ROME – Ex-porn star Ilona Staller, once a member of the Italian Parliament, said Friday she would run for mayor of Milan, the Italian financial capital that she says could benefit from having a casino.

Staller, better known by her performing name “Cicciolina,” told The Associated Press she hopes to win the 2006 mayor race as an independent so she can make Milan “an exciting place.”

“‘Exciting’ is an ambiguous word, I know, that is why people like it. I want to open a casino in the Sforzesco Castle so City Hall can have more money,” she said.

The castle is a 15th-century monument in the heart of Milan that draws tourists and hosts cultural programs.

She is trying to collect 1,000 signatures to get on the Milan ballot.

Staller, 52, emigrated from Hungary in the 1970s. She entered politics in 1987 by winning a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, on the Radical party ticket.

In 1991, she married American pop artist Jeffrey Koons, who had hired her to pose with him in sexually explicit photos, paintings and sculptures exhibited in galleries. They divorced in 1993.

In 2002, she was unsuccessful in efforts to win a seat in the Hungarian parliament and the mayorship of the Italian town of Monza.