In the luxuriantly carpeted corridors of the Hotel Parco dei Principi in the north of Rome, hundreds of journalists, Italian and foreign alike, had arrived ahead of time to capture the final count of a bitterly contested election. The hotel had been selected as the venue for the presumed winner, the Brothers of Italy, and the reporters were gathered in the hope of witnessing the party’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, exalt in her triumph.
It wasn’t lost on the press that the Parco dei Principi had once played host to a conspiracy of fascist coup-plotters way back in 1965. Brothers of Italy traces its own roots to a party founded by postwar Mussolini loyalists, and the summer campaign, spurred by the collapse of the coalition led by technocrat Mario Draghi, had been dominated by questions over these ugly origins. Nevertheless, by way of an alliance with a fallen far-right rival, the League, alongside Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Meloni was projected to land a 42.7 percent vote share—enough to form a government.
