Cremonese redirects here. For the football team, see U.S. Cremonese.

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Cremona
—  Comune  —
Comune di Cremona Municipality of Cremona
Panorama of Cremona View of Cremona
Cremona Location of Cremona in Italy
Coordinates: 45°08′N 10°02′E / 45.133°N 10.033°E / 45.133; 10.033Coordinates: 45°08′N 10°02′E / 45.133°N 10.033°E / 45.133; 10.033
Country	Italy
Region	Lombardy
Province	Cremona (CR)
Government
• Mayor	Oreste Perri (PdL)
Area
• Total	69.7 km2 (26.9 sq mi)
Elevation	47 m (154 ft)
Population (December 1, 2008)
• Total	72,266
• Density	1,000/km2 (2,700/sq mi)
Demonym	Cremonesi
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code	26100
Dialing code	0372
Patron saint	St. Omobono
Saint day	November 13
Website	Official website

Cremona  listen (help·info) is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana (Po valley). It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments. The city of Cremona is especially noted for its musical history and traditions, including some of the earliest and most renowned luthiers, such as Guarneri and Stradivari and several members of the Amati family.

History[link]

Ancient[link]

Cremona is first mentioned in history as a settlement of the Cenomani, a Gallic (Celtic) tribe that arrived in the Po valley around 400 BC. However, the name Cremona dates back (most probably) to earlier settlers and puzzled the ancients, who gave many fanciful interpretations. In 218 BC the Romans established on that spot their first military outpost (a colonia) north of the Po river, and kept the old name. Cremona and nearby Placentia (modern Piacenza, on the south bank of the Po), were founded in the same year, as bases for penetration into what became the Roman Province of Gallia Cisalpina (Cisalpine Gaul). Cremona quickly grew into one of the largest towns in northern Italy, as it was on the main road connecting Genoa to Aquileia, the Via Postumia. It supplied troops to Julius Caesar and benefited from his rule, but later supported Marcus Iunius Brutus and the Senate in their conflict with Augustus, who, having won, in 40 BC confiscated Cremona's land and redistributed it to his men. The famous poet Virgil, who went to school in Cremona, had to forfeit his ancestral farm ("too close to wretched Cremona"), but later regained it. The city's prosperity continued to increase until 69, when it was destroyed in the Second Battle of Bedriacum by the troops of Vespasian, fighting to install him as Emperor against his rival Vitellius. Cremona was rebuilt with the help of Vespasian himself, but it seems to have failed to regain its former prosperity as it disappeared from history until the 6th century, when it resurfaces as a military outpost of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire during the Gothic War.

Early Middle Ages[link]

When the Lombards invaded much of Italy in the second half of 6th century, Cremona remained a Byzantine stronghold as part of the Exarchate of Ravenna. The city expanded towards the north-west, with the creation of a great trenched camp outside the walls. In 603, it was conquered by the Lombard king Agilulf and again destroyed. Its territory was divided between the two duchies of Brescia and Bergamo. However, in 615 queen Theodelinda, a devout Roman Catholic intent on converting her people, had Cremona rebuilt and re-installed a bishop there. Control of the city fell increasingly to its bishop, who became a Holy Roman Empire vassal after Charlemagne's conquest of Italy. In this way, Cremona increased its power and its prosperity steadily and some of its bishops had important roles between the 10th and 11th centuries. Bishop Liutprand of Cremona was a member of the Imperial court under the Saxony dynasty and Olderic gained strong privileges for his city from emperor Otto III. Its economy was boosted by the creation of a river port out of the former Byzantine fortress.

However, the two bishops Lambert and Ubaldo created discord with the city's people. Emperor Conrad II settled the quarrel by entering in Cremona in 1037 together with the young Pope Benedict IX.

Commune[link]

Under Henry IV, Cremona refused to pay the oppressive taxes requested by the Empire and the bishop. According to a legend, the great gonfaloniere (mayor) Giovanni Baldesio of Cremona faced the emperor himself in a duel. As Henry was knocked from his horse, the city was saved the annual payment of the 3 kg. golden ball, which, for that year, was instead given to Berta, Giovanni's girlfriend, as her dowry. The first historical news about a free Cremona is from 1093, as it entered into an anti-Empire alliance led by Mathilde of Canossa, together with Lodi, Milan and Piacenza. The conflict ended with the defeat of Henry IV and his famous humiliation of Canossa to Pope Urban II in 1098. Cremona gained the Insula Fulcheria, the area around the nearby city of Crema, as its territory.

From this time, the new commune warred against nearby cities to enlarge its territory. In 1107, Cremona conquered Tortona, but four years later its army was heavily defeated near Bressanoro. As in many northern Italian cities, the people were divided into two opposing parties, the Guelphs, who were stronger in the new city, and the Ghibellines, who had their base in the old city. The parties were so irreconcilable that the former built a second Communal Palace, the still existing Palazzo Cittanova ("new city's palace").

When Frederick Barbarossa descended into Italy to assert his authority, Cremona sided with him in order to gain his support against Crema, which had rebelled with the help of Milan. The subsequent victory and its loyal imperial stance earned Cremona the right to create a mint for its own coinage in 1154.

In 1162, Imperial and the Cremonese forces assaulted Milan and destroyed it. However, in 1167 the city changed side and joined the Lombard League. Its troops were part of the army that, on May 29, 1176, defeated Barbarossa in the Battle of Legnano. However, the Lombard League did not survive this victory for long. In 1213, at Castelleone, the Cremonese defeated the League of Milan, Lodi, Crema, Novara, Como and Brescia. In 1232, Cremona allied itself with Emperor Frederick II, who was again trying to reassert the Empire's authority over Northern Italy. In the Battle of Cortenuova, the Cremonese were on the winning side. Thereafter Frederick often held his court in the city. In the Battle of Parma, however, the Ghibellines suffered a heavy defeat and up to two thousand Cremonese were made prisoners. Some year later Cremona took its vengeance by defeating Parma's army. Its army, under the command of Umberto Pallavicino, captured Parma's carroccio and for centuries kept the enemy's trousers hanging from the Cathedral's ceiling as a sign of the rival's humiliation.

In 1301 the troubadour Luchetto Gattilusio was podestà of Cremona. During this period Cremona flourished and reached a population of up to 80,000, larger than the 69,000 of 2001.

Seignory[link]

In 1266, Pallavicino was expelled from Cremona, and the Ghibelline rule ended after his successor Buoso da Dovara relinquished control to a consortium of citizens. In 1271 the position of Capitano del Popolo ("People's Chieftain") was created. In 1276 the signore passed to marquis Cavalcabò Cavalcabò, who in 1305 was succeeded by his son Guglielmo Cavalcabò, who held power until 1310. During this period many edifices were created or restored including the belfry of the Torrazzo, the Romanesque church of San Francis, the Cathedral's transepts and the Loggia dei Militi. Moreover, agriculture was boosted with a new network of canals. After some foreign invasions (notably that of Emperor Henry VII in 1311), the Cavalcabò lasted until November 29, 1322, when a more powerful family, the Visconti of Galeazzo I, came to prominence that in Cremona was to last for a century and a half. The Visconti's signore was interrupted in 1327 by Ludwig the Bavarian, in 1331 by John of Bohemia, and in 1403 by a short-lived return of the Cavalcabò. On July 25, 1406, the captain Cabrino Fondulo killed his employer Ubaldo Cavalcabò along with all the male members of his family, and assumed control over Cremona. Later, as he was revealed as unable to face the task, he ceded back the city to the Visconti for a payment of 40,000 golden florins.

Thus Filippo Maria Visconti made his signore hereditary. Cremona became part of the Duchy of Milan, following its fate until the unification of Italy. Under the Visconti and later the Sforza Cremona underwent high cultural and religious development. In 1411 Palazzo Cittanova become the seat of the University of fustian merchants. In 1441 the city hosted the marriage of Francesco I Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti in the temple built by the Benedictines, which today is the church of Saint Sigismund. In that occasion a new sweet was devised, which was later turned into the famous torrone. Ludovico il Moro supported the building of several operas for the Cathedral, the church of St. Agatha and the Communal Palace.

In 1446 Cremona was encircled by the condottieri troops of Francesco Piccinino and Luigi dal Verme. The siege was raised after the arrival of Scaramuccia da Forlì from Venice.

Foreign occupations[link]

From 1499 to 1509 Cremona was under Venetian control. The victory of the Italian League at Agnadello gave it back to the Duchy of Milan. However, the latter was assigned to Spain under the Treaty of Noyon (1513). Cremona fell to the new rulers only in 1524 when the Castle of Santa Croce surrendered. The French were finally expelled from the duchy two years later, with the Treaty of Madrid, and subsequently Cremona remained for long a foreign dominion. This did not prevent from further embellishments like the Loggia of the Cathedral's Porch by Lorenzo Trotti (1550) or the new church of San Siro and Sepolcro by Antonio Gialdini (1614).

The Spanish rule was mediocre. Unable to face the famine of 1628 and the plague of 1630, the duchy, after a short-lived French conquest in 1701 during the War of Spanish Succession, passed to Austria on April 10, 1707.

For later history, see Lombardy

The Cathedral and the Baptistery of Cremona.

Main sights[link]

Churches[link]

The Cathedral of Cremona and the annexed Baptistery constitutes one of the most notable sites for Romanesque-Gothic art in northern Italy.

Other churches include:

• San Michele
• San Luca
• San Sigismondo
• Sant'Agostino
• Sant'Agata
• San Marcellino
• Santa Lucia
• Santa Rita
• San Pietro al Po

Buildings[link]

• The Torrazzo, the third highest brickwork bell tower in Europe.
• Loggia dei Militi
• Palazzo Cittanova
• Palazzo Fodri
• Palazzo Comunale
• Teatro Ponchielli
• Museo Civico Ala Ponzone
• Museo Stradivariano
• Museo della Civiltà Contadina
• Museo Berenziano

See also:

• Le colonie padane

Economy[link]

The economy of Cremona is deeply linked to the agricultural production of the countryside. Food industries include salted meat, sweets (torrone), vegetable oils, grana padano, provolone and "mostarda" (pickled fruit). Heavy industries include steel, oil and one electric plant. The river-port is a base for the barges transporting goods along the Po river.

Music[link]

Cremona has a distinguished musical history. The 12th century cathedral was probably the focus of organized musical activity in the region in the late Middle Ages. By the 16th century the town had become a famous musical centre. Nowadays there are important ensembles for Renaissance and Baroque music, i.e. Choir & Consort Costanzo Porta, and festivals which maintain Cremona as one of the most important towns in Italy for music. Composer Marc'Antonio Ingegneri taught there; Claudio Monteverdi was his most famous student, before leaving for Mantua in 1591. It was also the birthplace of Pierre-Francisque Caroubel, a collaborator with noted German composer Michael Praetorius. The bishop of Cremona, Nicolò Sfondrati, a fervent supporter of the Counter-Reformation, became Pope Gregory XIV in 1590. Since he was an equally fervent patron of music, the renown of the town as a musical destination grew accordingly.

From the 16th century onwards, Cremona was renowned as a centre of musical instrument manufacture, beginning with the violins of the Amati family, and later included the products of the Guarneri and Stradivari shops. To the present day, their work is widely considered to be the summit of achievement in string instrument making. Today Cremona is still renowned for producing high-quality instruments.

Cremona had a band tradition linked to the Guardia nazionale founded under Napoleonic influence. In 1864, native son, Amilcare Ponchielli, became its leader and created what might be considered one of the greatest bands of all time. In his role as capobanda, Ponchielli founded a band school and a tradition that waned only at the onset of World War I.

Transport[link]

Cremona railway station, opened in 1863, is the terminus of six railway lines, all of a regional nature, linking Cremona with Pavia, Mantua, Treviglio, Brescia, Piacenza and Fidenza, respectively.

Sport[link]

Like in many other Italian cities, Cremona's favourite sport is football. The U.S. Cremonese played for several years in Serie A, its most renowned players being Aristide Guarneri, Emiliano Mondonico, Antonio Cabrini and Gianluca Vialli - all born in or near Cremona. The brightest page in the more than one century old history of Cremonese was written in the early 1990s, when President of the team was Domenico Luzzara and the coach was Gigi Simoni; the team managed to stay in Serie A for 3 consecutive years, ending one of the championship at the tenth place. On March 27, 1993, by defeating English team Derby County in the Final to win the Anglo-Italian Cup, Cremonese became the second Italian team in football history to win at Wembley.

Cremona has also a first-division waterpolo club and, by the 1980s, had built a strong basketball tradition, now brought on by Gruppo Triboldi, a team from Soresina which however plays usually in Cremona. There is also a century-old tradition in rowing and canoe racing, with three different clubs, located along the Po river, that trained many world and Olympic champions. One of its most famous sprint canoers was Oreste Perri, mayor of Cremona since 22 June 2009.

Notable people[link]

Notable painters and architects[link]

• Sofonisba Anguissola
• Bernardino and Giulio Campi
• Francesco and Giuseppe Dattaro
• Altobello Melone‎

Gallery[link]

• 

  City hall (Palazzo del Comune)

• 

  La Loggia dei Militi

• 

  A street near the duomo

• 

  Violin shop

• 

  Astronomical clock on the Torrazzo belltower

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cremona

• City's portal

Gaetano Gabriele D'Annunzio
Born	(1863-03-12)12 March 1863 Pescara
Died	1 March 1938(1938-03-01) (aged 74) Gardone Riviera
Occupation	Poet, journalist, novelist, dramatist, soldier
Literary movement	Decadent movement

Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio^[1] (ennobled by the King of Italy in 1924 as Principe di Montenevoso; Italian pronunciation: [ɡabriˈɛːle danˈnuntsjo]; 12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938) was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, dramatist, and soldier during World War I. He was a prominent Italian nationalist figure. His role in politics is controversial due to his influence on the Italian Fascist movement and his status as the alleged forerunner of Benito Mussolini.

Early life[link]

D'Annunzio was of Dalmatian extraction.^[2] He was born in Pescara, Abruzzo, the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town whose name was originally Francesco Rapagnetta, to which both father and son legally added D'Annunzio. The son was baptized Gaetano and gained the name of Gabriele as a nickname in childhood, from his angelic looks.^[3] His precocious talent was recognised early in life, and he was sent to school at the Liceo Cicognini in Prato, Tuscany. He published his first poetry while still at school at the age of sixteen with a small volume of verses called Primo Vere (1879), influenced by Giosuè Carducci's Odi barbare, in which, side by side with some almost brutal imitations of Lorenzo Stecchetti, the fashionable poet of Postuma, were some translations from the Latin, distinguished by such agile grace that Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article. In 1881 D'Annunzio entered the University of Rome La Sapienza, where he became a member of various literary groups, including Cronaca Bizantina and wrote articles and criticism for local newspapers. In those university years he started to promote Italian irredentism.

Literary work[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Here he published Canto novo (1882), Terra vergine (1882), L'intermezzo di rime (1883), Il libro delle vergini (1884) and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected under the general title of San Pantaleone (1886). Canto novo contains poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power, some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzese landscape, commented on and completed in prose by Terra vergine, the latter a collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant life of the author's native province. Intermezzo di rime is the beginning of D'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner. His conception of style was new, and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life. Both style and contents began to startle his critics; some who had greeted him as an enfant prodige rejected him as a perverter of public morals, whilst others hailed him as one bringing a breath of fresh air and an impulse of a new vitality into the somewhat prim, lifeless work hitherto produced.

Meanwhile the review of Angelo Sommaruga perished in the midst of scandal, and his group of young authors found itself dispersed. Some entered the teaching career and were lost to literature, others threw themselves into journalism.

Gabriele D'Annunzio took this latter course, and joined the staff of the Tribuna. For this paper, under the pseudonym of "Duca Minimo", he did some of his most brilliant work, and the articles he wrote during that period of originality and exuberance would well repay being collected. To this period of greater maturity and deeper culture belongs Il libro d'Isotta (1886), a love poem, in which for the first time he drew inspiration adapted to modern sentiments and passions from the rich colours of the Renaissance.

Il libro d'Isotta is interesting also, because in it we find most of the germs of his future work, just as in Intermezzo melico and in certain ballads and sonnets we find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of Il piacere, Il trionfo della morte and Elegie romane (1892).

D'Annunzio's first novel Il piacere (1889, translated into English as The Child of Pleasure) was followed in 1891 by Giovanni Episcopo, and in 1892 by L'innocente (The Intruder). These three novels made a profound impression. L'innocente, admirably translated into French by Georges Herelle, brought its author the notice and applause of foreign critics. His next work, Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death) (1894), was followed soon by Le vergini delle rocce (1896) and Il fuoco (1900); the latter is in its descriptions of Venice perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language.

D'Annunzio's poetic work of this period, in most respects his finest, is represented by Il Poema Paradisiaco (1893), the Odi navali (1893), a superb attempt at civic poetry, and Laudi (1900).

A later phase of D'Annunzio's work is his dramatic production, represented by Il sogno di un mattino di primavera (1897), a lyrical fantasia in one act; his Città Morta (1898), written for Sarah Bernhardt. In 1898 he wrote his Sogno di un pomeriggio d'autunno and La Gioconda; in the succeeding year La gloria, an attempt at contemporary political tragedy which met with no success, probably because of the audacity of the personal and political allusions in some of its scenes; and then Francesca da Rimini (1901), a perfect reconstruction of medieval atmosphere and emotion, magnificent in style, and declared by an authoritative Italian critic — Edoardo Boutet — to be the first real, if imperfect, tragedy ever given to the Italian theatre.

In 1883 D'Annunzio married Maria Hardouin di Gallese, and had three sons, but the marriage ended in 1891. In 1894 he began a love affair with the famous actress Eleonora Duse which became a cause célèbre. He provided leading roles for her in his plays of the time such as La città morta (The Dead City) (1898) and Francesca da Rimini (1901), but the tempestuous relationship finally ended in 1910. After meeting the Marchesa (Luisa) Casati in 1903, he began a life long turbulent on again off again affair with Luisa, that lasted until a few years before his death.

In 1897 D'Annunzio was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for a three-year term, where he sat as an independent. By 1910 his daredevil lifestyle had forced him into debt, and he fled to France to escape his creditors. There he collaborated with composer Claude Debussy on a musical play Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of St Sebastian), 1911, written for Ida Rubinstein. The Vatican reacted by placing all of his works in the Index of Forbidden Books. The work was not successful as a play, but it has been recorded in adapted versions several times, notably by Pierre Monteux (in French), Leonard Bernstein (sung in French, acted in English), and Michael Tilson Thomas (in French). In 1912 and 1913, D'Annunzio worked with opera composer Mascagni on his opera Parisina, staying sometimes in a house rented by the composer in Bellevue, near Paris.

Flight over Vienna[link]

Gabriele d'Annunzio (on left) with a fellow officer.

After the start of World War I, D'Annunzio returned to Italy and made public speeches in favor of Italy's entry on the side of the Triple Entente. Since taking a flight with Wilbur Wright in 1908, D'Annunzio had been interested in aviation. With the war beginning he volunteered and achieved further celebrity as a fighter pilot, losing the sight of an eye in a flying accident. In February 1918 he took part in a daring, if militarily irrelevant, raid on the harbour of Bakar (known in Italy as La beffa di Buccari, lit. the Bakar Mockery), helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public, still battered by the Caporetto disaster. On 9 August 1918, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", he organized one of the great feats of the war, leading 9 planes in a 700-mile round trip to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna. This is called in Italian "il Volo su Vienna", "the Flight over Vienna".

Fiume[link]

Postcard from Fiume 1921.

D'Annunzio on 1920 Fiume postage stamp. The motto Hic Manebimus Optime is Latin for: 'Here we'll stay wonderfully'

Fiume residents cheering D'Annunzio and his raiders, September 1919.

The War strengthened his ultra-nationalist and irredentist views, and he campaigned widely for Italy to assume a role alongside her wartime Allies as a first-rate European power. Angered by the proposed handing over of the city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) which had an Italian majority population, at the Paris Peace Conference, on 12 September 1919, he led the seizure by 2,000 Italian nationalist irregulars of the city, forcing the withdrawal of the inter-Allied (American, British and French) occupying forces.^[4] The plotters sought to have Italy annex Fiume, but were denied. Instead, Italy initiated a blockade of Fiume while demanding that the plotters surrender. D'Annunzio then declared Fiume an independent state, the Italian Regency of Carnaro; the Charter of Carnaro foreshadowed much of the later Italian Fascist system, with himself as "Duce" (leader). Some elements of the Royal Italian Navy, such as the destroyer Espero joined up with D'Annunzio's local forces.^[5] He attempted to organize an alternative to the League of Nations for (selected) oppressed nations of the world (such as the Italians of Fiume), and sought to make alliances with various separatist groups throughout the Balkans (especially groups of Italians, though also some Slavic groups), although without much success. D'Annunzio ignored the Treaty of Rapallo and declared war on Italy itself, only finally surrendering the city in December 1920 after a bombardment by the Italian navy.

Later life[link]

After the Fiume episode, D'Annunzio retired to his home on Lake Garda and spent his latter years writing and campaigning. Although D'Annunzio had a strong influence on the ideology of Benito Mussolini, he never became directly involved in fascist government politics in Italy, being temporarily crippled and shocked after an attempted murder in 1922. Shortly before the march on Rome, he was pushed out of a window by an unknown assailant, surviving but badly injured, and did not completely recover before Mussolini had been appointed Prime Minister and hailed by the fascists as duce del fascismo.

In 1924 he was ennobled by King Victor Emmanuel III and given the hereditary title of Principe di Montenevoso. In 1937 he was made president of the Royal Academy of Italy. D'Annunzio died in 1938 of a stroke, at his home in Gardone Riviera. He was given a state funeral by Mussolini and was interred in a magnificent tomb constructed of white marble at Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.

He was an atheist.^[6]

Politics[link]

D'Annunzio is often seen as a precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism. His own explicit political ideals emerged in Fiume when he coauthored a constitution with syndicalist Alceste de Ambris, the Charter of Carnaro. De Ambris provided the legal and political framework, to which D'Annunzio added his skills as a poet. De Ambris was the leader of a group of Italian seamen who had mutinied and then given their vessel to the service of D'Annunzio. The constitution established a corporatist state, with nine corporations to represent the different sectors of the economy (workers, employers, professionals), and a tenth (D'Annunzio's invention) to represent the "superior" human beings (heroes, poets, prophets, supermen). The Carta also declared that music was the fundamental principle of the state.

It was rather the culture of dictatorship that Benito Mussolini imitated and learned from D'Annunzio. D'Annunzio has been described as the John the Baptist of Italian Fascism,^[7] as virtually the entire ritual of Fascism was invented by D'Annunzio during his occupation of Fiume and his leadership of the Italian Regency of Carnaro.^[8] These included the balcony address, the Roman salute, the cries of "Eia, eia, eia! Alala!", the dramatic and rhetorical dialogue with the crowd, the use of religious symbols in new secular settings.^[7] It also included his method of government in Fiume, the economics of the corporate state; stage tricks; large emotive nationalistic public rituals; blackshirted followers, the Arditi, with their disciplined, bestial responses and strongarm repression of dissent.^[9] He was even said to have originated the practice of forcibly dosing opponents with large amounts of castor oil, a very effective laxative, to humiliate, disable or kill them, a practice which became a common tool of Mussolini's blackshirts.^[10][11][12]

D'Annunzio advocated an expansionist Italian foreign policy and applauded the invasion of Ethiopia.

Rivalry with Mussolini[link]

As John Whittam notes in his essay "Mussolini and The Cult of the Leader":^[13]

…This famous poet, novelist and war hero was a self-proclaimed Superman. He was the outstanding interventionist in May 1915 and his dramatic exploits during the war won him national and international acclaim. In September 1919 he gathered together his 'legions' and captured the disputed seaport of Fiume. He held it for over a year and it was he who popularised the black shirts, the balcony speeches, the promulgation of ambitious charters and the entire choreography of street parades and ceremonies. He even planned a march on Rome. One historian had rightly described him as the 'First Duce' and Mussolini must have heaved a sigh of relief when he was driven from Fiume in December 1920 and his followers were dispersed. But he remained a threat to Mussolini and in 1921 Fascists like Balbo seriously considered turning to him for leadership.

In contrast Mussolini vacillated from left to right at this time. Although Mussolini's fascism was heavily influenced by the Carta del Carnaro, the constitution for Fiume written by Alceste De Ambris and D'Annunzio, neither wanted to play an active part in the new movement, both refusing when asked by Fascist supporters to run in the elections of May 15, 1921. Before the March on Rome, De Ambris even went so far as to depict the Fascist movement as: "a filthy pawn in Mister Giolitti's game of chess, and made out of the least dignified section of the bourgeoisie"

D'Annunzio was seriously injured when he fell out of a window on 13 August 1922; subsequently the planned "meeting for national pacification" with Francesco Saverio Nitti and Mussolini was cancelled. The incident was never explained and is considered by some historians an attempt to murder him, motivated by his popularity. Despite D'Annunzio's retreat from active public life after this event, the Duce still found it necessary to regularly dole out funds to D'Annunzio as a bribe for not re-entering the political arena. When asked about this by a close friend, Mussolini purportedly stated: "When you have a rotten tooth you have two possibilities open to you: either you pull the tooth or you fill it with gold. With D'Annunzio I have chosen for the latter treatment."^[14]

Nonetheless, D'Annunzio kept attempting to intervene in politics almost until his death in 1938. He wrote to Mussolini in 1933 to try to convince him not to take part in the Axis pact with Hitler. In 1934, he tried to disrupt the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini after their meeting, even writing a satirical pamphlet about Hitler. Again, in September 1937, D'Annunzio met with the Duce at the Verona train station to convince him to leave the Axis alliance. Mussolini in 1944 admitted to have made a mistake not following his advice.

Literature[link]

At the height of his success, D'Annunzio was celebrated for the originality, power and decadence of his writing. Although his work had immense impact across Europe, and influenced generations of Italian writers, his fin de siècle works are now little known, and his literary reputation has always been clouded by his fascist associations. Indeed, even before his fascist period, he had his strong detractors. A New York Times review in 1898 of his novel The Intruder referred to him as "evil", "entirely selfish and corrupt".^[15] Three weeks into its December 1901 run at the Teatro Constanzi in Rome, his tragedy Francesca da Rimini was banned by the censor on grounds of morality.^[16]

A prolific writer, his novels in Italian include Il piacere (The Child of Pleasure, 1889), Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death, 1894), and Le vergini delle rocce (The Virgins of the Rocks, 1896). He wrote the screenplay to the feature film Cabiria (1914) based on episodes from the Second Punic War. D'Annunzio's literary creations were strongly influenced by the French Symbolist school, and contain episodes of striking violence and depictions of abnormal mental states interspersed with gorgeously imagined scenes. One of D'Annunzio's most significant novels, scandalous in its day, is Il fuoco (The Flame of Life) of 1900, in which he portrays himself as the Nietzschean Superman Stelio Effrena, in a fictionalized account of his love affair with Eleonora Duse. His short stories showed the influence of Guy de Maupassant. He was also associated with the bizarre Italian noblewoman Luisa Casati, an influence on his novels and one of his mistresses.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica wrote of him:

…The work of d' Annunzio, although by many of the younger generation injudiciously and extravagantly admired, is almost the most important literary work given to Italy since the days when the great classics welded her varying dialects into a fixed language. The psychological inspiration of his novels has come to him from many sources—French, Russian, Scandinavian, German—and in much of his earlier work there is little fundamental originality.

His creative power is intense and searching, but narrow and personal; his heroes and heroines are little more than one same type monotonously facing a different problem at a different phase of life. But the faultlessness of his style and the wealth of his language have been approached by none of his contemporaries, whom his genius has somewhat paralysed. In his later work [meaning as of 1911], when he begins drawing his inspiration from the traditions of bygone Italy in her glorious centuries, a current of real life seems to run through the veins of his personages. And the lasting merit of D'Annunzio, his real value to the literature of his country, consists precisely in that he opened up the closed mine of its former life as a source of inspiration for the present and of hope for the future, and created a language, neither pompous nor vulgar, drawn from every source and district suited to the requirements of modern thought, yet absolutely classical, borrowed from none, and, independently of the thought it may be used to express, a thing of intrinsic beauty. As his sight became clearer and his purpose strengthened, as exaggerations, affectations, and moods dropped away from his conceptions, his work became more and more typical Latin work, upheld by the ideal of an Italian Renaissance.

In Italy some of his poetic works remain popular, most notably his poem "La pioggia nel pineto" (The Rain in the Pinewood), which exemplifies his linguistic virtuosity as well as the sensuousness of his poetry.

Museums[link]

D'Annunzio's birthplace in Pescara.

D'Annunzio's life and work are commemorated in a museum, Il Vittoriale degli Italiani. He planned and developed it himself, adjacent to his villa at Gardone Riviera on the southwest bank of Lake Garda, between 1923 and his death. Now a national monument, it is a complex of military museum, library, literary and historical archive, theatre, war memorial and mausoleum. The museum preserves his torpedo boat MAS 96 and the SVA-5 aircraft he flew over Vienna.

His birthplace is also open to the public as a museum, the Casa Natale di Gabriele D'Annunzio in Pescara.

Works[link]

Novels[link]

• Il piacere (The Child of Pleasure[1], 1889)
• Giovanni Episcopo (1891)
• L'innocente (1892)
• Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death, 1894)
• Le vergini delle rocce (The Maidens of the Rocks, 1895)
• Il fuoco ( The Flame of Life: A Novel, 1900)
• Forse che sì forse che no (1910)

Tragedies[link]

• La città morta (The Dead City: a Tragedy, 1899).
• La Gioconda (Gioconda, 1899).
• Francesca da Rimini (1902). [2]
• L'Etiopia in fiamme (1904).
• La figlia di Jorio (1904).
• La fiaccola sotto il moggio (1905).
• La nave (1908).
• Fedra (1909).

Short story collections[link]

• Terra vergine (1882)
• Le novelle della Pescara (1884–1886)

Poetry collections[link]

• Primo vere (1879)
• Canto novo (1882)
• Poema paradisiaco (1893)
• The five books of Laudi del cielo, del mare, della terra e degli eroi (1903–1912)
  • Maia (Canto Amebeo della Guerra)
  • Elettra
  • Halcyon, Alcyone
  • Merope
  • Asterope (La Canzone del Quarnaro)
• Ode alla nazione serba (1914)

Autobiographical works[link]

• La Leda senza cigno
• Notturno
• Le faville del maglio
• Le cento e cento e cento e cento pagine del Libro Segreto di Gabriele D'Annunzio tentato di morire o Libro Segreto (as Angelo Cocles)

His epistolatory work, Solus ad solam, was published posthumously.

Legacy[link]

• In his honour, the Chilean poet Lucila Godoy Alcayaga took the first name of her pseudonym, Gabriela Mistral.
• Ernesto Giménez Caballero was given the nickname the "Spanish D'Annunzio".^[17]

See also[link]

• Bolesław Prus

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Annunzio, Gabriele D". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 22. 

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Gabriele D'Annunzio: Defiant Archangel by J.R. Woodhouse (2001, ISBN 0-19-818763-7)
• D'Annunzio: The First Duce by Michael A. Ledeen (ISBN 0-7658-0742-4)
• Dannunzio: The Poet As Superman by Anthony Rhodes (ISBN 0-8392-1022-1)
• Gabriele D'Annunzio: The Dark Flame by Paolo Valesio (trans. by Marilyn Migiel, ISBN 0-300-04871-8)
• D'Annunzio and the Great War by Alfredo Bonadeo (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8386-3587-3)
• Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees (1991, ISBN 0-13-089301-3)
• The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism 1919-1945 by Alastair Hamilton (London, 1971, ISBN 0-218-51426-3)
• Matteo Veronesi, Il critico come artista dall'estetismo agli ermetici. D'Annunzio, Croce, Serra, Luzi e altri, Bologna, Azeta Fastpress, 2006, ISBN 88-89982-05-5

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gabriele d'Annunzio

• Gabriele D'Annunzio - gabrieledannunzio.it
• www.gabrieledannunzio.net
• Gabriele D'annunzio
• Casa D'Annunzio
• D'Annunzio's museum "Il Vittoriale"
• IL VITTORIALE "La Cittadella del d'Annunzio"
• Per non dormire Eleganze notturne al Vittoriale
• Eleganze notturne al Vittoriale
• Decennale di Fiume
• Stamp Fiume
• Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien "Epistolario D'Annunzio Debussy"
• Gabriele D'Annunzio poems
• Free scores by Gabriele d'Annunzio at the International Music Score Library Project