Well done everybody who had a go at my airport quiz! Her are the answers, with a little bit of extra information:

1. Parma, aeroporto Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi was born in 1813 in Roncole, near Busseto, north west of Parma. You can read about the role of Giuseppe Verdi during the Italian Risorgimento in this post: Viva Verdi. He wrote his famous opera Aida for the inauguration of the Cairo Opera Theatre, which followed the opening of the Suez Canal.

2. Pisa, aeroporto Galileo Galilei. Galilei was born in Pisa in 1564. According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo probably bears more of the responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else, and Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science.

3. Firenze, aeroporto Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci was born in Florence in 1454. Between 1499 and 1502 Vespucci participated as observer for the king of Portugal in several voyages that explored the east coast of South America. On these voyages he realized that South America extended much further south than previously thought, and came to the conclusion that this was not part of Asia, but an entirely new continent which he named: The New World. It was the German Martin Waldseemüller who gave this new continent the name America (after Amerigo) in 1507 in his ‘Cosmographiae Introductio’.

4. Roma Fiumicino, aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci. Well, what can I say about Leonardo da Vinci? He was born in 1452 in the village of Vinci near Firenze. His Monna Lisa is the most famous and most reproduced portrait in the world. Sometime ago we wrote a series of articles about it entitled ‘Tales of la Gioconda’. You can read them by clicking on the links:La Gioconda part 1, La Gioconda part 2, and La Gioconda part 3

5. Venezia, aeroporto Marco Polo. Marco polo was born in Venezia in 1254. The story of his travels are recorded in the book Il Milione (The Million), also known in English as ‘The Travels of Marco Polo’.

6. Catania, aeroporto Vincenzo Bellini. Bellini was born in Catania, Sicilia, in 1801. His most famous operas are La Sonnambula, Norma, and I Puritani.

7. Bologna, aeroporto Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi was born in Bologna in 1874. He began his experiments with wireless telegraphy at the age of twenty in the attic of his own home, with just the help of his butler Mignani.

8. Genova, aeroporto Cristoforo Colombo. Most scholars generally agree that Christopher Columbus, whose Italian name was Cristoforo Colombo, was born in the Italian city of Genoa in 1451. In 1477 he moved to Portugal, one of the greatest world powers of that time, where he adopted the Portuguese translation of his name, Christovão Colom. Then in 1485 he settled in Spain where his name changed once again to Cristóbal Colón.

9. Verona, aeroporto Valerio Catullo. The Latin poet Gaius Valerius Catullus was born in Verona in 84 BC. He greatly influenced later poets such as Ovid, Horace and Virgil.

10. Palermo, aeroporto Falcone – Borsellino. I recently wrote two articles to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the killings of these two Sicilian magistrates. You can read them by clicking on the following links: La strage di Capaci, and Via D’Amelio