The Italian Village That's Amore for Gaddafi

ROME, June 22, 2010 -- The flamboyant Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has fallen in love in Italy. Not with an Italian beauty but with an undiscovered mountain town in central Italy.

He was smitten with the tiny town of Antrodoco last summer when he made a brief stop on his way to earthquake stricken L'Aquila, where he was joining world leaders at the G8 Summit as the leader of the Arab League.

Gaddafi is known for exasperating local officials and diplomats on his foreign visits with his unusual requests, unscheduled stops and insistence that his driver take the most circuitous routes to reach a destination. Some say this is due to a fear of going through mountain tunnels and using highways; others say he just adores the mountains.

On his first stop at Antrodoco, the quixotic leader paused to stretch his legs and admire the view of the mountains. On his return from the summit, he stopped again at the town's entrance and was greeted warmly by about 20 villagers who surrounded his motorcade and, when he emerged, happily posed with him for photographs. To their delight, the Libyan leader even exchanged a few words in Italian.

Until now, this small town of 2,800 inhabitants had another claim to fame. On a nearby mountainside, where pine saplings were strategically planted before World War II, rows of now-mature pine trees spell out the word "DUX," the Latin word for leader, in a tribute to Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini.

Like many small towns in Italy, Antrodoco, with its high unemployment and lack of tourist attractions, is slowly emptying out.

Spurred on by the chance encounter with Gaddafi, the mayor and town council hope the Libyan leader is enamored enough with the place to want to invest in putting it on the map as a vacation destination. They hope Gaddafi will fund a luxury hotel, a bottling plant for local mountain spring water, new sports center and soccer-training center.