Francesca Calvo

Francesca Calvo (May 17, 1949 – April 30, 2003) was an Italian politician and the mayor of Alessandria from 1993 to 2002. She was the first woman to hold the office of mayor of the city. A member of Lega Nord during most of her mayoralty, Calvo was elected in the first direct mayoral election held in Alessandria under the new Italian local-government electoral system introduced in the early 1990s.

Her administration is mainly associated with the management of the flood that struck Alessandria during her first year in office, and with the subsequent reconstruction of the city.

Personal life Francesca Calvo was born on May 17, 1949 in Turin, Italy.

Career Calvo began her political career in the 1980s, she first joined Italian Liberal Party. In 1993, she was the candidate for the office of mayor of Alessandria, winning the ballot against the candidate of the Democratic Party of the Left, Andrea Ferrari.

In 1999, she was expelled from the Northern League after having defended Domenico Comino. She joined Piemont, movement founded by Comino, the person she defended, which federated with the Autonomists for Europe. She was the candidate for the presidency of the Piedmont region in 2000, obtaining only 2.58% of the votes.

In the following years, she moved closer to the League, obtaining a position from Roberto Castelli, minister of justice in the Second Berlusconi government, and heading a list with her own name in support of Oreste Rossi, candidate of the House of Freedoms for mayor of Alessandria in 2002. The lists supporting her included Lega Nord, Lavoratori Padani and Alessandria Libera; in the first round these lists received 20.4%, 4.4% and 3.7% respectively.

The Piedmont Regional Council's electoral observatory also records Calvo as the Polo Federalista candidate in the 2000 regional election and gives the same regional total of 62,288 votes and 2.58%.

Later political activity In the 2002 municipal election in Alessandria, Calvo was no longer mayoral candidate but remained politically active. Local reporting after her death stated that she was elected to the municipal council in 2002 and later took a role in the secretariat of Roberto Castelli, who was Minister of Justice in the second Berlusconi government.

Death Calvo passed away on April 30, 2003 by a serious illness at Pavia Hospital at the age of 53, shortly before her 54th birthday. Reports at the time stated that she had been admitted for treatment for an illness diagnosed a few months earlier.

For her legacy, the civic library of the city of Alessandria is named after her.

Legacy The civic library of Alessandria is named the Biblioteca civica Francesca Calvo. The library is a public municipal library belonging to the Comune di Alessandria and is listed by the Italian national library registry with ISIL code IT-AL0002. According to the registry, the library had 190,699 items in its holdings in the most recent reported data, including manuscripts, serials, audiovisual documents and microforms.

Calvo has also been commemorated locally through public remembrance events. In 2021, Radio Gold included her in a series on women from Alessandria, identifying her as the first woman mayor of the city. In 2024, local media revisited her words from the 1994 flood and included comments from her son, Davide Buzzi Langhi, thirty years after the disaster.