Vito Positano
Encyclopedia
Vittorio Positano, popularly known as Vito Positano (2 October 1833–26 November 1886) was an early Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 diplomat known for saving the Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n capital city of Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

 from burning during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

Positano was born in the Southern Italian city of Noicattaro
Noicattaro
Noicattaro is a town and comune in the province of Bari, Puglia, Italy. It means "New Kotor", a city in Montenegro....

, formerly Noja, Province of Bari
Province of Bari
The Province of Bari is a province in the Apulia region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Bari.It has an area of 5,138 km², and a total population of 1,594,109 . There are 48 comuni in the province, see Comuni of the Province of Bari...

, then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, commonly known as the Two Sicilies even before formally coming into being, was the largest and wealthiest of the Italian states before Italian unification...

. He enlisted in the kingdom's army and was promoted to the rank of Captain for his participation in the crushing of local brigandage. After his service in the army, he joined the Bari fire brigade. According to some accounts, Positano was a follower of Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and...

 and participated in the Italian unification
Italian unification
Italian unification was the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century...

 (Risorgimento).

After the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...

 in 1861, Positano joined the diplomatic branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in 1863. He was at first a diplomatic agent in Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...

 in the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...

; he later held various posts in Italian consulates, mainly in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

. He served in Corfu
Corfu
Corfu is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the second largest of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the edge of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered as a single municipality. The...

, Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

, Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 and Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

. In 1876, he was appointed Vice Consul
Vice Consul
A vice consul is a subordinate officer, authorized to exercise consular functions in some particular part of a district controlled by a consulate....

 in Sofia.

As Joseph Gurko's forces approached the Ottoman-controlled city during the Russo-Turkish War, Positano, together with the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 Vice Consul Léandre François René le Gay and the Austro–Hungarian Vice Consul, refused to leave Sofia, thus saving it from the planned burning
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...

 by the Ottoman defending forces. After the Ottoman retreat, Positano organized armed detachments to protect the population from marauder
Marauder
A marauder is a bandit, outlaw, raider or such like who moves about in roving fashion looking for plunder.Other uses of marauder, usually derived from the above include:in " Football"...

s (regular Ottoman Army deserters, bashi-bazouk
Bashi-bazouk
A bashi-bazouk or bashibazouk was an irregular soldier of the Ottoman army...

s and Circassians) and a fire brigade to put out individual fires; this was the first fire brigade in Sofia's history. For his deeds during the war, Positano received an order from the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 and was made honorary citizen of Sofia, the capital of the newly-established autonomous Principality of Bulgaria
Principality of Bulgaria
The Principality of Bulgaria was a self-governing entity created as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The preliminary treaty of San Stefano between the Russian Empire and the Porte , on March 3, had originally proposed a significantly larger Bulgarian territory: its...

. He remained Italian Vice Consul in Sofia until 1879.

In 1881, Positano was sent to Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...

 to serve as Consul
Consul (representative)
The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries...

; in a few years he was dispatched to Yokohama
Yokohama
is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...

, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, where he died in 1886.

Streets in his native town and the Bulgarian capital Sofia have been named after Vito Positano. The one in Sofia is particularly famous for the 20 Positano Street address, the headquarters of the Bulgarian Socialist Party
Bulgarian Socialist Party
The Bulgarian Socialist Party is social-democratic political party in Bulgaria and successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party. The BSP is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Socialist International, and is currently led by Sergei Stanishev....

.
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