For many Italians, he is the face of life’s simple pleasures, chuckling at his good fortune in a green felt fedora while sporting a luxuriant moustache and happily slurping a cold beer.
Yet all is not well for the man who has lent his image to Moretti beer. Orso Maria Guerrini, the actor who plays the Moretti man in television advertisements, has for two decades been at the centre of a property row that shows no sign of ending.
It centres on the Palazzo Guerrini Bratti, an 18th-century residence in Cesena in the Emilia-Romagna region, complete with winding staircases and hallways decorated with frescoes depicting mythological scenes.
The residence has failed to attract any interest at five auctions
Guerrini, 81, inherited the property after his uncle, the count Leon Francesco Guerrini Bratti, died in 2002. He