author
Giovanni Cairoli
1842–1869
A young patriot of Italy’s Risorgimento, he was drawn into the fight for national unity almost from boyhood. His short life ended at just twenty-seven, but his role in the dramatic Villa Glori expedition helped make him one of the remembered Cairoli brothers.
1 Audiobook
Villa Glori - Ricordi ed aneddoti dell'autunno 1867
by Pio Vittorio Ferrari, Giovanni Cairoli
About the author
Born in Pavia on July 27, 1842, Giovanni Cairoli grew up in a deeply patriotic family led by Adelaide Bono Cairoli, whose children became closely linked with the cause of Italian independence. As a teenager, he was already caught up in anti-Austrian feeling during the years before Italy’s unification, and he later continued his studies in Turin, leaving with the rank of lieutenant in the military engineers.
He is best remembered for taking part in the 1867 expedition to Villa Glori alongside his brother Enrico, an episode tied to Giuseppe Garibaldi’s wider campaign for Rome. Giovanni was seriously wounded in the fighting and taken prisoner, while Enrico was killed. The experience stayed with him, and he later wrote a diary about the expedition.
Afterward he returned to Pavia and also served in local public life, but he did not live long after those turbulent years. He died in Belgirate on September 11, 1869. Though his life was brief, he remains part of one of the best-known family stories of the Risorgimento.