Honour comes as Rome commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Rome is to bestow honorary citizenship on Liliana Segre, the 89-year-old Italian life senator and Holocaust survivor, following a unaminous vote in city hall.

The honour, announced a few days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January, is expected to be conferred on Segre "as soon as possible" at a ceremony in Rome.

A statement said the honorary citizenship was awarded to the life senator, "who survived the Nazi-Fascist persecutions", as a "witness to the tragedy of the Holocaust and interpreter of the values of justice and peace among human beings, for her work of testimony and upholding the memory of the Holocaust and her commitment to human rights."

Segre is also set to become an honorary citizen of Fiumicino, a town on the coast north of Rome, following a vote in favour of the motion by the town council.

The Milan-born senator was recently placed under police protection after being subjected to a barrage of anti-Semitic messages, receiving up to 200 hate-mails a day, including death threats.

Segre survived the horrors of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz after being deported there in 1944 at the age of 13.