Severino Gazzelloni - flautist

Lead player with RAI orchestra considered a great of Italian music

Severino Gazzelloni was regarded as one of
Italy's finest flautist

The flautist Severino Gazzelloni, who for 30 years was the principal player of his instrument in the prestigious RAI National Symphony Orchestra but who had a repertoire that extended well beyond orchestral classical music, was born on this day in 1919 in Roccasecca, a town perched on a hillside in southern Lazio, about 130km (81 miles) south of Rome.

He was known for his versatility. In addition to his proficiency in classical flute pieces, Gazzelloni also excelled in jazz and 20th century avant-garde music. As such, many musicians and aficionados regard him as one of the finest flute players of all time.

Gazzelloni also taught others to master the flute. His notable pupils included the American jazz saxophonist Eric Dolphy and the Dutch classical flautist Abbie de Quant.

The son of a tailor in Roccasecca, Gazzelloni grew up in modest circumstances yet had music around him from a young age as his father played in a local band.  He taught himself music and became fascinated with the flute as an instrument, acquiring the technique to play it simply by practising for endless hours on his own.

Severino Gazzelloni's golden flute was made for him
by a craftsman in Germany

By the age of seven, his father considered him good enough to sit alongside him in the band, whose conductor and musical director, Giambattista Creati, recognised him as a musician of natural talent and great potential.

With Creati’s encouragement, Gazzelloni developed as a performer over the next few years and in 1934, at the age of 15, obtained a place at Italy’s premier conservatory, the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he graduated in 1942 under the guidance of the accomplished flautist Arrigo Tassinari.

During the war years he stayed in Rome, finding work in the orchestra at a variety theatre, where he met Alberto Semprini, who would go on to become director of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra.

When Gazzelloni played with that orchestra for the first time in 1944, it was called the Radio Roma Orchestra, led by Fernando Previtali. His debut appearance began an association that would last until the mid 1970s.

Gazzelloni was as comfortable playing jazz as he
was with classical music

He began to give solo recitals in 1945, launching his solo career with a tour of Belgium. His debut as a soloist in an Italian venue did not come until 1947, when Italy was beginning to get back on its feet after the devastation of the Second World War, and Gazzelloni gave a performance at the Teatro Eliseo in Rome.

His interest in avant-garde music developed after he had met the Venetian-born composer Bruno Maderna, through whom he was introduced to the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik - a summer school for ‘new music’ - that was held each year in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt.

Gazzelloni went to Darmstadt for the first time in 1952 and taught there continuously from 1956 to 1966.

In those years he developed friendships and professional relationships with some of the leading lights of the 20th century avant-garde movement, including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Franco Donatoni, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Luciano Berio and Sylvano Bussotti.

The composer Igor Stravinsky composed
music for Gazzelloni

Berio, the experimental composer who was a pioneer of electronic music, Boulez, Maderna and Igor Stravinsky - the Russian-born pianist considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century - all wrote pieces specifically for Gazzelloni, who was nicknamed “the Golden Flute” - in part in recognition of his virtuosity but also because he did actually own a gold-plated flute, made for him by a German craftsman in 1956.

Gazzelloni is said to have enjoyed the informality of the jazz scene and one of his most successful tours came in 1976, when he was accompanied by the eminent classical pianist Bruno Canino and a jazz combo that comprised some of Italy’s top names, including the jazz piano player Enrico Intra, the saxophonist Giancarlo Barigozzi, bass guitarist Pino Presti, drummer Tullio De Piscopo and lead guitarist Sergio Farina.

At his peak as a soloist, Gazzelloni played as many as 250 concerts a year, as well as teaching at the Academy of Santa Cecilia and at the Chigiana Academy in Siena.

He died in Cassino, not far from Roccasecca, in 1992 in a clinic where he had been undergoing treatment for a brain tumour.

Two years after his death, the municipality of Roccasecca launched a musical festival in his honour and the event, the International Festival Severino Gazzelloni, is today an annual month-long event staged in August and September, supported by the Licinio Refice Conservatory of Frosinone and the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, with sponsorship from businesses in the area.

The remains of the castle at Roccasecca

Travel tip:

The town of Roccasecca occupies a strategic position at the entrance to two narrow gorges that provide access to the Valle di Comino below the slopes of Monte Asprano. It has a castle built in the 10th century at the behest of the Abbot of Montecassino. The abbot later put the castle in the control of the D’Aquino family and it was there that Tommaso D’Aquino, the Dominican friar who was canonized as Saint Thomas Aquinas fifty years after his death, was supposedly born in 1225. The castle fell into disrepair in the 17th century.

The entrance to the Conservatory
of the Academy of Santa Cecilia

Travel tip:

The National Academy of Santa Cecilia is one of the oldest musical academies in the world. It was founded in Rome by Pope Sixtus V in 1585 at the Church of Santa Maria ad Martires, better known as the Pantheon. Over the centuries, many famous composers and musicians have been members of the Academy, which lists opera singers Beniamino Gigli and Cecilia Bartoli among its alumni. Since 2005 the Academy’s headquarters have been at the Parco della Musica in Rome, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano, but the historic conservatory in Via dei Greci remains, offering preparatory courses, and also houses the Italian Institute for Music History.



More reading:

How avant-garde composer Luigi Nono saw music as a form of political expression

Why Pino Presti is an important figure in Italian contemporary music

The brilliance of classical flute player Leonardo De Lorenzo

Also on this day:

1905: The birth of Michele Navarra - practising doctor and Mafia boss

1932: The birth of academic and novelist Umberto Eco

1948: The birth of anti-Mafia activist Giuseppe Impastato


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Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Greco - Mafia executioner

Notorious hitman thought to have committed at least 80 murders

Giuseppe 'Pino' Greco was one of the
Sicilian Mafia's most notorious killers

The notorious Mafia hitman Giuseppe Greco, who was convicted posthumously on 58 counts of murder but whose victims possibly ran into hundreds, was born on this day in 1952 in Ciaculli, a town on the outskirts of Palermo in Sicily.

More often known as ‘Pino’, or by his nickname Scarpuzzedda - meaning ‘little shoe’ - Greco is considered one of the most prolific killers in the history of organised crime.

The nephew of Michele Greco, who lived on an estate just outside Ciaculli and rose to be head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission - a body set up to settle disputes between rival clans - Pino Greco is generally accepted to have been responsible for 80 deaths, although some students of Cosa Nostra history believe he could have committed more than 300 killings.

Most of Greco’s victims were fellow criminals, the majority of them killed during the Second Mafia War, which began in 1978 and intensified between 1981 and 1983 with more than 1,000 homicides, as rival clans fought each other and against the state, with judges, prosecutors and politicians prominent in the fight against organised crime themselves becoming targets.

Greco, in fact, was convicted at the so-called Maxi Trial in the late 1980s of the murder of General Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, Italy’s counter-terrorism chief, who was shot to death in his car in Palermo in 1982 after being sent to Sicily with a brief to end the conflict.

General Carlo Alberto dalla was Greco's most high-profile
victim among the scores of murders he committed

In 1983, also in Palermo, he planted and detonated the car bomb that killed magistrate Rocco Chinnici, his two carabinieri escorts and the porter of the building where Chinnici lived.

As a young man, Greco was academically bright, excelling in the study of Latin and Greek, but his family background meant that his life in crime was effectively preordained. His father was also a contract killer, whose nickname Scarpa - ‘shoe’ - gave rise to Giuseppe’s nom de guerre.

The exact point at which he became part of the Mafia is not known but by 1979 he was sitting alongside his uncle, Michele, on the Commission, as the Ciaculli clans formed a powerful alliance with the Corleonesi, led by Salvatore 'Toto' Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.

It was on behalf of Riina and Provenzano, who instigated the internecine conflict that was to prove so deadly, that Pino carried out his reign of terror, working closely in particular with Filippo Marchese, a notorious Corleonesi hitman who ran the so-called Room of Death, an apartment in Palermo where victims would be taken to meet their fate.

Giuseppe Lucchese, who for a
time was Greco's partner in crime

Such was the nature of Greco’s work, however, that within days of organising with Marchese a massacre of nine gangsters invited to a barbecue at his uncle’s estate, Greco was ordered by Riina to kill Marchese, who was perceived as becoming too powerful.

Unfortunately for Greco, that fate would soon enough be his own, Riina’s craving for ultimate power brooking no sentiment. Greco's ‘mistake’ was to assume control of the Ciaculli mob on behalf of his uncle, who was in hiding.

Riina decided he had to reduce the strength of the Ciaculli, who lost eight members in a massacre in the Piazza Scaffa in central Palermo, and had decided that Greco had to go even as his erstwhile chief henchman was arranging the killing of another identified ‘enemy’ in police investigator Antonino Cassarà.

In September 1985, Greco invited two supposed friends, Vincenzo Puccio and Giuseppe Lucchese, into his villa outside Bagheria, about 20km (12 miles) east of Palermo, only for the pair to draw their weapons and shoot him dead. His body was never found and his death not confirmed until 1989 by an informant, Francesco Marino Mannoia, whose brother had also been in Greco’s house at the time of the killing.

By that time, the Maxi Trial, the extraordinary event spanning six years that saw the conviction of 360 defendants following the investigations led by Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, had handed Greco a life sentence in absentia, along with Marchese, Riina and Provenzano among others.

The sandy beach at Mondello, the pretty resort just
along the coast from Palermo

Travel tip:

Palermo has plenty of attractions in the heart of the city, but there are also some good beaches nearby, the closest of which is at Mondello, about 10km (6 miles) out of town to the north. The former fishing village has a nice sweeping bay enclosing turquoise water and a beach of fine sand and a promenade lined with beautiful villas, many built in Liberty style at the start of the 20th century as summer retreats for the wealthier residents of the city.  The nature reserve of Capo Gallo, with its white rocks and clear water, is within walking distance of Mondello.

The Villa Palagonia in Bagheria reflected the town's
wealth in the early 18th century

Travel tip:

Bagheria, a town of around 55,000 inhabitants, became prosperous under Savoyard and Habsburg rule in the early 18th century, when the first of many grand villas were built in the town.  The two most striking baroque residences, Villa Valguarnera and Villa Palagonia, were designed by the architect Tommaso Maria Napoli and have echoes of architecture in Rome and Vienna, where he had worked previously.  Villa Palagonia is renowned for its complex external staircase, curved façades, and marble.  The town is the home of the film director Giuseppe Tornatore, most famous for Cinema Paradiso, and some of the location shooting took place there.


More reading:

How Bernardo Provenzano evaded the police for 43 years

Giovanni Falcone's lifelong crusade against the Mafia

Tommaso Buscetta, the Mafia 'pentito' who put hundreds behind bars

Also on this day:

1710: The birth of 'opera buffa' composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

1881: The birth of Gaetano Merola, founder of the San Francisco Opera

1975: The death of Carlo Levi, author of Christ Stopped at Eboli


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Renato Carosone – singer-songwriter

Composer revived popularity of the traditional Neapolitan song

Renato Carosone wrote such classic songs as
 Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano and Mambo Italiano

Renato Carosone, who became famous for writing and performing Neapolitan songs in modern times, was born Renato Carusone on this day in 1920 in Naples.

His 1956 song Tu vuo’ fa’ l’Americano - 'You want to be American' - has been used in films and performed by many famous singers right up to the present day.

Torero, a song released by him in 1957, was translated into 12 languages and was at the top of the US pop charts for 14 weeks.

Carosone studied the piano at the Naples Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella and obtained his diploma in 1937, when he was just 17. He went to work as a pianist in Addis Ababa and then served in the army on the Italian Somali front. He did not return to Italy until 1946, after the end of the Second World War.

Back home, he had to start his career afresh and moved to Rome, where he played the piano for small bands.

Carosone's Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano featured
in a 1958 movie starring Totò

He was asked to put together a group for the opening of a new club and signed Dutch guitarist, Peter van Houten and Neapolitan drummer, Gegè di Giacomo, with whom he launched the Trio Carosone.

When Van Houten left to pursue a solo career, Di Giacomo remained with Carosone and they recruited more musicians to form a new band.

The band was popular both in Italy and abroad during the 1950s and the songs Carosone composed, many inspired by his native city, achieved high sales after being recorded.

In 1957, Carosone and his band started off a US tour with a concert in Cuba and finished off with a triumphant performance at Carnegie Hall in New York.

In 1960, Carosone made the shock announcement that he was retiring. He was at the height of his career and his decision caused uproar. It was even suggested that he had received criminal threats, but nothing was ever proved. Away from the music business, Carosone took up painting.

He made a comeback in 1975 in a televised concert. He then performed in live concerts and at the Sanremo Music Festival, continuing to make TV appearances until the late 1990s.

Carosone retired from the music scene in 1960 but made
a comeback at the 1975 Sanremo Music Festival

His biggest hits, such as Tu vuo’ fa’ l’Americano, Mambo Italiano and Torero were written in collaboration with the Neapolitan lyricist Nicola Salerno, who was known as Nisa. They developed a perfect understanding and it was said that after just a few words from Carosone, Nisa could write a funny story based on them.

Carosone's original version of Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano was performed by him in the film Totò, Peppino e le fanatiche (directed by Mario Mattoli, 1958). The song was featured in the 1960 Melville Shavelson film It Started in Naples, in which it was sung by Sophia Loren. It was also performed by Rosario Fiorello in the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

The melodies of Carosone, influenced by jazz and swing, helped revive the popularity of Neapolitan songs, which he presented in a modern manner.

Carosone died in 2001 in Rome at the age of 81 and was buried in the Flaminio Cemetery in the city.

Carosone's boyhood home in Naples was in a street close
to the historic square, the vast Piazza Mercato

Travel tip:

Carosone lived as a child in Vico dei Tornieri, in the historic centre of Naples near Piazza Mercato, which is now a lively commercial area, but was once the setting for the city’s important executions. He studied the piano at the Naples Conservatory, which has been housed in a monastery next to the Church of San Pietro a Majella since 1826. The church and monastery are in Via San Pietro a Majella, which leads off the top of Via dei Tribunali.

The Cimitero Flaminio in Rome, where Carosone was
buried, is the largest cemetery in the city

Travel tip:

Carosone was laid to rest in the Cimitero Flaminio in Via Flaminio in Rome, which is also known as Cimitero di Prima Porta, and is the largest cemetery in the city. Prima Porta is a suburb of Rome on the right bank of the Tiber. An important marble statue of Augustus Caesar was discovered in the area in 1863.

More reading:

The classic songs of Cesare Andrea Bixio

Giambattista De Curtis - the man behind Torna a Surriento

Why Totò is still regarded as Italy's finest funny man

Also on this day:

1698: The birth of poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio

1929: The birth of film director Sergio Leone

1952: The birth of politician Gianfranco Fini

Watch Renato Carosone and his musicians perform Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano

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Giulio Einaudi - publisher

Son of future president who defied Fascists

Giulio Einaudi ran his publishing company
for more than 60 years

Giulio Einaudi, who founded the pioneering publishing house that carries the family name, was born on this day in 1912 in Dogliani, a town in Piedmont.

The son of Luigi Einaudi, an anti-Fascist intellectual who would become the second President of the Italian Republic, Giulio was also the father of the musician and composer Ludovico Einaudi.

Giulio Einaudi’s own political leanings were influenced by his education at the the Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio, where his teacher was Augusto Monti, a staunch opponent of Fascism who was imprisoned by Mussolini’s regime in the 1920s.

After enrolling at the University of Turin to study medicine, Einaudi decided to abandon his studies to work alongside his father Luigi in publishing an anti-Fascist magazine Riforma Sociale - Social Reform.

His own contribution was to establish a cultural supplement, edited by the writer and translator Cesare Pavese, which so offended Mussolini that in 1935 the magazine was closed down and the staff arrested.

Einaudi spent 45 days in jail along with Pavese and several writers who would later become celebrated names, including Vittorio Foa, Massimo Mila, Carlo Levi and Norberto Bobbio.

The publisher's famous ostrich logo is still on
the cover of every Einaudi publication

By that time, in collaboration with Mila, Bobbio, Pavese and Leone Ginzburg, he had founded the publishing house - Giulio Einaudi Editore - whose offices were on Via Arcivescovado in Turin. Critics who later accused Einaudi of being a literary mouthpiece for the Italian Communist Party (PCI), rather than a genuinely independent publisher, would delight in pointing out that it was the same building that had hosted L'Ordine Nuovo - The New Order - the journal published by the Marxist philosopher and PCI founder Antonio Gramsci.

The first book to carry the company’s famous ostrich emblem - borrowed from the magazine - was a translation - by his father - of Henry A. Wallace's What America Wants, an analysis of New Deal economics. Mussolini apparently approved of the substance of the book but not of Luigi Einaudi’s foreword.

Luigi Einaudi, Giulio's father, was the
2nd President of the Italian Republic

Despite Giulio’s imprisonment and the Fascist Party verdict that the purpose of Giulio Einaudi Editore was “disseminating anti-fascist publications and gathering together anti-fascist elements from the intellectual world”, the publishing house survived the war years.

This was despite being damaged in bombing raids on Turin and Giulio’s decision to decamp temporarily to Switzerland, from where he returned to support the resistance movement in Piedmont.

Once the Fascists had been overthrown, the business grew quickly. Einaudi was well placed to feed the literary needs of a nation embracing a left-wing renaissance and although the publisher had a close relationship with many leading members of the PCI, many literary historians have argued that Einaudi was already the father of left-wing culture in Italy and that his writers influenced the PCI rather than other way round.

At the same time, Einaudi had an eye for spotting young talent, publishing authors such as Natalia Ginsburg, Elsa Morante, Italo Calvino and Primo Levi while they were still unknown.

When Giulio Einaudi Editore celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1983, it had published more than 5,000 titles, its back catalogue representing a history of 20th century Italian literature, with Carlo Emilio Gadda, Leonardo Sciascia and the poet Eugenio Montale also among his authors.

The composer and pianist Ludovico
Einaudi is Giulio's son

In addition to original fiction and non-fiction, Einaudi published translations of Goethe and Defoe and was the first to publish the studies in psychology of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in Italian.

Known as Il principe (the prince) because of his distinguished appearance, his biggest failing was that he spent money as if he were royalty. Seldom would he reject a project on the grounds of cost and years veering from one financial crisis to another came to head in 1994, when his bankers ran out of patience and the need for outside investment led to the company being taken over by Mondadori, the publishing conglomerate controlled by the right-wing former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, although Einaudi remained chairman.

Einaudi enjoyed Rome as much as Turin and died at his country house just outside the capital in April 1999, aged 87. He was survived by his wife, Renata Aldrovandi, sons Mario, Riccardo and Ludovico, and a daughter, Giuliana.

Dogliani's imposing church of Sant Quirico and
Paolo, designed by Giovanni Battista Schellino

Travel tip:

Einaudi’s home town of Dogliani, where there has been a settlement since pre-Roman times, is about 60km (37 miles) southeast of Turin in the Langhe, a picturesque area of hills to the south and east of the Tanaro river famous for wines, cheeses and truffles. As well as being the home of the red wine Dolcetto di Dogliani, the town is famous for the annual tradition of Presepio Vivente, in which around 350 people take part in a living nativity scene in the medieval streets.  The town is also notable for the magnificent parish church of Santi Quirico and Paolo, designed by Giovanni Battista Schellino. The Einaudi home, a farmhouse just outside the town called San Giacomo, was acquired by Luigi Einaudi in 1897 and became the heart of the family’s wine-producing business.

Rome's Isola Tiberina used to be one of Giulio Einaudi's
favourite places in the capital

Travel tip:

When in Rome, Giulio Einaudi would often be spotted at a table outside a cafe in Piazza Navona or, in the summer months, on the Isola Tiberina, situated in the bend in the Tiber that wraps around the Trastevere district, with which it is connected by the Ponte Cestio. A footbridge allows access from the other bank of the river.  The island was once the location of an ancient temple to Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine and healing, and in modern times the Fatebenefratelli Hospital, founded in the 16th century. The 10th century the Basilica of St. Bartholomew is also located on the island, which is just 270m (890ft) long and 67m (220ft) wide.

Find a hotel in Rome with TripAdvisor

More reading:

Cesare Pavese, the author whose translations introduced Italy to the great American writers of the 20th century

How the murder Giacomo Matteotti changed the mind of Luigi Einaudi

Antonio Gramsci - the Communist intellectual Mussolini could not gag

Also on this day:

533: Pope John John II is the first pontiff not to us his own name

1462: The birth of painter Piero di Cosimo

1909: The birth of mountaineer Riccardo Cassin

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Cesare Paciotti - shoe designer

Exclusive brand worn by many celebrities

Cesare Paciotti has been designing shoes
full time since 1980

The shoe designer Cesare Paciotti, whose chic collections have attracted a celebrity clientele, was born on New Year’s Day in 1958 in Civitanova Marche, a town on the Adriatic coast.

His company, Paciotti SpA, is still headquartered in Civitanova Marche, as it has been since his parents, Giuseppe and Cecilia, founded their craft shoe-making business in 1948, producing a range of shoes in classical designs made entirely by hand.

Today, the company, which trades as Cesare Paciotti, has major showrooms in Milan, Rome and New York and many boutique stores in cities across the world. The business, which also sells watches, belts, others accessories and some clothing lines, has an annual turnover estimated at more than $500 million (€437 million).

Cesare Paciotti inherited the family firm in 1980 at the age of 22, having spent his late teenage years and early adulthood pursuing his interest in the arts by studying Drama, Art and Music at the University of Bologna, and then travelling to London, the United States and the Far East.

When he returned home, he already had solid shoemaking skills, having learned from his parents in their workshop as he grew up.

Paciotti's shoes are known for their elegant design, with
particular emphasis on the heel

He and his sister, Paola, were entrusted with running the business between them, Cesare focusing on creativity and design with Paola in charge of operational matters. They established Pariotti SpA in 1980 and launched their first collection in the same year.

Most of the workers employed by their parents were retained but Cesare nonetheless was able to drive the company forward. Thanks to Paola's astute management and Cesare's originality of design, the name quickly acquired a high profile and prestigious fashion houses such as Gianni Versace, Romeo Gigli and Dolce & Gabbana began to approach them to craft shoes for their labels.

Versace, in fact, had worn some handmade shoes created by Cesare’s father, so he was familiar with their workshop’s use of high quality materials and attention to detail.

In 1990, Cesare turned his attention in particular to the image of the Paciotti women's collection. It had traditionally produced shoes with a rather masculine appearance but Cesare was determined to change this and introduced a tall stiletto heel that soon became highly recognisable as a Paciotti trademark, synonymous with extremely feminine shoes.

In recent years, celebrities such as as Rihanna, Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, supermodels Bar Refaeli and Miranda Kerr, actresses Anne Hathaway and Sienna Miller and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift have become clients.

Paciotti not only produces luxury shoes but other items such as watches and jewellery.  The company is famous for a dagger illustrated in its logo.

The port of Civitanova Marche, where Paciott's parents
established the family business in 1948

Travel tip:

Civitanova Marche, where Cesare Paciotto was born, is a port and resort on the Adriatic coast, about 50km (37 miles) south of Ancona. Now with a population of more than 42,000 inhabitants, the town developed in the 16th century under the Sforza and Cesarini families, the legacy of which is the Palazzo Cesarini-Sforza, the interior of which conserves some 16th-century frescoes by Pellegrino Tibaldi.  The 15th century walls commissioned by the Sforza family remain intact. The town also has some interesting Liberty-style architecture, including the Villa Conti, originally built in 1910, destroyed during the Second World War and subsequently rebuilt.

I faraglioni are a familiar landmark off the coast of Capri

Travel tip:

Among Cesare Paciotti’s many boutiques is one on Via Vittorio Emanuele III on Capri, the street that links the quaint Piazzetta with the exclusive Grand Hotel Quisisana.  The area brims with designer shops. Among Paciotti’s neighbours on Via Vittorio Emanuele III and the adjoining Via Camerelle are branches of Miu Miu, Louis Vuitton, Moschino and Dolce & Gabbana. A short walk beyond Via Camerelle along Via Tragara leads to the Belvedere Tragara, which offers views of Capri’s famous offshore rock formation i faraglioni.


More reading:

How Salvatore Ferragamo rose from humble beginnings to be a fashion giant

The meteoric rise of Gianni Versace

Guccio Gucci - from carrying bags to making them

Also on this day:

Capodanno - New Year - in Italy

1803: The birth of Guglielmo Libri, notorious book thief

1926: The birth of singing star Claudio Villa


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Giovanni Pascoli – poet

Painful childhood inspired great verse

Giovanni Pascoli is considered to be
one of Italy's greatest poets

Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli, who was regarded as the greatest Italian poet writing at the beginning of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1855 in San Mauro di Romagna, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Pascoli’s poems in Latin won prizes and he was regarded by the writer Gabriele D’Annunzio as the finest Latin poet since the Augustan age, which lasted from approximately 43 BC to AD 18 and was thought to be the golden age of Latin literature.

Although Pascoli was the fourth of ten children, his family were comfortable financially and his father, Ruggero Pascoli, was administrator of an estate of farmland on which they lived.

But when Giovanni Pascoli was just 12 years old, his father, returning from Cesena in a carriage drawn by a black and white mare, was shot and killed by an assassin hiding in a ditch at the side of the road. The mare carried on slowly and brought home the body of her master, Ruggero, but the murderer was never brought to justice.

Giovanni Pascoli’s mother died the following year and five other children in the family had also died before he became an adult.

Giovanni Pascoli (right) as a child,
pictured with his father and two brothers

In 1871 Pascoli moved to live in Rimini with some of his siblings, where he began to join in with Socialist demonstrations. He was briefly imprisoned in Bologna for preaching political anarchy after a protest against the capture of the anarchist Giovanni Passannante, who had tried to kill King Umberto I.

Pascoli composed an Ode to Passannante, but he tore it up soon after reading it during a Socialist gathering in Bologna.

He had been studying at the University of Bologna under the poet, Giosuè Carducci, but after his imprisonment he began a career in teaching, first in secondary schools and then in universities, as a professor of Greek, Latin and Italian literature.

In 1905 he was appointed to the Chair of Italian Literature at Bologna.

Pascoli’s first literary work, Myricae, was a collection of short, delicate lyrics inspired by nature and reflecting the psychological unrest of his student years.

His best work is considered to be Canti di Castelvecchio, a collection of moving songs about his sad childhood that also celebrated nature and family life.

The cover of Pascoli's book
of lyric poetry, Myricae

These were written at the home in Castelvecchio di Barga - now known as Castelvecchio Pascoli - in Tuscany that he shared with his sister Maria after 1895.

In his later years, Pascoli wrote nationalistic and historic poetry such as Poemi del Risorgimento, published in 1913. The way he focused on small things in his poetry and scaled back on the era’s grandiose language and rhetoric is thought to have contributed to the modernisation of Italian poetry.

His poems were translated and published in English in the 1920s and he also translated poems by Wordsworth, Shelley and Tennyson into Italian.

Pascoli died in 1912 at the age of 56 in Bologna.

An Italian literary award, the Pascoli Prize, was established in 1962 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death and his birthplace was renamed San Mauro Pascoli in 1932 in his honour.

San Mauro is also notable for the ruins of former Roman
brick furnaces discovered during digging for a canal

Travel tip:

San Mauro Pascoli, renamed to honour the poet, is a town in what is now the province of Forlì-Cesena in the Emilia-Romagna region, about 100km (62 miles) southeast of Bologna and just 7.5km (4.7 miles) from the sea. The Italian shoe designer Giuseppe Zanotti was also born there. Pascoli's family home, in what is now Via Giovanni Pascoli, is open to the public as a museum. For more information visit www.casapascoli.it. The town is also notable for the remains of Roman brick furnaces discovered during the construction of the Romagnolo Emiliano Canal.

The Casa Pascoli at Castelvecchio was left to the hamlet
of Barga in Giovanni's sister Maria's will

Travel tip:

Giovanni Pascoli’s house in the hamlet of Castelvecchio Pascoli is also now a museum dedicated to his life and work. After the poet’s death in 1912, his sister, Maria, took care of the house, faithfully preserving its structure and original furnishings. She left the house to the Municipality of Barga in her will and it has since been declared a national monument. In the chapel, which had been restored by Pascoli himself, Maria was laid to rest after her death in 1953, next to her brother.


More reading:

Giosue Carducci, the first Italian to win a Nobel Prize in Literature

Salvatore Quasimodo, the engineer whose poetry won a Nobel Prize

How Gabriele D'Annunzio combined writing with a military career

Also on this day:

The Festa di San Silvestro

1842: The birth of Belle Époque artist Giovanni Boldini

1990: The death of architect Giovanni Michelucci

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Camila Giorgi - tennis player

Italian No 1 who specialises in beating big names

Camila Giorgi has risen to No 26 in the world
following a successful 2018 season

The tennis player Camila Giorgi, currently the highest-ranked Italian in the female world rankings, was born on this day in 1991 in Macerata, a city in the Marche region.

Giorgi, the Italian No 1, rose to 26 in the latest Women’s Tennis Association world rankings, her highest position to date. There is no other Italian woman in the top 100.

This has been a breakthrough year for Giorgi in that she reached the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam event for the first time, at the Wimbledon Championships in London in June.

Giorgi was not seeded but after defeating 21st seed Anastasija Sevastova in the first round, she advanced through her section of the draw with three more victories, culminating in a straight-sets win over former world No 8 Ekaterina Makarova in the fourth round.

That earned Giorgi a last-eight meeting with seven-times Wimbledon champion and world record grand slam winner Serena Williams.  Giorgi won the first set but Williams fought back to win the match.

Earlier in the 2018 summer, Giorgi had delivered her best performance at the French Open by reaching the third round. Later in the year, she won her second career WTA tournament, the Linz Open in Austria.

Giorgi has an excellent record in matches against top players
and commentators believe her best years are still to come

Although Giorgi has never beaten Serena Williams in four encounters, she has an unusually good record against top players.

In the course of her career, Giorgi has beaten former World No 1 players Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka, Caroline Wozniacki, Garbiñe Muguruza and Karolina Pliskova, double Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, two French Open champions in her fellow Italian Francesca Schiavone and Jelena Ostapenko, another Wimbledon winner in Marion Bartoli and three US Open champions in Samantha Stosur, Italy’s Flavia Pennetta and Sloane Stephens.

Giorgi was born to Argentinian parents of Italian descent. Her parents are Claudia Gabriella Fullone, a fashion designer who designs her daughter’s tennis clothes, and Sergio Giorgi, who is her full-time coach. In 1982, Sergio was drafted into the army of Argentina and fought against the British in the Falklands War.

She is one of four children. Her older brother Leandro is studying to be an actor, and younger brother Amadeus is a promising footballer. Sadly, their older sister, Antonela, was killed in a road accident while the family were living in Paris in 2011. They now live at Tirrenia, a resort near Pisa.

Giorgi reached the quarter-finals at the
Wimbledon Championships in 2018

Giorgi, who was given a placement at Nick Bollettieri’s tennis academy in Florida when she was eight, made her professional debut at the age of 15. She won the first of her five International Tennis Federation tournaments in August 2008.

Her first appearance at a Grand Slam tournament came in 2011, when she won through qualifying to make the draw at Wimbledon. She lost her first-round match, but reached the fourth round at Wimbledon the following year, advancing to the same stage at the US Open in 2013, defeating former world No 1 Wozniacki along the way.  She made the third round at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2015, during which she scored her first WTA title in Rosmalen, in the Netherlands.

At the age of 27, Giorgi has been regularly praised for the power of her hitting and the quality of her ground strokes, but has also attracted comment, not always favourable, for posting glamorous images of herself on her social media accounts and for not yet fulfilling her potential on the court.

However, her progress has not been helped by problems with a shoulder injury.

Moreover, the age at which tennis players achieve success has changed. Teenage prodigies are no longer common. Giorgi’s age is now the average for female players in the top 50.

Also, Italian players are typically late developers. Her fellow Italians Schiavone and Pennetta won Grand Slam titles in their late twenties or early thirties.  When Pennetta won the US Open in 2015 she was 33, defeating 32-year-old compatriot Roberta Vinci in the final.

Queues at the entrance to the Arena Sferisterio, which
hosts a month-long summer opera festival in Macerata

Travel tip:

Camila Giorgi’s home city of Macerata is in an inland area of Marche, about 48km (30 miles) south of Ancona and 30km (19 miles) from the coastal town of Civitanova Marche. Not a well-known tourist destination, it nonetheless has a charming hilltown feel, with a maze of narrow cobblestone streets and one of Italy’s oldest universities, dating back to 1290. It is the setting each summer for a month-long opera festival at the atmospheric Arena Sferisterio, which has attracted some of the world’s biggest stars.

The Tuscan seaside resort of Tirrenia, where Camila Giorgi
now lives, is surrounded by pine forests 

Travel tip:

Tirrenia, situated about 20km (12 miles) from the city of Pisa, is an elegant resort surrounded by pine forests. Known for its wide, sandy beaches and clear water, it is well equipped with sports facilities and is a centre for leisure sailing and spearfishing. The forest areas offer walks and cycle paths and has a protected area, the Tirrenia Dune Oasis, which is managed by the Worldwide Fund for Nature as home to a many varieties of flora and fauna and one of the last dune environments in Italy.

Find a hotel in Tirrenia with TripAdvisor

More reading:

How Francesca Schiavone became the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam

The talent that helped doubles star Sara Errani hit No 5 in singles rankings

The unique achievement of Adriano Panatta 

Also on this day:

39AD: The birth of Roman emperor Titus

1572: The death of architect Galeazzo Alessi

1962: The birth of politician Alessandra Mussolini


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