Tittoni, Tommaso

(1855–1931)

   Elected to Parliamentwhen he was just over 30 years old, Tittoni was one of the leading conservatives in liberal Italy. He was nominated to the Senate in 1902 and the following year became foreign minister in the second government of Giovanni Giolitti. Prime minister for two weeks during a government crisis in 1905, Tittoni held the post of foreign minister, with one brief interlude as ambassador to Great Britain, until 1910. As foreign minister at a complex and difficult moment in European history, Tittoni skillfully managed to keep Italy from definitively joining either of the two armed camps forming in Europe and to keep tensions with Austria from boiling over into war. Between 1910 and 1916, he was ambassador to Paris; in 1919, he became foreign minister under Francesco Saverio Nitti. Tittoni supported the advent of Fascism, and served as president of the Senate until 1929, whereupon he became president of the Accademia d’Italia/Italian Academy and a member of the Fascist Grand Council. He died in his native Rome in 1931.