Luigi Cagnola - architect

Designer of Milan’s neoclassical Arch of Peace

Luigi Cagnola's Arch of Peace marks the historic
entrance to Milan at Porta Sempione

The architect Luigi Cagnola, among whose most notable work the monumental Arco della Pace - Arch of Peace - in Milan stands out, was born in Milan on this day in 1762.

The Arco della Pace, commissioned when Milan was under Napoleonic rule in 1807, can be found at Porta Sempione, the point at which the historic Strada del Sempione enters the city, about 2km (1.2 miles) northwest of the Duomo. 

Cagnola’s original commission a year earlier was for a triumphal arch for the marriage of Eugenio de Beauharnais, viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy, with Princess Amalia of Bavaria. The arch was made of wood, and not intended as a permanent structure, but Cagnola’s design was of such beauty that the Milan authorities asked him to reconstruct it in marble.

His other major works include the Porta Ticinese, another of the main gates into Milan, the campanile - bell tower - of the church of Santi Nazario e Celso in Urgnano, a small town just outside Bergamo in Lombardy, the chapel of Santa Marcellina in Milan, the staircase of the Villa Saporiti in Como, and his own villa just outside Inverigo, the town to the southwest of Lake Como where Cagnola spent his final days.

Cagnola's campanile at the town
of Urgnano, near Bergamo

As a teenager, Cagnola was educated at a college in Rome before going on to the University of Pavia, where he studied law. He secured a post in the Austrian administration in Milan and married Francesca D'Adda, a musician.

However, the law did not interest him in any degree close to his real passion, which was for architecture. He submitted designs for a new gate at Porta Orientale - now Porta Venezia - to the east of Milan’s city centre. They were commended, but not selected on the grounds of being too expensive. 

His position within the Austrian administration left him vulnerable when the French invaded Milan in 1796 and he took refuge in Venice, where he used the opportunity to study the work of Andrea Palladio, which would have a great influence on his own designs.

The Arco della Pace was one of Cagnola’s first commissions when he returned to Milan. After the completion of the wooden arch, the first stone of the marble version was laid in 1807.

Built in Cagnola's favoured neoclassical style, it was decorated with a number of bas-reliefs, statues, and corinthian columns, with many contributions by other artists, including Pompeo and Luigi Marchesi, Giovanni Battista Comolli and Grazioso Rusca.

The bas-reliefs are dedicated to major events in the history of Italy and Europe, such as the Battle of Leipzig, the foundation of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia and the Congress of Vienna. Other decorations have classical mythology subjects and there is a group of statues that are allegories of major rivers in North Italy such as the Po, the Adige and the Ticino. 

The statue of Cagnola at the
Palazzo di Brera in Milan

Cagnola did not live to see its construction finished, mainly because when Napoleon’s Kingdom of Italy fell and Milan was conquered again by the Austrian Empire, construction was halted for a while. It resumed again in 1826 but Cagnola died in 1833, five years before it was finished.

The project was taken over by Francesco Londonio and Francesco Peverelli, yet they followed Cagnola’s designs faithfully. It was completed in 1838. 

In the meantime, Cagnola built the Porta Ticinese to the south of Milan and parish church of Vaprio d'Adda, the bell tower at Urgnano, reconstructed the parish church of Ghisalba, near Bergamo, and built the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in Concorezzo, outside Monza. 

His villa outside Inverigo, built on a hill, was heavily influenced by what he had learned about Palladio. He even named it Villa La Rotonda, after Palladio’s famous four-faced symmetrical mansion outside Vicenza. 

Along with Luigi Canonica, Giocondo Albertolli and Giuseppe Zanoia, Cagnola also became involved in Milan’s urban planning initiatives at a time when early industrialisation meant the city was expanding.

After his death, Cagnola was initially buried at the cemetery in Ozzero, a small town on the outskirts of Milan, where the family had a palazzo. When the cemetery was closed, his body was transferred to its present resting place at the Monumental Cemetery in Milan.

The Arco della Pace seen from within the
green space of the Parco Sempione in Milan

Travel tip:

The Arco della Pace is situated at the northwestern end of the Parco Sempione, the large park that stretches out behind the Castella Sforzesco. The gate marked the place where the then newly-constructed Strada del Sempione entered Milan. This road, which is still in use today, connects Milan to Paris through the Simplon Pass crossing the Alps. Previously, the gate was known as Porta Giovia - "Jupiter's Gate".  The gate has been associated with a number of important moments in Milanese history.  In March 1848, Austrian army led by marshal Josef Radetzky retreated through Porta Giovia after being defeated in the Five Days of Milan rebellion, while in June 1859, four days after the Battle of Magenta, Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Italy entered Milan through the gate.

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Cagnola's Villa La Rotonda outside the
town of Inverigo, captured on canvas

Travel tip:

The town of Inverigo is at the heart of the Brianza, an area between Milan Como that has a large number of historical residences, once owned by rich families from Milan who would escape to Inverigo in the summer, seeking peace and quiet in the cool countryside.  Through history, it belonged to the Mariano fief, later becoming the property of the Viscontis and the Sforza families. Served by train from Milan, it is sometimes known as the “pearl of Brianza”.

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Also on this day:

68: The death of the emperor Nero

1311: Duccio di Buoninsegna’s masterpiece Maestà is unveiled

1898: The birth of racing driver Luigi Fagioli

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8 June

Tomaso Albinoni - Venetian composer

Prolific writer of operas and instrumental music

The composer Tomaso Albinoni, perhaps best known for the haunting and powerful Adagio in G Minor, was born on this day in 1671 in Venice.  Albinoni was a contemporary of two other great Venetian composers, Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi, and was favourably compared with both.  It is his instrumental music for which he is popular today, although during his own lifetime he was famous for his operas, the first of which was performed in Venice in 1694.  He is thought to have composed some 81 operas in total, although they were not published at the time and the majority were lost.  His first major instrumental work also appeared in 1694. With the support of sponsorship from noble patrons, he published nine collections - in Italy, Amsterdam and London - beginning with Opus 1, the 12 Sonate a Tre, which he dedicated to his fellow Venetian, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII.  It was this work that established his fame.  He followed it with another collection of instrumental pieces, dedicated to Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, who may have employed him as a violinist.  Read more…

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Luigi Comencini – film director

Movies helped create an international audience for Italian cinema

Award winning director and screenwriter Luigi Comencini was born on this day in 1916 in Salò, a town on the banks of Lake Garda in Lombardy.  He is considered to have been one of the masters of the commedia all’italiana genre, a type of film produced between the 1950s and the 1970s that dealt with social issues such as divorce, contraception and the influence of the Catholic Church in a sardonically humorous way.  After Comencini studied architecture in Milan he went to work as a newspaper film critic. He began his career as a filmmaker in 1946 with a short documentary, Bambini in città, about the hard life of children in post-war Milan.  His first successful movie was L’imperatore di Capri in 1949, featuring the comedian Totò.  Comencini’s 1953 film, Pane, amore e fantasia, starring Vittorio De Sica and Gina Lollobrigida, is considered a prime example of neorealismo rosa -  pink neorealism. It was followed by Pane, amore e gelosia in 1954.  His masterpiece is considered to be Tutti a casa, starring Alberto Sordi, which was a bitter comedy about Italy after the armistice of 1943, when Italy surrendered to the Allies.  Read more…

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Benedetto Alfieri – architect

Talented designer behind the Teatro Regio in Turin

Baroque architect Benedetto Innocenzo Alfieri was born on this day in 1699 in Rome.  He was a member of the Alfieri family who originated in Piedmont and he became the uncle of the dramatist, Vittorio Alfieri. Benedetto was also the godson of Pope Innocent XII.  Alfieri was sent to be educated in mathematics and design by the Jesuits. He later moved to Piedmont and lived in both Turin and Asti, where he practised as a lawyer and an architect.  Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia, one of his patrons, commissioned him to design the Royal Theatre in Turin, originally assigned to Filippo Juvara, but who died before work began. The building was acknowledged as his masterpiece, but it burned down in 1936 and the theatre did not reopen until 1973.  Benedetto also helped with the decoration of the interior of the Basilica of Corpus Domini in Turin and the interior of Palazzo Chiablese next to the Royal Palace in Turin. In recognition, Charles Emmanuel III made him Count of Sostegno.  Alfieri also completed the bell tower of the Church of Sant’Anna in Asti and the façade of Vercelli Cathedral.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Fiorelli - archaeologist

The man whose painstaking work saved Pompeii

Giuseppe Fiorelli, the archaeologist largely responsible for preserving the ruins of Pompeii, was born on this day in 1823, in Naples.  It was due to Fiorelli’s painstaking excavation techniques that much of the lost Roman city on the Neapolitan coast was preserved as it had looked when, in 79 AD, it was totally submerged under volcanic ash following the eruption of Vesuvius.  He also hit upon the idea of filling the cavities in the hardened lava and solidified ash left behind by long-rotted bodies and vegetation with plaster to create a model of the person or plant that had been engulfed.  This became known as the Fiorelli process.  Little is known of Fiorelli’s early life apart from some details of his academic career, which clearly show him to be precociously clever.  He studied law from the age of 11 and obtained a degree in legal studies at the age of 18. He was also a student of italic languages, numismatics – the study of coins, paper money and medals -- and epigraphy – the study and interpretation of ancient inscriptions.  Having chosen to pursue his interest in archaeology and the study of ancient civilisations, he wrote an article on numismatics that won him membership of a number of academies at the age of 20.  Read more…

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Guido Banti – physician

Doctor was the first to define leukaemia

The innovative physician and pathologist Guido Banti was born on this day in 1852 in Montebicchieri in Tuscany.  His work on the spleen led him to discover that a chronic congestive enlargement of the spleen resulted in the premature destruction of red blood cells. Closely related to leukaemia, this was later named 'Banti’s disease' in his honour.  Banti’s father was a physician and sent him to study medicine at the University of Pisa and the Medical School in Florence.  He graduated in 1877 and was appointed an assistant at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and also as an assistant in the laboratory of Pathological Anatomy.  The ability to observe patients in bed and then carry out post mortem examinations was to prove fundamental to his work.  Within five years he had become chief of medical services. In 1895, after a five year spell in a temporary post he was appointed Ordinary Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the medical school in Florence. He remained in this post for 25 years.  Banti published the first textbook in Italy on the techniques of bacteriology in 1885.  He studied and also wrote about heart enlargement.  Read more…

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7 June

Pippo Baudo - TV presenter

Record-breaking host of Sanremo festival

The television presenter Pippo Baudo, who became one of the most recognisable personalities on Italian television in a broadcasting career spanning six decades, was born on this day in 1936 in Militello in Val di Catania, in Sicily.  Baudo has presented numerous shows for the national broadcaster Rai and for private networks but is probably best known as the host of the annual Sanremo Music Festival and the presenter of the immensely popular Sunday afternoon magazine show Domenica In.  He was the face of Sanremo a record 13 times between 1968 and 2008, eclipsing another much-loved TV host, Mike Bongiorno, who presented the prestigious song contest on 11 occasions.  Baudo has anchored or co-hosted Domenica In for 11 seasons.  His appearance in the 2016-17 edition of the show came 37 years after he presented the programme for the first time in 1979.  His other major shows include Settevoci, Canzonissima, Fantastico, Serata d'onore and Novecento.  Pippo - short for Giuseppe - is the son of a lawyer, whose father had ambitions for his son to follow a similar career path.  Read more…

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Federico da Montefeltro – condottiero

Patron of the arts made money through war

Federico da Montefeltro, one of the most successful of the Italian condottieri, was born on this day in 1422 in Gubbio.  He has been immortalised by the famous portrait painted of him by Piero della Francesca, where he was dressed in red and showing his formidable profile.  Federico ruled Urbino from 1444 until his death, commissioning the building of a large library where he employed his own team of scribes to copy texts.  He was the illegitimate son of Guidantonio da Montefeltro but he was legitimised by the Pope with the consent of Guidantonio’s wife.  Federico began his career as a condottiero - a kind of mercenary military leader - at the age of 16. When his half brother, who had recently become Duke of Urbino, was assassinated in 1444, Federico seized the city of Urbino.  To bring in money he continued to wage war as a condottiero. He lost his right eye in an accident during a tournament and later commissioned a surgeon to remove the bridge of his nose to improve his field of vision and make him less vulnerable to assassination attempts.  Subsequently, he refused to have his portrait painted in full face, hence he is depicted in profile by Piero della Francesca.  Read more…

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Gaetano Berenstadt – operatic castrato

Italian-born performer who specialised in roles created by Handel

Gaetano Berenstadt, an alto castrato who sang many roles in George Frideric Handel’s operas, was born on this day in 1687 in Florence.  His parents were German and his father played the timpani - kettle drums - for the Grand Duke of Tuscany.  Berenstadt was sent to be a pupil of Francesco Pistocchi, a singer, composer and librettist who founded a singing school in Bologna.  After performing in Bologna and Naples, Berenstadt visited London where he performed the role of Argante in a revival of Handel’s Rinaldo. The composer created three new arias especially for Berenstadt’s voice.  On a later visit to London, Berenstadt sang for the composers of the Royal Academy of Music. On this visit he created the roles of Tolomeo in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, the title role in Flavio, and the role of Adalberto in Ottone.  Back in Italy, he sang music by Italian composers and in two new compositions by Johann Adolph Hasse. He usually took on the role of a villainous tyrant and, despite the quality of his voice, he never portrayed a female character.  His final appearances on stage were in his native Florence.   Read more…

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6 June

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

Prime Minister died after creating a united Italy

The first Prime Minister of Italy, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, died on this day in 1861 in Turin.  A leading figure in the struggle for Italian unification, Cavour died at the age of 50, only three months after taking office as Prime Minister of the new Kingdom of Italy. He did not live to see Venice and Rome become part of the Italian nation.  Cavour was born in 1810 in Turin, the second son of the fourth Marquess of Cavour. He was chosen to be a page to Charles Albert, King of Piedmont, when he was 14. After attending a military academy he served in the Piedmont-Sardinian army but eventually resigned his commission and went to run his family’s estate at Grinzane in the province of Cuneo instead.  He then travelled extensively in Switzerland, France and England before returning to Turin where he became involved in politics.  Originally he was interested in enlarging and developing Piedmont-Sardinia economically rather than creating a unified Italy.  As Prime Minister he took the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia into the Crimean war hoping it would gain him the support of the allies for his plans for expansion.  Read more…

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Maria Theresa - the last Holy Roman Empress

Italian noblewoman was first Empress of Austria

Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily, the last Holy Roman Empress and the first Empress of Austria, was born at the Royal Palace of Portici in Naples on this day in 1772.  She was the eldest daughter of Ferdinand IV & III of Naples and Sicily (later Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies) and his wife, Marie Caroline of Austria, through whom she was a niece of the last Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.  Named after her maternal grandmother, Maria Theresa of Austria, she was the eldest of 17 children. Her father was a son of Charles III of Spain and through her father she was a niece of Maria Luisa of Spain and Charles IV of Spain.  Although she had a reputation for pursuing a somewhat frivolous lifestyle, which revolved around balls, carnivals, parties and masquerades, she did have some political influence, advising her husband about the make-up of his government and encouraging him to go to war with Napoleon, whom she detested.  She assumed her titles after she married her double first cousin Archduke Francis of Austria on September 15, 1790.  Francis became Holy Roman Emperor at age 24 in 1792.  Read more…

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Battle of Novara 1513

Many lives lost in battle between French and Swiss on Italian soil

Swiss troops defeated a French occupying army on this day in 1513 in a bloody battle near Novara in the Piedmont region of northern Italy.  The French loss forced Louis XII to withdraw from Milan and Italy and after his army were pursued all the way to Dijon by Swiss mercenaries, he had to pay them off to make them leave France.  The battle was part of the War of the League of Cambrai, fought between France, the Papal States and the Republic of Venice in northern Italy, but often involving other powers in Europe.  Louis XII had expelled the Sforza family from Milan and added its territory to France in 1508.  Swiss mercenaries fighting for the Holy League drove the French out of Milan and installed Maximilian Sforza as Duke of Milan in December 1512.  More than 20,000 French troops led by Prince Louis de la Tremoille besieged the city of Novara, which was being held by the Swiss, in June 1513.  However, a much smaller Swiss relief army arrived and surprised the French just after dawn on June 6.  German Landsknecht mercenaries, armed with pikes like the Swiss troops, put up some resistance to the attack.  Read more…

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5 June

NEW - Braccio da Montone - condottiero

Soldier of fortune briefly ruled Perugia

Military leader Braccio da Montone, who is considered one of the greatest of the Italian condottieri who fought in the 14th and 15th centuries, died on this day in 1424.  He had a lifelong rivalry with another condottiero, Muzio Attendolo Sforza, and during the first quarter of the 15th century all the major Italian cities either hired Braccio or Sforza to carry out their military action.  The rapid movements of Braccio’s troops became legendary and he founded a military school, which became known as ‘the Braccesca’. This had a major impact on Italian warfare. Braccio’s men employed tactics such as speed, shock and the rapid rotation of small units on the battlefield.  Braccio was born Andrea Fortebraccio into a wealthy family in Perugia in 1368. He began his military career as a page, but after his family were exiled from Perugia and they lost the castle of Montone, he entered the company of the condottiero Alberico da Barbiano, which was where he first encountered Muzio Attendolo Sforza.  He fought for the Malatesta and Montefeltro families in Romagna and was injured during the siege of the castle of Fossombrone in 1391.  Read more…

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Salvatore Ferragamo - shoe designer

From humble beginnings to giant of the fashion industry

Salvatore Ferragamo, the craftsman once dubbed 'Shoemaker to the Stars' after his success in creating made-to-measure footwear for movie stars and celebrities, was born on this day in 1898 in Bonito, a small hill town in Campania, in the province of Avellino.  Although in time he would become a prominent figure in the fashion world of Florence, Ferragamo learned how to make shoes in Naples, around 100 kilometres from his home village.  He was apprenticed to a Neapolitan shoemaker at the age of just 11 years and opened his first shop, trading from his parents' house, at 13.  When he was 16 he made the bold decision to move to the United States, joining one of his brothers in Boston, where they both worked in a factory manufacturing cowboy boots.  Salvatore was impressed at how modern production methods enabled the factory to turn out large numbers of boots but was concerned about compromises to quality.  This led him to move to California and to set up shop selling his own hand-made shoes in Santa Barbara, where he made his first contacts in the burgeoning American film industry.  Read more…

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Carmine Crocco - soldier and brigand

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

Carmine Crocco, whose life of brigandry was driven by a hatred of what he saw as the bourgeois oppressors of the poor, was born on this day in 1830 in the town of Rionero in Vulture, in Basilicata.  Crocco fought in the service of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Expedition of the Thousand but was no supporter of Italian Unification and spent much of his life thereafter fighting on the side of the ousted Bourbons and of the peasant people of the south, many of whom were as poor after unification as they had been before, if not poorer.  He assembled his own private ‘army’, including many other fearsome brigands, which at one point numbered more than 2,000 men.  For this reason, he is regarded as something of a folk hero in southern Italy, where there is a popular belief that he robbed the rich to give to the poor in the manner of the legendary English outlaw, Robin Hood.  Nonetheless, when he was arrested for the final time he was tried and convicted of 67 murders and seven attempted murders among many crimes, having led a life of violence.  His initial death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment with hard labour. Read more…

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Ludovico III Gonzaga – Marquis of Mantua

Condottiero fought to improve the town of his birth

Ludovico Gonzaga, who ruled his native city for 34 years, was born on this day in 1412 in Mantua.  He grew up to fight as a condottiero - a military leader for hire - and in 1433 he married Barbara of Brandenburg, the niece of the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund.  After Ludovico entered the service of the Visconti family in Milan, he and his wife were exiled from Mantua by his father, Gianfrancesco I.  But father and son were later reconciled and Ludovico became Marquis of Mantua in 1444, inheriting territory that had been reduced in size and was impoverished after years of war.  He continued to serve as a condottiero, switching his allegiance between Milan, Florence, Venice and Naples, to gain territory and secure peace for Mantua.  The high point of his reign came when Pope Pius II held a Council in Mantua between 1459 and 1460 to plan a crusade against the Ottoman Turks. Although the Pope was unimpressed with Mantua and criticised the food and wine afterwards, the event earned prestige for Ludovico, whose son, Francesco, was made a Cardinal.  During Ludovico’s reign, he paved the streets of Mantua, built a clock tower and reorganised the city centre.  Read more…

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Braccio da Montone – condottiero

Soldier of fortune briefly ruled Perugia

Braccio da Montone is considered
one of the greatest of all condottieri

Military leader Braccio da Montone, who is considered one of the greatest of the Italian condottieri who fought in the 14th and 15th centuries, died on this day in 1424.

He had a lifelong rivalry with another condottiero, Muzio Attendolo Sforza, and during the first quarter of the 15th century all the major Italian cities either hired Braccio or Sforza to carry out their military action.

The rapid movements of Braccio’s troops became legendary and he founded a military school, which became known as ‘the Braccesca’. This had a major impact on Italian warfare. Braccio’s men employed tactics such as speed, shock and the rapid rotation of small units on the battlefield.

Braccio was born Andrea Fortebraccio into a wealthy family in Perugia in 1368. He began his military career as a page, but after his family were exiled from Perugia and they lost the castle of Montone, he entered the company of the condottiero Alberico da Barbiano, which was where he first encountered Muzio Attendolo Sforza.

He fought for the Malatesta and Montefeltro families in Romagna and was injured during the siege of the castle of Fossombrone in 1391. In 1394 he was taken prisoner and held briefly in the Rocca of Umbertide, but he was released after a ransom was paid.

In 1398, Braccio was hired by Pope Boniface IX to fight in the war against Perugia. In 1406 he was fighting against Perugia again, along with other exiles who had joined his army and helped him ravage the Umbrian countryside. In 1407 the citizens of Rocca Contrada gave him the seigniory of the town in exchange for his support against the marquess of Fermo.

Braccio da Montone's great rival, 
Muzio Attendolo Sforza

The Antipope John XXIII assigned Braccio the fiefdom of Montone and the governorship of Bologna. He invaded and conquered most of Umbria with his sights set on the town of his birth, Perugia. At the battle of Sant’Egidio in 1416, his troops were victorious and Perugia was finally forced to open its gates to Braccio da Montone. Other Umbrian states then named him as their lord.

His conquest was legitimised by Pope Martin V in 1420, who granted him the title of papal vicar. He was then finally able to rule Perugia, the city that had exiled him and his family years before.

Braccio married Elisabetta Ermanni with whom he had three daughters. After her death in 1419, he married Niccolina Varano, who bore his first son, Carlo, in 1421. He later had a son out of wedlock, Oddo, who also became a condottiero.

In the 1420s, Braccio and Sforza found themselves on opposite sides again. Queen Joan II of Naples and King Alfonso V of Aragon were fighting against the Pope’s chosen ruler, Louis III of Anjou. Braccio was fighting for Queen Joan, who gave him the fiefdoms of Capua and Foggia, while Sforza headed the Angevin army.

The rival condottieri died within a few weeks of each other in 1424 during a campaign in Abruzzo. First Sforza drowned and then Braccio died a few days later after being wounded in the neck in battle against Sforza’s son, Francesco, who was to go on to become a famous condottiero and Duke of Milan.

The Pope had Braccio buried in unconsecrated ground because he had died while excommunicated, having chosen to fight for Queen Joan. But In 1432, Braccio’s nephew, Niccolò Fortebraccio, had his body moved to the Church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia. After Braccio’s death, the ownership of Umbria reverted to the papacy.

From its hilltop location, Montone offers some
spectacular views of the surrounding countryside

Travel tip:

The village of Montone in Umbria, from which Braccio da Montone derived his name, is on top of a hill, about 40km (25 miles) from Perugia. Montone was named ‘uno dei 100 borghi piu belli d’Italia’, one of the 100 most beautiful villages in Italy. The Rocca di Braccio, Braccio’s castle, was restored after its destruction in 1478 by Pope Sixtus IV. The village was at the height of its splendour in the early part of the 15th century, when Braccio made it his fiefdom.

The Church of San Francesco al Prato,
where Braccio da Montone is buried

Travel tip:

The Church of San Francesco al Prato, where Braccio da Montone was finally laid to rest, is in Piazza San Francesco at the end of Via dei Priori in Perugia. It was founded by Franciscans in the 13th century and was built in the shape of the upper Basilica of St Francis in Assisi. It became known as ‘the Pantheon of Perugia’ because it received the remains of the city’s most famous people, whose families commissioned works from such great artists as Perugino, Pinturicchio and Raffaello.

Also on this day:

1412: The birth of Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua

1830: The birth of soldier and brigand Carmine Crocco

1898: The birth of shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo

(Picture credit: Montone view by trolvag; Church of San Francesco al Prato by Demincob via Wikimedia Commons)

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4 June

Cecilia Bartoli – opera singer

Soprano put the spotlight back on ‘forgotten’ composers and singers

Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli was born on this day in 1966 in Rome. Bartoli is renowned for her interpretations of the music of Mozart and Rossini and for her performances of music by some of the lesser-known Baroque and 19th century composers.  Her parents were both professional singers and gave her music lessons themselves and her first public performance was at the age of eight when she appeared as the shepherd boy in Tosca.  Bartoli studied at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome and made her professional opera debut in 1987 at the Arena di Verona.  The following year she earned rave reviews for her portrayal of Rosina in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in Germany and Switzerland.  Bartoli made her debut at La Scala in 1996, followed by the Metropolitan Opera in 1997 and the Royal Opera House in 2001.  She has performed and recorded Baroque music by composers such as Gluck, Vivaldi, Haydn and Salieri.  She has sold more than ten million copies of her albums, received numerous gold and platinum certificates and been given many awards and honours.  Read more…

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Flavio Biondo – historian and archaeologist

Writer reconstructed ancient Roman topography

Flavio Biondo, the first historian to write about the concept of the Middle Ages, died on this day in 1463 in Rome.  Biondo, who is also sometimes referred to as Flavius Biondus, his Latin name, wrote Historiarum, which ran to 32 volumes. It was a comprehensive treatment of both Europe and Christendom from the sack of Rome by the Goths in AD 410 to the rise of Italian cities in the 15th century.  His work provided a definite chronological scheme, from ancient Rome up to his own time, which started the idea of the 1000 year period we now refer to as the Middle Ages. It is known that the writer Niccolò Machiavelli often consulted this work.  Biondo was born in 1392 in Forlì in Romagna, which is now part of the region of Emilia-Romagna. He was educated well and during a brief stay in Milan he discovered, and was able to transcribe, the only existing manuscript of Cicero’s dialogue, Brutus.  Biondo trained as a notary before moving to Rome, where he was appointed as an apostolic secretary.  After embarking on diplomatic missions throughout Italy, he wrote De Roma instaurata (Rome Restored), a three volume work that reconstructed ancient Roman topography.  Read more…

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Deborah Compagnoni - Olympic skiing champion

Alpine ace won gold medals in 1992, 1994 and 1998

The three-times Olympic skiing champion Deborah Compagnoni was born on this day in 1970 in Bormio, northern Lombardy.  Regarded as the greatest Italian female skier of all-time, she won gold medals at the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics.  Despite suffering two serious cruciate ligament injuries, she also won multiple events at the Alpine Skiing World Cup between 1992 and 1998.  Born in Bormio but raised in Santa Caterina di Valfurva, in Valtellina, Compagnoni’s talent became obvious at a young age but she began suffering injuries also at an early age.  At just 16 years old she won the bronze medal in the downhill at the World junior championships in 1987, and the following year won the junior title in giant slalom and achieved her first podium in the World Cup.  However, shortly afterwards she broke her right knee at Val d'Isére downhill, the first of a number of major injuries, but for which she could have attained even greater success.  Compagnoni won her first race in the World Cup in 1992, in the super-G. She also won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics of the same year, again in the super-G, at Albertville in France.  Read more…

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Claudia de’ Medici – Archduchess of Tyrol

Medici daughter who was born to rule

Claudia de’ Medici, who ruled the Tyrol region of Austria while her son was still a minor, was born on this day in 1604 in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.  Claudia was the daughter of Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his wife Christina of Lorraine.  She was destined for a marital alliance with someone equally aristocratic and became engaged at just four years old to Federico Ubaldo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino.  She was educated in a convent where, in addition to piety, she learned to play the harp and paint pictures.  At the age of 16, she married Federico, Duke of Urbino and was initially disappointed when she found out he had his mistress installed in the ducal palace.  But two years later she had a daughter with him, Vittoria della Rovere. Her husband died a year later in 1623 leaving her a widow at the age of 19.  Claudia remarried in 1626 to Leopold V, Archduke of Austria, and became the Archduchess consort of Austria. She had five children by Leopold before his death six years later in 1632.  She assumed the regency of Tyrol in the name of her son, Ferdinand Charles, and held it until 1646 when Ferdinand became 18.  Read more…

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