So, here’s a little quiz for you. Many Italian airports are named after famous Italians. Below I’ve given ten descriptions of people who have had an airport named after them. Who are they, and which airports are their names linked to?

Please leave your answers in the ‘Leave a Reply’ section at the end. Don’t worry if you can’t get them all.

1. A famous opera composer who was born in the north of Italy in 1813 and died in 1901. Many of his works were considered symbolic of the Italian struggle against foreign powers by the patriots who fought in the wars for the independence of Italy in the 19th Century. He also wrote the opera for the inauguration of the Suez Canal.

2. Astronomer, mathematician, physicist and philosopher born in 1564. Amongst his many scientific inventions and improvements are the telescope and the military compass. For his theories about the rotation of the Earth he was condemned as an heretic by the Catholic Church, and only ‘rehabilitated’ by it in 1992.

3. Navigator, geographer and cartographer born in 1454. He demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies weren’t part of the Asian continent, but a totally new continent, which he called the New World, and which later on was named after him.

4. Painter, architect, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, musician, born in 1452. In his world famous enigmatic portrait he developed the use of aerial perspective and the sfumato technique.

5. A merchant, born in 1254, who travelled the Silk Road to China with his father and uncle, where he was a guest of the Kublai Khan. After he returned to Italy, he was taken prisoner by the Genoese, and during his captivity he dictated the story of his travels to Rustichello da Pisa.

6. At the foot of mount Etna lies an airport dedicated to a romantic opera composer who was born in Sicily in 1801 and died at the young age of 34. This quintessential composer of the Bel Canto style created characteristic vocal melodies which are pure and sensuous in expression.

7. Physicist and inventor born in 1874, he is known as the father of long distance radio transmissions. In 1909 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, together with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".

8. An explorer and a navigator, he was born in 1451. On the 3rd of August 1492 he departed from Palos de la Frontera in Spain with three ships: Santa Maria, Pinta and Niña. This journey marks the beginning of the modern era in Western history.

9. In the town of two famous literary lovers, the airport is dedicated to a Latin poet who was born in 84 BC. He was a fierce opponent of Cicero. Many of his love poems were dedicated Clodia Metelli, whom he called Lesbia, in honour of the famous Greek poetess Sappho from Lesbos.

10. This airport was recently named after two famous magistrates killed by the Mafia. The first judge was killed on the 24th of May 1992 on the motorway near the Capaci exit as he was returning from that same airport. His colleague was killed on the 19th of July 1992 in Via D’Amelio, as he was leaving his mother’s apartment.

I’ll publish the answers on Friday, good luck!