Take a look below for our list of 10 of the most famous people from Italy.
1. Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 until he was ousted in 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship.
2. Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar, known by his cognomen Julius Caesar, was a Roman politician and military general who played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.
3. Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer and citizen of the Republic of Genoa.
4. Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.
Considered to be the greatest living artist during his lifetime, he has since also been described as one of the greatest artists of all time. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Florentine Medici client, Leonardo da Vinci.
5. Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei, was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician who played a major role in the scientific revolution during the Renaissance.
6. Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, poetry, and cartography.
7. Marco Polo
Marco Polo was an Venetian merchant traveller and citizen of the Venice Republic whose travels are recorded in Livres des merveilles du monde (Book of the Marvels of the World, also known as The Travels of Marco Polo).
8. Enrico Caruso
Enrico Caruso was an Italian operatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic.
9. Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi FRSA was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system.
10. Bruno Sammartino
Bruno Leopoldo Francesco Sammartino was born in Pizzoferrato, Abruzzo, Italy, to Alfonso and Emilia Sammartino on October 6, 1935. He then died on April 18, 2018 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He is known for his powerful bearhug finishing move, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time.
