Milan airport to be named after playboy former premier Berlusconi

Milan airport is to be named after Italy's scandal-dogged tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, a former three-time prime minister, despite protests Tuesday from the Italian city's centre-left mayor.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who is also transport minister and head of the far-right League party, announced the name change Friday, just over a year after Berlusconi's death.

"The final decision rests with the Minister of Transport and I am ready to sign it, with pride and emotion, in memory of my friend Silvio, great entrepreneur, great Milanese, and great Italian," Salvini said.

Milan's mayor Giuseppe Sala said Tuesday the decision to change the name of Malpensa, one of the biggest airports in Italy, should not have been Salvini's alone.

"Can a decision of this kind be made in 24 hours?" he was quoted by the AGI Italian news agency as saying.

Billionaire Berlusconi, who died in June last year aged 86, had strong ties to Milan but was a highly divisive figure.

While some Italians saw him as a charming, self-made man, others slammed him as an international embarrassment, particularly due to his many legal woes and sexual scandals.

The former cruise ship singer was born in the northern Italian city and built his immense fortune there.

For over 30 years he chaired AC Milan, which won the Champions League five times on his watch.

But he was also dogged by accusations he paid young starlets for their silence over his notoriously hedonistic soirees, which he always insisted were elegant dinners.

Berlusconi was sentenced in 2013 to seven years in jail for paying for sex with a 17-year-old starlet known as "Ruby the Heart-Stealer", though that conviction was later overturned.

His second wife, Veronica Lario, divorced him in 2014, saying at the time that she could no longer tolerate his "consorting with minors".

The Milan division of Italy's main opposition party, the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), also assailed what the "inappropriate and wrong choice".

"Our gateway to the world deserves to represent a shared memory and the unifying values of our country," it said in a statement, saying it was collecting names of "non-divisive figures" for whom Malpensa could be named.

Left-wing trade union CGIL posted an online petition on Change.org to propose naming the airport instead after Carla Fracci (1936-2021), a renowned Italian ballet dancer from Milan.

It said Fracci "transmitted elegance, style and bravura throughout the world", and appealed to authorities to "avoid choices that are sources of deep divisions".