FLORENCE, ITALY – Former Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has died at the age of 95.
Born in Livorno (Tuscany) in 1920, Ciampi was head of State from 1999 to 2006.
He also had a stint a premier, from 1993 to 1994, and served for 14 years as the governor of the Bank of Italy, up to 1993.
Ciampi was the first non-parliamentarian prime minister of Italy in more than 100 years. He was credited with adopting the euro currency and personally chose the Italian design for the 1-euro coin, whereas all others were left to a television vote among some candidates the ministry had prepared.
Ciampi chose the Vitruvian man of Leonardo da Vinci, on the symbolic grounds that it represented man as a measure of all things, and in particular of the coin: in this perspective, money was at the service of man, instead of its opposite. The design also fitted very well on the bimetallic material of the coin.
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