Berlusconi leaves Italy locked in grief, looking at political void

"Italy without Berlusconi". With three words, the country's biggest-selling Corriere della Sera daily Tuesday captured the chasm created by the death of its most seductive and divisive politician.

A youthful Silvio Berlusconi smiled in photographs featured on most front pages as the papers paid tribute to a man who rose from cruise ship crooner to media mogul and three-time prime minister, before dying Monday aged 86.

"It is difficult to imagine a life without Silvio," Corriere's Massimo Gramellini wrote.

Fellow editorialist Aldo Cazzullo said he "seduced a country".

"Berlusconi's feat was not founding private televisions or a party that became the biggest in Italy in just three months," he wrote.

"Berlusconi's real feat was making the majority of Italians identify with him. He was enormously rich, and he won the votes of the poor."

Messaggero lead with "The Italian dream", and described Berlusconi as "a man who left a deep footprint".

"The first populist," the centre-left Repubblica daily headline said, with a picture of an unsmiling Berlusconi, his face half in shadow.

"He sought immortality in every gesture of his life and above all in the cult of himself", wrote Ezio Mauro, who was editor of the Repubblica during much of Berlusconi's period in power and clashed regularly with him.

The right-wing Giornale, which was owned until not long ago by Berlusconi's family, called him "everyone's president".

"None of the greats who made Italy great ever managed to do as much as him," it said.

But the centre-left Domani daily said that while Berlusconi was "a giant", he had also been "a disaster for the country".

And the Foglio daily went with a cartoon depicting Berlusconi — famed for his sex scandals and legal woes — asking to be made a saint.

Berlusconi is survived by his 33-year-old girlfriend, Marta Fascina; two ex-wives; and five children, some of whom help run his empire, recently estimated to be worth some seven billion dollars.

Health complications

Silvio Berlusconi died at age 86, his spokesman confirmed Monday as he was admitted to a Milan hospital Friday for what aides said were pre-planned tests related to his leukaemia.

His admission came just three weeks after he was discharged following a six-week stay at Milan's San Raffaele hospital, during which time doctors revealed he had a rare type of blood cancer.

Berlusconi had suffered ill health for years, from heart surgery in 2016 to a 2020 hospitalisation for coronavirus. Despite being re-elected to the Senate last year, he was rarely seen in public.

But he remained the official head of his right-wing Forza Italia party, a junior and occasionally troublesome partner in PM Giorgia Meloni's coalition government.

Berlusconi led Italy three times between 1994 and 2011, for a total of nine years, wooing voters with a promise of economic success only to be forced out as a debt crisis gripped his country.

But his influence extended well beyond politics, thanks to his extensive TV, newspaper, and sporting interests, while his playboy antics kept him in the headlines even in his final years.

"Silvio Berlusconi made history in this country," ex-PM Matteo Renzi said on Facebook.

"Many loved him, many hated him; everyone today must recognise that his impact on political but also economic, sporting and television life was unprecedented," he said.

While it is too soon for details of his funeral, Berlusconi built a Pharaoh-inspired marble mausoleum at his villa in Arcore, near Milan, to house his family and friends when they die.