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People

Military leaders, scholars, churchmen and soldiers: some of the figures who linked the Ruffo name to the history of Italy and Europe.

The ace of the black skull

Fulco Ruffo di Calabria

Naples, 12 August 1884 · Ronchi di Apuania, 23 August 1946

Son of the Duke of Guardia Lombarda and the Belgian noblewoman Laura Mosselman du Chenoy, Fulco served as a young man in the cavalry, in the «Foggia» regiment, and then worked in Africa. When war broke out he moved to the air service and became a pilot in September 1915.

On 23 August 1916 he scored his first victory, shooting down an Austrian observation balloon over Tolmino together with Francesco Baracca and Luigi Olivari. With Baracca he flew in the 91st Squadron, the famous «Squadron of Aces», and took command of it after Baracca's death in June 1918. His fighter carried a black skull as its emblem.

In October 1918 he was forced to land behind enemy lines, but managed to make his way back to the Italian side. After the war he became a senator of the Kingdom. His marriage to Luisa Gazelli of the Counts of Rossana produced seven children.

Confirmed victories
20
Air combats
53
Unit
91st Squadron
Aircraft
Nieuport, SPAD VII
Decoration
Gold Medal of Military Valour

Read the page on Fulco and the Great War →

Images and documents

  • Piero Baroni, «Il Principe con le Ali. Fulco Ruffo di Calabria», Macchione Editore.
  • Igino Mencarelli, «Fulco Ruffo di Calabria», Italian Air Force, Historical Office, 1970.
  • Pastel portrait in uniform, with decorations on the chest.
  • Studio portrait as a young man, with top hat and cane.
  • In full dress uniform as a cavalry officer.
  • At the airfield with other officers, in a hand-coloured period photograph.
  • «La Tribuna Illustrata», 5–12 August 1917: «I fasti dell'aviazione», plate by A. Minardi dedicated to Lieutenant Ruffo di Calabria.
  • Photographic portrait in uniform, with ribbons, pilot's badge and handwritten dedication.
  • Period photograph with two officers.

Pietro I Ruffo

1188 · Terracina, 1257

General of Frederick II, Count of Catanzaro, Grand Marshal of the Kingdom and Viceroy of Sicily and Calabria. The documented genealogy of the family begins with him. He was murdered at Terracina by an assassin sent by Manfred.

Giordano Ruffo

13th century

A member of Frederick II's court, he wrote the De medicina equorum, a treatise on the care of horses regarded as one of the founding texts of medieval veterinary medicine.

  • Giordano Ruffo, «Nelle scuderie di Federico II imperatore ovvero L'arte di curare il cavallo», edited by Maria Anna Causati Vanni.

Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo

Naples, 15 September 1663 · Rome, 16 February 1753

Son of Carlo Ruffo, 3rd Duke of Bagnara, he took a degree in civil and canon law at La Sapienza in Rome and entered the papal diplomatic service. In 1698 he was appointed titular Archbishop of Nicaea and Apostolic Nuncio to Florence.

Pope Clement XI created him a cardinal in 1706. From 1717 to 1738 he was Archbishop of Ferrara, then Bishop of Palestrina and of Porto e Santa Rufina. In 1740 he became Bishop of Ostia and Velletri and Dean of the College of Cardinals, the highest office among the cardinals. He took part in four conclaves, from 1721 to 1740.

He died in Rome, in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, at the age of 89, and is buried in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Damaso.

  • Portrait of Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo.
  • «Editto sopra la guardia del Po in occasione d'escrescenza» (Edict on guarding the Po in times of flood), issued by Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo, Bishop of Ferrara and legate a latere. Ferrara, 1728, Printing House of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber. At the bottom, the Ruffo arms beneath the cardinal's hat.
  • Handwritten letter from Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo to Princess Colonna Borghese, Ferrara, 17 May 1732.

Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo

San Lucido, 1744 · Naples, 1827

In 1799 he raised the Army of the Holy Faith in Calabria, made up largely of peasants, and marched up the peninsula to Naples. His campaign brought down the Neapolitan Republic and restored the Bourbons to the throne.

Books on the cardinal

  • Mario Casaburi, «Fabrizio Ruffo. L'uomo, il cardinale, il condottiero, l'economista, il politico», Rubbettino.
  • Peter Nichols, «Rosso cardinale», novel, Editori Riuniti.
  • Antonio Manes, «Un cardinale condottiero. Fabrizio Ruffo e la Repubblica Partenopea», Jouvence.
  • Massimo Lelj, «La Santa Fede. La spedizione del cardinale Ruffo (1799)», A. Mondadori.
  • Semi Macchione, «Il cardinale Fabrizio Ruffo di Calabria e la Repubblica Partenopea del 1799», Editrice Intercontinentalia.
  • Alberto Consiglio, «Lazzari e Santa Fede. Rivoluzione napoletana del 1799», Ceschina.
  • Giuseppe Caridi, «Il cardinale Ruffo e la straordinaria avventura del 1799», Rubbettino.

Cardinal Luigi Ruffo

Sant'Onofrio, 25 August 1750 · Naples, 17 November 1832

Also known as Luigi Ruffo Scilla, he was the son of Guglielmo Ruffo, Prince of Scilla, and Lucrezia Reggio. He took a degree in civil and canon law at La Sapienza in Rome and was ordained a priest in 1780.

In 1785 he became titular Archbishop of Apamea and Apostolic Nuncio to Tuscany. From 1793 he was nuncio to the Emperor in Vienna. Pope Pius VII created him a cardinal in 1801 and in 1802 appointed him Archbishop of Naples, an office he held for thirty years, until his death.

When the French arrived in 1806 he was removed from Naples and confined at Gaeta. He was later taken to France, to Paris and then to Saint-Quentin, and was one of the «black cardinals» whom Napoleon forbade to wear their red robes. He returned to Naples in 1815. He took part in the conclaves of 1823, 1829 and 1830–1831 and is buried in Naples Cathedral.

  • Portrait of Cardinal Luigi Ruffo, Archbishop of Naples. In his hand he holds a letter addressed to him as Archbishop of Naples.

Paolo Ruffo, Prince of Castelcicala

Richmond, 2 July 1791 · Paris, 12 November 1865

Son of Fabrizio Ruffo, Prince of Castelcicala and ambassador of the Kingdom of Naples in London, he was born in England and grew up in the British Army. In 1811 he joined the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons and by 1815 he was a lieutenant.

On 18 June 1815 he fought at Waterloo on the Duke of Wellington's staff, carrying orders across the battlefield. He was badly wounded and took about a year to recover. His Waterloo Medal was later placed on his coffin.

In 1832, on his father's death, he became Prince of Castelcicala and devoted himself to diplomacy for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with postings in Russia, Austria and Great Britain. From 1855 to 1860 he was the King's Lieutenant General in Sicily. He left the post after Garibaldi's landing and spent his last years in Paris, where he died.

  • Portrait of Paolo Ruffo, Prince of Castelcicala, in uniform with his decorations.

Cardinal Fulco Luigi Ruffo

Palermo, 6 April 1840 · Rome, 29 May 1895

Also known as Fulco Luigi Ruffo Scilla, he was the son of Fulco Ruffo, 9th Prince of Scilla, and Eleonora Galletti. He studied with the Barnabites and then at the Roman Seminary, where he took degrees in theology and in civil and canon law. He was ordained a priest in Rome in 1862.

In 1877 Pius IX appointed him Archbishop of Chieti, an office he held for ten years. In 1887 Leo XIII sent him as Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria, and in 1889 called him back to Rome as Master of the Chamber of His Holiness and Prefect of the Apostolic Palaces.

Leo XIII created him a cardinal in the consistory of 14 December 1891, with the title of Santa Maria in Traspontina. From 1894 to 1895 he was Camerlengo of the College of Cardinals. He died in Rome at the age of 55.

  • Portrait of Cardinal Fulco Luigi Ruffo. Top left, the Ruffo arms with the cardinal's hat.

Paola, Queen of the Belgians

born in 1937

Fulco's daughter, she married Prince Albert of Belgium in 1959. In 1993 Albert came to the throne as Albert II, and Donna Paola Ruffo di Calabria became the sixth Queen of the Belgians.

Images and documents

  • «La Domenica del Corriere», 5 July 1959: the wedding in Brussels of Prince Albert of Belgium and Princess Paola Ruffo di Calabria, leaving the Cathedral of St Gudula. Drawing by Walter Molino.
  • «La Tribuna Illustrata», 1 May 1960: the birth of Paola and Albert's first son, Philippe, with King Baudouin. Drawing by Vittorio Pisani.
  • «La Stampa»: Paola at the Cavalry Museum in Pinerolo with her mother Luisa and her son Philippe, in front of the mementoes of her father Fulco and her brother Augusto, on the 25th anniversary of Augusto's death (2 November 1943).
  • Letter from Paola Ruffo di Calabria, Brussels, 5 July 2023, in memory of her father Fulco and the pilots of the Great War.
  • Mario Danneels, «Paola», Jourdan.
  • «Dolce Paola. Een koninklijk stijlicoon», photographic book in Dutch.