The party leader, Walter Veltroni, astounded his longest-serving parliamentarian by replacing him with a 26-year-old woman.

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"Safeguarding Rome's ancient legacy does not mean that the contemporary city is unable to produce artistic beauty, " says Rome's mayor, Walter Veltroni.

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And the left did conspicuously well in Rome, whose mayor, Walter Veltroni, is one of the few credible alternatives to Mr Prodi as leader of the opposition.

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It was particularly striking that Mr D'Alema and his party's national secretary, Walter Veltroni, were both overshadowed at the conference by a third man, Sergio Cofferati, the old-style boss of Italy's largest trade union.

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The main rival to the 58-year-old Mr Bersani was Dario Franceschini, a former Christian Democrat who stepped in when the previous leader, Walter Veltroni, resigned in February after a disastrous showing in a regional election.

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Yet although Italian bondholders took a hit from the subsequent default and Italy's economy was soon overtaken by Spain's, financial markets proved forgiving, and the government of Walter Veltroni managed to rejoin the euro fairly quickly.

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Others on the centre-left, for instance Mr D'Alema's Blairite colleague, Walter Veltroni, are again bemoaning the effectiveness, and unfairness, of Mr Berlusconi's ready access to the air-waves: the tycoon-cum-politician happily floods his own television channels with advertisements in praise of himself.

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