ROME — For Roberto D’Agostino, Italy’s upcoming election is going to be a bit “like sex often is.”

“The foreplay, namely the campaign, is far more exciting than the climax, namely the actual outcome of the vote," said the owner and hands-on editor of Dagospia — Italy’s most eye catching and controversial web publication.

It’s a flippant aside. But it captures — in crude vernacular — an undercurrent of elite opinion regarding the upcoming parliamentary election on March 4: That for all the politics and promises of the electoral campaign, the outcome is unlikely to provide the country with a stable government, much less resolve any of its well-known problems.

With his definitely not-safe-for-work website and regular presence on the country’s political talk shows, the 69-year-old Rome native is adept at capturing Italy's political zeitgeist.

Sporting long hair and a ZZ-Top beard, D’Agostino doesn’t look much like an Italian political heavyweight. His rail-thin body is covered in tattoos, with a large cross spanning his back. Most of his fingers are weighed down by silver rings, some featuring skulls.

“Dagospia is an irreplaceable instrument for the ruling class, one they cannot live without." — Filippo Ceccarelli, senior political journalist at La Repubblica

But Dagospia’s cocktail of content — a heady mix of political scandalmongering, celebrity gossip and softcore pornography — has become a must-read for the Italian elite.

"Dagospia is an irreplaceable instrument for the ruling class, one they cannot live without," said Filippo Ceccarelli, a senior political journalist with the daily newspaper La Repubblica. "I am a journalist, and I look at it at least twice a day. If I were a banker or a politician, I would probably consult it even more often."

D’Agostino runs his operation from a three-floor penthouse he shares with his second wife Anna Federici, the daughter of a real estate mogul and the financial backer of the whole operation, and their Labradors. Visitors entering the apartment are greeted by an original giant crucifix by Damien Hirst — a work called "The Wounds of Christ," formed from autopsy photos of a man with pierced hands and feet.

Blending religion, sex and politics is one of the recurring themes of D'Agostino's personal and professional life. His — and Dagospia's — eccentricity are embodied in the couple's mansion. On one of its balconies, overlooking the Tiber, stand two man-size statues: One of Mao Zedong, another, gilded, of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Across its floors are displayed religious relics, penis-shaped sculptures in different sizes, and portraits of the former Chinese leader.

He launched his website — the name is a blend between his own name and the Italian word for spy — in May 2000. He did so, he says, when his column Spia in the weekly L'Espresso magazine was cancelled after he wrote a piece recounting an anecdote in which the CEO of Prada described Fiat's patriarch Gianni Agnelli as "bringing bad luck" — an insult in Italy.

In the years since its launch, D’Agostino has built his personal brand into a one-man media empire.

He built the website’s initial success, he said, from tidbits he received from Francesco Cossiga, a former Italian prime minister and president. Until he died in 2010, Cossiga was a source of juicy exclusives on the political and financial establishment.

Ceccarelli, the La Repubblica journalist, credits Dagospia’s success to two factors. D'Agostino's was one of the first media outlets in Italy to grasp the potential of the web. And it was the first to understand that the web was a post-ideological visual space.

"Dagospia is a media to look [at] rather than to read,” said Ceccarelli, who wrote the foreword to one of D’Agostino’s books.

In the years since its launch, D’Agostino has built his personal brand into a one-man media empire. He has a show on satellite television, co-authored two books of photographs of Italy's ruling class at their worst at weddings, restaurants, political gatherings and parties, and recently gave the keynote lecture at Rome’s La Sapienza university.

Until 2012, D’Agostino worked closely with Umberto Pizzi, one of Rome's most renowned paparazzi and his co-author on the books of photography. The two parted ways when Mario Monti became prime minister, leaving Pizzi to despair that the golden age of Italian political debauchery had ended.

"Just by looking at Monti, you get bored,” Pizzi told the Italian newsweekly Panorama at the time. “There is nothing left to portray. It's the end of an era."

Readers, especially in Rome, refresh the webpage several times a day to read what mainstream outlets are not allowed or do not want to print. Many politicians become sources hoping that they themselves will be spared ending up as the subject of an exposé.

“In a serious country Dagospia would not exist. But in Italy news gets buried." — Roberto D’Agostino, owner of Dagospia

Stories published on the website range from unsourced accounts of how French President Emmanuel Macron wanted Italy's Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan to become Eurogroup president to rumors about the pope setting up his own intelligence agency within the Vatican.

In D’Agostino's view, Italy is run by "powerful bureaucrats" who direct elected politicians and ministers from behind the scenes. His bottom line is that Italy has always been and remains a feudal country.

"In a serious country Dagospia would not exist," said D'Agostino in an interview in his Roman mansion. “But in Italy news gets buried."

"We are the only free media in town,” he added. “Most media outlets in the country are owned by the ruling class in order to strategically prevent news about them to be published.”

Politicians fear Dagospia’s headlines and the nicknames its editor gives them — and uses repeatedly until they stick. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the "cainano" a cross between caiman and nano (dwarf) for his ferocity and his height. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is "il ducetto from Rignano" — after Il Duce, Benito Mussolini’s famous tile, and the name of Renzi's hometown on the outskirts of Florence.

“These elections will see the return of Berlusconi,” said D’Agostino. “Unlike Renzi, he has never been arrogant. He destroyed the country to take care of his own interests, but Italy never had a national identity so no one really remembers.”

"Matteo Renzi fell because he did not want to compromise and come to terms with the ‘strong powers’ and because of his arrogance," D'Agostino said. The former prime minister’s sin "was to think he could come into the Italian capital, put his own people in place, and govern."

“When the Romans conquered Palestine they put Herod in charge, and he was Palestinian,” D’Agostino said. “Renzi has put [his people] everywhere across the country and lost."