Italy bids goodbye to Berlusconi with state funeral

Thousands of mourners packed the area around the Duomo Cathedral in Milan on Wednesday to bid farewell to Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media mogul and former prime minister who died Monday at the age of 86, reported Xinhua.

More than 2,000 people, including national and international political leaders, and figures from the world of business, media, sports and entertainment attended the state funeral. The ceremony was broadcast nationally.

Wednesday had been declared a national day of mourning for Berlusconi, with flags at government offices and state monuments flying at half-mast. The European Union and Italian flags also flew at half-mast at various seats of the European Parliament.

Besides Berlusconi's family members, politicians attending the event included Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, President Sergio Mattarella, and the heads of most of the country's major political parties. International figures included Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, as well as dozens of ambassadors based in Italy.

According to reports on Mediaset, the television giant Berlusconi founded, the billionaire will be cremated and his ashes deposited in a mausoleum on the grounds of his villa in Arcore town, near Milan.

Berlusconi died on Monday at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. He was admitted to hospital on Friday for scheduled health check-ups related to his chronic leukemia.

He has profoundly influenced Italy in many aspects. The billionaire media tycoon was a dominant figure in Italian politics for three decades, heading four separate Italian governments as prime minister between 1994 and 2011, and he was also a member of the country's Senate.

Forza Italia, the political party he founded, is a junior partner in the current Italian government headed by Meloni.

Once a cruise ship singer, Berlusconi rose to national prominence as a property developer, before founding Mediaset, Italy's largest privately-owned broadcaster. Using the profits from Mediaset, he went on to acquire control of Italy's football club AC Milan, and then to become a vocal critic of the country's political establishment in the early 1990s.