9 September

NEW - Roberto Donadoni - footballer and coach

Understated midfielder who helped AC Milan win six Serie A titles

The footballer and coach Roberto Donadoni, who was a key figure in an AC Milan side that dominated Italian football for the best part of a decade, was born on this day in 1963 in Cisano Bergamasco in Lombardy.  A winger or midfielder famed for his ability to create goalscoring opportunities for his team-mates, Donadoni was once described by the brilliant French attacker Michel Platini as ‘the best Italian footballer of the 1990s’. His collection of 21 winner’s medals includes six for winning the Serie A title with AC Milan and three for the European Cup or Champions League.  He was also part of the Italian national team that reached the final of the World Cup in 1994, losing to Brazil on penalties.  Donadoni was never a prolific goalscorer: in more than 500 league and international matches, he found the net only 34 times. Yet he had exceptional technical ability and great passing skills and if tallies of ‘assists’ in matches had been recorded during his career as they are now, the role he played in Milan’s success in particular would be appreciated still more.  Since ending his career as a player, Donadoni has totted up 450 matches as a coach, taking charge at seven clubs in Italian football and one in China, as well as having a stint as head coach of the national team. Read more…

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Cesare Pavese - writer and translator

Author introduced great American writers to Fascist Italy

Cesare Pavese, the writer and literary critic who, through his work as a translator, introduced Italy to the Irish novelist James Joyce and a host of great American authors of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1908 in Santo Stefano Belbo, a town in Piedmont about 60km from Turin.  Pavese would become an acclaimed novelist after the Second World War but was frustrated for many years by the strict censorship policies of Italy’s Fascist government.  It is thought he devoted himself to translating progressive English-language writers into Italian as the best way by which he could promote the principles of freedom in which he believed.  Pavese’s translations would have given most Italians they first opportunity to read writers such as Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos and Daniel Defoe, as well as Joyce, who would ultimately spend many years living in Italy.   The son of Eugenio Pavese, an officer of the law courts in Turin, Cesare had a fractured childhood. His father died when he was only six and his mother, Consolina, is said to have shown him little affection.  Read more…

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Francesco Carrozzini - director and photographer

Famous for portraits of wealthy and famous

The American-based director and photographer Francesco Carrozzini was born on this day in 1982 in Monza, Italy.  The son of the late former editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Vogue magazine, Franca Sozzani, Carrozzini has directed many music videos and documentary films and a small number of feature-length movies, including one about the life of his mother.  In photography, he has become best known for his portraits of the rich and famous, including actors such as Robert De Niro and Cate Blanchett, models including Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, musicians such as Lana Del Ray and Kanye West, and artists including Jeff Koons and Andres Serrano.  Carrozzini has also photographed a number of political leaders, including the former British prime minister Tony Blair, ex-Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.  He is a founder of the Franca Sozzani Fund for Preventive Genomics, which he helped create following the death of his mother at the age of 66 from a rare form of cancer.  Franca Sozzani’s prominence in the fashion and magazine industry meant that Carrozzini grew up in a house he described as being filled with creative energy.  Read more…

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Allied troops land at Salerno

Operation that marked start of invasion of Italy

The first wave of an invasion force that would eventually take control of much of the Italian peninsula on behalf of the Allies landed on the beaches around Salerno in Campania on this day in 1943.  More than 450 ships carrying 190,000 troops assembled off the coast on the evening of September 8, shortly after news had broken that terms for the surrender of the Italian half of the Axis forces had been agreed.  The US 36th Infantry Division were in the vanguard of the invasion force, approaching the shore at Paestum at 3.30am on September 9, and there were other landings further up the coast near Battipaglia and Pontecagnano involving British troops.  After news of the Italian surrender, the invasion force, which consisted initially of 55,000 troops, were unsure how much resistance they would encounter.  A decision had been taken not to launch a naval or aerial bombardment in advance of the invasion, in the hope that it would take the enemy by surprise. In fact, the Germans were well prepared and even as the first landing craft approached Paestum, the American soldiers on board were greeted with a loudspeaker announcement from near the beach in English, urging them to give themselves up.  Read more…

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Oscar Luigi Scalfaro – President of Italy

Devout lawyer served the Republic all his life

The ninth President of the Italian Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, was born on this day in 1918 in Novara.  After studying law and entering the magistrature he became a public prosecutor and is the last Italian attorney to have obtained a death sentence.  In 1945 he prosecuted the former Novara prefect Enrico Vezzalini and five servicemen, who were accused of collaborating with the Germans. All six were condemned to death and the sentence was carried out a few months later.  Subsequently Scalfaro obtained another death sentence, but the accused was pardoned before the execution could take place.  Scalfaro was brought up to be a devout Catholic and studied law at Milan’s Università Cattolica.  Before the war ended he lost his wife, Maria Inzitari, who died a few weeks after giving birth to their daughter. He never remarried.  In 1948, as a member of Democrazia Cristiana, Scalfaro became a deputy representing Turin and was to keep the seat for more than 40 years, during which he held a number of leadership positions within the Christian Democrat party and in the Chamber of Deputies.  Read more…

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Roberto Donadoni - footballer and coach

Understated midfielder who helped AC Milan win six Serie A titles

Roberto Donadoni is now a coach after
a hugely successful playing career

The footballer and coach Roberto Donadoni, who was a key figure in an AC Milan side that dominated Italian football for the best part of a decade, was born on this day in 1963 in Cisano Bergamasco in Lombardy.

A winger or midfielder famed for his ability to create goalscoring opportunities for his team-mates, Donadoni was once described by the brilliant French attacker Michel Platini as ‘the best Italian footballer of the 1990s’.

His collection of 21 winner’s medals includes six for winning the Serie A title with AC Milan and three for the European Cup or Champions League.

He was also part of the Italian national team that reached the final of the World Cup in 1994, losing to Brazil on penalties.

Donadoni was never a prolific goalscorer: in more than 500 league and international matches, he found the net only 34 times. Yet he had exceptional technical ability and great passing skills and if tallies of ‘assists’ in matches had been recorded during his career as they are now, the role he played in Milan’s success in particular would be appreciated still more.

Since ending his career as a player, Donadoni has totted up 450 matches as a coach, taking charge at seven clubs in Italian football and one in China, as well as having a stint as head coach of the national team. Although he led the Azzurri to the quarter-finals of Euro 2008, he has yet to win a trophy as a coach.

Donadoni won six Serie A
titles with AC Milan

Born within the province of Bergamo, it was natural for Donadoni to launch his professional career with Atalanta, the club based in Bergamo, the Lombardy region’s fourth largest city. He joined the club’s youth system and made his debut in Serie C at the age of 18, winning the Serie C1 title in his first season.

Two years later, in 1984, he helped Atalanta return to Serie A after an absence of five seasons, as Serie B champions. His youthful talent did not go unnoticed and in 1986 he moved to AC Milan, one of the first signings made following Silvio Berlusconi’s takeover of the club.

It was not long before he was playing in front of defenders such as Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Mauro Tassotti and behind strikers of the calibre of Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and George Weah as the Milan teams coached by Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello swept all before them.

He was part of the team that Sacchi led to the 1987-88 Serie A title, Milan’s first for nine years, which went on to win the European Cup in 1989 and 1990, the first team to retain the trophy since Nottingham Forest a decade earlier.

Under Capello, who succeeded Sacchi when the latter was appointed to coach the national team, Donadoni won four scudetti - the scudetto being the shield-shaped badge worn on the shirts of the reigning champions - in the space of five seasons, as well as another European Cup, by then rebranded as the Champions League, in 1994.

Donadoni has gained respect as a coach, although
he has yet to enjoy tangible success

After his fifth domestic title, Donadoni left the club, initially intending to retire but then accepting on offer to extend his career in the United States with the Metrostars, where his form not only prompted a recall to the Italian national team but a further stint with AC Milan, where he was part of Alberto Zaccheroni's team that won Serie A in 1998-99.

Regarded as the most dedicated and selfless of players, he was once quoted as saying that his greatest satisfaction on the football field came from “making the pass that leads to the goal”.

In his international career, Donadoni made his senior debut for the Azzurri in 1986 and was a key member of the team that finished third in the 1990 World Cup on home soil under Azeglio Vicini, although the tournament was marred for him by missing one of Italy’s penalties in the shoot-out that determined their semi-final against Argentina, which was won by the South American side.

He went one better in the 1994 World Cup in the United States. Reunited with his former Milan coach Sacchi, he helped the Italians reach the final in Pasadena, but was again on the losing side after a penalty shoot-out, with Brazil taking the prize. This time, Donadoni was spared the responsibility of taking one of the kicks.

He retired for good in 2000, having helped Al-Ittihad win the Saudi Premier League title.

Since then he has built a second career as a coach. Following the traditional Italian route of working his way up through the lower divisions, Donadoni took his first coaching job with Lecco - just 15km (nine miles) north of his hometown of Cisano Bergamasco - and has since had another nine coaching contracts with eight clubs, as well as a two-year spell as head coach of the national team. 

He was sacked as Azzurri coach after Italy’s disappointing performance at Euro 2008 and had the misfortune to be in charge at Parma as the once highly-successful club plunged towards bankruptcy for a second time in 2015, when he was applauded for sticking by his players - unsuccessfully, in the end - as they battled to avoid relegation from Serie A, despite going unpaid for a year.

The new church of San Zenone in
Cisano Bergamasco

Travel tip:

The small town of Cisano Bergamasco is in the San Martino valley, which straddles the provinces of Lecco, 15km (nine miles) to the north, and Bergamo, 20km (12 miles) to the southeast. It is also close to the lakeside city of Como, some 40km (25 miles) to the west. Although there has been a settlement in the area since Roman times, and some remains of the medieval Vimercati-Sozzi Castle are preserved within the grounds of a private villa, the Cisano Bergamasco of today is typical of the pleasant, well-maintained municipalities to be found in much of northern Italy.

Lecco sits alongside the beautiful Lago
di Lecco, the eastern fork of Lake Como

Travel tip:

Lecco, where Roberto Donadoni took his first steps in coaching, lies at the end of the south eastern branch of Lago di Como, which is known as Lago di Lecco. The Bergamo Alps rise to the north and east of the lake. The writer Alessandro Manzoni lived in Lecco for part of his life and based his famous novel, I promessi sposi, there. 

Also on this day:

1908: The birth of writer Cesare Pavese

1918: The birth of former Italian president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro

1943: Allied troops land at Salerno, south of Naples

1982: The birth of photographer and film director Francesco Carrozzini

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8 September

Michelangelo’s David

Masterpiece emerged from an abandoned block of marble

A huge statue of the Biblical hero David, sculpted by Michelangelo, was unveiled in Piazza della Signoria in Florence on this day in 1504.  The 5.17m (17ft) high statue was placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of civic government in Florence. The sculpture symbolised the defence of civil liberties in the republic of Florence, which at the time was an independent city state threatened on all sides by rival states. It was thought that the eyes of David were looking towards Rome and seemed to have a warning glare.  David is regarded as one of Michelangelo’s masterpieces. He was sculpted from a block of Carrara marble originally designated to be one of a series of prophets for Florence Cathedral. The marble was worked on by two artists before being abandoned and left exposed to the elements in the yard of the Cathedral workshop.  After 25 years of neglect, the Cathedral authorities decided to find an artist to produce a sculpture from their expensive block of marble.  At the age of 26, it was Michelangelo who convinced the overseers of works for the Cathedral that he deserved the commission.  Read more…

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Ludovico Ariosto – poet

Writer led the way with spirituality and humanity

The man who coined the term humanism - umanesimo - Ludovico Ariosto, was born on this day in 1474 in Reggio Emilia.  He became famous after his epic poem, Orlando furioso, was published in 1516.  It is now regarded by critics as the finest expression of the literary tendencies and spiritual attitudes of the Italian Renaissance.  Ariosto chose to focus on the strengths and potential of humanity, rather than upon its role as subordinate to God, which led to the Renaissance humanism movement.  His family moved to live in Ferrara when he was just ten years old and the poet has said he always felt ferrarese.  His father insisted he studied law but afterwards Ariosto followed his natural instincts to write poetry.  When his father died in 1500, Ariosto had to provide for his four brothers and five sisters and took the post of commander of the Citadel of Canossa at the invitation of Ercole I d'Este.  Then, in 1503, he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, son of Ercole I. He was obliged to follow the Cardinal on diplomatic, and sometimes dangerous, missions and expeditions.  Read more…

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Magda Olivero - soprano

Singer who performed into her 80s and lived to 104

The opera singer Magda Olivero, who became known as the last verismo soprano, died on this day in 2014. She was almost halfway through her 105th year, having been born in 1910.  Olivero became associated with the works among others of Francesco Cilea, Pietro Mascagni, Umberto Giordano and Franco Alfano, all of whom she actually worked with in person, her longevity providing a 21st century link with the world of 19th century Italian opera. She missed the chance to know and work with Giacomo Puccini only narrowly, the composer passing away at the age of 66 when Olivero was 14.  Born in Saluzzo in Piedmont, Olivero made her operatic debut eight years after Puccini’s death in a radio production in Turin in 1932. She gave her last stage performance 49 years later in 1981, although even that was not the end of her career. Her last recording of her signature role - Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur - did not come until 1994, when she was still able to control her pitch and tone at the age of 83.  Born as Maria Maddalena Olivero to a well-to-do family who gave her a good education, she built on her radio debut - singing Nino Cattozzo's oratorio, I misteri dolorosi - to establish a successful career.  Read more…

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7 September

Kidnapping of Pope Boniface VIII

When the Pope was slapped down by a disgruntled landowner

An army, representing King Philip IV of France and the anti-papal Colonna family, entered Anagni in Lazio and captured Pope Boniface VIII inside his own palace on this day in 1303.  The Pope was kept in custody for three days and was physically ill-treated by his captors until the local people rose up against the invaders and rescued him.  Boniface VIII returned to Rome, but he was physically and mentally broken after his ordeal and died a month later.  The Pope had been born Benedetto Caetani in Anagni in 1230. He became Pope Boniface VIII in 1294 after his predecessor abdicated. He organised the first Catholic Jubilee Year to take place in Rome in 1300 and founded Sapienza University in the city in 1303, the year of his death.  But Boniface VIII is mainly remembered for his conflicts with Philip IV of France. In 1296 Boniface VIII issued the bull Clericis Laicos which forbade under the sanction of automatic excommunication any imposition of taxes on the clergy without express licence by the Pope. Then in 1302 he issued a bull proclaiming the primacy of the Pope and insisting on the submission of the temporal to the spiritual power.  Read more…

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Genoa Cricket and Football Club

Italy's historic first football club

Italy's oldest surviving football club was founded on this day in 1893 in Genoa.  Originally named Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club, it was established by British Consular officials and for a number of years football was a minor activity.  Initially, Italians could not be members.  Football became more its focus after an English maritime doctor, James Spensley, arrived in Genoa in 1897 and organised a match against Football Club Torinese, which had been formed in Turin in 1894. Spensley insisted the club's rules be altered to allow Italians to play.  The match took place in January 1898 and although the attendance was only around 200 spectators, it was deemed a success by those who took part, particularly the Turin side, who won.  After a return match, plans were drawn up to form an Italian Football Federation and to organise a first Italian Championship.  Genoa were the inaugural champions, although only four teams took part and the competition was completed in the course of one day, in May, at the Velodromo Umberto I in Turin.   Spensley's team beat Internazionale of Milan in the final.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Gioachino Belli – poet

Sonnet writer satirised life in 19th century Rome

The poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli was born on this day in 1791 in Rome and was christened Giuseppe Francesco Antonio Maria Gioachino Raimondi Belli.  He was to become famous for his satirical sonnets written in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome.  After taking a job in Civitavecchia, a coastal town about 70km (44 miles) northwest of Rome, Belli’s father moved the family to live there, but after he died - of either cholera or typhus - his wife returned to Rome with her children and took cheap lodgings in Via del Corso.  Living in poor circumstances, Belli began writing sonnets in Italian at the suggestion of his friend, the poet Francesco Spada.  In 1816, Belli married a woman of means, Maria Conti, and went to live with her in Palazzo Poli, the palace that forms the backdrop to the Trevi Fountain. This gave him the freedom to develop his literary talents. They had a son, Ciro, in 1824.  The palace was Belli’s home for 21 years, from 1816 to 1837, but he was able to travel to other places in Italy where he came into contact with new ideas. It was during a stay in Milan that he first encountered dialect poetry and satire.  Read more…

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6 September

Andrea Camilleri – author

Creator of Inspector Montalbano

Writer and film producer Andrea Camilleri, who died in 2019, was born on this day in 1925 in Porto Empedocle in Sicily.  Famous for creating the fictional character Inspector Montalbano, Camilleri is a prolific, best-selling novelist who has generated worldwide interest in the culture and landscapes of Sicily.  Camilleri studied literature and although he never completed his course he began to write poems and short stories. He was taught stage and film direction and became a director and a screenwriter. He worked on several television productions for RAI, including the Inspector Maigret series.  He wrote his first novel in 1978 but it was not until 1992 that one of his novels, La stagione della caccia - The Hunting Season - became a bestseller.  In 1994 Camilleri published La forma dell’acqua - The Shape of Water - which was the first novel to feature the character of Inspector Montalbano, a detective serving the police in Vigàta, an imaginary Sicilian town.  The book was written in Italian but had a real Sicilian flavour, with local phrases and sayings and descriptions of the classic Sicilian dishes particularly favoured by Montalbano.  Read more…

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Giovanni Fattori - painter

Landscape artist who painted Risorgimento battle scenes 

The painter Giovanni Fattori, who campaigned to free Italy from Austrian domination and captured Risorgimento battle scenes on canvas, was born on this day in 1825 in Livorno.  Fattori became a leading member of a group of Tuscan painters known as the Macchiaioli, who have been described as the Italian equivalent of the French Impressionists but whose images were more sharply defined.  The group, largely comprising painters from a working class background, saw themselves more as a social movement who expressed themselves through art.  Born into a modest household in the Via della Coroncina in the centre of Livorno, the Tuscan port city, Fattori’s family hoped he would seek a qualification in commerce that would equip him to prosper in the city’s trade-based economy.  But his skill in sketching persuaded them instead to apprentice him in 1845 to Giuseppe Baldini, a local painter of religious themes.  The following year he moved to Florence to study under Giuseppe Bezzuoli and enrol at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.  It was while he was in Florence, in 1848, that he became politically active, joining the Partito d’Azione.  Read more…

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Francesco I d’Este – Duke of Modena

Military leader left legacy of fine architecture

Francesco I, Duke of Modena, who was to be immortalised in a bust by the sculptor, Bernini, was born on this day in 1610 in Modena in Emilia-Romagna.  He is remembered as a skilful military commander, who enriched Modena with the building of the Ducal Palace.  Francesco was the eldest son of Alfonso III d’Este and Isabella of Savoy and became Duke of Modena in 1629 after the death of his mother had prompted his grieving father to abdicate in order to take religious vows and become a Capuchin Friar in Merano.  During the next two years about 70 per cent of the inhabitants of Modena were killed by the plague.  The Duke’s father, now known as Fra’ Giambattista da Modena, tried to help the dying and went about preaching during the outbreak of plague, before retiring to a convent built by Francesco for him in Castelnuovo in Garfagnana.  After the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, Francesco sided with Spain and invaded the Duchy of Parma, but when he went to Spain to claim his reward he was able to acquire only Correggio, for a payment of 230,000 florins.  Francesco then sided with Venice, Florence and Parma against Pope Urban VIII and tried unsuccessfully to conquer Ferrara.  Read more…

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Isabella Leonarda – composer

Devout nun wrote an abundance of Baroque music

Isabella Leonarda, a nun who was one of the most productive women composers of her time, was born on this day in 1620 in Novara.  Leonarda’s published work spans a period of 60 years and she has been credited with more than 200 compositions.  She did not start composing regularly until she was in her fifties, but noted in the dedication to one of her works that she wrote music only during time allocated for rest, so as not to neglect her administrative duties within the convent.  Leonarda was the daughter of Count Gianantonio Leonardi and his wife Apollonia. The Leonardi were important people in Novara, many of them church and civic officials.  Leonarda entered the Collegio di Sant’Orsola, a convent in Novara, when she was 16 and rose to a high position within the convent.  Her published compositions began to appear in 1640 but it was the work she produced later in her life that she is remembered for today and she became one of the most prolific convent composers of the Baroque era. It is believed she taught the other nuns to perform music, which would have given her the opportunity to have her own compositions performed.  Read more…

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5 September

Francesca Porcellato - Paralympian

Life of sporting excellence born of horrific accident

Francesca Porcellato, one of Italy’s most enduring Paralympians, was born on this day in 1970 in Castelfranco Veneto.  She has competed in seven summer Paralympics as an athlete and cyclist and three winter Paralympics in cross-country skiing, winning a total of 14 medals, including three golds.  At the 2010 Winter Paralympics in Vancouver, Canada, she was flag-bearer for the Italian team.  She is also a prolific wheelchair marathon competitor, sharing with America’s Tatyana McFadden the distinction of having won the London Marathon wheelchair event four times.  As recently as 2017, at the age of 47, Francesca won gold in the H3 event at the Paracycling road world championships in Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. The H3 category – for paraplegic, tetraplegic or amputees unable to ride a standard bicycle – involves competitors riding in a lying position, using their arms to turn the wheels.  Francesca was the defending champion in the H3 after winning gold at the 2015 championships in Nottwil in Switzerland, where she also took gold in the time trial.  Read more…

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Mario Scelba – Prime Minister of Italy

Tough interior minister worked for social and economic reform

Mario Scelba, a Christian Democrat who would become Italy’s 33rd Prime Minister, was born on this day in 1901 in Caltagirone in Sicily.  He earned the nickname ‘the Iron Sicilian’ while serving as Interior Minister because of his repression of both left-wing protests and Neo-Fascist rallies.  Scelba had been born into a poor family that worked on land owned by the priest Don Luigi Sturzo, who was to become one of the founders of the Italian People’s Party (PPI).  As his godfather, Sturzo paid for Scelba to study law in Rome. When the Fascists suppressed the PPI and forced Sturzo into exile, Scelba remained in Rome as his agent.  He wrote for the underground newspaper, Il Popolo, during the Second World War. He was once arrested by the Germans but freed after three days as he was considered to be ‘a worthless catch’.  After Rome’s liberation by the Allied Forces, Scelba joined the new Christian Democrats, reborn out of the PPI. The Christian Democrats started organising post-Fascist Italy in competition with the centre and left parties, but also at times in coalition with them.  Read more…

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Tommaso Campanella – poet and philosopher

Friar had utopian dream to banish poverty

Writer Tommaso Campanella was born on this day in 1568 in Stilo in Reggio Calabria and was baptised Giovanni Domenico Campanella.  As a friar who was also a philosopher, Campanella tried to reconcile humanism with Roman Catholicism. He is best remembered for his work, La città del sole (The city of the sun), written in 1602 which was about a utopian commonwealth where every man’s work contributed to the good of the community and there was no poverty.  The son of a poor cobbler, Campanella was an infant prodigy who joined the Dominican order before he was 15, taking the name Fra Tommaso.   He was influenced by the work of philosopher Bernardino Telesio, who opposed Aristotle’s ideas, and he became interested in astrology, which constantly featured in his writing.  After Campanella published his own work, Philosophy Demonstrated by the Senses, which stressed the need for human experience as a basis for philosophy, he was arrested, tried and imprisoned briefly for heresy.  Campanella then became interested in pragmatism and the idea of political reform, moved deeply by the poverty of the people living in his native Stilo.  Read more…

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Giacomo Zabarella – philosopher

Scholar devoted his life to explaining Aristotle’s ideas

The leading representative of Renaissance Aristotelianism, Giacomo Zabarella, was born on this day in 1533 in Padua in the Veneto.  His ability to translate ancient Greek enabled him to understand the original texts written by Aristotle and he spent most of his life presenting what he considered to be the true meaning of the philosopher’s ideas.  He had been born into a noble Paduan family who arranged for him to receive a humanist education.  After entering the University of Padua he was taught by Francesco Robortello in the humanities, Bernardino Tomitano in logic, Marcantonio Genua in physics and metaphysics and Pietro Catena in mathematics. All were followers of Aristotle.  Zabarella obtained a Doctorate in Philosophy from the university in 1553 and was offered the Chair of Logic in 1564. He was promoted to the first extraordinary chair of natural philosophy in 1577.  Zabarella became well known for his writings on logic and methodology and spent his entire teaching career at the University of Padua.  As an orthodox Aristotelian, he sought to defend the scientific status of theoretical natural philosophy.  Read more…

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4 September

NEW - Rita Atria - witness of justice

Tragic teenager who broke Mafia code of omertà

Rita Atria, the girl from a Mafia family in southwest Sicily who famously went to the police after her father and brother were both killed by criminal rivals, was born on this day in 1974 in Partanna, in the province of Trapani. She was just 11 years old when her father, Vito, ostensibly a shepherd but in reality a local Mafia boss, was shot dead by a hit man hired by a rival family. The killing took place in 1985, nine days before her brother, Nicolò, was due to be married. He vowed to avenge his father’s death and spoke openly about knowing who was responsible.  He and his bride, Piera Aiella, a local girl, were both 18 at the time of their marriage. Piera, who had known Nicolò since he was 14, did not wish to marry him but Vito had thought she would make his son a suitable wife, and had made it clear to her that she had little choice in the matter.  They had a child in 1988 and in 1991 moved to the nearby village of Montevago, where Nicolò set up a pizzeria.  The day he opened for business, in June, 1991, he and Piera invited a few friends to a modest celebration party. Read more…

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Luigi Cadorna – Marshall of Italy

Tough military leader was blamed for losing crucial battle

Luigi Cadorna, a military General who was made a Marshall of Italy, was born on this day in 1850 in Verbania, on the shore of Lake Maggiore in the Piedmont region.  Cadorna is most remembered for his role as Chief of Staff of the Italian Army during the first part of the First World War.  His father was General Raffaele Cadorna, the Piedmontese military leader whose capture of Rome in 1870 completed the unification of Italy.  Sent by his father to a military school in Milan from the age of 10, he entered the Turin Military Academy when he was 15 and, after graduating at the age of 18, was commissioned as a second lieutenant of artillery.  He participated in the occupation of Rome in 1870 as part of the force commanded by his father.  After becoming a Major, Cadorna was appointed to the staff of General Pianelli and became Chief of Staff of the Verona Divisional Command.  From 1892 he was the Colonel commanding the 10th Regiment of Bersaglieri, where he acquired a reputation for strict discipline and harsh punishment.  He was promoted to lieutenant general in 1898 and subsequently held a number of senior command positions.  Read more…

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Giacinto Facchetti - footballer

The original - and best - attacking full back

The footballer Giacinto Facchetti, who captained Italy at two World Cups and won four Serie A titles plus two European Cups for Inter Milan, died on this day in 2006 in Milan at the age of 64.  He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. When his funeral took place at the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, more than 12,000 fans joined the mourners marking his life. His remains were then taken back to his home town of Treviglio in the province of Bergamo.  Apart from being regarded as the model professional and a pillar of moral decency, Facchetti was seen as a player ahead of his time, the first attacking full back who was a master in both disciplines of his game.  Under the coaching of Internazionale’s great Argentine-born coach, Helenio Herrera, he became integral to the defensive system known as catenaccio, of which Herrera was one of the highest profile advocates.  But Facchetti also knew exactly when to turn defence into attack and to exploit his speed and athleticism going forward. Inter were known as a defensive team but they were also one of the best at punishing opponents with rapid breakaway attacks. In more than 600 appearances for Inter, Facchetti scored 75 goals, the most by any defender in the history of football in Italy.  Read more…

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Saint Rosalia

Little Saint ended the plague in Palermo

The Feast Day of Saint Rosalia is being celebrated today in Sicily, throughout the rest of Italy, in America, Venezuela and in many other countries.  Saint Rosalia, also known as La santuzza, or the Little Saint, is the patron saint of Palermo as well as three towns in Venezuela.  Centuries after Rosalia’s death, the people of Palermo believed she ended the plague when what they thought were her remains were carried in a procession through the city.  Rosalia was born in Palermo in about 1130 into a noble Norman family that claimed to descend from Charlemagne.  She became devoutly religious and eventually went to live as a hermit in a cave on Mount Pellegrino in Sicily.  There is a story that she was led by two angels to live in the cave and that she wrote on the wall that she had chosen to live there out of her love for Jesus. She is believed to have died in 1166 when she would have been about 36.  In 1624 when Palermo was afflicted by the plague, Rosalia appeared first to a sick woman and then to a hunter to tell them where her remains were to be found. She told the hunter to bring her bones to Palermo to be carried in a procession through the city.  Read more…

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