Supporters flocked to the centre of the Italian capital to vent their delight and relief, scenes echoed in piazzas across Italy from Milan in the north to Messina on the island of Sicily, in the deep south.

Hundreds of young people, many stripped to their underwear, frolicked in the Trevi Fountain in Rome, waving Italian flags and splashing onlookers as ecstasy took hold of natives and tourists alike around Bernini's masterpiece.

"We couldn't miss this," said Californian tourist Scott Bern. "We heard the final was on, bought some Italian shirts and here we are. It's great Italy won," Bern said after watching the game in a cafe with his family.

In Bibo's Bar across the road from Prime Minister Romano Prodi's party headquarters, pandemonium broke out after Italy's full-back Fabio Grosso buried the decisive penalty.

"It's been a match of intense suffering but we've won it now, and everything's great," shouted waiter Carlo Dilizio, 47, above the din as fireworks lit up the moonlit sky.

"I bought an Italian flag in 1982 (the last time Italy won the World Cup) and I took it out of the drawer the other day to show my son. And I said, let's write 2006 on it, and hope," said Carlo, tears of joy filling his eyes.

Italy's 87-year-old President Giorgio Napolitano attended the final in Berlin with French President Jacques Chirac, and said Chirac had been the first to congratulate him.

But it wasn't a moment to crow: "At certain times, one has to be a little elegant," he told Italian TV.

Prodi, like millions of other Italians, preferred to suffer at home.

"We won by the width of a post," said the prime minister, referring to France's miss during the penalties.

The win, declared a "great victory for clean football" by right-wing National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini, will ease the pain over a probe into a match-fixing scandal which has scarred the reputation of Italy's top Serie A teams.

But in the euphoria following the World Cup victory, such gloom has been put to the back of the collective Italian mind.

At the ancient Circus Maximus, the park where Romans once held chariot races, more than 150,000 people who watched the game on giant screens erupted into a cacophony of noisy revelry.

It was time to banish bitter memories of losing the 1994 final to Brazil in a penalty shoot-out.

An Italian TV commentator declared that watching the tense match had caused great suffering: "soffertissimo!"

For others, as the match ground on to extra-time and then to the dreaded penalties, the tension was almost too much to bear as old insecurities came flooding back.

"If Zidane scores another goal I'm jumping in the river, I swear," said Francesco Pignolo, 30, watching with friends at an open-air bar on the banks of the Tiber.

The final triumph was almost operatic. And like all good opera, there was tragedy as Zinedine Zidane, aged 34 and arguably the month-long competition's finest performer, ended his career with a sensational sending off for headbutting an opponent.

"Red, red, red," shouted the crowd in Bibo's as the referee reached for his card.

But the sending off left a bitter taste with Italians, as Zidane has been idolised in Italy after his years as a player with Juventus of Turin.

"I loved Zidane as a player and a man, but now I take it all back. He's a 'bastardo' for what he's done," said Carlo the waiter, a self-confessed "Juventino" or Juventus supporter.

Leading daily Corriere della Sera, which trumpeted "World Champions" on the front page of its Internet edition, said the veteran Zidane had ended his career "with a header".

The wonderful delirium with which Romans embraced victory, and each other, after the game was a stark contrast to the eerie quiet which swept over the capital's normally chaotic streets during the match.