Random Italian Facts Trivia Quiz

Answer: Novecento

Bertolucci (1941-2018) directed over 20 movies and wrote the screenplay for his most successful movies. He started his career as an assistant to Pier Paolo Pasolini, while still at university. Indeed, Bertolucci quit his studies in literature to become a movie director. In 1962 he directed his first feature film: "La Commare Secca" (translated as "The Grim Reaper"), a murder mystery.
Bertolucci broke through with "Il Conformista" (1970), about a fascist murderer. "Last Tango In Paris" (1972) was a controversial movie about an older man (Marlon Brando) sexually dominating a young woman (Maria Schneider).
Many consider "Novecento" (translated as "1900") as Bertolucci's masterpiece. In this 1976 movie Bertolucci filmed the story of a farmer's boy (Gerard Depardieu) and the son of a rich landowner (Robert de Niro) between 1900 and 1945. Apparently neither De Niro nor Depardieu have starred in any other Bertolucci movie.
Bertolucci won two Oscars for his movie "The Last Emperor" (1987), both as director and as author of the screenplay.
"The Deer Hunter" (1978) starred Robert de Niro and was directed by Michael Cimino. "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1990) starred Depardieu and was directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau. "Roma Cita Aperta" (1945) was directed by Roberto Rossellini, starring Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizzi.

Answer: Victor Emmanuel II

Victor Emmanuel II was born in 1820 as Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Tomaso di Savoia. Luckily for us he used only two of his given names: it would be hard to repeat all seven of these every time we speak of him.
Victor Emmanuel II was a distant relative of Victor Emmanuel I, king of Sardinia from 1802 until 1821. After the abdication of Victor Emmanuel I, Sardinia was ruled by Victor Emmanuel I's younger brother Charles Felix. But when Charles Felix died, this branch of the family was extinct. Via Victor Emmanuel I's great-great-great-great-grandfather Charles Emmanuel I, one could trace relatives in another family branch, the House of Carignano. The seventh generation of Princes of Carignano was Victor Emmanuel II's father Charles Albert, who thus inherited the throne of King of Sardinia.
When Victor Emmanuel II ascended to the throne of Sardinia in 1849, he ruled not only the kingdom of Sardinia but also the duchy of Savoy-Piemonte. The rest of Italy was divided between the Kingdom of the two Sicilies (Sicily and southern Italy), the Papal State, the Duchy of Tuscany and the Kingdom of Lombardy -Venezia (a vassal state of Austria-Hungary), plus the Duchy of Modena-Reggio and the Duchy of Parma.
With French support Victor Emmanuel II inflicted a defeat on Austria, thus gaining control over Parma, Modena-Reggio and Tuscany.
In a second stage, Victor Emmanuel II supported the irregular troops led by Giuseppe Garibaldi to invade Sicily, which led to the unification of The Two Sicilies with Sardinia-Piemonte. This reunified state was now renamed Kingdom of Italy, with Victor Emmanuel II as king and Turin as capital. Later Victor Emmanuel II annexed the Kingdom of Venetia (1866) and the Papal States (1870).

Napoleon I was a French Emperor. Charles I was the name of many kings, among others an English king and a Spanish king. Frederic I can point at Frederic I Barbarossa, Emperor of the Holy Roman empire, or at a Prussian king.

Answer: Dino Zoff

All these Italian soccer players have won the World Cup at one stage: Borel in 1934, Meazza in 1938, Zoff in 1982 and Materazzi in 2006.
Zoff (born 1942) was a very experienced goalkeeper when he entered the Fifa World Cup in Spain in 1982. He started his career with Udinese in 1961. After playing several seasons with Mantova and Napoli, he was transferred to Juventus, where he would play from 1972 until his retirement in 1983.
Zoff was the oldest player on any selection for the 1982 World Cup. When he started the tournament, he already had played 99 matches for the Italian national team. Italy started with three draws in the first round, and defeated Brazil and Argentina in the second round. They won the semi-finals against Poland and the finals against West-Germany.
At the moment Zoff retired, he had played 112 times for the national team. He would later take on a position as head coach for Juventus, for Lazio, for Fiorentina and for the national team.
Borel (1914-1993) was a forward player who appeared in only 3 matches for the Italian squad, including the quarter final on the FIFA World Cup 1934. He was the youngest of the Italian squad when they won their first FIFA World Cup.
Meazza (1910-1979) played as a midfielder in the FIFA World Cups 1934 and 1938, although he is better known as a forward player. In 1938 Meazza was the captain of the winning squad.
Materazzi (born 1973) was a defensive player. In the final match of the FIFA World Cup 2006, he induced a riot with Zinedine Zidane, resulting in a red carton for the French player - although later on the FIFA fined Materazzi, too.

Answer: Evangelista Torricelli

Torricelli (1608-1647) studied math and philosophy, and later science. He worked for a brief time with Galilei. When the Grand Duke of Tuscany desired very impressive fountains, Torricelli improved the pumps needed, in using mercury instead of water. Later Torricelli filled a 1m long, narrow tube with mercury and put it upside down in a dish containing mercury. The mercury dropped to about 76 cm - which Torricelli than equalled to the pressure of the air above us. He was so excited with this invention that he wrote to a friend "We all live at the bottom of a sea of air".
Giuseppe Zamboni (1776-1846) is not credited with the invention of the machine to polish ice rinks. Instead he developed the dry battery.
Chiariglione (born 1943) is an engineer active in the field of media technology. He was one of the founders of the MPEG project, which develops standards for the digital compression of graphic and/or acoustic information.
Burattini (1617-1681) was a polymath. He travelled to Egypt to explore the Great Pyramid, he proposed a first workable definition for a standard length measurement, and he built a glider aircraft with four wings that actually lifted off.

Answer: Non ho l'eta

Gigliola Cinquetti (born 1947) started her singing career in 1964 with the song "Non ho l'età (per amarti)" - which translates to "I'm not old enough (to love you)". This song placed first at the Sanremo music festival and also won the Eurovision Song Contest. Although unlikely for a song in a foreign language, it also became one of the 100 best-selling songs in the UK in 1964.
Ten years later, Cinquetti did even better with the song "Si" ("Yes"), attaining a top-ten place in the UK hit parade. But this entry to the Eurovision Song contest did not win: the winner of the 1974 Eurovision Song contest was the Swedish group ABBA with "Waterloo".
Cinquetti also released the song "Alle porte del sole" and the English version "To the Door of the Sun" in 1973. The Italian version was brought to more fame by Al Martino the next year.
"Con te partiro" ("With you I'll leave") is perhaps the best known song of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
"Fratelli d'Italia" is the first line and the unofficial title of the Italian national anthem.

Answer: Po

The Po river flows from west to east in the broadest part of Italy, the northern plain. The Po river is at least 652 km long, and flows near cities such as Turin and Piacenza. The Po mouths in the Adriatic sea near Venice. The city of Milan, although etymologically meaning "middle of the plain", is not on the Po river itself (as one would expect, based upon the name), but is connected to the Po by a system of navigable channels. Tradition says Leonardo da Vinci contributed to the development of these channels.
Near the mouth of the Po are two natural parks. The Po valley is used partly for agriculture, partly for industry.
The Tiber river flows for 406 km from east to west, and the main city on the Tiber is Rome. The Arno flows for 241 km from the heart of Tuscany to the west, via Firenze, and mouths in the Tyrrhenian Sea near Pisa. The Alcantara river flows for only 52 km from west to east, not on the Italian mainland but on the island of Sicily.

Answer: Geppetto

Carlo Collodi (1826-1890) wrote this fantastic story. It starts with a carpenter named Mastr'Antonio who wants to make a table leg out of a nice wood log, but then the log talks him out of it. Instead, he gives the log to the poor Geppetto, who makes a puppet out of it.

The puppet is named Pinocchio, and it's full of mischief. Pinocchio runs off to a traveling marionette theatre, led by signore Mangiafuoco (literally: the fire-eater). Mangiafuoco gives Pinocchio five gold coins, and two creatures try to rob him: La Volpe, acting as a lame fox, and Il Gatto, acting as a blind cat.

The fox and the cat hang Pinocchio, but Il Falco (a falcon) pecks the rope on which Pinocchio hangs. When Pinocchio contacts the authorities to complain about La Volpe and Il Gatto, the judge named Il Giudice (in fact a gorilla) condemns Pinocchio for the crime of foolishness. Many more adventures ensue, until finally Pinocchio is transformed into a real boy by la Fata dei cappelli turchini (the Fairy with the Turquoise hair).

Answer: Il nome della rosa

All of these novels were authored by Umberto Eco (1932-2016), a professor in semiotics (the study of signs and symbols and their use in communication).
In his debut novel "Il nome della rosa" ("The Name of the Rose", 1980) we follow the aforesaid William of Baskerville. The mystery is finally solved with the use of Bible interpretation, semiotics and medieval philosophy - and of course the assassin is the least suspect of all. I won't spoil the plot here, in case you decide to read the book (or watch the movie). If you are fluent enough, I advise you to read the book in the original language. I first read it in translation and later in the original Italian, and I found the Italian version superior to the Dutch translation.
"Il pendolo di Foucault" ("Foucault's Pendulum", 1988) was Eco's second novel. Here a trio of book editors have encountered so many conspiracy novels that they start a conspiracy theory of their own.
In "L'isola dei giorno prima" ("The Island of the Day Before", 1994) Eco introduces a nobleman who is the sole survivor on a ship adrift near the International Date Line in the 17th Century.
"Il cimitero di Praga" ("The Prague Cemetery", 2010) is a diary by the fictional character Simone Simonini, about life between 1861 and 1897 in Italy. Remarkably all other characters are historic characters, and Simonini is the only fictional one.

Answer: Censor

The Roman Republic (commonly situated between 509 BC and 27 BC) had all these official functions. The Roman Empire (starting about 27 BC) maintained most of these functions in name, but all political power was exerted by the Emperor and his close co-workers.
The censor was the last step in the cursus honorum. Free men aiming at a political career had to start by winning the election for quaestor (although it may have helped to serve in the army for ten years as military tribune). Quaestors were responsible (during the Republic) for the treasury. A following step was praetor, a function more or less comparable to our judges in civil affairs. The final step for most was to become consul, one of the two heads of state during the Republic. Quaestors, praetors, aediles (charged with the maintenance of public buildings and with the organization of festivals) and consuls all were elected only for one year.
Censors on the other hand were chosen for five years at once, although sometimes exceptions were made. The censors (chosen out of the ex-consuls) had three major tasks. First of all, they held the census: a declaration by each pater familias (head of the family) about the identity of the family members and their (taxable) possessions. Refusing to put down such a declaration could be punished by death or by enslavement. Secondly, the censors evaluated the (private and public) behaviour of eligible men to moral standards. A senator who did not live up to the moral standards could be erased from the list of senators and thus expelled out of his function. The third and last function of the censors was the administration of public finances.
The Roman word censor has inspired the modern English words "census" (survey of the population) as well as "censorship" (erasing from publications all that is deemed contrary to the moral standards).

Answer: Saint Mark

Saint Mark was according to tradition the founder of a Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt. The Coptic Church claims to be the direct successor of this Alexandrine church, where Mark was the first bishop. Saint Mark is the patron saint of prisoners and stained glass workers. In his role of first bishop in Egypt, he is also patron saint of Egypt.
In 828 relics ascribed to Saint Mark were transported from Alexandria to Venice. The main cathedral in Venice (as well as the square on which the entrance to this cathedral is situated) have been named after Saint Mark to commemorate the transport of his relics to Venice.
Saint Luke is the patron saint of painters and apothecaries. Furthermore he is the patron of the Italian town Capena and the German town Hermersdorf.
Saint John the evangelist (who probably also was the eponymous apostle) is patron saint of authors and notaries. Furthermore, his patronage includes the Italian diocese of Arezzo and the Italian region Umbria.
Saint Matthew, the patron saint of accountants and tax collectors, is also the patron of Salerno in Italy and Washington DC.
All these gospel writers have many more patronages than those mentioned here. I just picked two professions and two place names for each of them.