1000 Mile Race

The 1953 Mille Miglia was held on April 26, 1953, though the slowest cars left Brescia the evening before. Mille Miglia means “a thousand miles” in Italian, and the route was a round trip from Brescia to Rome and back on ordinary public roads. That year it was the second round of the new World Sportscar Championship, so it also drew teams from outside Italy, e.g., Aston Martin, Jaguar and Gordini.

Of the 577 cars entered, 490 started and 283 were classified as finishers. The cars were sorted into classes by engine size, and the smaller, slower ones left first. Each car’s number was its start time, so Juan Manuel Fangio in number 602 left Brescia at 6:02 am.

The home teams were Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari. The Alfas took an early lead, but Consalvo Sanesi crashed on the road to Rome and Karl Kling retired after an accident of his own, having taken over the lead. Giuseppe Farina’s Ferrari had crashed out as well. Fangio then led until his steering and brakes started to fade, and Giannino Marzotto passed him in a Ferrari 340 MM. Marzotto won in 10 hours 37 minutes, averaging about 89 mph, which was his second win after 1950. Fangio finished second, about 11 minutes behind – and for most of the return leg he had effective steering on only one front wheel. Felice Bonetto was third in a Lancia.

The film director Roberto Rossellini drove a Ferrari that year as well. He had recently married Ingrid Bergman, and she didn’t want him to race. The story goes that she threw herself across the car in Rome and refused to move until he agreed to withdraw, though the results list him as retiring with differential trouble.

As was typical of the Mille Miglia, the race was marked by fatal accidents. A French navigator was killed when his Jaguar crashed near Ferrara, and two spectators died as well, one of them a twelve-year-old boy.

Note

This album page doesn’t have many stamps on it. I wish Leuchtturm would have used a more compact layout for these album pages. The Italian Republic issued far too many stamps. Dispersing them over so many pages makes it worse. The cost of an album page for some of these is more than the value of the few stamps they hold.

Contains 8 spots: own 8 – 8 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Jan 9, 2023

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot	own	catalog	subject	description
1.1	✓	707	1000 Mile Car Race	25₤ (apr 1953) comm., violet
2.1	✓	706	Antonello da Messina	25₤ (feb 1953) comm., red
2.2	✓	708	Labor Order of Merit	25₤ (apr 1953) comm., purple
2.3	✓	709	Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)	25₤ (may 1953) comm., brown
2.4	✓	719	St. Claire, San Damiano Convent - Assisi	25₤ (jun 1953) comm., red brown
3.1	✓	721	Tyche and Eutichide of Sicyon Intl. Expo of Agriculture, Rome	25₤ (jul 1953) comm., green
3.2	✓	722	Tyche and Eutichide of Sicyon Intl. Expo of Agriculture, Rome	60₤ (jul 1953) comm., sky blue
4.1	✓	720	Mountain Festival	25₤ (jul 1953) comm., green

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.