Category: History

The high towers of the town of San Gimignano

In Italian mid-13th century communes, the number and height of towers were a good indicator of the wealth of the place. In fact, although we could think of them as mere castellated defensive structures, they became from a certain moment on the prerogative of noble families. Basically, the tower-house was conceived, a housing type exclusive…
Fidenza Cathedral and the Passio of Saint Domninus

Bibles of stones, sculpture manuscripts, tales and figures came to life from the hands of skilled Romanesque stonemasons at Fidenza Cathedral of Saint Domninus. Wise magisters whose power of symbolic knowledge made it possible to transform imagination into real form. But also humble people of faith who carved the stone giving it deep and unchanging…
Spartacus, the hero and the gladiator

The dry, metallic sound of chains breaking can be heard. Immediately begins a great uproar of shouts and warriors begins, united in a single spasm of freedom. It is only possible to envision that din, at the opening of the gates of the ludus gladiatorius of ancient Capua, vehemently disturbing the quiet of the place.…
Who was William Shakespeare?

“It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the clerk of a Stratford court; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on…
The secrets of the Sicilian city of Messina

The city of Messina has a long history. Ancient Zancle, a toponym derived from the Greek Ζὰγκλης, meaning “sickle”, was founded by Cumans and Chalcidian settlers in the 8th century B.C., as testified by the historian Thucydides1. The name certainly derives from the shape of San Ranieri peninsula, where today is the city’s port. “Was…
Volterra, a town rich of history and mysteries

All around the scenic Piazza dei Priori in Volterra the narrow streets of the Medieval town, still enclosed by the original 13th-century walls, intertwine. The city converged on two main centers of power: the Palazzo dei Priori was the seat of municipal government, while the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta represented the symbol of episcopal…
The mysterious disappearance of the physicist Ettore Majorana

“I was born in Catania, August 5th, 1906. I earned a high school diploma in classical studies in1923; I then regularly attended engineering studies in Rome university until the beginning of the final year. In 1928, desiring to study pure science, I requested and obtained admittance to the Faculty of Physics, and in 1929 I…
The village of Monteriggioni, story of a betrayal

An unconquerable, impenetrable fortification, so well perched that no one ever could conquer it with weapons. Along the wooded paths of the Via Francigena, near the glorious city of Siena, is the village of Monteriggioni. The last bastion of an ancient and heroic resistance, it lies on the verdant hills of Tuscany hinterland. A famous…
The mysteries of the fortified citadel of Milazzo

Between two wide inlets, the Gulf of Milazzo and the Gulf of Patti, stands imperious an ancient castle. The fortified citadel of Milazzo was one of Sicily’s most important strongholds. It is a spectator and actor of the various dominations that have marked the island over the centuries. Also, it represents the scene of ghostly…
The Avignon Papacy or Babylonian captivity

It was not so unusual for the pope to reside outside Rome – the city was often insecure and unruly – but that this would happen for some seventy years no one imagined. When Clement V transferred the papal see to Avignon at the beginning of the 14th century, it was thought to be only…