ROME: Italian author Umberto Eco, who became famous for the 1980 international blockbuster “The Name of the Rose”, died on Friday, Italian media reported.
La Repubblica newspaper said it had been informed by the family that Eco died late on Friday night at his home in northern Italy.
“He was an extraordinary example of European intellectualism, uniting a unique intelligence of the past with an inexhaustible capacity to anticipate the future,” Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency Ansa.
Born in the northwest Italian city of Alessandria on Jan. 5, 1932, Eco was the son of an accountant employed by a manufacturer of iron bathtubs.