Italy's "grand coalition" under Prime Minister Enrico Letta was the big winner in local elections which saw the battered centre-left take victory in Rome and other major cities, according to Italian politics expert Prof Giovanni Orsina.

In an exclusive interview, the professor of history at Rome's Luiss-Guido Carli University tells IBTimes UK says that Letta's uneasy coalition "is a unique window of opportunity for Italy," as, "[The country has been living] in a kind of crypto, non-declared civil war for the last 20 years".

Interviewed by Gianluca Mezzofiore