Funeral services have been held for best-selling Italian author Umberto Eco who wrote "The Name of the Rose." 

Eco became famous in 1980 for the international best-seller "The Name of the Rose."

He died last week at the age of 84. 

Eco was virtually unknown outside university circles until well into middle age -- when he found himself becoming an international celebrity overnight after he published that first novel -- an unorthodox detective story set in a medieval monastery.

The book was also the subject of a lavish film starring Sean Connery.

Eco attributed the book's success to the similarity of experiences shared by mankind in the fourteenth and late twentieth century.

Hi last novel "Numero Zero" (Number Zero), which is set in an Italian newspaper newsroom, was published last year.