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Recently I visited Della Valle at his art-filled 17th-century villa in Le Marche. I asked him whether, as many suspect, his next step is to put himself forward as an untarnished but equally charismatic alternative to Berlusconi. He is, after all, a self-made man with splendid homes, yachts, a private plane, a newspaper and a football team. He is on the board of Mediobanca, which, among other things, controls Assicurazioni Generali, the insurance giant at the centre of Italy’s financial establishment. A few months ago, Della Valle’s decisive role in ousting Generali’s director, Cesare Geronzi, an ally of Berlusconi, made everyone aware of just how powerful he is. Isn’t the next logical step the Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of Italian prime ministers?
‘I am a businessman,’ he told me. ‘Politics is not my trade. I am not interested in sitting around and arguing about things. I go on talk shows because I think a citizen has the right to give his opinion, but I prefer to be on the outside. I can do more. I can decide what I want to do and do it.’
A velvet-footed waiter served us coffee. Della Valle was a gracious host, solicitous and charming. He looked quite formal, wearing a dark suit made by the Milanese tailor Caraceni: ‘My uniform.’ He always wears a bunch of string bracelets, which are mementos. He was by no means the Italian statesman stereotype; he did not seem to be an obvious megalomaniac. ‘If I could have anything,’ he said, ‘my dream would be to have a year of free time. You have no idea how much I travel. When anyone asks me, “Have you seen this exhibition?”, I have to say, “No. I went from the plane to the hotel, to a meeting, then I left.” I want to enjoy my homes, spend time with my son, play football with my friends. Or maybe go to Venice for the day, have lunch at Harry’s Bar. That is what I would do if I was not working in my business all the time.’
Still, one has to remember that Berlusconi also denied to the press that he had any political ambitions. Then, a few months later, he was prime minister. I tried to tease Della Valle by asking if, with this restoration project, he saw himself as a modern emperor. ‘No, no, no,’ he answered. ‘I am just one of the “popolo” [the ordinary people].’
Back to that night at the Colosseum. Della Valle approaches me and asks, with a smile, ‘Do you want to come see the lions?’ It’s hard to deny that it is a pretty special occasion. The Romans are taking it in. ‘He wants to build an empire, there is no doubt about that,’ says one of his guests, ‘and he wants to do it on his own terms.’ Della Valle, surrounded by his friends and admirers, is beaming.
‘You see, I came here as a child,’ he tells me. ‘Now it is something that I really love that I can do this. In the end, when I come here with my grandchildren, it is something that I will look back on and say, I have really done something. In the past my family always believed that if you do a good deed you should never talk about it, I have come to see this differently. It’s not a matter of charity. Giving something back to society is the duty of every successful businessman. It is also good for our business because in the end people want to see that you are giving something back. We are only starting with this. I want to see other people, other Italians, people I know in business who are also my friends, follow this example.’
A short distance from where we are, in the Palazzo Chigi, sits Silvio Berlusconi — morally bankrupt, deluded, all his credibility lost, truly suffering from an emperor complex. He is scrambling to buy himself some more time, having just survived a vote of no confidence by the narrowest of margins. How long can he last?
It is hard to avoid comparing the two men. For now ‘the shoemaker’ has his own arena. But who knows what the future may bring, especially in a country that happens to be shaped like a boot.
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