Elettra Marconi and her special bond with Forte dei Marmi

Our interview with the daughter of the great scientist Guglielmo Marconi

He loved Forte dei Marmi and Versilia very much, where, on board his steam yacht Elettra, he met Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali, his future wife. We are talking about Guglielmo Marconi, ‘the father of radio’, but not only. He is one of the most important Italian scientists of all time. Born out of that love was Elettra, named after the yacht where Marconi lived and worked together with his wife and daughter, two of the crucial female figures in his life, along with his mother, the first to believe in him and encourage him in his research work. With Maria Cristina - or just ‘Cristina’, as Marconi usually called her - and Elettra, he often frequented Forte dei Marmi. To tell us about these sweet memories, in the year in which we celebrate 150 years since the birth of the great inventor, is Elettra Marconi herself, Princess Elettra, from her marriage to Prince Carlo Giovanelli, who passed away in 2016. It was 1937 when her father died suddenly in Rome, a few hours after accompanying Cristina to catch the train to Versilia, where they would have celebrated Elettra’s seventh birthday. She still loves to return to Forte dei Marmi, where it all began.

Elettra Marconi with her mother Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali

Can you tell us about the meeting between your father and your mother?

They met for the first time in Versilia. She and a friend of hers had been invited to an evening on board the yacht Elettra. My mother was 25 years old, she had long blonde hair that framed big blue eyes, and that evening she wore a red dress, she was beautiful. My father sent a motorboat to pick them up on shore. He welcomed all the guests and the moment their eyes met as my mother climbed the ladder turned into an encounter that lasted a lifetime.

You lived the first years of your life on board the Elettra. Did you ever take part in any of your father’s experiments?

Sometimes he called me and my mother while he communicated via radio with the most distant countries, Australia, Africa, China... to let us hear when the sound was crisp and clear, it was amazing. Then there was the period in which he worked on the invention of radar. He had two buoys placed on the bow, then we helped him put up some white sheets so that he couldn’t see anything and, looking at the radar, he gave the helmsman instructions to pass exactly in the middle. He called it ‘blind navigation’. He wanted to enable those who sailed to do so without risking collisions with other ships, rocks and icebergs. He wanted to protect the lives of seafarers (unfortunately the invention of radar did not arrive in time to completely avoid the Titanic tragedy, but it was thanks to Marconi’s radio that they managed to call for help and save the survivors, ed.). Then there are also other inventions that he was working on and that he would certainly have completed if he had not died so soon.

Among these there could also have been the cell phone...

It can’t be ruled out. In 1931 he invented the first radio telephone for Pope Pius. It was a kind of precursor of the cell phone, and he already imagined a world where we could talk to each other remotely with “a little box in our pocket”.

What relationship did your father have with Forte dei Marmi?

I know that there are memories of the Elettra moored at Franceschi’s Capannina, even if, in reality, he had time to see little more than the birth of what was one of the great innovations in Versilia, so he only spent a couple of evenings there with my mother. However, he loved Forte dei Marmi deeply, because that is where my mother had grown up, which is why we returned often. This is how it became a special place for me too, which I still love today.