Secret doors, sunken baths and nymphs on the ceiling: inside Berlusconi’s bunga bunga bunker

Rome’s foreign press corps moves into the grand palazzo that was previously home to the former Italian prime minister

For the correspondent in Rome who tires of trying to understand the inner workings of Italian politics, relief is now at hand – the prospect of a nice hot soak in a sunken bath.
It just so happens that the bath is where Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed some of his more jaw-dropping “bunga bunga” shenanigans, when he cavorted with young women less than a third of his age.
On Monday, the foreign press corps moved into a grand palazzo in Rome that was last owned by the former prime minister known as “Il Cavaliere” (The Knight).
The water to the bath was still running when one of the 300 or so international correspondents who form the Foreign Press Association tried the taps.
The press corps’ last home, a building around the corner from the famed Trevi Fountain, was sold off to become a five-star hotel.
After a painstaking search for a new location, 16th-century Palazzo Grazioli was chosen.
It was, for many years, the home of Berlusconi, both when he was prime minister and afterwards when he was forced to resign in 2011 amid an acute debt crisis.
Aside from the sunken bath, the most startling feature may be the secret door that is hidden behind a wooden bookcase in one of the rooms where journalists will now finesse their copy.
A concealed handle enables the bookcase to be opened with a creak, revealing a dark space and an old wooden door.
The door leads to a back stairway which spills out into the palazzo’s courtyard – the perfect escape, perhaps, for a harried correspondent whose foreign editor is on the warpath after a missed deadline.
Another broad staircase is overlooked by the stuffed head of a Javan rhinoceros, which was shot in 1879 by an Italian duke, an ancestor of the aristocratic Grazioli family who still own the building.
The foreign press association has taken over the entire first floor of the palazzo – in Italian known as the “piano nobile” – literally, the noble floor, where bedrooms and reception rooms are traditionally found.
George Clooney passed through here once, hoping to speak to the prime minister about aid efforts in Darfur. Berlusconi had other ideas.
“It became a very different evening than anyone thought,” the Hollywood actor later recalled. “I was like ‘I have to go’ and he was saying ‘No, where are you going? There’s going to be a party’, and I was like, ‘No I gotta go – I really do’.”
Much of the original decoration and the fittings have remained. There are vast tapestries and oil paintings on the walls, alongside delicately etched mirrors and chandeliers. Frescoes on the ceilings depict muscular classical heroes, fat-thighed cherubs and scantily clad nymphs.
The hefty cost of renting the property is paid by the Italian state.
The arrangement has its origins in the Fascist era; Mussolini was keen to have all foreign journalists clustered together in one location so that he could keep tabs on them.
Rome’s correspondents are a privileged lot. There are a handful of other foreign correspondent clubs around the world, in places like Hong Kong, Bangkok and Tokyo, but they rarely offer the sumptuous facilities as the one in Rome. 
There was a buzz as journalists of many different nationalities, from Canadian and Iranian to British, French, German and Turkish, turned up for work on Monday and admired the opulent decor.
“It’s like the first day at school. You half expect to see everyone laying out their pencils and pencil cases,” a British colleague said.
The lavatories have been left as they were when Berlusconi lived here, complete with baths and brass taps. Water still flows from the taps, offering the promise of a long lunchtime soak in the tub.
The Telegraph’s assigned desk space is in Berlusconi’s former bedroom – sadly the double bed that he was reportedly given as a gift by Vladimir Putin has been removed.
It was here that he invited a prostitute named Patrizia D’Addario to spend the night. She wrote an excruciatingly detailed account of the encounter in a book titled, Prime minister, Take Your Pleasure.
“He told me he wanted contact with my skin, he held me tight, he took my breath away … He suffocated me with kisses,” Miss D’Addario wrote. “We kissed an infinite number of times, with him above all kissing my intimate parts.”
His stamina was such that “he could get into the Guinness Book of Records”. He kept her up all night, she said. “There were moments when I feared I would not stand up to his assaults. Does he take something? I have asked myself many times.” She mused that his energy might have come from the “disgustingly sweet” herbal tea that he drank.
She was invited back to the palazzo by the prime minister and on that occasion was not the only woman in his sights. “Being an escort, I thought I had seen it all – but 20 women for one man was a new experience.”
Journalists can now wander down a long corridor where Berlusconi and Putin were photographed beaming as they tossed a ball for one of the Italian premier’s white poodles, called Dudu.
At the height of the bunga bunga scandals, when the prime minister was being entertained by young models and aspiring actresses, a pair of them wearing little black dresses took photos of each other posing in front of the mirror, holding a hairdryer like a pistol as if they were Bond girls.
Inevitably, the photos were leaked and have become one of the abiding images of Berlusconi’s libidinous era. Correspondents joked about finding G-strings and pairs of knickers in the bathroom cupboards.
Berlusconi, who was prime minister three times and a billionaire businessman, died last year.
There is a bar with, as its centrepiece, an arrangement of Campari bottles – the drinks maker is one of the sponsors of the place, along with Barilla, a pasta company, and the chocolate company Ferrero.
“I think with our last place, we probably had the best foreign press club in the world,” said Philip Willan, a British journalist who has lived in Italy for decades and writes for The Times from time to time.
“With this new place, there can’t be any doubt.”