Life
Born the fifth of six children of the shipowner Gioacchino and of Laura Cafiero, he was on his part the shipowner and founder of the Flota Lauro, one of the most powerful Italian fleets of all time and one of the major fortunes in the south of Italy, in addition to the owner of a true financial empire created by himself. A determining fact in marking the force of his activities was his genial intuition that his workers should participate in the benefits of their activities.
Often found in society news for his frequent romantic encounters, the popular tradition recorded legendary characteristics to his amatory capacities.
As a politician, he maintained a great popularity and was venerated by the majority of the population of the city of Naples, to the point that in the municipal elections of 1952 and 1956 he received almost 300,000 votes, higher than any number of votes received by any candidate in local elections up to that point. In the general elections of 1953, he received 680,000 votes for the Chamber of Deputies, also a number that had never been achieved before.
During the decades of Italian fascism, he was named the National Counselor of the Chamber of the fasces and the corporations, appointed to this position by Galeazzo Ciano, the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini himself, who was active in shipping commerce. Also during this period he was named president of the Naples football club SSC Napoli, where he succeeded Giorgio Ascarelli.
After the war, after an initial participation in the Common Man's Front, he became active in the monarchist movement of Alfredo Covelli and financially supported the birth of the Monarchist National Party (PNM), and was for a long time the mayor of Naples, appreciated and questioned for his management of the public funds.
A square in the coastal town of Sorrento is named in his honour.
Read more about this topic: Achille Lauro
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the profundity of life reveals itself entirely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, before one’s eyes. It becomes its symbol.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“What is art,
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art’s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“The richest princes and the poorest beggars are to have one great and just judge at the last day who will not distinguish between them according to their ranks when in life but according to the neglected opportunities afforded to each. How much greater then, as the opportunities were greater, must be the condemnation of the one than of the other?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)