by John Hooper
in Italy’s history, 12–22, 31, 107, 203
organized crime and, 68, 230, 235
political, 104–5
religious, 125, 126
soccer-related, 211, 212
terrorist, 52–53
in unsolved mysteries, 52–54
verbal vs. physical, 32, 38–39
toward women, 32, 150–51
Virgin Mary, 93, 126, 135, 229
as role model for women, 143, 152, 154, 166
Vittorio Emmanuele, king of Italy, 269, 274
volcanoes, 5, 7, 106–7, 136
Waldensians, 124–25
war, Italian abhorrence of, 31–32
wealth, 9–10, 277
Weisz, Árpád, 206
welfare, 48, 277, 286
family vs. government as provider of, 177, 179
wills and inheritance, 175, 261
wine, 10, 97, 99
wiretapping, 63–64, 264–65
women, 26, 77, 193
beauty and, 26, 87, 93
changing role of, 139–54
domestic violence against, 32, 150–51
legal rights of, 174
sexual exploitation of, 145–46, 148, 152, 210
sexual myths about, 157–58
subjugation of, 142–43
in workplace, 144, 147–48, 152–53, 177–78
in World War II, 139–41
see also feminist movement
women suffrage, 142, 143
workplace, 94–95, 113, 145
women in, 144, 147–48, 152–53, 177–78
World Bank, 222, 238
World Economic Forum (WEF), 146, 153, 239
World Values Survey, 130, 173, 195, 282
World War I, 9, 10, 35, 128, 219
World War II, 38, 59n, 97n, 101, 107–8, 115, 117, 123, 125, 126, 127, 139–41, 143, 165, 184, 203, 205n, 206, 209, 240, 254, 272, 279, 290
Italian Allied support in, 34–35, 58
Yakuza, 228–29
Yugoslavia, 11, 174, 284
Zapatero, José Luis, 149, 167
Zingari (“Gypsies”), 284–85
*Michelangelo may have taken subtle revenge. In the middle of the tower, above the gate and to either side of the entrance, there is an odd motif that looks suspiciously like a basin draped with a towel. It has been taken by some as a reference to Pius’s origins. He was said to be descended from a line of Milanese barbers.
*Il Risorgimento, or “The Resurgence,” was the movement that led to the ejection of Italy’s foreign rulers and the unification of the country in the nineteenth century.
*The Mezzogiorno refers to the southern one-third or so of mainland Italy, although it is often taken to include Sicily and Sardinia as well.
*After Byzantium, the name of the ancient Greek settlement on the same site.
*The most important monument to survive from Rome’s Byzantine period is the half-ruined Church of Santa Maria Antiqua on the edge of the Forum. Long closed to the public to allow for the restoration of its frescoes, it was reopened for a brief period in 2014.
*From its official title, La Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia (“The Most Serene Republic of Venice”). No one who has looked across the lagoon on a windless day can fail to understand how appropriate it was.
*He was wrong about the cuckoo clocks, though. They were invented not in Switzerland, but in southern Germany.
*Even Russian troops have fought on Italian soil, in 1799–1800, against the invading French revolutionary army.
*It is noteworthy, I think, that the English terms evoke respect for a much wider community—“the public” or “society”—whereas civismo derives from civis and civitas, the Latin words for “citizen,” “citizenship” and the inhabitants of a city-state. Arguably the only unit bigger than a family for which Italians feel an effortless and instinctive respect is the town or city they regard as home.
*Francesco Crispi, one of the heroes of the Risorgimento and one of Italy’s earliest prime ministers, was of Albanian descent. The academic and politician Stefano Rodotà, who became the first head of Italy’s data protection authority, is from an Arbëreshë village in Calabria. His daughter, Maria Laura Rodotà, is a well-known Corriere della Sera columnist and sketch writer.
*Not the least remarkable thing about the Italian national anthem is that Goffredo Mameli was a mere twenty years old when he wrote it.
*Little known outside Italy, Totò remains one of the country’s best-loved comedians, along with Alberto Sordi and Roberto Benigni. Like Chaplin, he specialized in playing the “little man,” but he was in fact an aristocrat—the illegitimate son of a marquis, who adopted him. De Curtis’s titles included “Imperial Highness,” “Palatine Count,” “Knight of the Holy Roman Empire” and “Exarch of Ravenna.”
*In modern times, there have been at least two attempts by neo-Fascists to seize power. In 1961, then head of the military police Giovanni De Lorenzo hatched a plot known by the name Piano Solo. The other, planned for December 7 or 8, 1970, was led by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese. However, doubts have been expressed about the seriousness of both these attempts to seize power, and especially Piano Solo.
*Italy’s constitutional arrangements exaggerate the extent of the instability. Prime ministers cannot reshuffle their cabinets without forming a new government. By the reckoning of most other democracies, Depretis was prime minister three times.
*Depretis was out of office for thirty-one months in eleven years; Berlusconi for twenty-four months in ten and a half years.
*The word he used was negri, which, unlike neri (“blacks”), nowadays has clearly pejorative overtones.
*The comparison is somewhat unfair, however, since many of Italy’s law enforcement officers fulfill duties that elsewhere fall outside the scope of police work. This is certainly true of the Carabinieri, who are a branch of the armed forces and take part in overseas peacekeeping missions; the members of the Guardia di Finanza, who act as tax inspectors, customs officers and border guards; and the Polizia Penitenziaria.
*Ostensibly, this is an acryonym: MOdulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico. But Mosè is the Italian version of Moses, and the name of the project also alludes to the biblical prophet’s parting of the Red Sea.
*See here
*It should be noted that Prodi’s own government did no more than others to clear up the confusion over supposed expulsions.
*In March 2013, the Court of Cassation, Italy’s supreme court, upheld an appeal by the prosecution, quashed the acquittals of both defendants and ordered their appeals to be reheard in Florence. In January 2014, Knox and Sollecito were again found guilty of murdering Kercher. Sollecito’s twenty-five-year sentence was reinstated. Knox’s sentence, of twenty-six years, was increased to twenty-eight years and six months. Lawyers for both defendants said they would lodge a fresh appeal with the Court of Cassation.
*In the 1980s, the Rome prosecutors’ office, which oversees investigations in the capital, won the nickname of il porto delle nebbie (“the misty port”) because of the way so many sensitive inquiries disappeared into a dense judicial fog, never to be heard of again. The phrase comes from the title of the Italian translation of Georges Simenon’s 1932 novel Le port des brumes (translated into English as Death of a Harbormaster).
*The case dragged through the courts for seventeen years. In 2014, Dell’Utri was arrested in Lebanon ahead of a definitive ruling by the Court of Cassation on his appeal against a seven-year jail sentence. His appeal was subsequently thrown out and a request was made by the Italian authorities for his extradition.
*Uncle of murder victim Sarah Scazzi, who disappeared on August 29, 2010.
*Most recently, in the Second World War the retreating German army renounced military action to defend first Rome and
then Florence. Orvieto was saved by a pact between the local British and German commanders.
*Collodi was a pen name. He was born Carlo Lorenzini.
*It could be argued, however, that the figures for Britain and the United States are no longer an accurate reflection of the extent of official snooping. As the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has since revealed, Britons and Americans are under close surveillance through other means.
*One of the Camerata’s most influential members was Galileo Galilei’s father, Vincenzo Galilei, who proposed the decisive leap from polyphony to monody in the accompanying music.
*Verdi’s own surname was coincidentally symbolic. It could be understood as a coded reference to the king under whom Italy would eventually unite: an acronym of “Vittorio Emanuele, Re d’Italia.” So when audiences joined in chanting “Viva Verdi,” they could feel they were doing more than just praising the composer.
*See here.
*Technically, his fourth because of a reshuffle in 2005. See footnote here.
*El Mahroug, who also styled herself Ruby Rubacuori, or “Ruby the Heart-stealer,” was above the age of sexual consent in Italy when she attended the Bunga Bunga sessions, but below the minimum age at which she could be paid for sexual services. Berlusconi was found guilty in 2013 of paying a juvenile prostitute and taking advantage of his official position to coerce the police. In 2014, he was aquitted of both charges on appeal. At the time of writing, it is unclear whether the prosecution intends to lodge a further appeal with the supreme court.
*See here.
*In fact, Aristotle never wrote anything of the sort. He put it as a question: “Now the first thing which presents itself to our consideration is this, whether it is best to be governed by a good man, or by good laws?”
*This point can be overstressed. The same is true of German schön and of other adjectives in other languages. But it is nevertheless striking how often bello and bella are deployed in Italian. It is not perhaps strange that bella should be used in the same way as “love” or “honey” in addressing a woman. But the use of bello is worthy of remark. Whereas, in addressing another man, a Briton might use “mate,” an American “buddy” and a Spaniard “macho” or “tío,” an Italian will use the equivalent of “handsome.”
*Italians first developed a taste for whiskey in the Dolce Vita days of the early 1960s. Until the early 1990s, they were among the world’s most avid consumers of malts, notably Glen Grant, which was bought by the Campari group in 2005. By then, however, overall consumption had begun to fall. Italy remains the world’s fifth-largest market for malts, but the most recent figures show that sales are a third of what they were at their peak.
*From me ne frego (“I don’t give a damn”). See also here.
*It was never used, however, and was only prescribed as the sentence for the assassination, or attempted assassination, of a pope.
*Dr. Keys, who devised and gave the initial letter of his surname to the K-ration, the small but notorious food pack given to American soldiers in the Second World War, took his own advice. He lived for many years in southern Italy and died at the age of one hundred.
*Italy also spent the least of all developed countries on fixing the millennium bug. But that proved to be a shrewd decision.
*See here.
*The actor in question was Franca Faldini, his wife.
*Catenaccio was not, in fact, invented by Italians. It was first used by the Swiss national team and for several years was known by the French word verrou. It entered Italy by way of the Milan team Inter, which used catenaccio to win the league title, known as the scudetto (“little shield”), in the 1951–1952 season.
*The use of the Italian word casino is one of the subtler traps awaiting English speakers. With the accent (and stress) on the final syllable, casinò refers to a gaming palace. Without it, casino refers to a brothel.
*See here.
*The Venetians did not, however, invent the concept. German rulers had been confining Jews to particular areas of their cities since the eleventh century.
*Two Italian Jews, Emilio Segrè and Franco Modigliani, also won Nobel Prizes after fleeing to the United States to escape Fascist persecution.
*Before Rome was occupied, first Turin and then Florence served as the seat of government.
*The choice has since been extended to include approved charities.
*See below, Chapter 19.
*The leader of the original group, Andrea Riccardi, went on to become a university professor. He was a minister in the nonparty government of Mario Monti from 2011 to 2013, responsible for overseas development and racial integration.
*The first tarot packs appeared in Italy in the fifteenth century. But they were used for playing games. It was not until more than three centuries later, in France, that they were employed for divination.
*Altogether, nineteen women partisans were awarded the Medaglia d’Oro al Valore Militare.
*“Witch” seems to have been a mistranslation into English of the Italian versiera, the term for the sheet or rope used to trim a sail and the one Agnesi used to describe the curve.
*Identified, though not by Goethe, as Princess Teresa Ravaschieri di Satriano.
*Magnani won the 1955 Academy Award for best actress for her performance in The Rose Tattoo. Loren was awarded the same Oscar six years later for her role in an Italian-language film, Vittorio De Sica’s La ciociara (shown in English-speaking countries under the title of Two Women).
*The equivalent in Italian of “macho” or “male chauvinist.”
*The most famous former velina is Elisabetta Canalis, who had an unusually long run on Striscia la notizia, from 1999 to 2002, before embarking on a career as an actor. She became internationally famous when she was the girlfriend of Hollywood star George Clooney.
*Not that Italy is the only country in which women’s bodies are exploited in the media. No Italian newspaper has ever published anything similar to the topless “Page Three” shots in British tabloids.
*Born Madonna Louise Ciccone. Her grandparents Gaetano and Michelina Ciccone emigrated to the United States from Pacentro, a mountain village in Abruzzo.
*An archaic honorary title for a woman that was used in the same way that “Mistress” once was in English. Mona Lisa is correctly Monna Lisa.
*One of the few areas in which Italy was given a high rating was sex education. But, as several gynecologists and obstetricians pointed out, that was no thanks to the state. Their own professional body had taken the initiative to promote sex education in the classrooms. Italy remains one of the few countries in Europe where it is not a mandatory subject at school.
*Born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero.
*See here.
*Weirdly, homosexual acts had until then been illegal in the north of the new kingdom, yet legal in the south.
*Her real name is Vladimiro Guadagno. Though physically male, Luxuria has long lived as a woman and prefers to be referred to as such. Her use of the women’s restrooms in parliament elicited protests from some of her fellow (if that is not too inappropriate a term in this context) women legislators.
*See here.
*Italy has maintained its position as a mobile telephone operator’s heaven, notwithstanding the introduction of more sophisticated handsets. By 2010, according to figures compiled by the market research company Nielsen, 28 percent of Italians had bought a smartphone, compared with 17 percent of Americans and only 12 percent of Britons. Interestingly, the country with the second-highest level of smartphone penetration was Spain, another Latin nation with a largely oral culture and strong family ties.
*There are, however, two important exceptions here: la mia mamma and il mio papà (or babbo), even though you say mia madre and mio padre. The article is also used for plural constructions, such as le mie sore
lle (“my sisters”).
*In the case of a couple with only one child, the proportions are one-third each for spouse and child, leaving the remaining one-third to be disposed of by will.