Body of Italian family minister's husband found in Lake Vico after five-week search

Discovery after weeks of searching

The body of Luigi Cavallari, the 84-year-old husband of Italian Family Minister Eugenia Roccella, was recovered from Lake Vico on Tuesday morning, more than five weeks after he disappeared. Fire service and police divers located the body approximately one kilometre from the spot where Cavallari went missing on the afternoon of June 27, and about twenty metres from the shore. The lake, in the province of Viterbo north of Rome, reaches depths of around 50 metres.

A period of agonising waiting ends today. I want to thank from the bottom of my heart the team that, with so much humanity and dedication, searched for my dear Luigi until he was found.

The incident on June 27

Cavallari and the minister were aboard a small boat on Lake Vico when he decided to dive into the water to cool off during the intense summer heat. After resurfacing briefly, he said he did not feel well, but the boat, which was not anchored, drifted away and his wife was unable to reach him in time. The working hypothesis is that he suffered a thermal shock due to the water temperature. An autopsy will be performed to determine the exact cause of death.

Complex recovery operation

The search involved a large deployment of personnel and equipment, including firefighters, Carabinieri with their underwater unit, the Guardia di Finanza, and police. Remote-controlled underwater vehicles equipped with camera and sonar systems were used to map the lakebed systematically. Operations were complicated by poor visibility: the first eight to nine metres of depth are dense with vegetation, and below that a silty-clay substrate creates heavy suspension. Side-scan sonar proved essential for working in the absence of optical visibility.

Having found Luigi does not ease the pain of separation. Thank you again to everyone, from the bottom of my heart.

A life of discretion and scholarship

Luigi Cavallari was a university professor and scholar of building technologies who spent nearly fifty years out of the public eye despite being married to one of the most prominent figures in Italian politics. He taught Technology at the Faculty of Architecture of the Gabriele d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, training hundreds of future architects and engineers. His research focused on technologies of the built environment, innovation in building systems, and construction quality. From 2002 to 2008 he directed the Department of Technologies of the Built Environment, and between 2005 and 2012 he headed the Construction Engineering degree programme.

Fifty years together

Cavallari and Eugenia Roccella met when she was 18 and married in 1976. They had two children and celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in March 2026. Roccella had spoken publicly about their relationship only rarely. In an interview with the programme "Storie al bivio," she said of their first meeting: "I met him when I was 18 and never left him. He is the love of my life." Cavallari will be buried in the cemetery of Ronciglione, the town in the Viterbo area where the couple were well known long before Roccella became a minister and which they regularly visited. The Fratelli d'Italia party, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, issued a message of support on social media.