The 16 Greatest Italians of All Time

Poets, physicists, generals and one carmaker. The shortlist covers two thousand years and refuses to settle down.

1. 1
   Leonardo da Vinci

   Painter, anatomist and engineer from a Tuscan hill town, and the era's defining mind.
2. 2
   Dante Alighieri

   Wrote the Divine Comedy and, in doing so, largely invented written Italian.
3. 3
   Michelangelo

   Carved the David, painted the Sistine ceiling and designed St Peter's dome.
4. 4
   Galileo Galilei

   Turned a telescope on Jupiter, found its moons, and was tried for saying what he saw.
5. 5
   Julius Caesar

   General, dictator and the reason half the world's months are named as they are.
6. 6
   Marco Polo

   Venetian merchant whose account of Asia shaped European geography for two centuries.
7. 7
   Giuseppe Garibaldi

   The general whose thousand redshirts made Italian unification real.
8. 8
   Enrico Fermi

   Built the first nuclear reactor under a Chicago squash court in 1942.
9. 9
   Guglielmo Marconi

   Sent the first radio signal across the Atlantic and won the 1909 Nobel Prize.
10. 10
    Sophia Loren

    The first performer to win an acting Oscar for a role in a foreign language.
11. 11
    Giuseppe Verdi

    Composer of Rigoletto, La traviata and Aida, and a symbol of the Risorgimento.
12. 12
    Maria Montessori

    Physician and educator whose teaching method now runs in schools on every continent.
13. 13
    Federico Fellini

    Director of La Dolce Vita and 8½, and winner of four foreign-language Oscars.
14. 14
    Niccolò Machiavelli

    Florentine diplomat whose short book on power still supplies the adjective.
15. 15
    Luciano Pavarotti

    The tenor who took opera to stadiums and sold it to people who had never bought any.
16. 16
    Enzo Ferrari

    Racing driver turned constructor, and the name on the most recognisable car badge on earth.

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