Lucci Hotel Rome Blog

Our blogger: Raul

If you look for Silvio Berlusconi on Wikipedia you’ll discover he’s “an Italian politician, entrepeneur,  real estate and insurance tycoon, bank and media proprietor,  sports owner  and songwriter".

Berlusconi is a man of many faces, and undoubtedly this versatility is one of the virtues that have allowed him to stay in power for more than ten years.

To understand Berlusconi is to understand Italy: its fears, its dreams. The man owns (successfully) a powerful world-class soccer  team, is the third richest man in Italy and a charming figure who has convinced the Italians to elect him on two different occasions. On the other hand, the initial sources of his wealth are still subject to debate. He is well known for tailoring laws that fit his needs, and has been deemed in more than one occasion “unfit to lead” , in the words of The Economist.

Berlusconi started doing business in his Native Milan, with a huge real estate project called Milano 2. Then he jumped to the media industry and banking and then went on to found his own party in 1994. According to some, he did this to save himself from jail and his interests from bankruptcy, or, in Berlusconi’s version , to become “a public servant because I do not want to live in an illiberal country, ruled by immature forces and by people who are well and truly bound to a past that proved both a political and economic failure”. In the last part of this sentence, he was trying to exploit the Italians fear of communism, a common weapon in his media arsenal..

Even if you don’t agree with his ideas or his life its difficult not to like Berlusconi, and that’s perhaps his most dangerous talent. He is, maybe, the ultimate entertainer: he wrote the anthems for his own party, Forza Italia; of his soccer team, AC Milan, and takes care of his image with the compulsion of an actor: For example, its well-known in Italy that he has had a face-lift and several hair transplants. There is also something dramatic, or better, tragicomic in some of his most famous “Berlusconisms”, the most recent defining Barack Obama, as a “handsome tanned man.” Berlusconi incarnates Italy, as it is right now. And this Italy will live as long as Berlusconi. And Vice-versa.

If you want to have a chance to see Berlusconi while you are in Rome, try taking a walk on Via del Corso: Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian government, lies there. To have easy access to this and many other Roman curiosities, make sure to book a well located hotel. Yes Hotel, and Hotel Des Artistes are two excellent  options.