Silvio Berlusconi was on his way to the San Raffaelle hospital last Friday. They told him to have routine physicals. Pure caution. But Il Cavaliere asked the driver to make a detour and, before taking him to the medical center, to stop at Milano Due, the massive building complex he built in the late 1970s that served as a platform for a business and media empire . Accompanied by his girlfriend, 33-year-old deputy Marta Fascina, and some members of his team, he entered the Maximilian Bar on the complex’s small square. He ordered an orange polo shirt and sat down at the table in the corner, just in front of the register and the glass pane that gave him a full view of the artificial lake he’d built on the spot where it all began. He spent an hour there, photographed himself with some children, repeated the same ice cream twice more, and then they took him to the hospital. He passed away three days later, on Monday.
“Of course it would be nice to think it was premeditated. Imagine that he knew he was going to die and that’s why he came here to say goodbye to the place from which he had built his empire. But I don’t know…” explains Omar Calveti, manager of the bar where Berlusconi last saw the outside before entering the hospital. Today this table is empty. And the photo from that moment, released by Italian media, shows an 86-year-old man, swollen from medication, flashing a childish, almost friendly smile while taking a picture with a child, who is also likely to be drinking has gone . a pole on the same pole. The image of Berlusconi without photoshop or makeup.
Silvio Berlusconi with child, in the Maximilian restaurant, three days before his death, in a Twitter picture.
Dozens of families stroll through the large complex on Tuesday afternoon. Brick, vegetation, small lakes, birds, shopping malls and lots of tranquility. If the upper middle class had been built by a utopia, Milano Due would be the perfect representation of this ambitious dream shared by millions of Italians. The mirror in which a generation tired of economic stagnation, rigid Catholic customs and a lifestyle that didn’t change wanted to look: no matter how much the Christian Democratic governments decided and the prime ministers were overthrown. “We came here because it was paradise. There were actors, journalists, good restaurants. Everything worked fine and it was two steps from the center of Milan. This place was a revolution,” explain Mattia and Teresa, a couple who bought a house in the early 1990s. It was sold directly to Berlusconi. That’s how it was then.
Mughal monument
In the center of the square there is a monument dedicated to the tycoon, the work of his main sculptor Pietro Cascella (the same who designed the mausoleum of his mansion in Arcore). Today is full of flowers and writings. Milano Due had to be a neighborhood where cars were not protagonists and children could walk around safely. The first residents arrived in 1971, however the complex continued to be built for several more years. Around 2,700 middle-class families now live here. Isolated blocks, built with technology from Siemens and Bticino, surround a central space with swimming pools, tennis courts, schools and a “garden of aggressiveness” where, as the advertisement says, children could learn how “Indians and cowboys” to fight. . But the particular structure, built with bridges to avoid crossing zebra crossings, was also the home of Italy’s first commercial television, TeleMilano 58, which began broadcasting in 1974.
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Milano Due makes it possible to decipher many elements of Berlusconi’s life and aesthetics. Also from his cultural and physical geography – he himself spent his life crossing the complex to go from his mansion in Arcore to the San Raffaelle hospital – and from that political era in which Forza Italia, his party, knew , how to engage with a fed electorate. of the Gattopardism of the Italian parties. But the location also raises historical questions, such as the true origin of the money that the magnate used to build a building project on a 712,000 square meter plot in the municipality of Segrate, which borders Milan. The official version says that the capital was backed by a loan from the Rasini Bank, where Berlusconi’s father worked, but it was also used by various mafia families. The magistrate’s investigations always showed that it could be due to the connections that Berlusconi had made with Cosa Nostra. It could never be proven.
The architectural idea was that of the untouched landscape. And to prevent the television antennas from spoiling the popular memory of this artificial world, the architects Giancarlo Ragazzi and Giulio Possa decided to install an underground network. In 1974, Giacomo Properzj and Alceo Moretti became enthusiastic about the station and began broadcasting all sorts of amateur programs involving the residents of Milano Due. Also Tele Milano Cavo was born and it was a success. A year later, Berlusconi took over the chain and began organizing a constellation of small stations that circumvented the law preventing radio and television licenses and competed with Rai. From the amalgamation of all these artifacts, Canale 5 was born, and then the Mediaset empire.
In short, Milano Due has been the birth of an orphan universe since Monday, when Berlusconi died at the age of 86. The map of its ecosystem is small and the cardinal points are very close: Arcore, Mediaset, San Raffaelle Hospital, AC Milan Stadium and then Monza Stadium. All of these projects have their origin and development in this living space with a scent that is as artificial as it is post-modern. His first creation. And that’s probably what Berlusconi saw through the window of the Maximilian bar as he lined up selfies with kids and orange poles. “Haven’t you had enough?” his partner warned. But enough is definitely never enough when you feel the end is near.
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