ROME: In an emotional ceremony on Wednesday, Italian actress Sophia Loren was given honorary citizenship of Pozzuoli, the small town near Naples where she grew up in poverty before rising to international stardom.

Loren, still striking at age 70 in a white trouser-suit, was greeted by a large crowd of fans in her first return to Pozzuoli since 1983.

A group of classmates from her school gave the actress a class picture dating back to the 1948-1949 school year — a barely-teenage Loren clearly visible holding a book under her arm.

“I remember the difficult period of the war, the hours we passed in the railway tunnels to flee the bombings,” Loren told Pozzuoli’s mayor who gave her a piece of volcanic rock for her “to never forget her land.”

Loren, raised in poverty in Pozzuoli, started her career in the 1950s. She soon met producer Carlo Ponti, who became her husband and mentor, and went on to act in more than 100 films and received two Hollywood Oscars.

On her arrival on Wednesday, Loren had said she had not forgotten her roots in impoverished southern Italy or the first bowl of porridge she devoured at the end of World War Two.

“How do I find Pozzuoli? ... The only thing I felt was the scent. It’s been years since I’ve come.

I think about what I suffered in the war,” she responded to the swarms of residents and paparazzi who turned out for her “homecoming”.

The screen siren started life as an illegitimate child in Pozzuoli, a poor town on the bay near Naples.—AFP/Reuters