Clio Napolitano, the wife of former President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, has died
He would have been 90 years old in November
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Clio Napolitano, the wife of former President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, has died in Rome - after a long illness. She would have been 90 years old in November. Born in Chiaravalle, in the province of Ancona, the former 'first lady' passed away less than a year after the death of her husband, who died on 22 September 2023 at the age of 98.
After graduating from classical high school in Jesi, Clio Maria Bottoni, this is her maiden name, later graduated in Law at the University of Naples Federico II, where she met her future husband Giorgio.
Parallel to the start of the future Head of State's parliamentary career, Clio Napolitano practised in a law firm. The two married in 1959 in a civil ceremony on the Capitol Hill, in line with the customs of Italian Communist Party officials. Two sons were born to the couple, Giovanni (born in 1961) and Giulio (born in 1969). As a lawyer, he specialised in labour law and the application of the law on fair rent in agriculture, assisting many farm labourers. Until 1992 she worked in the legislative office of the League of Cooperatives, a position she left when her husband was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies. On this choice, she later recounted: 'I left because it seemed inappropriate for me to stay on, my counterparts being the parliamentary commissions, the Council presidency and other institutional bodies. Perhaps in this sense Giorgio influenced the realisation of a professional path'.
Coinciding with her husband's election to the Quirinale, Clio Napolitano often attended official events, accompanying her husband on almost all state trips. A woman of great style, she also participated in numerous social events, accepting invitations from important fashion designers to their fashion shows. Little inclined to the strict protocol dictates of the Quirinale, she remembers when, in September 2012, she queued up like a commoner to see an art exhibition on Vermeer set up in the Quirinale stables, insisting on paying for the ticket. In March 2014, on the occasion of the Day in Remembrance of the Victims of Violence, she personally went, together with the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic Donato Marra, to lay a bouquet of flowers at the Dioscuri fountain on the Quirinale square, which had been lit up in red for the occasion with the names of some of the victims of the bloody attacks projected on the base of the obelisk.
