Lorenzo Annibale Costantino Nigra, Count of Villa Castelnuovo (11 June 1828 – 1 July 1907), was an Italian nobleman, philologist, poet, diplomat, and politician. Among his several positions he held and political and foreign affairs in which he was involved in the Kingdom of Piedmont and Kingdom of Italy, he served as ambassador and was later appointed a member of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy. Biography Nigra was born in Villa Castelnuovo, in the province of Turin, Piedmont. He graduated in jurisprudence at the University of Turin. During the Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states, he interrupted his studies to serve as a volunteer against the Austrian Empire, and was wounded at the battle of Rivoli. On the conclusion of peace, he entered the Kingdom of Piedmont's foreign office; he accompanied King Victor Emmanuel II and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, to Paris and London in 1855. In 1856, he took part in the conference of Paris by which the Crimean War was brought to an end. After the meeting at Plombières between Cavour and Napoleon III, Nigra was again sent to Paris, this time to popularize a Franco–Piedmontese alliance, Nigra being, as Cavour said, the only person perhaps who knows all my thoughts, even the most secret. He was instrumental in negotiating the marriage between Victor Emmanuel's daughter Clothilde and Napoleon's nephew, and during the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 he was always with the emperor. He was recalled from Paris when the occupation of the Marche and Umbria by the Piedmontese caused a breach in Franco–Italian relations, and was appointed secretary of state to the prince of Carignano, viceroy of the Neapolitan provinces. When Napoleon recognized the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, Nigra returned to France as minister-resident, and for many years played a most important part in political affairs and for Cavour; for his account of the administration of the Neapolitan provinces, Giustino Fortunato judged it an "admirable brave writing ... that is worth so much gold". During his mandate in Paris, Nigra contributed to the negotiations that led, thanks to the consent of Napoleon, to the conclusion of the Italo–Prussian alliance in 1866 ahead of the Third Italian War of Independence. In 1870, after his in the battle of Sedan, Napoleon was taken prisoner. As ambassador in Paris, Nigra remained the only friend of the empress Eugénie de Montijo, who was