Matteo Renzi

Renzi climbed through local Florentine politics - president of the province, then mayor - before winning the Democratic Party leadership in 2013 and becoming prime minister the next year, the first sitting mayor to make the leap. His government moved fast: electoral law rewrites, looser employment rules, civil-trial simplification, the legalization of same-sex unions, a cull of small taxes. The 2016 constitutional referendum rejected his reforms and he resigned in December, replaced by his foreign minister. He lost the party leadership after the 2018 election, left the PD entirely in 2019 to found Italia Viva, and in early 2021 withdrew his party's backing from Giuseppe Conte's government - a move that collapsed the cabinet and triggered a fresh political crisis. He's been in the Senate for Florence since 2018, described most often as centrist or liberal, a figure whose trajectory bent from young reformer to coalition dealmaker.