanni a liberal anti-Fascist who was a minister in the last democratically elected Italian government before Mussolini.

It was as a reaction to his father’s death in 1926, following injuries inflicted on him by Fascist thugs who tracked him down in France on Mussolini’s orders, that Amendola secretly joined the PCI and began to work for the downfall of the dictator.

Giorgio's father, Giovanni, died
after being beaten by Fascist thugs

He was largely based in France and Germany but from time to time returned to Italy undercover in order to meet other left-wing figures. It was on one visit in 1932 that he was arrested in Milan.

After a few months in jail he was freed under a supposed amnesty but then detained again and sentenced to confinement on Santo Stefano island in the Pontine archipelago, which Mussolini used for political prisoners. After leading protests by inmates against the requirement that they greet visiting politicians with the Fascist ‘Roman salute’ he was exiled to France and later Tunisia.

Amendola was not freed until 1943, at which point he returned to Rome to join in the Italian partisans in helping to liberate the city.

He was a PCI representative in the Central Committee of National Liberation and as the commander of a so-called “Garibaldini" corps - named after the volunteers who fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi in the unification of Italy in the 19th century - he reached Milan in 1944, helping with the work of partisan group in parts of northern Italy still under German occupation.

After the war, Amendola served as a deputy for the PCI from 1948 until his death in 1980.

A minister in the postwar governments of Ferruccio Parri and Alcide De Gaspari, he adopted a position on the right-wing of the party, opposing the extremism of the left as fiercely as he had fought against the extremism of Mussolini’s followers.

Italian Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer built on the work
of Amendola in making the left more mainstream

It was Amendola’s goal to shift the party away from the ideology of the Russian Communists towards a position where meaningful alliances could be formed with more moderate left-wing groups, such as the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).

His attempts to reposition the PCI was in part responsible for the emergence of the concept of Eurocommunism that gained popularity as the philosophy embraced by Italy’s most successful communist politician, the long-time PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer.

Amendola turned his political philosophy into several books, including Comunismo, antifascismo e Resistenza (Communism, Anti-Fascism and Resistance, 1967), Lettere a Milano (Letters to Milan, 1973), Intervista sull'antifascismo (Interview on Anti-Fascism, 1976, with Piero Melograni), Una scelta di vita (A choice of Life, 1978), and Un'isola (An Island, 1980), which was a biographical work about his time on Santo Stefano.

Amendola died in Rome, aged 72, after a long illness. His wife Germaine Lecocq, whom he met during his French exile in Paris and who helped him to write his last work, passed away only a few hours later.

The ruins of the prison building on the island of Santo
Stefano that Mussolini used to incarcerate his opponents

Travel tip:

Santo Stefano is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy, part of the Pontine Islands.  The prison built by the Bourbons in 1797 remained in use until 1965. It was one of the prisons used extensively by the Fascists to imprison opponents of Benito Mussolini’s regime.  The future president of the republic, Sandro Pertini, was incarcerated there. These days, the island is uninhabited except for the tourists who visit each day.

The Campo Verano cemetery in Rome has many highly
elaborate and ornate tombstones

Travel tip:

Giorgio Amendola was buried in the Campo Verano cemetery in Rome, close to the Basilica of San Lorenzo al Verano in the Tiburtino quarter of the city, not far from the Sapienza University of Rome. The cemetery, built on the site of ancient Roman catacombs, is also the last resting place among others of the novelist Alberto Moravia, the actor Marcello Mastroianni, the racing driver Elio de Angelis, and Claretta Petacci, who was the mistress of the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

More reading:

How Enrico Berlinguer turned Italy's Communists into a political force

Alcide de Gaspari - the man charged with rebuilding a broken Italy

Antonio Gramsci - the Communist intellectual Mussolini could not gag

Also on this day:

1688: The birth of engraver Antonio Visentini

The Festival of Madonna della Salute in Venice

1854: The birth of Pope Benedict XV, First World War pontiff


Home

Giampiero Combi - goalkeeper

Juventus stalwart who captained Italy’s 1934 World Cup winners

Giampiero Combi is seen as
one of Italy's all-time greats

The footballer Giampiero Combi, who is considered to be one of the best Italian goalkeepers of all time, was born on November 20, 1902 in Turin.

Combi, who spent his entire career with his home-town club Juventus, was Italy’s captain at the 1934 World Cup, which Italy hosted and won, the team coached by Vittorio Pozzo and inspired by the revered Inter Milan striker Giuseppe Meazza defeating Czechoslovakia after extra time in the final of the 16-team tournament.

The achievement in front of excited Italian supporters in Rome capped a marvellous career for Combi, although it came about only by chance.

He had announced that he would retire at the end of the 1933-34 domestic season at the age of 31, having made 40 appearances for the azzurri. But Pozzo had persuaded him to be part of his squad to provide experienced cover for the emerging young Inter star Carlo Ceresoli.

In the event, Ceresoli suffered a broken arm in training a few weeks before the tournament and Combi found himself as the number one. He performed immaculately throughout, conceding only three goals in 510 minutes of football.

He played a particularly important role as Italy beat the highly-fancied Austria 1-0 in the semi-final thanks in no small part to saves by Combi that were hailed by the Italian press as “miraculous”.

Virginio Rosetta (left), Combi and Umberto Caligaris
formed a redoubtable combination for club and country

Until Italy’s triumph in Spain in 1982, Combi was the only goalkeeper to have been the captain of a World Cup-winning team, although there are now three goalkeepers with whom he shares that distinction.

Dino Zoff wore the armband when the azzurri lifted the trophy in Spain. Since then, Iker Casillas was captain when Spain won in 2010, while the current world champions, France, were led by Hugo Lloris.

Combi, Zoff and Gianluigi Buffon, another World Cup winner, are generally regarded as Italy’s three greatest goalkeepers. Coincidentally, all three played the major part of their club careers wearing the black and white stripes of Juventus.

As well as helping Italy win the first of their four World Cups, Combi was twice a winner of the Central European International Cup - a predecessor of the modern European championships - and won a bronze medal as a member of the Italy team at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam.

In his time at Juventus, where he earned the nickname Uomo di Gomma - Rubber Man - for his extraordinary agility, Combi was a Serie A champion five times between 1926 and 1934.

Giuseppe Meazza (centre) and Giampiero Combi (right) were
on opposite sides in Serie A matches

The combination of Combi and the full backs Virginio Rosetta and Umberto Caligaris formed a formidable defensive partnership for both Juventus and the Italian national team.

Combi’s 370 appearances for the Turin club over 13 seasons was the most by a goalkeeper for the club until Zoff (476) overtook him in the 1970s with Buffon eclipsing even Zoff with 656 appearances between 2001 and 2018.

Another record held by Combi for many years was his feat of playing for 934 consecutive minutes during the 1925-26 season without conceding a goal.  It stood for an incredible 90 years before it was bettered by Buffon, who went unbeaten for 974 minutes during the 2015–16 Serie A season.

Ironically, Combi could have spent his career with Turin’s other club - Torino - but after a trial match they let him go on the grounds that he lacked the strength and athleticism to be a successful footballer.  Juventus, however, saw him as a good prospect and he joined their youth team.

At the 1934 World Cup, Combi found himself up against another
of the world's great 'keepers in Spain's Ricardo Zamora 

He was given his first-team debut in 1922 in circumstances that were similar to his recall to the national side at the World Cup in 1934, asked to step up after the regular Juventus goalkeeper, Emilio Barucco, was injured.

Combi soon became first choice for the bianconeri and was selected for the Italy national team for the first time in 1924, although his azzurri debut did not go as he had hoped, Italy losing 7-1 to the brilliant Hungary. He later claimed that the match was one of the most important of his career, making him resolve to work harder at his game.

After he finally did retire in 1935, Combi worked for Juventus and for the national federation in various roles as well as developing a career in industry. He died at the age of just 53 in August 1956 after suffering a heart attack at the wheel of his car.

In his memory, Juventus named the first team's training ground after him and created a Giampiero Combi award for excellence among their youth players. The Merano Littorio sports ground, purpose built as a base for the the Italian national team during the 1934 World Cup, was also renamed in his honour.

The Castello Della Rovere in Vinovo is a link with
the town's historic past as a ceramics centre

Travel tip:

The Turin football team trains at a state-of-the-art complex at Vinovo, a town situated about 14 km (9 miles) southwest of the city centre. Vinovo, which has a population of just under 15,000, is notable for being the home of the Castello Della Rovere, which was built at the end of the 15th century by Cardinal Domenico della Rovere and represents a rare example of Renaissance architecture in Piedmont.  In the 18th century the castle became the headquarters of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory, and as such became the core of the community as a major employer, the town growing in terms of size and amenities as a result. Nowadays, the castle hosts the campus of St. John International University, a private American university, surrounded by a vast park featuring an artificial lake.

The beautiful city of Turin at dusk with the unmistakable Mole
Antonelliana to the right and the alpine peaks in the distance

Travel tip:

Turin was once the capital of Italy, yet tends to be overshadowed by other cities such as Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice when it comes to attracting tourists. is best known for its royal palaces  Yet there is much to like about a stay in elegant Turin, from its many historic cafés to 12 miles of arcaded streets and some of the finest restaurants in Piedmont, not to mention the beautiful royal palaces that echo the city’s past as the seat of the once dominant House of Savoy. Yet because visitors do not flock to Turin in such large numbers prices tend to be a little lower than in the better known tourist cities.

More reading:

How Vittorio Pozzo led Italy to two World Cups

The record-breaking career of Dino Zoff

Giuseppe Meazza - Italian football's first superstar

Also on this day:

1851: The birth of Queen Margherita of Savoy

1914: The birth of fashion designer Emilio Pucci

1978: The death of Giorgio de Chirico - founder of metaphysical art

Home

Pino Rauti – politician and journalist

Writer chronicled the story of Fascism in Italy

Pino Rauti was a prominent figure in
far-right Italian politics for 64 years

Pino Rauti, leader of the neo-fascist Social Idea Movement, was born Giuseppe Umberto Rauti on this day in 1926 in Cardinale in Calabria.

Rauti was to become a leading figure on the far right of Italian politics from 1948 until his death in 2012.

As a young man he had volunteered for the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana of Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic and he then went on to join the Spanish Foreign Legion.

After his return to Italy, Rauti joined the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). He became associated with Julius Evola, a leading fascist philosopher, and became editor of his journal, Imperium.

Rauti joined the staff of the Rome-based daily Il Tempo in 1953 and later became the Italian correspondent for the Aginter Press, a fake press agency set up in Portugal in 1966 to combat communism.

In 1954 he established his own group within MSI, the Ordine Nuovo, but he became disillusioned with MSI and his group separated from the party two years later.

Rauti worked as a journalist on the
Rome newspaper Il Tempo

Rauti’s name was linked with a number of terror attacks, including the Piazza Fontana bombing. He was brought to trial in 1972 over this atrocity at a Milan bank, which caused 17 deaths, but he was acquitted through lack of evidence.

There were other claims linking him with terrorist activities but he was never convicted of any offences.

Rauti returned to MSI and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1972. In the 1980s, he became a leading figure in the European Parliament.

He went up against Gianfranco Fini for leadership of MSI in 1987 but Fini’s more moderate policies won him the biggest share of the vote.  In 1990, he did replace Fini as leader, but the party’s performance in the next regional elections was the worst in its history and he was removed from the leadership in 1991, with Fini taking charge again.

When Fini founded the Alleanza Nazionale in place of MSI, Rauti led a group of militants to form the Fiamma Tricolore, which he saw as continuing the path of Fascism.

Pino Rauti with Gianfranco Fini (left), whom he replaced as
leader of the MSI party in 1990

Rauti stood down as leader in 2002 in favour of Luca Romagnoli, who then sought to work with Silvio Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms coalition. Rauti became a strong critic of Romagnoli and was eventually expelled from the party he had founded.  It was then that he established his own party, the Social Idea Movement.

Between 1966 and 1990, Rauti wrote a number of books about the history of Fascism and the policies of Mussolini.

Rauti died in Rome in November 2012, aged 85.

His daughter, Isabella, who also became a journalist, is now a member of Fratelli Italia, a conservative nationalist party formed by former members of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party. She was elected as Senator for Mantua earlier this year. She is the ex-wife of a former Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno.

A view over the rooftops of Cardinale in Calabria

Travel tip:

Cardinale in Calabria, where Pino Rauti was born, is a comune in the province of Catanzaro, the capital city of the region. Cardinale was proved to be a Neolithic site in the 19th century, when work was being carried out to reinforce an old iron bridge and axes made from stone were found, establishing the presence of man there as far back as the stone age. These axes can now be seen in the Archaeological Museum in Crotone.

The Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome, seat
of the Chamber of Deputies

Travel tip:

The Camera dei Deputati - the Chamber of Deputies -  is one of Italy’s houses of parliament, the other being the Senate of the Republic. The Camera dei Deputati meets at Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome, a palace originally designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and completed by Carlo Fontana in 1697, which is to the north of the Pantheon.

More reading:

How Giorgio Almirante tried to make MSI acceptable in mainstream Italian politics

Fini's move away from Fascism

The Piazza Fontana bombing

Also on this day:

1877: The birth of Giuseppe Volpi, founder of the Venice Film Festival

1893: The birth of Giuseppe Curreri, better known as the boxer Johnny Dundee

1907: The birth of Luigi Beccali, winner of Italy's first track gold at the Olympics


Home

Gio Ponti - architect and designer

Visionary who shaped more than 100 buildings

The 1956 Pirelli Tower in Milan is one of
Ponti's most famous buildings

Giovanni ‘Gio’ Ponti, one of the most influential architects and designers of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1891 in Milan.

During a career that spanned six decades, Ponti completed more than 100 architectural projects in Italy and abroad and also designed hundreds of pieces of furniture, decorative objects and household items.

As an architect, he made a significant impact on the appearance of his home city. The Pirelli Tower, which for 35 years was Italy’s tallest skyscraper, is the building for which Ponti is most famous, but it is only one of 46 in Milan.

He also designed the Montecatini buildings, the Torre Littoria (now known as the Torre Branca) in Parco Sempione, the San Luca Evangelista church in Via Andrea Maria Ampère, and Monument to the Fallen in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio.

Ponti’s work was by no means confined to Milan, however.  Elsewhere in Italy, he designed the Mathematics Institute at the University of Rome, the Carmelo Monastery in Sanremo, the Villa Donegani in Bordighera, the Gran Madre di Dio Concattedrale in Taranto and the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento.

Ponti designed 46 buildings in his home city alone
and many more around the world

Outside Italy, he worked on projects in 12 countries. Notable Ponti buildings around the world include the Denver Art Museum in the United States, the Ministries Building in Islamabad, Pakistan, and the the Villa Planchart in Caracas, Venezuela.

Ponti also worked for 120 different companies as a designer, creating designs for furniture and household objects that included the Superleggera chair for the furniture maker Cassina, which combined strength with ‘super light weight’.  Made from ash wood, it weighed only 1.7kg (3.75lb).

After a classical schooling in Milan, Ponti enrolled in at the Faculty of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano but his studies were interrupted by the First World War, in which he served with some distinction. Reaching the rank of captain, he received the Bronze Medal and the Italian Military Cross. He also painted watercolours of his companions in arms, and while based in the Veneto was able to observe the architecture of Palladio.

Once he finally did graduate, he married his girlfriend, Giulia Vimercati, with whom he had four children - Lisa, Giovanna, Giulio and Letizia.

Ponti's North Building at the Denver Art Museum
in Colorado had a castle-like appearance

Ponti began his architectural career in partnership with Mino Fiocchi and Emilio Lancia, at which time he was influenced by the Milanese neoclassical Novecento Italiano movement.  The first building he designed in his own right was the house in Via Giovanni Randaccio in the Sempione district of central Milan, where he also lived.

He co-founded in 1928 the magazine Domus, of which as editor he would oversee some 560 issues, in all of which he wrote at least one article.  As an academic, he delivered lectures in 24 countries.

The 1930s were years of intense activity for Ponti.  During this time, he shifted towards Modernism with the Borletti funeral chapel and houses in Via de Togni, via Letizia and via del Caravaggio that were designed for the Milanese bourgeoisie, the Torre Littoria and the Rasini Building. He designed the San Michele hotel on Capri and a building for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pavia.

In the 1950s he was involved in projects as diverse as urban planning in Milan, as the city began a period of intense redevelopment of areas bombed during the Second World War, and designing the interiors of ocean liners.

The Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio in Taranto in the
south of Italy, built in 1970

After a period working in Brazil and Venezuela, he began his acknowledged masterpiece, the Pirelli Tower in Milan, in 1956, working with another great Italian architect, Pier Luigi Nervi.  Rising to a height of 127m (417ft), it was among the first skyscrapers to abandon the customary block form, Ponti designing a futuristic slender shape with tapered sides drawing to a point at each end, which viewed from above would resemble the outline of a ship. It was hailed as a symbol of corporate success and an optimistic catalyst for economic prosperity.

In the 1960s he built the Milan churches of San Francesco and of San Carlo Borromeo, before turning his attention away from Latin America to the East he built his ministerial buildings in lslamabad and a villa for the businessman Daniel Koo in Hong Kong.

Even as he approached the age of 80, Ponti was still making his mark. He designed his Cathedral in Taranto when he was 79 and had turned 80 when he produced his iconic design for the seven-storey castle-like North Building of the the Denver Art Museum in Colorado.

Ponti died in 1979 at the age of 87 in his eighth-floor apartment in the Via Giuseppe Dezza, where he and his family had lived since 1957 and which reflected all of the ideas with regard to layout, walls, furniture and objects that he had developed during the 1950s.

The Castello Aragonese in Taranto stands guard
over the entrance to the port's harbour

Travel tip:

The city of Taranto, where Ponti’s modern cathedral is considered one of his major works, sits on the inside of the heel of southern Italy. A major naval base, it has a spectacular setting between a sweeping bay and the Mare Piccolo, an inland sea. One of the biggest cities in pre-Roman Europe, contemporary Taranto is a city of two distinct parts – a somewhat crumbling centro storico on a small island protecting the lagoon, and new city of wide avenues laid out in a formal grid. In the 1930s Mussolini had a quarter of the ancient centre demolished to build apartment blocks, and it was badly bombed in the Second World War. The old city - the Città Vecchia - contains a castle built by Ferdinand of Aragon in 1492, behind which are the ruins of an ancient sixth century BC Doric temple. The city’s original cathedral, which dates from 1070, has been remodelled with a Baroque façade.

The beautiful green space of the Parco Sempione in
Milan, looking towards the Arch of Peace

Travel tip:

Parco Sempione is a large park in Milan, with an overall area of 38.6 hectares (95 acres), located in the historic centre of the city. The adjacent to the gardens of the Sforza Castle and to the Arch of Peace, two of the main landmarks of Milan. A third prominent monument of Parco Sempione is the Palazzo dell'Arte, built in 1933 and designed by Giovanni Muzio. Also in the park are the Arena Civica, the public aquarium, and the Torre Branca tower, which used to be known as the Torre Littoria, a 108.6m (356ft) metal structure with a viewing platform at the top.

More reading:

From football stadiums to churches: The work of Pier Luigi Nervi

How Marco Zanuso put Italy at the forefront of contemporary style

The brilliance of Renzo Piano, designer of the Pompidou Centre and the Shard

Also on this day:

1626: The consecration of St Peter's Basilica in Rome

1630: The birth of Holy Roman Empress Eleonora Gonzaga

1804: The birth of soldier and former Italian PM Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora


Home