The woman next to me started crying when the hearse carrying Silvio Berlusconi’s corpse arrived in Milan’s Piazza Duomo just before three o’clock last Wednesday afternoon. She was dressed in black from head to toe, with a black bag and black sunglasses. Giant red and black AC Milan flags – Berlusconi owned the football club for thirty years – waved over us, providing some shade from the scorching sun. Football chants briefly broke out: ‘Silvio! Silvio! Silvio!’; ‘Anyone not jumping is a communist!’; ‘There’s only one president!’ Journalists zig-zagged through the crowd and confused tourists wondered why they couldn’t get near the cathedral. ‘It’s the funeral of a former prime minister,’ someone explained to them, in English. ‘A complex personality.’
Read more about ‘Anyone not jumping is a communist’