Giovanni de Ciotta

Giovanni de Ciotta was the first-born son of Lorenzo de Ciotta and Luisa de Adamich, daughter of the foremost Fiuman merchant and father of modernisation in Fiume, Andrea Lodovico de Adamich. The family de Ciotta originated from Livorno, where Giovanni served the Austrian army as an engineer. As an officer of the Austrian engineer corps, he fought in Italy in the 1848-49 campaigns and remained in the army until 1859. He arrived in Fiume in 1859 from Livorno, after having resigned from the Austrian army, reputedly for political reasons. In Fiume, initially, he lived as a landlord and commercial agent for his brother Lorenzo, who ran a trading company in Livorno, but Giovanni de Ciotta soon turned to engineering. Nevertheless, his personal life remains a mystery.