Filippo Antonio Gualterio (6 August 1819 – 10 February 1874) was an Italian writer and statesman, he served as an Italian senator and as a minister of the interior for the Kingdom of Italy.

Biography

Filippo was born to an aristocratic family in

Orvieto Orvieto () is a city and ''comune'' in the Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy, situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff. The city rises dramatically above the almost-vertical faces of tuff cliffs that are compl ...

. An ancestor of the same name (1660–1728) had been cardinal and papal nuncio to France. In the mid to late 1830s, the present Filippo studied at the Collegio de' nobili di Roma and the Collegio dell'Assunta. In 1846, he published the annotated ''Unpublished Chronicle of Events in Orvieto and other parts of Italy from the year 1333 to the year 1400 by the Count Francesco di Montemarte''. In 1848, he was named Captain of the Civic Guards of the Papal State. The next few years required a balancing between his Italian patriotism and fealty to the Papal State. He participated with papal troops under

Giovanni Durando Giovanni Durando (23 June 1804 – 27 May 1869) was an Italian general and politician. Biography Born at Mondovì, in what is now the province of Cuneo, he entered the Royal Guard corps of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1822. In the 1830s, after hav ...

in the defense of

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region at the northern base of the ''Monte Berico'', where it straddles the Bacchiglione River. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. Vicenza is a th ...

against Austrian forces Filippo lived in this period either at his Villa Paolina in

Porano Porano is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Terni in the Italian region Umbria, located about 50 km southwest of Perugia and about 45 km northwest of Terni. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 1,867 and an area of ...

or in his family palace in the center of Orvieto. On January 6, 1849, demonstrations broke out near his palace, which sheltered the papal treasury in town. The guard was called, and despite the efforts of the bishop Vespignani to calm both sides, shots broke out and one person died and various were wounded. Filippo was affected by this outcome. This and the subsequent reaction in the following years, led to his exile from the Papal States, and he remained in Tuscany until 1861. He would subsequently write a multivolume history of the events of 1848–1849. In Piedmont, he befriended

Count Cavour Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri (, 10 August 1810 – 6 June 1861), generally known as Cavour ( , ), was an Italian politician, businessman, economist and noble, and a leading figure in the movement towa ...

and was able to revisit Rome with a Sardinian passport. He was often criticized by the more radical, republican patriots such as

Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi (12 August 1804 – 25 September 1873) was an Italian writer and politician involved in the Italian Risorgimento. Biography Guerrazzi was born in the seaport of Livorno, then part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. He st ...

. By the 1860s, he was named to various civic posts through Italy, serving the Savoyard monarchy. He was General Intendant of Perugia (17 December 1860 - 13 March 1862) and Prefect of various cities: Genoa (11 January 1863 – 26 March 1865), Palermo (26 March 1865 – 9 April 1866) and Naples (9 April 1866 – 28 July 1867). He was also Royal Commissioner of Perugia and Orvieto from September 1860. He was Minister of the Interior of the Kingdom of Italy in 1867–1868, and later Minister of the Royal House. By the end of the decade, he retired from public life, and died in Rome. A bust to him was dedicated in the

Palazzo Comunale A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...

, along with that of Cavour.Orvieto: Note storiche e biografiche
by Luigi Fumi, Citta di Castello (1891); pages 203-208.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gualterio, Filippo Antonio 1804 births 1873 deaths People from Orvieto Italian politicians Italian people of the Italian unification People of the Revolutions of 1848 19th-century Italian novelists 19th-century male writers