Born in Naples on June 29, 1925, Mr Napolitano is a Senator for Life and has worked closely in the past with incoming Prime Minister Romano Prodi, having been his interior minister in Mr Prodi’s first government in 1996.
Mr Napolitano forged his political career during World War II when he took part in the resistance against Nazi and Fascist troops, founding a communist group in 1942. At the end of the war he became an official member of the Italian Communist Party, entered politics and was elected to parliament for the first time in 1953.
As a member of the party’s National Committee, he quickly became a key party organiser and was one of the most influential leaders of its reformist wing. The party was officially disbanded in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whereupon Mr Napolitano, like many other communists, joined the current Democrats of the Left.
He was speaker of the lower house of parliament in 1992-1994, later becoming interior minister in Prodi's first centre-left government from 1996 to 1998. The following year he won a seat in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, serving as a left-wing MEP until 2004.
In October last year, he was named a lifetime Senator by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the man he replaces in Italy's Quirinale presidential palace.