71 Facts About Giorgio Napolitano

Giorgio Napolitano was the longest-lived president in the history of the Italian Republic, which has been in existence since 1946.

Giorgio Napolitano was a longtime member of the Italian Communist Party, which he joined in 1945 after taking part in the Italian resistance movement, and of its post-Communist democratic socialist and social democratic successors, from the Democratic Party of the Left to the Democrats of the Left.

Giorgio Napolitano was a leading member of migliorismo, a reformist, moderate, and modernizing faction on the right-wing of the PCI, which was inspired by the values of democratic socialism, looked favourably to social democracy, and was interested in revisionist Marxism.

Giorgio Napolitano was Minister of the Interior from 1996 to 1998 during the first Prodi government.

In 2005, Giorgio Napolitano was appointed a senator for life in Italy by then president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

In keeping with his constitutional role, Giorgio Napolitano then asked former European commissioner Mario Monti to form a cabinet, which critics referred to as a "government of the president".

Giorgio Napolitano intended to retire from politics after his seven-year presidential term expired, but reluctantly agreed to run again in the 2013 presidential election to safeguard the continuity of the country's institutions during the parliamentary deadlock that followed the February 2013 Italian general election.

Giorgio Napolitano was the first sitting president to run for a second term.

When Letta handed in his resignation in February 2014, Giorgio Napolitano mandated Matteo Renzi to form a new government.

Giorgio Napolitano had already stated that he did not intend to serve out a full second term.

Giorgio Napolitano then resumed his Italian Senate seat, which he held until his death in 2023.

Giorgio Napolitano was often accused by his critics of having transformed a largely ceremonial role into a political and executive one, acting as kingmaker during his political tenure.

Giorgio Napolitano was the oldest head of state in Europe and the third oldest in the world, behind the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Giorgio Napolitano was born in Naples, Campania, on 29 June 1925.

Giorgio Napolitano's father Giovanni was a liberal lawyer and poet, while his mother was Carolina Bobbio, a descendant of a noble Piedmontese family.

Giorgio Napolitano played in a comedy by Salvatore Di Giacomo at Teatro Mercadante in Naples.

Giorgio Napolitano dreamt of being an actor and spent his early years performing in several productions at the Teatro Mercadante.

Giorgio Napolitano loved reading the poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale, and Salvatore Quasimodo.

Giorgio Napolitano has often been cited as the author of a collection of sonnets in Neapolitan dialect published under a pseudonym, Tommaso Pignatelli, and entitled Pe cupia 'o chiarfo.

Giorgio Napolitano denied this in 1997 and on the occasion of his presidential election, when his staff described the attribution of authorship to Napolitano as a "journalistic myth".

Giorgio Napolitano published his first acknowledged book, entitled Movimento Operaio e Industria di Stato, in 1962.

In 1944, along with the group of Neapolitan communists, such as Mario Palermo and Maurizio Valenzi, Giorgio Napolitano prepared the arrival in Naples of Palmiro Togliatti, the long-time leader of the Italian Communist Party who was in exile since 1926 when the Communist Party of Italy was banned by the Fascist regime in Italy; Togliatti was one of few leaders not to be arrested, as he was attending a meeting of the Comintern in Moscow.

Giorgio Napolitano became a member of the Secretariat of the Italian Economic Centre for Southern Italy in 1946, which was represented by Giuseppe Paratore, where he remained for two years.

Giorgio Napolitano played a major role in the Movement for the Rebirth of Southern Italy for over ten years.

On 11 June 1946, nine days after the 1946 Italian institutional referendum in which Italy became a republic, Giorgio Napolitano was at the headquarters of the Communist federation in via Medina when they were besieged for many hours by a crowd of royalist demonstrators who were enraged by the display of the party's red flag and the tricolor without the Savoy coat of arms.

Giorgio Napolitano was elected to the National Committee of the party during its eighth national congress in 1956, largely thanks to the support offered by Togliatti, who wanted to involve younger politicians in the central direction of the party.

Giorgio Napolitano became responsible for the commission for Southern Italy within the National Committee.

Giorgio Napolitano complied with the party-sponsored position on this matter, a choice for which he was later criticized; he repeatedly declared to have become uncomfortable with the decision, developing what his autobiography describes as a "grievous self-critical torment".

Between 1963 and 1966, Giorgio Napolitano was party chairman in the city of Naples and later, between 1966 and 1969, he was appointed as chairman of the secretary's office and of the political office.

In 1964, following the death of Togliatti, Giorgio Napolitano was one of the main leaders who supported an alliance with the Italian Socialist Party, which after the end of the Popular Democratic Front joined the government with Christian Democracy.

Giorgio Napolitano's political thought was somewhat moderate in the context of the PCI; he became the leader of the wing of the party called migliorismo, whose members notably included Gerardo Chiaromonte and Emanuele Macaluso.

Between 1977 and 1981, Napolitano had some secret meetings with the United States ambassador Richard N Gardner, at a time when the PCI was seeking contact with the US administration, in the context of its definitive break with its past relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the beginning of Eurocommunism, the attempt to develop a theory and practice more adapted to the democratic countries of Western Europe.

Giorgio Napolitano was an active member of the party until it ended in 1991.

Thanks to this role and in part by the good offices of Giulio Andreotti, in the 1980s Giorgio Napolitano was able to travel to the United States and give lectures at Aspen, Colorado, and at Harvard University.

Giorgio Napolitano has since visited and lectured in the United States several times.

In July 1989, Giorgio Napolitano became foreign minister in the PCI shadow government, from which he resigned the day after the Congress of Rimini, where the PCI was dissolved.

That same year, Giorgio Napolitano supported the motion that led to the PCI's transformation and name change.

In 1992, Giorgio Napolitano was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies, replacing Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who became president of the Italian Republic.

Giorgio Napolitano was a prominent symbol of the Second Italian Republic that ensued.

Giorgio Napolitano was the first former Communist to hold the office, a role traditionally occupied by Christian Democrats.

Giorgio Napolitano remained Minister of the Interior until October 1998, when Prodi's government lost its majority in the Italian Parliament.

Giorgio Napolitano served a second term as a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004 within the Party of European Socialists, and was part of the European Parliament Committee on Constitutional Affairs.

In October 2005, Giorgio Napolitano was named senator for life, and was one of the last two to be appointed by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the then Italian president of the Republic, together with Sergio Pininfarina.

When Giorgio Napolitano was elected, Berlusconi gave an interview to Panorama, one of his political magazines, saying that the UDC betrayed him by letting 60 of his electors cast a blank vote on the first ballot, instead of supporting the official candidate Gianni Letta.

On 9 July 2006, Giorgio Napolitano was present at the 2006 FIFA World Cup final, in which the Italy national team defeated France and won its fourth World Cup, and afterwards he joined the players' celebrations.

Giorgio Napolitano is the second president of the Italian Republic to be present at a FIFA World Cup final won by the Italian team after Sandro Pertini in 1982.

On 26 September 2006, Giorgio Napolitano made an official visit to Budapest, Hungary, where he paid tribute to the fallen in the 1956 revolution, which he initially opposed as member of the PCI, by laying a wreath at Imre Nagy's grave.

On 10 February 2007, a diplomatic crisis arose between Italy and Croatia after Giorgio Napolitano made an official speech during the celebration of the National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe.

On 21 February 2007, Prodi submitted his resignation after losing a foreign policy vote in Parliament; Giorgio Napolitano held talks with the political groups in Parliament, and rejected the resignation on 24 February, prompting Prodi to ask for a new vote of confidence.

On 7 May, Giorgio Napolitano appointed Berlusconi as Prime Minister of Italy following his landslide victory in the 2008 Italian general election.

On 6 February 2009, Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign an emergency decree made by the Berlusconi government in order to suspend a final court sentence allowing suspension of nutrition to 38-year-old coma patient Eluana Englaro; the decree could not be enacted by Berlusconi.

Giorgio Napolitano earned the nickname "King George", which The New York Times attributed to "his stately defense of Italian democratic institutions".

Giorgio Napolitano received complimentary calls from multiple world leaders, including by the United States under Barack Obama, with whom he had positive relations.

In December 2011, L'Espresso declared 2011 to be the year of Giorgio Napolitano and named him the man of the year.

Giorgio Napolitano said that in 2013 he was implored by the governing parties to remain as prime minister.

Critics accused Giorgio Napolitano of orchestrating a coup against Berlusconi, and that he did this to help his former comrades; in fact, many people in the Quirinale told Casini that Berlusconi himself felt relieved, Berlusconi's party was instrumental to the Monti government formation, and Berlusconi himself supported Giorgio Napolitano's re-election in 2013.

Giorgio Napolitano reluctantly agreed to serve for another term in order to safeguard the continuity of the country's institutions.

Giorgio Napolitano became the new secretary of the Democratic Party and the centre-left's prospective candidate for Prime Minister.

Giorgio Napolitano's victory was welcomed by Letta, who had been the vice-secretary of the party under Bersani's leadership.

Giorgio Napolitano's cabinet became Italy's youngest government to date, with an average age of 47.

Giorgio Napolitano had surgery on his aorta in April 2018, and was in the intensive care unit after abdominal surgery in May 2021.

At the beginning of 1959, Giorgio Napolitano met Clio Maria Bittoni, who had graduated in law.

Giorgio Napolitano was a laico and non credente, effectively an atheist.

Giorgio Napolitano was the first to know about the pope's resignation.

Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio and former minister in the Monti Cabinet, said that "Giorgio Napolitano considered the Church a component of great importance in the social stability of the country" and was concerned by the rightward shift of Catholics.

In 2023, Giorgio Napolitano was hospitalized in Rome shortly after his 98th birthday on 29 June.

Giorgio Napolitano was buried in Rome's Cimitero Acattolico, near other historical figures like Antonio Gramsci, Andrea Camilleri, Emilio Lussu, Lindsay Kemp, Amelia Rosselli, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Giorgio Napolitano is considered one of the most important figures of the Italian Republic, particularly of the Second Italian Republic between the 1990s and 2010s, and is described as a giant of Italian politics.

Giorgio Napolitano was the first Italian president to be re-elected, and was the first former Communist to achieve the Italian Republic's highest office.

Giorgio Napolitano underwent several changes, from supporting Soviet Communism from the 1940s to the 1960s, from the moderate transition in the 1960s and 1980s, and a man of the institutions from the 1990s to the 2010s.

Giorgio Napolitano received a number of honours, both nationally and internationally.