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Carolina Pepoli

21 Agosto 1824 - 23 Agosto 1892

Scheda

Carolina Pepoli was born, on August 21, 1824, of the union between Marquis Guido Taddeo Pepoli and princess Letizia Murat, daughter of Gioacchino and Carolina, members of the royal family of Naples. Letizia had married the Bolognese Count on October 23, 1823; four children were born of this union, Paolina, Carolina, Elisabetta-Maria-Luciana and Gioacchino Napoleone. In 1845, Carolina married Count Angelo Tattini and moved to the palace in via Santo Stefano, which soon became one of the main meeting places of the liberal élite in Bologna. Since the beginning, Carolina got interested in politics, as we can deduce also from the high number of letters exchanged from 1845 to 1881 with her Florentine friend Giuseppe Pelli Frabboni, with whom she used to discuss about the most important events in Italy and Europe. Carolina lived as a protagonist the 1848 revolution, even fighting along Bologna’s streets, during the August 8 battle for the liberation from the Austrians. Once the Italian unity was accomplished, Carolina seemed to set aside her interests for politics, maybe because of several (family mournings), that, during the years, heavily affected her – in 1870, her son Napoleone died on a cargo on his way toward America and in 1878, both her second son, Giovanni, and her husband died – or maybe because she realised, as time went by, that she was part of a historical period that was definitely over, the period of the Risorgimento struggles. In spite of this, Carolina didn’t give up her social engagements: driven by her deep filanthropic attitude, she participated to the Società Operaia Femminile and her engagement in educational endeavours was acknowledged in 1888, when, during the celebrations of the VIII Centenary of the University of Bologna, she was elected presidentess of the Comitato delle Signore, in order to give the University a gonfalon and to receive the most important guests. She died at the age of sixty-eight, on August 23, 1892.