1899 in Italy

Kingdom of Italy

• Monarch – Umberto I
• Prime Minister – Luigi Pelloux

  Events

February

• February 4 - A new coercive Public Safety bill is introduced by the government of Luigi Pelloux and adopted by Parliament. The law made strikes by state employees illegal; gave the executive wider powers to ban public meetings and dissolve subversive organisations; revived the penalties of banishment; and preventive arrest for political offences, and; tightened control of the press by making authors responsible for their articles and declaring incitement to violence a crime. The Radicals and Socialist start an obstructionist campaign using the filibuster: points of order, endless speeches and other procedural delaying tactics.

  May

• May 14 - Prime Minister Pelloux resigns over his Chinese policy but forms a new government, the most decisively conservative since 1876.

  June

• June 22 - Pelloux's patience with the obstruction to his public safety provisions snaps and he issues an unconstitutional royal decree. More moderate politicians like Giuseppe Zanardelli and Giovanni Giolitti join the opposition.

  July

• July 11 - The automobile manufacturer Fiat is established in Turin by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli. The company would become the major car making industry of Italy. The first Fiat plant opened in 1900 with 35 staff making 24 cars.

  Sports

• December 16 - Football club A.C. Milan is founded in Milan by English lace-maker Herbert Kilpin and businessman Alfred Edwards among others.

  Births

• January 1 - Randolfo Pacciardi, Italian politician, a member of the Italian Republican Party
• January 23 - Carlo Betocchi, Italian writer
• March 8 - Giuseppe Bastianini, Italian Fascist politician and diplomat
• March 11 - Carlo Tamberlani, Italian film actor
• May 16 - Luigi Fenaroli, Italian botanist and agronomist
• August 20 - Tullio Cianetti, Italian Fascist politician
• August 30 - Domenico Pellegrini Giampietro, Italian Fascist academic, economist, and politician
• September 2 - Francesco Fausto Nitti, Italian journalist and fighter against Fascism
• September 28 - Achille Campanile, Italian writer, playwright, journalist and television critic
• September 29 - Ferruccio Ghinaglia, Italian Marxist revolutionary
• November 10 - Pietro Caruso, Italian Fascist and head of the Italian police during the final part of World War II who organised the massacre in Fosse Ardeatine
• November 16 - Carlo Rosselli, Italian political leader, journalist, historian and anti-Fascist activist
• December 18 - Antonio Ligabue, Italian painter
• December 23 - Aldo Capitini, Italian philosopher, poet, political activist, anti-Fascist and educator

  Deaths

• January 15 - Serafino Dubois, Italian chess player
• May 8 - Giacomo Naretti, Italian architect
• May 20 - Carlotta Grisi, Italian ballet dancer
• September 28 - Giovanni Segantini, Italian painter
• November 17 - Achille Costa, Italian entomologist
• November 28 - Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, Italian aristocrat, better known as La Castiglione, who achieved notoriety as a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III of France
• December 23 - Marietta Piccolomini, Italian soprano