The Fall of Il Cavaliere

Silvio Berlusconi Senate expulsion: on 27 November 2013, the Italian Senate voted to remove him from his seat, following his definitive conviction for tax fraud in the Mediaset case, a trial that had dragged on since 2005. Berlusconi was not in the chamber to witness the vote: he was on a stage set up beside Palazzo Grazioli, his residence in Rome, in front of some 5,000 supporters who had travelled from across Italy. "This is a day of mourning for democracy," he declared, calling his exclusion the result of a political and judicial conspiracy. Among the crowd, young activists and longtime loyalists welcomed him as a leader unjustly persecuted.

The Road to Berlusconi's Senate Expulsion

His political rise had begun almost twenty years earlier, in January 1994, with his "entry into the field" and the founding of Forza Italia. A businessman and owner of Mediaset, Berlusconi built his ascent on control of the country's television networks and on a direct, simplified style of communication that spoke to a mass audience while bypassing the traditional channels of political mediation. He led four governments, becoming one of the longest-serving and most divisive figures of Italy's Second Republic, amid accusations of conflict of interest and a deepening polarisation of public debate.

His Senate expulsion closed that chapter. It marked not only the formal end of a parliamentary career, but the decline of a model of leadership built on media control and personal charisma — one that had redefined the language of Italian politics for two decades.

Berlusconi's legacy remains divisive: a symbol, for some, of a modern and pragmatic Italy; for others, the protagonist of an institutional and moral decline. That afternoon outside Palazzo Grazioli, amid flags and chants of support, closed a chapter that changed the face of contemporary Italian politics..