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

Leonardo da Vinci

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

2

Dante Alighieri

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

3

Michelangelo

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

4

Galileo Galilei

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

5

Julius Caesar

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

6

Marco Polo

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

7

Giuseppe Garibaldi

The general whose thousand redshirts made Italian unification real.

8

Enrico Fermi

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

9

Guglielmo Marconi

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

10

Sophia Loren

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

11

Giuseppe Verdi

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

12

Maria Montessori

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

13

Federico Fellini

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

14

Niccolò Machiavelli

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

15

Luciano Pavarotti

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

16

Enzo Ferrari

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