Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano has ordered the presidential palace to make sweeping budget cuts in a bid to appease public opinion, increasingly indignant at the massive cost of the country’s political machine.

The Palazzo del Quirinale costs €235m ($320m) a year to run – twice as much as the White House and four times as much as Buckingham Palace – mainly in salaries for more than 2,000 civilian and police employees.