Clio Napolitano, the First Lady who paid for the ticket: a life alongside the president

If you remember Franca Ciampi’s lightning-fast jokes, by Clio Napolitano discretion has always emerged, even in the presence next to her husband, independence and the desire not to want privileges. She queued and insisted on paying to see a Vermeer exhibition in September 2012 at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, practically in her home. She was, at that time, wife of the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, who died on 22 September 2023 at 98 years old, the Italian First Lady. And she had been for years. Her face was known and recognised.

Born Clio Maria Bittoni, in Chiaravalle, in the Marche region on 10 November 1934. He is named after the muse of history, a companion in confinement of his family after his daughter, and Maria placed at the last moment by his grandparents at the baptism. It’s obvious to say that she grew up with politics already at home. She studied at the classical high school in Jesi and then graduated in law at the Federico II University of Naples. Here she meets her future husband who she will meet again in Rome where he took the path of politics, she that of the lawyer. She married in 1959, in a civil ceremony at the Capitol, as Communist Party officials did. Two sons, Giovanni, born in 1961, and Giulio, born in 1969. She has two grandchildren: Sofia (born 1997) and Simone (born 1999), children of Giovanni and Darlene Tymo.

«I could never marry a man who, generally speaking, didn’t think like me. I never had to fight to keep it, and where did it go? I never thought that ours was a union destined not to last, we have always had a very intimate family life, for example we have always worked in the same room, he doesn’t mind if, while he is writing, I talk on the phone to someone ». She told it to Paola Severini for the book The Wives of the Republic.

He chooses not to baptize his children and when the youngest is afraid of the guardian angel he goes to talk to the teacher. «When he went to nursery school he was terrified of the guardian angel because the teacher told him that she was always behind him and, at night, even under her bed. And in the evening, before going to sleep, he asked me to look if there was anyone down there. I went to school and spoke to the teacher, I told her not to frighten the child when she explained religion and she replied: why, are you Jewish? That a secular choice could be made was an option that was not even contemplated».

Expert in labor law, she has followed various cases for agricultural workers. It is said that once, next to her husband at a party demonstration, he was referred to as “the husband of our lawyer”. For years he worked in the legislative office of the League of Cooperatives. She left this post in 1992 when her husband was elected Speaker of the House. «I left because it seemed inappropriate to me to remain, as my counterparts were the parliamentary commissions, the Presidency of the Council and other institutional bodies. Well, perhaps in this sense Giorgio influenced the creation of a professional path.”

Even during the years at the Quirinale he always kept the house in Vicolo dei Serpenti open, in Monti district. And even at the Quirinale she lived an independent life, so much so that she was hit by a car one day when she had just gone out for a walk. In the Palace there was the Bakery, one of the sides of the Quirinale. Mrs. Napolitano, nine years younger than her husband, has always been the one to compare her, even shouted, with her calm and methodical husband. The husband’s flaw? Fussiness. The shared joys are instead cinema, theatre, music. She always followed her husband when it was necessary to be First Lady. Often wearing Raffaella Curiel jackets, light colors, soft and long cuts. Favorite jewels, ancient ones. The bad habit? Some cigarette. The ideals have always remained strong, above all that of the defense of women.