Silvio Berlusconi, who has died at the age of 86, was born into a middle-class family in Milan, a city heavily affected by the second world war. He attended a private school belonging to a religious order, and eventually graduated with distinction in law in 1961, specialising in advertising contracts, an area that would of course prove extremely useful in his later careers.
As Berlusconi came of age, Italy was entering its postwar economic “miracle”. And immediately after his graduation, he started a series of successful entrepreneurial initiatives in a booming construction industry.
In his early 30s, Berlusconi conceived of a revolutionary and visionary project, the construction of a residential area in the northern outskirts of Milan called Milano 2. The idea was to offer high standard, spacious homes in new areas on the outskirts of the city that contrasted with an increasingly crowded and polluted metropolis.
