📍Villa Griffone, Via Celestini 1, 40037 Pontecchio Marconi, Sasso Marconi, Italy
1874 – 1896“I grew up at Villa Griffone, my father's country estate at Pontecchio, in the green hills along the Reno valley just south of Bologna. My father, Giuseppe, was a wealthy landowner, and my mother, Annie Jameson, came from the Irish whiskey family. She taught me English, encouraged my curiosity and protected me from my father's impatience with what he thought were useless experiments. I was educated mostly at home and by private tutors, and spent time in Florence and Livorno, but Villa Griffone was where my imagination lived. I read everything I could about electricity, and when I learned of Heinrich Hertz's discovery of electromagnetic waves, I was convinced they could be used to send messages without wires. In 1894 and 1895 I turned the old silkworm room in the villa's attic into a laboratory, filling it with batteries, coils and antennas, and worked there day and night. My mother defended my experiments. First I rang a bell across the room, then sent signals down the length of the garden. In the summer of 1895 I placed a grounded antenna in the garden and sent signals beyond the Celestini hill, about two kilometres away, where our estate worker and my brother Alfonso waited with a receiver. When the signal arrived, Alfonso fired a rifle shot into the air. It was the moment I knew wireless could cross obstacles and distance. In 1896 I took my apparatus to England, and in time sent signals across the Atlantic and won the Nobel Prize. Villa Griffone is now the Marconi Museum, where my attic laboratory has been restored and visitors can still look out towards the Celestini hill.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today