The trial of American student Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher began at a Perugia court on Friday.
As the hearing started, judges turned down a request from Kercher's family for proceedings to be held behind closed doors.
Journalists and members of the public will be admitted to the trial of Knox, 21, and Sollecito, 24, but judges banned television cameras from the court.
They added that the court reserved the right to decide whether individual hearings should be held privately.
Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito had asked for the trial to be conducted in public.
Around 140 members of the press from 86 newspapers, radio stations and television channels from Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany and Switzerland have been accredited to cover the trial.
Kercher, 21, was found semi-naked and with her throat slashed on November 2, 2007 in the house she shared with Seattle-born Knox and two other Italian women in Perugia.
In October a third defendant, 21-year-old Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede, was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years for sexually assaulting and murdering the British exchange student.
The prosecution claims Kercher was killed when all three suspects tried to force her to participate in ''a perverse group sex game''.
Prosecutors claim that Knox was responsible for cutting Kercher's throat while Sollecito and Guede held the British student down.
Knox and Sollecito are also charged with the theft of 300 euros, two credit cards and two mobile phones belonging to Kercher as well as simulating a crime to make it look like an intruder had broken into the house.
The defendants, who have been awaiting trial for 14 months, deny the charges against them.
''I'm not afraid of the truth and I hope it finally comes out. I was Meredith's friend and I didn't kill her,'' Knox said through her lawyers on Wednesday.
Knox also faces charges of defamation after she initially implicated Democratic Republic of Congo national Diya 'Patrick' Lumumba in the crime.
Lumumba, 38, was arrested on testimony by the American but released shortly afterwards when no evidence was found against him. Knox later retracted her statements.
