Born in Giarre, Romeo was a leading historian of the Italian Risorgimento and of Italian modern history more generally. His best known work is probably his wide ranging and substantial (3 volume) biography of Cavour. Romeo was also a politician, sitting as a member of the Italian Republican Party in the European Parliament between 1984 and his death in 1987.
His passion for History was triggered at an early age after reading “Il Medioevo” (“The Middle Ages”) by Gioacchino Volpe, historian-politician who later would become his professor at the University of Catania. Romeo graduated in 1947 with a dissertation on the Risorgimento in Sicily winning a scholarship and publishing his dissertation into his first book. In 1953 Romeo moved to Naples, appointed as secretary of the Italian Historical Institute, where he stayed until 1956 when he took a professorship (history) in Messina. In 1962 Rosario Romeo took a position as Professor of Modern History at the University of Rome and in 1977 he became professor at the European University Institute in Florence where he stayed for most of 1978. Back in Rome, in November 1978 he was appointed rector/provost of the “Guido Carli” Free International University for Social Studies (LUISS) where he stayed until 1984. In 1986 Rosario Romeo was appointed a member of the Lincean Academy (Accademia dei Lincei).
On the political front, in 1984 Rosario Romeo’s name was on the candidate list of the then Italian Liberal Party for the 1984 Election to the European Parliament. Within the parliament he was elected vice-president of the Liberal and Democratic parliamentary group and of the Liberal and Democratic Reformist parliamentary group which replaced it at the end of 1985. He also served, between 1984 and 1987, as a member of the parliamentary committee for Regional Policy and Regional Planning, and between January and March 1987 as a member of the parliamentary committee on Institutional Affairs.
Read More:
1. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosario_Romeo
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