Angelo Rizzoli

The main creator of the touristic development of the island of Ischia during the post-war. Angelo Rizzoli was born in Milan on 31^st of October 1889, already orphan of his father who was a very poor and an alphabet cobbler. For this reason, he grew up in an orphanage, raised between the martinitt, where he learnt the profession of typographer.

He showed his spirit of enterprise when he was twenty, when he decided to open his own printing press with a colleague. In 1911 the “A.Rizzoli Co” was created, duly registered, which already in that year was known for the exclusive printing of commemorative postcards of the ongoing Libya war. Anna Marzorati a typographer’s daughter too. The young woman who Rizzoli married in 1912. In 1915, he went to war, which he came back from in 1917. In Milan, he met the editor Calogero Tumminelli, who suggested him to take over Mondadori periodicals in the red. This time too, Rizzoli showed courage and with 40 thousand liras in 1927, he closed the deal, facilitated by Tummarelli’s promise to let him the Italian Encyclopaedia, as happened. Therefore, Rizzoli thought about building a new printing press and he managed to find financiers who accompanied him in the new business as associates. The printing press was inaugurated in 1929 in Piazza Carlo Erba, where the seat of the Rizzoli stayed until the Sixties. In the meantime, the magazines started to sell again and were continuously growing. In 1929, the first book was published, History of the Risorgimento (Storia del Risorgimento) by Spellazon and soon after the new series of books were launched, starting from the BUR, classics at an affordable price. Meanwhile, the project of the fifteen volumes of the Enciclopedia Universale Rizzoli Larousse started. In 1933, Rizzoli redeemed all the shares of the society of which he became the only owner. The editorial success continued in the Fifties-Sixties and in the meantime, he entered into the cinema world with his new production company, the Cineriz, and two films destined to mark the history of cinema: La dolce vita and 8½ by Federico Fellini. The economic empire of Rizzoli was already very strong when Piero Malcovati, famous gynaecologist and hydrologist, doctor of his wife, offered him a rather bold investment. Malcovati was looking for financers for the Pithecusa society, which he founded with the aim to retrieve and relaunch the ancient and fallen Thermal Baths of Regina Isabella and Santa Restituta in Lacco Ameno, on the island of Ischia. Piero Malcovati consulted a well-known architect and engineer, who had already signed important works, considered masterpieces of the rationalist architecture: Ignazio Gardella, who was asked to design the new thermal baths of Lacco. Although he believed that it was not a deal, Rizzoli accepted to finance the work with less tight circumstances than the ones that Gardella had to face since the beginning. Soon after, Rizzoli took the complete control of the operation, while Malcovati kept the scientific direction of the thermal baths. In 1953, the creation of the establishment of the Thermal Baths of Regina Isabella in the centre of Lacco was launched. Rizzoli interrupted in 1954 the collaboration with Gardella, choosing other specialists and other designers for the works created by him in Lacco Ameno. With the construction of a big hotel close to the new thermal baths, followed by the reorganisation of the square and the shacks neighbourhood created after the earthquake of 1883, in few years Lacco Ameno became a prominent thermal centre and a reference for the international jet set. It acted as a forerunner to the touristic development of the entire island, allowing it to recover quickly the positions it lost between the earthquake of 1883 and the first half of 1900. In the meantime, Rizzoli fell in love with the island and he even acquired the historic Villa Arbusto, which soon his Ischitan residence, with a beautiful park maintained by Anna. Angelo Rizzoli wanted to name the hospital after her. He gave the hospital to the island in 1962. From “Sereno”, his yacht, Rizzoli landed in Lacco Ameno every year with different famous film star and jet set people and he chose Ischia as the location for different films produced by him. A bond with the island which remained strong until the death of the entrepreneur, which happened in Milan on 24^th of September 1970. In his ex-Villa of Lacco Ameno there is nowadays the siege of Rizzoli Museum next to the Arechaeological museum of Pithecusae.