Centenary landing Gianni Widmer

It was 16 April 1913 when the world's first aviator reached an altitude of 1600 metres. The protagonist of the feat was the Triestine pilot Gianni Widmer, who was awarded the first class gold medal for civil merit at the time. The aircraft used for the feat: a 50-horsepower Blèriot XI. The airspace flown over: the sky above San Marino. Landing site: the Monte Carlo plateau (m. 508), located in the Fiorentino castle in the Republic of the same name. To commemorate the centenary of the glorious feat, the AASFN is dedicating a commemorative postage stamp to the event. Giovanni Cremonini, who has become famous for his ‘portraits’ linked to the world of Formula One, and in particular to the entire epic of the Maranello red car, signed the sketch. In the vignette designed for the centenary, the cippus, created by the sculptor Carlo Reffi with an epigraph by Pietro Franciosi, stands out in the foreground. It was erected on the plateau where the landing took place, after an eleven-minute flight that saw the Trieste pilot take off from Rimini. The stamp places the classic ‘line’ of Mount Titano in the background. Next to the monument is a fine period portrait of Widmer and the French monoplane, the only coloured element on the stamp, which only four years earlier, among other things, had made the first air crossing of the English Channel. San Marino 1913-2013. One hundred years, an artist's vignette, an evocative issue, an anniversary still able to offer remembrance and memory of the extraordinary feats cherished by the short century.