The name of late three-time ex-premier and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi was inscribed in the city of Milan's Famedio Pantheon or Hall of Fame on Thursday, All Souls Day, the day when Christians remember their dead.
"He was a person who was very much appreciated and very much criticised," said Milan's centre-left Mayor Beppe Sala after protests from the left over the allegedly controversial figure joining the Lombardy capital's past great and good.
"It's a decision by the city council, not the mayor," Sala added.
Lombardy's rightwing Governor Attilio Fontana said "it's a just and dutiful recognition on the part of a city which was always his point of reference and to which he gave an awful lot".
The flamboyant businessman turned politician, who died in June aged 86 after dominating and polarizing Italian public life for decades, has now found a place among Milan's other illustrious past citizens.
The municipal panel's decision, proposed by Berlusconi's old centre right party Forza Italia (FI), was also backed by the centre left.
Another 13 late famed citizens entered the Famedio along with Berlusconi, including the former head of the Milan Conservatory of Music, Marcello Abbado, ex Furniture Show chief Manlio Armellini, and former organ makers Cesare, Alessandro and Natale Balbiani, representing the oldest such firm in Italy.There were also some illustrious women that council chair Elena Buscemi chose as examples for future generations, including the first Italian woman to graduate in civil engineering in Milan, in 1913, Gaetanina Calvi; and the first female Italian aviator, Rosina Ferrario.Other women included Gisella Floreanini, music teacher, partisan and politician, Italy's first woman minister; model and fashion designer Marta Marzotto; former undersecretary Ombretta Carulli Fumagalli, the first woman to hold the canon law chair at the Cattolica University; and partisan Francesca Laura Wronowski.The other men inducted were jazz guitarist Franco Cerri, artist Alberto Garutti, publisher Achille Mauri, and goldsmith and sculptor Alfredo Ravasco.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
