"May the happy and esteemed women of the future direct their thoughts to the pain and humiliation of those who preceded them in life, and may they remember with gratitude the names of those who paved the way to their unprecedented, perhaps not even dreamed of, happiness." (Of Women's Condition and of their Future, 1866)1

During her lifetime, Cristina was incredibly famous, and not only in Italy. She was celebrated for decades after her death for her contribution to the cause of Italian unification. But today she is almost unknown. Even if every Milanese once knew her name thanks to her wealth, beauty, courage and nonconformism, she is now only remembered by a street leading to the suburbs.

Cristina was a frail and shy child, yet from a very young age she proved to be fearless. She was born into a noble and wealthy family. Her father died when she was only four; however, hers was a peaceful childhood: her mother remarried Alessandro Visconti d'Aragona from whom she had four more children, and Cristina was in good and affectionate relationships with both her stepfather and her half-siblings. As was customary in noble families at the time, she received lessons at home rather than attending school. A crucial influence on her education was her drawing teacher, Ernesta Bisi, who first introduced her to new ideas, and her friendship with Bianca Milesi: ideas that came from France and were not at all appreciated by Cristina's powerful maternal grandfather, the Grand Chamberlain to the Emperor of Austria.

At 16, Cristina chose to marry the charming and dissolute Prince Emilio di Belgioioso over a sad and whiny cousin, ignoring the advice of friends. The young and good-looking Prince, however, had syphilis and a tendency to squander his fortune. To give an idea of the wealth of the Trivulzio family, consider that Cristina brought a dowry of 400,000 Austrian liras – 4 million euros today. Her marriage to Belgioioso was short-lived, but dissolved peacefully into a lifelong friendship.

In the late 1820s, Cristina began to associate with patriots: a fact that did not escape the watchful eye of the Milanese police. Feeling threatened, she first fled to Switzerland, and then to France. Here, as a guest of a notary friend, she met the French historian Augustin Thierry, who remained her lifelong friend after falling in love with her intellect, vitality, and resourcefulness. Unfortunately, he could not admire her beauty, having recently gone blind.

While the Austrian police seized all her assets in Italy, Cristina decided to move to France. There, for a time, she eked out a living crafting lace and cockades. Fortunately, however, her poverty only lasted a short time: first came her mother's help, then the release of her patrimony.

She acquired a residence in the heart of Paris, started hosting a salon, cultivated friendships with figures such as Heinrich Heine, Liszt, and de Musset, and maintained correspondence with La Fayette. She wrote articles, financed patriotic publications out-of-pocket, helped numerous Italian exiles, even financed an attempted Mazzinian coup in Sardinia, and advocated for the Italian cause within the influential Parisian élite.

She was widely admired and possessed a captivating charm, drawing reverence and numerous suitors with her striking height, slender figure, pale complexion, and dark hair. At the age of thirty, she gave birth to Maria, whose father would always remain unidentified, maybe the historian François Mignet. After this, she spent years in seclusion and study. Then, Cristina chose to return to Locate, to her large family estate.

Before leaving Milan, Cristina wished to give a special last goodbye to Giulia Beccaria, Alessandro Manzoni's mother, who was seriously ill. However, the “pious” Manzoni denied her entry, deeming her life too scandalous to be accepted by a Catholic. Later, when informed that Cristina had established a nursery school for impoverished children in Locate, he would exclaim: «If the children of farmers are now going to school, who will work the land?».

However, her nursery school was lauded by the esteemed pedagogist Ferrante Aporti, and it was not Belgioioso's only philanthropic initiative. Having admired the utopian socialist ideals of Charles Fourier while in France, she also established schools for boys and girls in Locate, as well as welfare services for the farmers.

Years of intense study followed (among other things, she translated the works of Gian Battista Vico into French) together with a fervour of ideas, dissent, and initiatives: Cristina aligned herself with the unitary and monarchical solution. These were turbulent years, laying the groundwork for 1848. She used her money to share ideas, inaugurating the journal «Ausonio», which drew inspiration from the famed «Revue des Deux Mondes». She also met leading figures, including the Count of Cavour, Cesare Balbo, Niccolò Tommaseo, and Giuseppe Montanelli.

She was in Rome when the Five Days of Milan broke out. She put together her ironically named army, the “Belgioioso Army”: 200 volunteers shipped by steamboat to Genoa, and from there to Milan. Shortly after, she joined the patriots of the Roman Republic, spending days and nights in hospitals, braving every risk and “inventing” nurses, who did not yet exist: aristocratic ladies, bourgeois women, and even some prostitutes. Years later, when the news spread, it caused a scandal among the “conformists” and even the Pope, to whom Cristina would reply with a public letter, writing respectfully yet without holding her tongue.

After the defeat of the Roman Republic, she set sail from Civitavecchia with her daughter, landing in Constantinople, and then venturing into Turkey. Here, with borrowed funds, she acquired a property, established an agricultural colony open to Italian refugees, aided the local community as she had in Locate, and sustained herself by writing articles of striking realism about Anatolia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.

In 1855, after the Austrian bureaucracy returned her assets, she traveled back to Italy where, in 1860, her daughter Maria married – it would be a happy marriage that would also make Cristina happy. In 1861, following the proclamation of the long-awaited unification of Italy, the Princess of Belgioioso peacefully abandoned all political activity and spent her life between Milan, Locate, and Lake Como with her devoted Turkish servant Burdoz and her English governess Miss Parker, her loyal companions in her travels and adventures for twenty years.

She died in 1871, at the age of 63, in Locate, where her grave is located till this day.


Translated by Alessia Tavaroli.
1 Translation by Alessia Tavaroli.