Prince Luigi Marcantonio Francesco Rodolfo Scipione Borghese, commonly known as Scipione Borghese (11 September 1871, Migliarino

Migliarino

Migliarino is a comune in the Province of Ferrara in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about 50 km northeast of Bologna and about 25 km southeast of Ferrara...

 - 18 November 1927, Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

) was an Italian industrialist, politician, explorer, mountain climber and racing driver.

He is best known for participating in (and winning) the Peking to Paris

Peking to Paris

The Peking to Paris motor race was a race held in 1907 for automobiles between Peking , China and Paris, France, a distance of 9,317 miles or 14,994 km....

 race in 1907, accompanied by the journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr.

Luigi Barzini, Sr.

Luigi Barzini Sr was an Italian journalist, war correspondent and fascist politician.-Biography:Born at Orvieto, Barzini started his career as a journalist in 1898, working for minor Italian magazines and was almost immediately noticed and hired by Luigi Albertini, then director of the Corriere...

 and Ettore Guizardi, the prince's chauffeur, who apparently did most of the driving. Nevertheless, before 1907 he had already become known internationally as a traveller, explorer, diplomat and mountain climber. In 1900 he had finished a journey in Asia from Beirut

Beirut

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...

 to the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. His book In Asia: Siria, Eufrate, Babilonia (In Asia: Syria, Euphrates, Babylon), published in 1903 and which proved a success, describes his journey from Beirut to Basra and the head of the Persian Gulf. Subsequently he also completed a journey across China, recounted in another book.

Tall and abstemious, he was a man of few words, cold, with calm and measured manners, and with great self-control. He was a deputy

Italian Chamber of Deputies

The Italian Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Parliament of Italy. It has 630 seats, a plurality of which is controlled presently by liberal-conservative party People of Freedom. Twelve deputies represent Italian citizens outside of Italy. Deputies meet in the Palazzo Montecitorio. A...

 of the Partito Radicale

Radical Party (Italy, 1877)

The Radical Party was a radical political party in Italy.It was founded in 1877 by Agostino Bertani and Felice Cavallotti as a radical-liberal party of what was then considered the "far left", from the name of the parliamentary group the Radicals formed with Andrea Costa, the first Socialist...

 in the Italian parliament of 1904 to 1913, fought bravely in the First World War, and began important improvement works in the "Agro Romano".

Family

Borghese was the eldest son of Paolo, 9th Prince of Sulmona (1845–1920) and his wife Ilona, Countess Apponyi de Nagy-Appony. He was twice married, firstly to Anna Maria de Ferrari (23 March 1874-25 November 1924), daughter of Gaetano, duca di Ferrari by his wife Maria Annenkov, on 23 May 1895, and they had two daughters. His second marriage to Teodora Martini on 8 August 1926 produced no issue. He was succeeded in the title Prince of Sulmona

Prince of Sulmona

The Prince of Sulmona is a noble title in Italy held by the House of Borghese. The title derives its name from Sulmona, a town in Abruzzo. Originally it was created in 1529, during Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor's reign as King of Naples for Philip de Lannoy, Prince of Sulmona...

 by his brother Livio Borghese, 11th Prince of Sulmona (1874–1939), second son of the 9th Prince.

Children

1. Santa Borghese (1 November 1897 Île de France, Paris - 13 April 1997 Rome). She married on 4 July 1925 at Isola Borghese, Lago di Garda, Astorre Hercolani, 9º principe Hercolani. They apparently had no issue.
2. Livia Borghese (4 March 1901 Île de France, Paris - 14 December 1969 Bologna, nine months after the death of her husband); she married on 30 December 1930 at Isola Borghese, Lago di Garda, Alessandro, conte Cavazza (1895-1969), by whom she had three sons (the eldest apparently born in 1922, or eight years before her marriage), and several descendants. The three sons of Donna Livia, contessa Cavazza and their descendants are the only known descendants of Scipio Borghese.

Source

• This page is a translation of its Italian counterpart.