Gian Paolo Pillitteri was born on 5 December 1940 in Sesto Calende, in the province of Varese; he had Sicilian origins.

I just couldn't recognize the Milan of my father's stories among that rubble, and when I saw the destroyed Gallery I burst into tears: as if a dream I had been pursuing for years had been lost forever.

"[1] Pillitteri was one of the young people who walked seventy kilometers in England in one of the peace marches promoted by Bertrand Russell.

Having completed his studies, Pillitteri began his activity as a journalist and film critic, and collaborated with Avanti!, Mondoperaio, and Critica Sociale.

Among the exhibitions held in those years there was the one dedicated to nouveau realism, which culminated with Christo's installations in Piazza del Duomo in Milan.

Ten years after its foundation, Pillitteri, Pierre Restany, and Guido Le Noci organized a festival to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its birth.

[4][5][6] Pillitteri became mayor of Milan, succeeding fellow PSI member Carlo Tognoli on 21 December 1986, at the helm of a municipal council that saw the political alliance with Christian Democracy (DC), following the coalition of the Pentapartito.

In 1987, following disagreements with the DC, an unprecedented red–red–green coalition was launched by the PSI with the Italian Communist Party and the Federation of the Greens.

[1] In 2022, he called the Mani pulite investigative pool the Great Caesura, and said: "Since politics is a generic, elusive fact, to eliminate it they struck at its incarnation: the parties.

With Tangentopoli, politics was mortally wounded: first they criminalized it and then, in a continuous process of devaluation, we arrived at today's indistinct magma.

[7] He was a professor of film history at the IULM University of Milan and a prolific author of books and essays concerning cinema and political activity,[10] including among others Anna Kuliscioff (1986), Maestri Autori Eventi (1986), Fra suspense e psicanalisi.

[13] His son Stefano Pillitteri, a criminal lawyer, was a municipal councilor in Milan for Forza Italia (FI).

[14] He had responsibility for quality, citizen services, civic services, and regulatory simplification within the centre-right coalition municipal council (FI/The People of Freedom–Northern League) led by mayor Letizia Moratti for five years from 5 June 2006 until 1 June 2011; his daughter Maria Vittoria also held various important roles in Mediaset.