[32] An enthusiast of the theatre since secondary school, during his university years he contributed a theatrical review to the IX Maggio weekly magazine and had small parts in plays organized by the Gioventù Universitaria Fascista itself.

[36] Napolitano has often been cited as the author of a collection of sonnets in Neapolitan dialect published under a pseudonym, Tommaso Pignatelli, and entitled Pe cupià 'o chiarfo ("To Mimic the Downpour").

[29] On 11 June 1946, nine days after the 1946 Italian institutional referendum in which Italy became a republic, Napolitano was at the headquarters of the Communist federation in via Medina when they were besieged for many hours by a crowd of royalist demonstrators who were enraged by the display of the party's red flag and the tricolor without the Savoy coat of arms.

[47] A 26 May 1953 document of the Italian Ministry of the Interior reported Napolitano as a member of the secret armed paramilitary groups of the PCI in the city of Rome, what became known as Gladio Rossa.

[48] When the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and its military suppression by the Soviet Union (USSR) occurred, the leadership of the PCI labelled the insurgents as counter-revolutionaries, and the official party newspaper L'Unità referred to them as "thugs" and "despicable agents provocateurs".

Napolitano complied with the party-sponsored position on this matter, a choice for which he was later criticized;[49] he repeatedly declared to have become uncomfortable with the decision, developing what his autobiography describes as a "grievous self-critical torment".

In 1964, following the death of Togliatti, Napolitano was one of the main leaders who supported an alliance with the Italian Socialist Party, which after the end of the Popular Democratic Front joined the government with Christian Democracy.

[27] Napolitano's political thought was somewhat moderate in the context of the PCI; he became the leader of the wing of the party called migliorismo, whose members notably included Gerardo Chiaromonte and Emanuele Macaluso.

Between 1977 and 1981, Napolitano had some secret meetings with the United States ambassador Richard N. Gardner, at a time when the PCI was seeking contact with the US administration, in the context of its definitive break with its past relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the beginning of Eurocommunism, the attempt to develop a theory and practice more adapted to the democratic countries of Western Europe.

[59] Thanks to this role and in part by the good offices of Giulio Andreotti, in the 1980s Napolitano was able to travel to the United States and give lectures at Aspen, Colorado, and at Harvard University.

Berlusconi complained about Napolitano's over fifty-year Communist militancy, reiterated his allegations of election fraud, and said that "there is a fake majority that with a 24 thousand vote difference in just one month has occupied the government, presidency of the Chamber, the Senate, and the Republic!

When Napolitano was elected, Berlusconi gave an interview to Panorama, one of his political magazines, saying that the UDC betrayed him by letting 60 of his electors cast a blank vote on the first ballot, instead of supporting the official candidate Gianni Letta.

The Holy See endorsed him as president through its official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, just after the Union named him as its candidate, as did Marco Follini, former secretary of the UDC, a member party of the House of Freedoms.

[58] After Napolitano's election, expressions of esteem toward him personally as regarding his authoritative character as the future president of the Italian Republic were made by both members of the Union and of the House of Freedoms, which had turned in blank votes, such as Pier Ferdinando Casini.

[84] On 26 September 2006, Napolitano made an official visit to Budapest, Hungary, where he paid tribute to the fallen in the 1956 revolution, which he initially opposed as member of the PCI, by laying a wreath at Imre Nagy's grave.

In the speech, he stated: Already in the unleashing of the first wave of blind and extreme violence in those lands, in the autumn of 1943, summary and tumultuous justicialism, nationalist paroxysm, social retaliation and a plan to eradicate Italian presence intertwined in what was, and ceased to be, the Julian March.

Another matter of debate in Croatia was that Napolitano made awards to relatives of 25 foibe victims, who included the last fascist Italian prefect in Zadar, Vincenzo Serrentino, who was sentenced to death in 1947 in Šibenik.

[98] On 30 January, Napolitano appointed the president of the Senate Franco Marini to try to form a caretaker government with the goal of changing the current electoral system rather than call a quick election.

[99] The state of the Italian electoral law of 2005 had been under criticism not only within the outgoing government but also among the opposition and in the general population because of the impossibility to choose candidates directly and of the risks that a close-call election might not grant a stable majority in the Senate.

[128] While also used affectionately, the "King George" moniker was seen negatively by his critics on the Italian right, as they alleged that he had helped engineer the end of Berlusconi's final government after colluding with European Union authorities.

About the Fall of Communism, he spoke of the "overthrow of that revolutionary utopia which contained within itself promises of social emancipation and human liberation and which had ended up — as Norberto Bobbio said with a withering expression — by being overturned, in the conversion of done in its opposite.

"[133] At the same time, he said that "the conservative ideology survived the end of Communism, increasingly taking on the appearance of that 'market fundamentalism', translated into deregulation and the abdication of politics, which only the global financial crisis which broke out in 2008 would have called into question.

"[133] Following five inconclusive ballots for the April 2013 Italian presidential election, Napolitano accepted to be re-elected as president – an unprecedented move – following pleas by Monti and the leaders of the main political blocks, Pier Luigi Bersani and Berlusconi.

[137] After his re-election, Napolitano immediately began consultations with the chairmen of the Chamber of Deputies, Senate, and political forces after the failure of the previous attempt with Bersani after the inconclusive February 2013 Italian general election, and the establishment of a panel of ten experts by Napolitano himself, who were dubbed as wise men by the press,[138][139][140] in order to outline priorities and formulate an agenda to deal with the persistent economic hardship and growing unemployment and end the country's political deadlock,[141][142][143] as well as to nominate his successor.

[165] On 14 February, Napolitano accepted Letta's resignation from the office of Prime Minister;[166] Napolitano wanted to avoid new elections until changes were made to Italy's electoral law, which many blamed for producing the deadlock and stalemate of Italian politics during those years;[167] he said that he wanted to resolve the political crisis "as quickly as possible" so that a new government in what he described as "this fragile economic phase" could pass a new electoral law and institutional reforms.

Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio and former minister in the Monti Cabinet, said that "Napolitano considered the Church a component of great importance in the social stability of the country" and was concerned by the rightward shift of Catholics.

[192] He was buried in Rome's Cimitero Acattolico, near other historical figures like Antonio Gramsci, Andrea Camilleri, Emilio Lussu, Lindsay Kemp, Amelia Rosselli, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

This failed in 2008 when Berlusconi won the ensuing elections, while he succeeded in 2011 when he mandated Monti to form a government,[199] a decision that remains controversial and polarizing but that it is considered to have saved Italy during the European debt crisis and praised for ending the country's political deadlock.

[27] In 2013, he accepted re-election reluctantly;[17] before his resignation in 2015 due to age reasons,[175] he again played a key role in forming Italy's first grand coalition government and ending the political stalemate.

[202] The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described Napolitano as being "highly appreciated at an international level", where he was considered "an impartial and reliable interlocutor",[197] while Deutsche Welle said that he "helped guide Italy through the EU sovereign debt crisis".