Silvio Berlusconi is dead: Look at the life of the controversial politician who changed Italy forever

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has passed away at the age of 86. The controversial man who redefined Italian politics, for better or for worse, gave up the ghost at the San Raffaele Hospital of Milan on the morning of June 12, 2023.

The Italian politician had been hospitalized for three days prior for tests. Italian newspaper La Repubblica writes that Berlusconi's health was gravely affected by chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, which he was diagnosed a few months before.

The cancer diagnosis, in fact, had been given to Berlusconi during a previous stay at San Raffaele Hospital, in April 2023. The Italian politician had been discharged from a 45-day stay a few weeks prior to his demise.

Discharged from hospital, he looked like the usual Berlusconi, a little bruised, but in a good mood. “After the darkness, I won again,” he said in a message released on social media. “Long live life, always!”, he concluded.

In the past, the former Italian Prime Minister had shown signs of ailing health. Berlusconi had undergone a heart surgery in June 2016 that forced him to a long, slow recovery.

Pictured: Berlusconi leaving the hospital in June 2016.

“In my life, I've never thought about age. On the contrary, I've always lived as if I were 40. Then, suddenly, the disease arrived. With the operation came the strong awareness that I am an 80 years old man,” Berlusconi said at the time.

Silvio Berlusconi's life and political career is truly unique, for better or for worse, full of scandals, criticisms and legal problems. Let's look back at the life of the man who was, without a doubt, one of the major protagonists of recent Italian history.

Silvio Berlusconi was born on 29 September 1936 in Milan, in front of an Italian Communist Party headquarters: Luigi, his father, worked at a bank and his mother, Donna Rosa (seen in the picture with her son in 2006), had been a secretary before becoming a housewife.

The eldest son of a family of a Milanese middle class family, Silvio had two younger siblings: Paolo, seen in the picture, and Maria Antonietta, who passed away in 2009.

After graduating from the Sant'Ambrogio Salesian high school in Milan, Berlusconi studied Law in the University of Milan. He graduated with honors in 1961.

Young Silvio worked as a bartender, photographer, and even a singer on cruise ships. After that, Berlusconi began to focus on the construction business.

In 1961, Berlusconi founded his first company, Cantieri Riuniti Milanesi. The construction of the Milano Due district in the 1970s puts him on the spotlight of the Italian business world.

Construction is not the only business to draw in Berlusconi: He acquires Telemilano in the late 1970s, which will later become Canale 5, thus starting his rise in the world of communications.

After Canale 5, Berlusconi's company buys Italia 1 channel in 1983, followed by the acquisition of Rete 4 the following year. In 1993, then, he founded Mediaset, one of the biggest media conglomerates in Europe.

Berlusconi doesn't disdain books either. In 1990, he acquired the majority share of Mondadori and other important publishing houses, including Einaudi. Mediaset also manages the film production company Medusa Film.

Berlusconi uses his grip on television to boost sales of the supermarket chain Standa, which his company acquired in 1988. He also gets into insurance and finances.

Pictured: A Standa commercial with the host Marco Columbro.
By nd - nd, Public domain, https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4264341

A sports enthusiast, but above all a football fan, Berlusconi bought AC Milan in 1986, which was facing a difficult financial situation.

Under Berlusconi's leadership and with the help of his financial backing, AC Milan enters a golden era: 8 championships and 5 Champions Leagues and a total of 28 official trophies in 30 years. In April 2017, the company is sold to the Chinese entrepreneur Li Yonghong.

Pictured: Berlusconi and Paolo Maldini

Berlusconi, however, couldn't stay away from the soccer fields for too long. After selling Milan, takes over AC Monza. In the 2021-2022 season, the Lombard team is promoted to Serie A, Italy's top league, for the first time in its history.

Berlusconi's political carrer began in 1994, with the foundation of the center-right Forza Italia party, which became Il Popolo della Libertà in 2008, only to be refounded in 2013.

Forza Italia, in coalition with the Italian Social Movement of Gianfranco Fini and the Northern League led by Umberto Bossi, wins the elections in March 1994. However, it lasts less than a year in power, falling apart after Bossi leaves the coalition.

However, Berlusconi returns to power in 2001 using all his charisma and showmanship. A few days before the election, he signs on live TV a 'Contract with the Italians' compromising to launch several reforms under his government. The “contract” stipulated that if he didn't get elected, Berlusconi would give up running again.

Berlusconi not only won, but he ended up becoming Prime Minister a total of 4 times: He was elected for a third government in April 2005 and re-elected to lead Italy from 2008 to 2011.

To top that, Berlusconi served as a deputy five times in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian legislature, starting in March 1994.

He was elected to the Senate in 2013, but was convicted of tax fraud later that year related to his media company, Mediaset. He was barred from public office for 2 years, and stripped from his seat in the Senate.

Over his life, Silvio Berlusconi faced over 30 trials, but the only charges he was convicted was Tax Fraud in 2013. He served his sentence with community service in a retirement home for a year.

However, it wasn't easy to take Berlusconi out of politics. In 2018, he was able to run again and managed to be elected to the European Parliament.

In September 2022 Forza Italia, alongside the Brothers of Italy and the Liga Nord, becomes part of the center-right coalition that wins the general elections. Berlusconi runs for Senate and manages to win.

Over the years, Berlusconi has certainly been a controversial character in Italy, making fans and critics alike. When he was in power, accusations of conflicts of interest were commonplace.

Berlusconi was also criticized over alleged funds of unknown origin during his early years in the construction business. The former Italian Prime Minister was accused of having connections with members of the mafia and Propaganda Due, a Masonic lodge connected with the Banco Ambrosiano scandal in the early 1980s.

Last but not least, a lot was commented about Berlusconi's friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During his political career, Berlusconi has been physically assaulted in two occasions: On December 31, 2004, when a worker hit him with a camera tripod in Rome; and in Milan in 2009, when he was hit in the face with a statuette of the Milan Cathedral.

Berlusconi's own personal life had also been full of scandals: First, there was the time he went to the birthday party of Noemi Letizia, an 18-year-old girl, in 2009.

The Spanish newspaper El País published some photos in 2008 relating to parties in Berlusconi's summer home in Sardinia, where many young women attended. The headline: “The pictures Berlusconi doesn't want Italians to see”.

This was followed by the Ruby Case, in which a Moroccan minor by the name of Ruby was arrested by the Milan Police in May 2010, only to be released after a phone call from Berlusconi to the police chief.

Berlusconi has been married three times. First in 1965, with Carla Elvira Lucia Dall'Oglio. They had two children together: Marina (born in 1966) and Pier Silvio (born in 1969).

Pictured: Carla Elvira Lucia Dall'Oglio with her daughter Marina.

He was still married to his first wife, he met the actress Veronica Lario at the Manzoni Theater of Milan, they began a relationship that made he formalized in 1985, when he divorced the mother of his two eldest children.

Berlusconi married Lario in 1990 and the two had three children: Barbara (1984), Eleonora (1986) and Luigi (1988). The stream of scandals led to their divorce in 2012, with his second Veronica publicly asking an apology from Silvio.

In his final years, Berlusconi was linked to Forza Italia deputy Marta Antonia Fascina, who was born in 1990. The two contracted a “symbolic matrimony” in 2021, a marriage with no legal or civil value.

By the time of his demise, Berlusconi had five children, 14 grandchildren and a great-grandchild. “Five children and many grandchildren make a patriarch. And I feel this”, said the former Italian Prime Minister in an interview with Italian celebrity magazine Chi.

Although few people in Italy have been as polarizing as Berlusconi, there is no doubt: A man that was always in the spotlight is gone today that has changed his country, for the good and the bad.