Louis Berizzi was in his pajamas when FBI agents burst into his Manhattan apartment and arrested him. As his daughter, Lucetta, and the rest of the family watched, wiping the sleep from their eyes, he hurried into clothing and was taken away. Soon after, FBI agents questioned ...read more
Archaeologists who discovered the imprint of a horse killed in the Pompeii disaster have now cast a full-size plaster replica of the horse’s body print, the first to be found in the wreckage at Pompeii. The horse with no name met its fate in 79 A.D., when the Mount Vesuvius ...read more
Since its original discovery in 1985, archaeologists have uncovered some 222 skeletons in a Longobard medieval necropolis in Veneto, Northern Italy. Each one has a grisly story to tell—the woman with two brooches; two greyhounds; a horse without a head. But one in particular ...read more
According to Machiavellianism, the ends always justify the means—no matter how cruel, calculating or immoral those means might be. Tony Soprano and Shakespeare’s Macbeth may be well-known Machiavellian characters, but the man whose name inspired the term, Niccolo Machiavelli, ...read more
Giuseppe Garibaldi is best known for leading military campaigns that helped unify Italy, but the famed freedom fighter came very close to taking another notable assignment. And his brush with the Union blue remains one of the most curious tales of the Civil War. An Italian ...read more
Roman authorities are now authorized to levy a hefty fine against anyone who wades, bathes, or swims in the Trevi Fountain, the 18th-century fountain decorated by artists from the Bernini school, or other historical waterworks. The new schedule of fines starts at 40 euros (about ...read more
Established around the first century B.C. as a Roman military colony, Florence became a cultural powerhouse between the 14th and 16th centuries, during the Renaissance period. The city was home to such luminaries as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, ...read more
Living in largely independent city-states that they laid out in a grid pattern, the Etruscans excelled at metalworking, seafaring, agriculture and pottery. According to the Roman historian Livy, “no people was ever more devoted to religious observances.” At the same time, they ...read more
Pick any day in the Piazza del Duomo in the Italian city of Pisa, and you will undoubtedly spot a bunch of tourists posing for the same photo: hands outstretched towards the cathedral’s conspicuously tilting bell tower, as if they are supporting it with their sheer strength. The ...read more
Toward the end of the 14th century AD, a handful of Italian thinkers declared that they were living in a new age. The barbarous, unenlightened “Middle Ages” were over, they said; the new age would be a “rinascità” (“rebirth”) of learning and literature, art and culture. This was ...read more
At dawn, the most destructive earthquake in recorded European history strikes the Straits of Messina in southern Italy, leveling the cities of Messina in Sicily and Reggio di Calabria on the Italian mainland. The earthquake and tsunami it caused killed an estimated 100,000 ...read more
In Monza, Italy, King Umberto I is shot to death by Gaetano Bresci, an Italian-born anarchist who resided in America before returning to his homeland to murder the king. Crowned in 1878, King Umberto became increasingly authoritarian in the late 19th century. He enacted a program ...read more
On May 9, 1978, the body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is found, riddled by bullets, in the back of a car in the center of historic Rome. He was kidnapped by Red Brigade terrorists on March 16 after a bloody shoot-out near his suburban home. The Italian government ...read more
On this day in 2001, Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after a team of experts spent 11 years and $27 million to fortify the tower without eliminating its famous lean. In the 12th century, construction began on the bell tower for the cathedral of Pisa, a busy trade center on ...read more
On this day in 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the ...read more
On this day in 1963, a landslide in Italy leads to the deaths of more than 2,000 people when it causes a sudden and massive wave of water to overwhelm a dam. The Diga del Vajont dam was built in the Vaiont Gorge to supply hydroelectric power to Northern Italy. Located 10 miles ...read more
An earthquake in Sicily kills over 100,000 people and destroys several towns on this day in 1908. The 7.5-magnitude tremor off the coast of the large island was also responsible for deaths on the Italian mainland. Sicily is situated near the spot where the European and African ...read more
On this day in 1974, Italian prosecutor Mario Sossi is kidnapped by the Red Brigades. It was the first time that the left-wing terrorist group had directly struck the Italian government, marking the beginning of tensions that lasted for 10 years. The Red Brigades were founded by ...read more
On this day in 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the ...read more
Benito Mussolini was an Italian political leader who became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945. Originally a revolutionary socialist, he forged the paramilitary fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. Called “Il Duce” (the Leader) by his ...read more