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Name | Modena |
---|---|
Official name | Comune di Modena |
Image shield | Stemma Modena.png |
Coordinates display | title |
Region | Emilia-Romagna |
Province | Modena (MO) |
Frazioni | Albareto, Baggiovara, Ca' Fusara, Cognento, Cittanova, Collegara, Ganaceto, Lesignana, Marzaglia, Navicello, Portile, San Damaso, San Donnino, Tre Olmi, Villanova |
Mayor party | Democratic Party |
Mayor | Giorgio Pighi |
Area total km2 | 182.7 |
Population total | 183069 |
Population as of | 21 December 2009 |
Population demonym | Modenesi |
Elevation m | 34 |
Saint | San Geminiano |
Day | January 31 |
Postal code | 41100 |
Area code | 059 |
Website |
An ancient town, it is the seat of an archbishop, but is now best known as "the capital of engines", since the factories of the famous Italian sports car makers Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati are, or were, located here and all, except Lamborghini, have headquarters in the city or nearby. Lamborghini is headquartered not far away in Sant'Agata Bolognese, in the adjacent Province of Bologna. One of Ferrari's cars, the 360 Modena, was named after the town itself. Also, one of the colors for Ferraris is Modena yellow.
The University of Modena, founded in 1175 and expanded by Francesco II d'Este in 1686, has traditional strengths in Economics, Medicine and Law and is the second oldest Atheneum in Italy, sixth in the whole world. Italian officers are trained at the Italian Military Academy, located in Modena, and partly housed in the Baroque Ducal Palace. The Biblioteca Estense houses historical volumes and 3,000 manuscripts.
Modena is well known in culinary circles for its production of balsamic vinegar.
Famous Modenesi include Mary of Modena, the Queen consort of England and Scotland; operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) and soprano Mirella Freni, born in Modena itself; Enzo Ferrari (1898–1988) eponymous founder of the Ferrari motor company; the Catholic Priest and Senior Exorcist of Vatican Gabriele Amorth; and the rock singer Vasco Rossi who was born in Zocca, one of the 47 comuni in the Province of Modena.
The Apennines ranges begin some 10 km from the city, to the south.
The commune is divided into four circoscrizioni. These are:
Modena has a temperate climate. It experiences hot, humid summers with little rainfall and cold, damp winters.
In the 1st century BC Mutina was besieged twice. The first siege was by Pompey in 78 BC, when Mutina was defended by Marcus Junius Brutus (a populist leader, not to be confused with his son, Caesar's best known assassin). The city eventually surrendered out of hunger, and Brutus fled, only to be slain in Regium Lepidi. In the civil war following Caesar's assassination, the city was besieged once again, this time by Mark Antony, in 44 BC, and defended by Decimus Junius Brutus. Octavian relieved the city with the help of the Senate.
Cicero called it Mutina splendidissima ("most beautiful Mutina") in his Philippics (44 BC). Until the 3rd century AD, it kept its position as the most important city in the newly formed Aemilia, but the fall of the Empire brought Mutina down with it, as it was used as a military base both against the barbarians and in the civil wars. It is said that Mutina was never sacked by Attila, for a dense fog hid it (a miracle said to be provided by Saint Geminianus, bishop and patron of Modena), but it was eventually buried by a great flood in the 7th century and abandoned.
As of December, 2008, Italian researchers have discovered the pottery center where the oil lamps that lit the ancient Roman empire were made. Evidence of the pottery workshops emerged in Modena, in central-northern Italy, during construction work to build a residential complex near the ancient walls of the city. "We found a large ancient Roman dumping filled with pottery scraps. There were vases, bottles, bricks, but most of all, hundreds of oil lamps, each bearing their maker's name", Donato Labate, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, stated.
The Este family were identified as lords of Modena from 1288 (Obizzo d'Este). After the death of Obizzo's successor (Azzo VIII, in 1308) the commune reasserted itself, but by 1336 the Este family was permanently in power. Under Borso d'Este Modena was made a duchy.
His son Francesco V was also a just ruler and famously tended the victims of war and cholera with his own hands. However, he, too, had to face yet more foreign-inspired revolutions and was temporarily expelled from Modena in the European Revolution of 1848. He was restored, amidst wide popular acclaim, by Austrian troops. Ten years later, on August 20, 1859, the revolutionaries again invaded (this time the Piedmontese) annexing Modena into the revolutionary Savoyard nation of Italy as a territorial part of the Kingdom of Italy. A later gerrymandered and corrupt plebiscite of 1860 pretended that the annexation was popularly supported. Notoriously, the voting in the plebiscite was rigged and this was an open secret. However, this has not prevented later generations of gullible, and mainly Anglo-Saxon, historians from believing that the plebiscites were genuine.
(now a military academy).]]
==Main sights==
The Gothic campanile (1224–1319) is called Torre della Ghirlandina from the bronze garland surrounding the weathercock.
The Ducal Palace, begun by Francesco I d'Este in 1634 and finished by Francis V, was the seat of the Este court from the 17-19th century. The palace occupies the site of the former Este Castle, once located in the periphery of the city. Although generally credited to Bartolomeo Avanzini, it has been suggested that advice and guidance in the design process had been sought from the contemporary luminaries, Cortona, Bernini, and Borromini.
The Palace currently houses the Accademia Militare di Modena, the Military Museum and a precious Library.
The Palace has a Baroque façade from which the Honour Court, where the military ceremonies are held, and the Honour Staircase can be accessed. The Central Hall has a frescoed ceiling with the 17th century Incoronation of Bradamante by Marco Antonio Franceschini. The Salottino d'Oro ("Golden Hall"), covered with gilted removable panels, was used by Duke Francis III as his main cabinet of work.
It is characterized by a Clock Tower (Torre dell'Orologio, late 15th century), once paired with another tower (Torre Civica) demolished after an earthquake in 1671. In the interior, noteworthy is the Sala del Fuoco ("Fire Hall"), with a painted frieze by Niccolò dell'Abbate (1546) portraying famous characters from Ancient Rome against a typical Emilia background. The Camerino dei Confirmati ("Chamber of the Confirmed") houses one of the symbols of the city, the Secchia Rapita, a bucket kept in memory of the victorious Battle of Zappolino (1325) against Bologna. This relic inspired the poem of the same title by Alessandro Tassoni. Another relic from the Middle Ages in Modena is the Preda Ringadora, a rectangular marble stone next to the palace porch, used as a speakers' platform, and the statue called La Bonissima ("The Very Good"): the latter, portraying a female figure, was erected in the square in 1268 and later installed over the porch.
Under the Mayor of Modena in collaboration with the Conservatorio dell'Illustrissima Comunita (Conservatory of the Most Illustrious Community), architect Francesco Vandelli was engaged to design the Teatro dell'Illustrissima Comunita, as the theatre was first called, "for the dignity of the city and for the transmission of the scenic arts". Paid for in the manner typical of the time - from the sale of boxes - in addition to a significant gift from Duke Friedrich IV, Vandelli created a design for the new theatre combining ideas from those in Piacenza, Mantua, and Milan, and it opened on 2 October 1841 with a performance of Gandini's Adelaide di Borgogna al Castello di Canossa, an opera specially commissioned for the occasion.
"Cappello da prete" is also a popular meal, which is a very fatty pig's trotter. Other dishes include "Torta Barozzi" or "Torta Nera", which is a made of black tart (a dessert made with a coffee/cocoa and almond filling encased in a fine pastry dough, "Ciccioli", which is a pig's head served cold, and "Pesto di Modena", which is cured pork back fat pounded with garlic, rosemary and Parmigiano-Reggiano used to fill tigelle, borlenghi and crescentine.
As of 2006, 89.61% of the population was Italian. The largest foreign group comes from other parts of Europe (namely Romania and Albania): 3.94%, followed by North Africa: 2.40%, and sub-saharan Africa: 1.94%. Approximately 1 in 5 newborns in Modena has at least one parent of foreign origins.
Category:Former countries on the Italian Peninsula Category:Cities and towns in Emilia-Romagna Category:World Heritage Sites in Italy Category:Romanesque sites in Emilia-Romagna
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Name | Antonello Venditti |
---|---|
Background | solo_singer |
Birth date | March 08, 1949 |
Birth place | Rome, Italy |
Genre | Pop, Pop rock |
Occupation | Singer-songwriter |
Years active | 1971–present |
Label | It, RCA Italiana, Philips, Heinz Music |
Url |
He studied piano in his youth and made his debut in the music world in the early 1970s at the Folkstudio of Rome, together with singers like Francesco De Gregori and Giorgio Lo Cascio. In duo with the former he released in 1972 his first LP, Theorius Campus. The LP scored little success, but Venditti at least made himself noted for the strength of his vocal qualities and for his attention to social issues, evidenced by pieces like Sora Rosa which is sung in Roman dialect. Also in dialect was Roma Capoccia, a declaration of love for his city, which later became one of his most famous songs. Curiously, Venditti refused to sing it for several years, as he considered it not politically or socially "engaged" enough.
Venditti subsequently moved to Milan and released L'orso bruno (1973), made in collaboration with musician Vince Tempera; this album included another song in dialect, E li ponti so' soli, but otherwise was marked by an even stronger attention to social themes. His next work, Le cose della vita ("Things of Our Life"), released the same year for the colossus RCA Music, confirmed this tendency. The following LP Quando verrà Natale ("When Christmas Comes") was similar; its even more naked arrangements emphasize the strength of Venditti's denunciation. After a live performance of the song "A Cristo" ("To Christ"), he was denounced by an Italian police officer for blasphemy. Venditti, however, was later totally acquitted.
Although Venditti's use of religious language was not typical of the culture of the left, his manner of life in the late '60s and the '70s was, as he later told the journalist Giampaolo Mattei, a "secular" one: "They were years in which the influence of the left was really strong and the life of us young people then was somewhat orphaned of God. I think it was the everyday life of the time that led me to participate in and embrace certain things. I emerged from that when I realised it was a dead end because it took away people's happiness. Maybe it did give them social growth, but about happiness it had nothing to say. Too much materialism and too little spirituality. A whole generation grew up with that materialism, with certain slogans."
Venditti's fortunes grew and peaked in 1975, with the LP Lilly. The yearning title-track was another strong accusation, this time against drugs, but it achieved an outstanding success anyway. Other famous pieces in the album were "Compagno di scuola" ("Schoolmate") and the long ballad "Lo stambecco ferito" ("The Wounded Ibex"), the story of a corrupt Northern Italian tycoon. Venditti continued to deal with front-page matters in his next LP, Ullalà (1976), whose "Canzone per Seveso" was about the industrial accident in July that year.
Political involvement, however, had side-effects on Venditti's inspiration in the late 1970s, marked in Italy by the growing menace of terrorism and by the strategia della tensione: some events (like the public booing of his friend De Gregori by politicized fans during a show) forced him to rethink his way of being a public personality. Sotto il segno dei pesci ("(Born) Under Pisces", 1978) contained more personal and intimate themes. The eponymous track scored a great success, but was largely misinterpreted as a song about a woman: it actually referred to Venditti's career, as he was in fact born "under the Pisces sign".
Success was, however, marred by his divorce from his wife Simona Izzo. She won custody of Venditti's son, Francesco Saverio. The following LP, Buona domenica (1979), was strongly marked by this difficult period. It contained, however, several classics, like the title-track and the ballad Modena, which featured Gato Barbieri on saxophone and is considered one of Venditt's finest works.
In 1982 the bitter Sotto la pioggia marked Venditti's passage to his own label, Heinz Music, and the beginning of the long-lasting collaboration with producer Alessandro Colombini. The following year A.S. Roma, his city's football team, won its long-awaited second scudetto: Venditti was therefore called upon to take part in the official celebration show, and the song that he composed for the occasion, "Grazie Roma" ("Thank You Roma"), turned into a great success, surprisingly not just in Rome. Venditti had already composed several songs about his favourite football team; some people criticized them harshly, mostly because of the strong contrast with the political-social themes of his other songs.
In the following years, and notably in the 1990s, Venditti's inspiration seemed to become more mainstream and commercial. His LPs (Cuore, In questo mondo di ladri, Benvenuti in Paradiso, Prendilo tu questo frutto amaro) were very successful, but his former themes were absent, or generally less stressed. Pieces like "Notte prima degli esami" or "Ma che bella giornata di sole" (about the Italian Liberation Day of September 1943) were anyway praised by critics. Among the songs of this period, "Dolce Enrico", from the LP Benvenuti in Paradiso (1991), was dedicated to the former leader of the Partito Comunista Italiano, Enrico Berlinguer, who died in 1984.
Antonello nel Paese delle Meraviglie ("Antonello in Wonderland") of 1997 featured his greatest hits accompanied by the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra of Sofia, directed by Renato Serio. Goodbye Novecento (1999) gave increasing attention to social and historical themes, but had a sub-par success by Venditti's standards. In 2001 A.S. Roma again won a scudetto, and Venditti played again in a free concert in the Circo Massimo for an immense audience of tifosi and lovers of his songs. His latest studio release is Che fantastica storia è la vita ("What a Fantastic Story Life Is", October 2003). Gato Barbieri played with Venditti in this release. After resolving the difficulties in his friendship with Venditti, told in the latter's 1979 song "Scusa Francesco" ("Sorry Francesco"), De Gregori is also present as singer in "Io e mio fratello" ("Me and My Brother"). The album also contains a satire of Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi ("Il Sosia").
In April 2008, in an interview with a Catholic website, Venditti spoke of his faith in Christ, his devotion to Padre Pio and his respect for Pope Benedict XVI, and also mentioned having been assaulted when he was sixteen by a malevolent entity which he identified with Satan. This led the media to class Venditti with other high-profile show-business converts like Claudia Koll (who was also attacked by a malevolent entity) and Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, although actually his conversion long predates theirs.
In October 2009 Venditti was criticized for asking, during a concert in Sicily, "Why did God create Calabria?" and declaring that "there is really nothing" in Calabria. Calabria is a region in South Italy. In the past it was colonized by the ancient Greeks and became the cradle of Magna Graecia, but now it is also the base of the modern crime organization 'ndrangheta. Venditti later made peace with Calabria over a cup of good coffee at his house in Rome with the mayor of Reggio Calabria, Giuseppe Scopelliti.
Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Italian singer-songwriters Category:Italian-language singers Category:Italian Roman Catholics Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism Category:People from Rome (city)
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.