Marco Malvaldi – crime writer and chemist

Author has mastered the science of detective fiction

Marco Malvadi began his writing
career with La briscola in cinque

Novelist Marco Malvaldi, who has written a prize-winning mystery featuring the real-life 19th century Italian culinary expert Pellegrino Artuso as his fictional sleuth, was born on this day in 1974 in Pisa.

Malvaldi, who is a graduate in chemistry from Pisa University, has also written a travel guide about his home town with the title Scacco alle Torre (Checkmate to the Tower), which has been presented at the Pisa Book Festival. In the book, he writes a story about a nocturnal walk through the city entitled Finalmente soli (Finally Alone), which was inspired by an image taken by a professional photographer, Nicola Ughi, a fellow Pisan, who has become his official portraitist. 

He began his writing career in 2007 with a mystery novel, La briscola in cinque (Game for Five), published by Sellerio Editore. The novel’s protagonist, Massimo, a barista, and the owner of a bar named BarLume, which is a play on the Italian word barlume, which means 'flicker of light', is forced into the role of investigator in the fictional seaside resort town of Pineta on the Tuscan coast.  

Other books in the series followed and three have been translated into English: Il gioco delle tre carte (Three-card Monte), Il re dei giochi (The King of Games) and La carta più alta (The Highest Card).

In 2011, Malvaldi’s novel, Odore di chiuso (The Scent of Must) was published by Sellerio Editore and later published in English under the title, The Art of Killing Well. It featured Pellegrino Artusi, a renowned 19th century gastronomist from the Romagna region, as his fictional detective. The novel was awarded the Isola d’Elba Award and the Castiglioncello Prize. 

Malvadi's novel The
Art of Killing Well

Malvaldi published a thriller in 2012, Milioni di milioni (Millions of Millions), which is set in the fictional Tuscan town of Montesodi Marittimo, and features a university geneticist and an archivist, who form an unusual team of amateur investigators. In 2013, Malvaldi was awarded the literary prize, Premio Letterario La Tore Isola d’Elba - two of five literary honours his books have won.

After graduating, Malvaldi also did research in the department of pharmacy at Pisa University and he has written several books about science. His book, Le due teste del tiranno: metodi matematici per la Libertà (The Two Heads of the Tyrant: Mathematic Methods for Freedom), published in 2017, won a 2018 Asimov award, for the best book in scientific dissemination published in Italy.

Malvaldi, whose birthday today is his 50th, has also co-authored books with Roberto Vacca, Dino Leporini, journalist and poet Ernesto Ragazzoni among many others. 

Malvaldi’s partner is Samantha Bruzzone, who is also a chemist and passionate about detective fiction. Together, they have written two children’s books and in 2022 the novel, Chi si ferma e perduto (Who Stops is Lost).

Pisa's leaning tower began to 
tilt soon after it was built

Travel tip:

Pisa is world famous for its leaning tower, which Malvaldi writes about in his book Scacco alle Torre (Checkmate to the Tower). Work began on the construction of a freestanding bell tower for the Cathedral in Pisa in 1173. The tower’s famous tilt began during the building process and is believed to have been caused by the laying of inadequate foundations on ground that was too soft on one side to support the weight of the structure. The tilt got worse over the years until work had to be carried out to correct it in the 20th century. At its most extreme, the tower leaned at an angle of 5.5 degrees but since the restoration work carried out between 1990 and 2001 the tower leans at about 3.99 degrees. The tower was reopened to the public in 2001, when it was declared that it would be stable for another 300 years.

The picturesque harbour at the port of Portoferraio
on the island of Elba off the Tuscan coast

Travel tip:

The Tuscan coast, which Malvaldi fictionalises in some of his books, has a long stretch of sandy beaches that include holiday destinations such as Viareggio, Forte dei Marmi, Catiglioncello, Follonica, Castiglione della Pescaia, Porto Ercole, Talamone, and many others. Off the coast is the island of Elba, a popular destination for holidaymakers who arrive by ferry at Portoferraio, where there is an old port and a modern seafront with hotels. The west coast of the island has sandy beaches, but the east coast is more rugged with high cliffs. Inland there are olive groves and vineyards producing the wine, Elba DOC. You can visit Napoleon’s two residences while he was in exile on the island, Palazzina Naopleonica, a modest house built around two windmills in Portoferraio, and Villa San Martino, his country house, further inland at San Martino and decorated inside with Egyptian-style frescoes.

Also on this day:

98: Trajan becomes Emperor of Rome 

1861: Italy elects its first parliament

1881: The birth of mobster Frank Nitti

1901: The death of composer Giuseppe Verdi

1927: The birth of writer and novelist Giovanni Arpino

1962: The birth of musician Roberto Paci Dalò

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26 January

Valentino Mazzola – footballer

Tragic star may have been Italy’s greatest player

The footballer Valentino Mazzola, captain of the mighty Torino team of the 1940s, was born on this day in 1919 in Cassano d’Adda, a town in Lombardy about 30km (19 miles) northeast of Milan.  Mazzola, a multi-talented player who was primarily an attacking midfielder but who was comfortable in any position on the field, led the team known as Il Grande Torino to five Serie A titles in seven seasons between 1942 and 1949. He scored 109 goals in 231 Serie A appearances for Venezia and Torino and had become the fulcrum of the Italy national team, coached by the legendary double World Cup-winner Vittorio Pozzo.  In just over a decade at the top level of the Italian game he achieved considerable success and some who saw him play believe he was the country’s greatest footballer of all time.  His life was cut short, however, when he and most of the Grande Torino team – and at the same time the Italian national team – were killed when a plane carrying them home from a friendly in Portugal crashed in thick fog on its approach to Turin airport on May 4, 1949.  The Superga Disaster – so-called because the aircraft collided with the rear wall of the Basilica of Superga, which stands on a hill overlooking the city – claimed the lives of 18 players.  Read more…

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Hebrew Bible in print for first time

Bologna printer makes history

The first printed edition of the Hebrew Bible was completed in Bologna on this day in 1482.  Specifically, the edition was the Pentateuch, or Torah, which consists of the first five books of the Christian and Jewish Bibles - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  Torah, in Hebrew, means 'instruction'.  The book was given that name because the stories within it, which essentially form the opening narrative of the history of the Jewish people, and the interpretations offered of them, were intended to set out the moral and religious obligations fundamental to the Jewish way of life.  The book was the work of the Italian-Jewish printer Abraham ben Hayyim dei Tintori, from Pesaro.  The text consisted of large, clear square letters, accompanied by a translation in the Jewish biblical language Aramaic and a commentary by Rashi, who had been the foremost biblical commentator of the Middle Ages.  It was published and financed by Joseph ben Abraham, a member of the Caravita banking family in Bologna. The editor was the Hebrew scholar Yosef Hayyim ben Aaron, of Strasbourg.  The printing press had been invented in Germany in 1439.  Read more…

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Giovanni Lanfranco - painter

Artist from Parma whose technique set new standards

The painter Giovanni Lanfranco, whom some critics regard as the equal of Pietro da Cortona and Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) among the leading masters of High Baroque painting in Rome, was born on this day in 1582 in Parma.  A master of techniques for creating illusion, such as trompe l'oeil and foreshortening, he had a major influence on 17th century painting in Naples also, inspiring the likes of Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena.  Lanfranco is best known for his Assumption of the Virgin (1625-7) in the duomo of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome, the altar fresco of the Navicella (1627-28) in St Peter’s Basilica, the cupola of the Gesù Nuovo church (1634-36) in Naples and the fresco of the Cappella del Tesoro, in Naples Cathedral (1643).  His St Mary Magdalen Transported to Heaven (c.1605), currently housed in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, is another outstanding example of his work, as is The Ecstasy of the Blessed Margaret of Cortona (1622), in the Pitti Palace in Florence.  Lanfranco’s dome frescoes were influenced by the work of Antonio da Correggio, the master of chiaroscuro.  Read more…

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Gabriele Allegra – friar and scholar

Sicilian who learned Chinese to carry out his life’s work

The Blessed Gabriele Allegra, a Franciscan friar who translated the entire Catholic Bible into Chinese, is remembered on this day every year.  He was born Giovanni Stefano Allegra in San Giovanni la Punta in the province of Catania in Sicily in 1907 and he entered the Franciscan seminary in Acireale in 1918.  Gabriele Allegra was inspired to carry out his life’s work after attending a celebration for another Franciscan who had attempted a translation of the Bible into Chinese in the 14th century. For the next 40 years of his life the friar devoted himself to his own translation.  Gabriele Allegra was ordained a priest in 1930 and set sail for China. On his arrival he started to learn Chinese.  With the help of his Chinese teacher he prepared a first draft of his translation of the Bible in 1947 but it was not until 1968 that his one volume Chinese Bible was published for the first time.  Gabriele Allegra died on 26 January 1976 in Hong Kong. Although he was primarily a scholar, he had also helped the poor, the sick and lepers along the way.  He was declared Venerable in 1994.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Calcio: A History of Italian Football, by John Foot

The first history of Italian football to be written in English, Calcio: A History of Italian Football is a mix of serious analysis and comic storytelling, with vivid descriptions of games, goals, dives, missed penalties, riots and scandals in the sometimes richest and toughest league in the world.  Calcio tells the story of Italian football from its origins in the 1890’s to the present day. It takes us through a history of great players and teams, of style, passion and success, but also of violence, cynicism, catenaccio tactics and corruption.  We meet the personalities that have shaped this history – from the Italian heroes to the foreigners that failed, the model professionals to the mavericks. Calcio evokes the triumphs (the 1982 World Cup victory) and the tragedies (Meroni, the 'Italian George Best', killed by his number one fan), set against a backdrop of paranoia and intrigue, in a country where the referee is seen as corrupt until proven otherwise.

John Foot, whose father, Paul, was a noted investigative journalist, is an English academic and historian specialising in Italy. His other books include Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism, The Archipelago: Italy Since 1945, and Pedalare! Pedalare!: A History of Italian Cycling.

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25 January

NEW - Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto - magistrate

Brave investigator murdered by the Sicilian Mafia

The fearless magistrate Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto was assassinated by Mafia gunmen in Valderice, a small town near the Sicilian city of Trapani, on this day in 1983.  Ciaccio Montalto, a state prosecutor who had been involved in every major organised crime investigation in western Sicily over the previous 12 years, was a short distance from his home in the early hours of the morning when his Volkswagen Golf was forced off the road.  Three men armed with machine guns and pistols opened fire, hitting Ciaccio Montalto multiple times, leaving his bullet-ridden body slumped in the driver’s seat. Used to hearing gunshots, none of the nearby residents ventured out to see what had happened and it was not until 7.15am that a passing carabinieri patrol came across the car and discovered the magistrate’s body. He was 41 years old.  The VW’s clock, which police believed stopped working because of the damage to the car, was showing 1.12am, which suggested that Ciaccio Montalto had been dead for just over six hours.  Ciaccio Montalto was an Italian magistrate who was a public prosecutor in Trapani.  Read more…

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Antonio Scotti - baritone

Neapolitan singer who played 35 seasons at the Met

The operatic baritone Antonio Scotti, who performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York for a remarkable 35 consecutive seasons, was born on this day in 1866 in Naples.  Scotti's career coincided with those of many fine baritones and experts did not consider his voice to be among the richest. Yet what he lacked in timbre, he compensated for in musicality, acting ability and an instinctive grasp of dramatic timing.  Later in his career, he excelled in roles that emerged from the verismo movement in opera in the late 19th century, of which the composer Giacomo Puccini was a leading proponent, drawing on themes from real life and creating characters more identifiable with real people.  For a while, Scotti's portrayal of the chief of police Baron Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, for example, was the yardstick against which all performances were measured, at least until Tito Gobbi's emergence in the 1930s.  Indeed, in 1924 the Met chose a gala presentation of Tosca as a fitting way for Scotti to mark the 25th anniversary of his debut there.  Scotti's parents in Naples were keen for him to enter the priesthood but he chose to pursue his ambitions in music. Read more…

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Friuli earthquake

First of two disasters to rock Italy in the same year

A devastating earthquake hit the area now known as Friuli-Venezia Giulia on this day in 1348.  With a seismic intensity believed to be the equivalent of 6.9 on the Richter scale, the effects of the quake were felt right across Europe.  According to contemporary sources, houses and churches collapsed and there were numerous casualties. It was recorded that even as far away as Rome, buildings had been damaged.  The epicentre is believed to have been north of Udine to the east of the small towns of Tolmezzo, Venzone and Gemona.  The earthquake happened on 25 January early in the afternoon and its effects were immediately felt in Udine, where the castle and cathedral were both damaged.  In Austria the town of Villach was later hit by a landslide caused by the earthquake. Buildings in Carniola, part of present day Slovenia, and in Vicenza, Verona and Venice were also damaged.  It was recorded that the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome was damaged by the earthquake and an ancient tower nearby developed a permanent tilt. Aftershocks were felt in different parts of Italy for several weeks.  Read more…

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Noemi - singer-songwriter

Debut album topped Italian charts

The singer-songwriter Noemi - real name Veronica Scopelliti - was born in Rome on this day in 1982.  Noemi’s first album, Sulla Mia Pelle, released in 2009, sold more than 140,000 copies, topping the Italian album charts.  It followed her appearance in the second series of the Italian version of The X-Factor, the television talent show that was launched in the United Kingdom in 2004.  Although she did not win the competition, Noemi proved to be the most popular singer, finishing fifth overall.  Soon afterwards, she landed her first recording contract, with Sony Music, and released a single, Briciole, which reached number two in the Italian singles chart.  Heavily influenced by soul music, Noemi established immediately the style that has seen her nicknamed the ‘lioness of Italian pop’.  The elder of two daughters of Armando and Stefania Scopelliti, Noemi - Veronica as she was then - had early experience of appearing in the spotlight - at 19 months she was chosen to model nappies in a TV commercial for Pampers.  She inherited her love for music from her father, who played guitar in a group, and began learning the piano at seven and the guitar at 11.  Read more…

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Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza - explorer

Italian whose name is commemorated in an African capital

The explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, from whom Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo took its name, was born on this day in 1852 in Castel Gandolfo, a town 25km (16 miles) southeast of Rome.  His birth name was Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazzà but he became a French citizen in 1874 after obtaining sponsorship from the French government to help fund his African expeditions, and adopted a French version of his name.  Although it was because of de Brazza that much of Congo became a French colony, the transference of sovereignty took place without bloodshed and de Brazza was well liked for his friendly nature and commitment to peace. Its capital, founded in 1880, was named Brazzaville in his honour and the name was retained even after the Republic of Congo became fully independent in 1960.  De Brazza was born into a noble family, the seventh of 13 children. His father, Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazzà, was a sculptor and painter who had studied under Antonio Canova; his mother, Giacinta Simonetti, hailed from a Roman family with Venetian roots. The family also owned houses in what is now Friuli Venezia Giulia at Brazzacco and Soleschiano, near Manzano, in the province of Udine.  Read more…

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Paolo Mascagni – physician

Scientist was first to map the human lymphatic system

The physician Paolo Mascagni, whose scientific research enabled him to create the first map of the complete human lymphatic system, was born on this day in 1755 in Pomarance, a small town in Tuscany about 40km (25 miles) inland from the western coastline.  Mascagni described his findings in a book with detailed illustrations of every part of the lymphatic system he had identified, which was to prove invaluable to physicians wanting to learn more about a part of the human body vital to the regulation of good health. He also commissioned the sculptor Clemente Susini to create a full-scale model in wax of the lymphatic system, which can still be seen at the Museum of Human Anatomy at the University of Bologna.  Later he created another significant tome, his Anatomia Universa, which comprises 44 enormous copperplate illustrations that set out to bring together in one book the full extent of human knowledge about the anatomy of the human body.  The ‘book’ in the event was so large it was never bound, each plate measuring more than 3ft 6ins (1.07m) by 2ft 6ins (0.76m), designed in such a way that those from the same plane of dissection can be placed together and show the whole body in life size.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style, by Letizia Paoli

Secrecy is one of the defining characteristics of the Italian Mafia. Wiretaps, financial records, and the rare informant occasionally reveal its inner workings, but these impressions are all too often spotty and fleeting, hampering serious scholarship on this major form of criminal activity. During her years as a consultant to the Italian government agency responsible for combating organised crime, Letizia Paoli was given unparalleled insider access to the confessions by pentiti (literally, repentants), former Mafia operatives who had turned. These came primarily from the two largest and most influential Southern Italian mafia associations, known as Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta, each composed of about one hundred mafia families. The sheer volume of these confessions, numbering in the hundreds, and the detail they contained, enabled the Italian government to effectively break up the Italian Mafia in one of the dramatic law enforcement successes in modern times. It is on these same documents that Paoli draws to provide a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behaviour, motivations, and structure. Puncturing academic notions of a modernised Mafia, Paoli argues that to view mafia associations as bureaucracies, illegal enterprises, or an industry specialising in private protection, is simplistic and often inaccurate. These conceptions do not adequately describe the range of functions in which the Mafia engages, nor do they hint at the Mafia's limitations. Mafia groups, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. It is precisely this myopia that has prevented these organisations from developing the skills needed to be a successful and lasting player in the entrepreneurial world of illegal global commerce. An interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organisations.

Letizia Paoli is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Criminology of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany and lecturer at the Department of Sociology of the Constance University, Germany.

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Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto - magistrate

Brave investigator murdered by the Sicilian Mafia

Onlookers gather round Ciaccio Montalto's car
the day after the magistrate was killed

The magistrate Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto was assassinated by Mafia gunmen in Valderice, a small town near the Sicilian city of Trapani, on this day in 1983.

Ciaccio Montalto, a state prosecutor who had been involved in every major organised crime investigation in western Sicily over the previous 12 years, was a short distance from his home in the early hours of the morning when his Volkswagen Golf was forced off the road.

Three men armed with machine guns and pistols opened fire, hitting Ciaccio Montalto multiple times, leaving his bullet-ridden body slumped in the driver’s seat. Used to hearing gunshots, none of the nearby residents ventured out to see what had happened and it was not until 7.15am that a passing carabinieri patrol came across the car and discovered the magistrate’s body. He was 41 years old.

The VW’s clock, which police believed stopped working because of the damage to the car, was showing 1.12am, which suggested that Ciaccio Montalto had been dead for just over six hours.

Ciaccio Montalto was an Italian magistrate who was a public prosecutor in Trapani, known for his investigations into the Mafia’s involvement in drug trafficking and their links to the local business and banking community and politicians.

Ciaccio Montalto was a formidable
adversary of the Trapani Mafia

He had played a part in every major Mafia investigation in the western part of the island since 1971. 

Speculation linked his killing either to an investigation in 1982 that led to arrest warrants being issued for 40 Mafia members and businessmen in the Trapani area, or to the arrest of two leading politicians - a regional Liberal party secretary and a noted member of the Republican party - on charges of granting illegal building contracts to Mafia figures. 

His death did not have the same impact as the slaying of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino almost a decade later, but was nonetheless a severe blow for the fight against the Mafia in Sicily, robbing the judiciary of a courageous and dedicated magistrate.

It was the Mafia's second major strike against the Italian state in just a few months following the killing of the carabinieri chief General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and his wife in Palermo the previous September. 

Ciaccio Montalto was born into a family of legal professionals. His father, Enrico, was a judge in the Court of Cassation, and his grandfather, Giacomo Montalto, a notary and former mayor of Erice, an historic hill town in Trapani province. Giangiacomo’s younger brother, Enrico, was a political activist who died in a car accident at the age of 22.

Although he was born in Milan, Ciaccio Montalto soon dedicated himself to the fight against crime in the city of his roots. He returned to Sicily in 1971, a year after beginning his legal career in the north, and rapidly rose to the level of Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic of Trapani.

Among the high-profile investigations he led was one into the so-called “Marsala monster” that ended with Michele Vinci, who was convicted of kidnapping three girls, including his niece, and leaving them to die in a well, being sentenced to 28 years in jail. 

Ciaccio Montalto was due to be
transferred to Florence

He also broke new ground during an investigation into the involvement of the mafiosi of the province of Trapani in drug trafficking and their links with the business and banking world of Trapani. He was one of the first magistrates to use asset tracing to follow the flow of “dirty money” after becoming convinced that money being laundered through Trapani’s banks was being used to fund a clandestine laboratory for the production of drugs in the Trapani area.

And thanks to Ciaccio Montalto’s work, the Minore brothers, a Mafia clan who controlled Trapani from the 1950s to the late ‘70s and were heavily involved in drug dealing and arms trafficking, as well as being suspected of carrying out many murders, were effectively driven out of the area, brothers Antonino - known as ‘Totò’ - Calogero, Giuseppe and Giacomo being forced to live as fugitives after the magistrate issued an arrest warrant for Totò Minore in 1979 for weapons trafficking. 

Ciaccio Montalto was realistic enough to know his success would put his own safety under threat. Soon after the 40 Mafia members and entrepreneurs he ordered to be arrested in 1982 were released due to lack of evidence, a black cross was painted on the bonnet of the car in which he would ultimately be killed. Unlike some high-profile investigators in the long fight against the Cosa Nostra, he did not have the security of an armour-plated vehicle or a police escort.

Disappointed with the result of that investigation and others, Ciaccio Montalto asked for a transfer to Florence, hoping to investigate the activities of an enclave of Trapani mafiosi who had settled there. The request was granted, but he was killed before it could happen.

Initial investigations into Ciaccio Montalto’s death pointed towards the Minore clan.  Salvatore Minore, in fact, was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for ordering the killing and two mafiosi for carrying it out, although all three were later acquitted by an appeal court. It was later discovered that Minore himself had been killed a year before Ciaccio Montalto.

Ultimately, on the basis of evidence provided by new witnesses and Mafia informers, the killing was attributed to the notorious Corleonesi mobster Salvatore ‘Totò’ Riina, who was seen as the capo di tutti capi - boss of all bosses - on Sicily, along with another leading mob figure, Mariano Agate. Riina, by then already in jail serving several life sentences, was handed another, along with Agate. Two corrupt lawyers, one of whom tipped off Riina after learning of Ciaccio Montalto’s intention to tackle the Trapani gangs in Florence, were acquitted on the grounds of unreliable testimony.

Ciaccio Montalto was granted a state funeral, conducted by the bishop of Trapani, Monsignor Emanuele Romano, at the cathedral of San Lorenzo, where 20,000 people gathered outside.

He was survived by his wife, Marisa La Torre, who would later be appointed deputy mayor of Trapani, and their three daughters Maria Irene, Elena and Silvia. 

The territory of Valderice includes mountain
scenary and a sweep of coastline 

Travel tip: 

The small town of Valderice, where Giangiacomo Ciaccio Montalto lived and sadly died while investigating crimes in Trapani province, has gone under that name only since 1958. It was previously known as Paparella but was renamed following the division of the Monte San Giuliano municipal area. Valderice, which is 8km (five miles) northeast of Trapani and about 95km (60 miles) west of Palermo, includes several scenic areas such as the stunning Zingaro Nature Reserve with its 7km of wild cliff top walks and the remains of a stone age settlement, and three beach areas: Bonagia, Lido Valderice and Rio Forgia.  In the town, the churches of Santa Maria della Misericordia, built in 1637, and Sant’Andrea Apostolo are among the oldest in the area. The Molino Excelsior is an old mill now converted to the Centro di Cultura Gastronomica, which every year provides gastronomic events, workshops and lessons to promote local customs and traditions. 

Erice is one of Sicily's most beautiful towns with
an abundance of picturesque narrow streets

Travel tip:

Dating back 3,000 years, Erice is one of Sicily’s most beautiful towns, a mediaeval gem that nestles some 2,464 feet above the sea, surrounded by vineyards in the mountains behind Trapani.  It is a fortified town with charming, narrow streets, echoing with history and blessed with a pace of life from a different age. Erice is watched over by an impressive 12th-13th century Norman castle, the Castello di Venere, where visitors can stroll around the grassy interior courtyard, flanked by an impressive stone wall allegedly built by Daedalus, the architect of Greek mythology. The castle offers spectacular panoramic views.  Erice has many churches and chapels, including the Norman-style church of San Martino, the church of Sant’Albertino degli Abbati and Chiesa Madre, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, with its quadrangular bell tower. One of the most attractive parts of Erice is the Spanish quarter, said to have been built in the period of Spanish domination to house Spanish soldiers, a requirement for every Sicilian city.

Also on this day:

1348: The Friuli earthquake

1755: The birth of physician Paolo Mascagni

1852: The birth of explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza

1866: The birth of operatic baritone Antonio Scotti

1982: The birth of singer-songwriter Noemi

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