Giò Stajano

Countess Maria Gioacchina Stajano Starace Briganti di Panico, known simply as Giò Stajano (1931–2011), was an Italian socialite, writer, journalist, actress, and painter. In the 1960s, before her transition and gender reassignment surgery (1983), she was known as one of the first publicly out gay men in Italy. It is said that her night swim in the Barcaccia Fountain inspired Federico Fellini's scene featuring Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita (1960).