Bernardo Provenzano, the undisputed chief of the Sicilian Mafia who had been on the run for more than four decades, was arrested on Tuesday while hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily.
"Thank God. The hunt is finally over," said Palermo police chief Giuseppe Caruso after agents seized Italy's most wanted man, scoring the state's biggest success against the Mafia in more than 13 years.
National anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso accused businessmen, politicians and other professionals of shielding Provenzano for many years, but did not elaborate.
Provenzano, known as the "Phantom of Corleone" after his native hill town, made famous by the Godfather films, has been running the Mafia since former "boss of bosses" Toto Riina was arrested in 1993.
He was arrested when some 50 policemen swooped on a farmhouse in the countryside near Corleone. Police said their lucky break came when they tracked a package that had been sent to Provenzano by his wife, who lived in Corleone.
Provenzano, who put up no resistance and acknowledged his identity after first denying it, appeared surprised to be caught, police said. He was flown to Palermo and taken to the main police station there. Roads leading from the airport into town were closed to traffic.
An angry crowd shouted "Assassin" and "Bastard" at Provenzano as policemen wearing black balaclavas escorted him into the building.
"We are the real Sicily," chanted an angry group of youths from an anti-Mafia association. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi expressed his delight at the arrest to Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.
The news bumped even national election results off the top spot on television news bulletins.
Provenzano, 73, has been wanted since 1963 and was known as Italy's "super-fugitive".
He had been sentenced in absentia to life in jail in connection with the Mafia's most notorious crimes of recent decades, including the killings in 1992 of top anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
One of the last pictures police had of him was taken when he was 25. They had since been using computer depictions of how he might have aged, aided by information from turncoat Mafiosi.
Police said they had found cryptic notes on small pieces of paper known as "pizzini" which Provenzano used to communicate with accomplices and his family. More notes were found in the pockets of the jeans he was wearing when he was arrested.
Grasso said he doubted Provenzano would ever collaborate with the authorities.
As a young man he was known as "Binnu the tractor" because of the way he mowed down enemies when a rising hitman of the Corleone clan.
His ability to evade capture for so many years while remaining in Sicily had become legendary.
Investigators say that while running the Mafia for the past 13 years, Provenzano instituted a "kinder, gentler" style in an attempt to give the crime organisation a lower profile in the hope that the police would pay it less attention.
They say one of two crime bosses - Salvatore Lo Piccolo, on the run since 1983, or Matteo Messina Denaro, a fugitive since 1993 - was in pole position to take over running the mob.
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