ITALY - LITERATURE - FUNERAL - ECO

ITALY, Milan : Men carry the coffin of late Italian novelist Umberto Eco at the end of a civil ritual, on February 23, 2016 at the Sforza Castle in Milan. Hundreds of mourners flocked to Milan's Sforza Castle to pay their respects to Italian literary giant Umberto Eco, the intellectual phenomenon behind the best-selling The Name of the Rose. Fans gathered outside the writer's home in the north Italian city applauded as Eco's coffin, laden with white roses, was carried to the imposing 15th century citadel and laid in state in a courtyard, under a presidential guard.