(FORTUNE Magazine) – DYNASTY. To Europe's long-established families, the word means centuries of riches, carefully husbanded and handed down, one generation to the next -- riches earned by service to one's king, by shedding heathen blood, and by quelling peasant uprisings. But to Europe's newest billionaires, dynasty means something else: a TV show with Joan Collins. Television magnate Silvio Berlusconi owes his $2.5 billion fortune -- Italy's largest, built over 20 years -- not to any king, but to his own uncanny skill at judging what programs Italians want to watch. These include a show where contestants play strip roulette (guess what the losers do), a variety program featuring giantess Brigitte Nielsen, and a froth of U.S. soaps, sitcoms, and serials, including Dallas and Rin-Tin-Tin. A cabaret singer in his youth, Berlusconi (''the Italian Merv'') discovered a legal loophole that let him start competing in 1978 against Italy's bland and boring state-run channels, which had enjoyed a monopoly. Last year his network pulled in 63% of all Italian ad revenues, or almost $1.5 billion. ''And I own it all,'' he says. At home in a former Benedictine monastery, Berlusconi, 52, leads a nonmonastic life with raven-haired actress Miriam Bartolini, in her 30s. Stainless-steel doors slide noiselessly apart to reveal his sanctum, furnished in early James Bond: a massive, white tectonic slab of a desk, with a private screening room downstairs that has nine monitors all going at once. This summer, Berlusconi won the right to sell Western commercials on Soviet television. Though he expects to negotiate similar deals in Eastern-bloc nations and China, projects closer to home have not always gone smoothly. With Jerome Seydoux and others, he launched France's first private TV channel, France Cinq, in 1985. Political opponents in France charged the group used Seydoux's government connections to get a sweetheart deal, and Berlusconi was forced to reduce his stake in the venture from 40% to 25%. The Seydoux fortune comes from Schlumberger, originally the world's largest , oil prospecting company, which has lubricated the family's pockets with $1.1 billion. Jerome, the head of the family at 54, runs Chargeurs, a conglomerate, while his sister, Veronique, dabbles in charity. Brothers Nicolas and Michel make movies. Though the Seydoux clan leans politically to the left and also has connections with Francois Mitterrand, these proved useless when the government ordered Chargeurs to hire more workers in 1982. The lesson? Surely that ties to a head of state, however close, are never the same as being head of state. Franz Joseph II, 82, ruler of Liechtenstein, need curry favor only with himself. Known simply to his subjects as the Sovereign, he assumed the throne in 1938, just in time to be received by Hitler in Berlin. Asked for his impressions of the Fuhrer, Franz Joseph replied, ''He was a tiny man, no taller than my chest.'' He disdains modernity, including religious fads like Protestantism: In Liechtenstein all noble children must be raised Catholic. Says the Sovereign: ''We cannot have someone of the aristocratic line succumbing to some queer American sect.'' As befits a king whose ancestors include the Spanish painter Velasquez, Franz Joseph owns a fine collection of art. Nice though it is, it cannot compete with that of his Swiss neighbor Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose 1,400 paintings rank second in value only to those of England's Queen Elizabeth II. ''Baron Heini,'' as he is called, helped arrange for paintings from Russia's Hermitage museum to be exhibited in Washington in 1986. Once during a White House dinner the Baron, who at 67 is married to a former Miss Spain, dozed off, exhausted. Miss Spain's previous Mr. was the late Lex Barker, a 1950s movie Tarzan. What the Baron is to art, his countryman Paul Sacher, 82, is to music. Born the son of a gardener, Sacher once complained he had to work his way through school ''by teaching other students who were younger or dumber than me.'' Marriage into the family that controls the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche gave him access to $1.2 billion and freed him to pursue music full time. He has founded and conducted orchestras, among them the Basler Kammerorchester, and has commissioned 200 scores over the years from the likes of Bela Bartok and John Cage. Probably no other European billionaire cares so passionately for music except for Freddy Heineken of the Netherlands, whose fortune derives from the brew that bears his name. Despite seven years of piano lessons he cannot read ; a note. But unfazed, he composes popular melodies and lives in hope that his friends Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams one day will record them. So far, no luck. Heineken, who was chained to a wall during a 1983 kidnapping attempt, has had one song recorded. Its title: Let's Get Away From Here. If Germany's Konrad and Gabriele Henkel harbor fears of kidnapping, they show no signs of it. Eccentrics of every political and artistic stripe grace their table, and the couple hosts Europe's highest-profile politico-literary salon. Gabriele's imaginative table settings have been called artworks in themselves. Asked by Stern magazine how she would decorate for a meal with the Pope, she replied: ''Since he is such a protagonist of the Counter- Reformation, I wouldn't do the expected and let myself be inspired by Bernini. I would do the opposite: Asiatic, meditative . . . small plants, stones, flowers. Zen.'' During a ''Lion's Festivity'' that Gabriele organized to celebrate Konrad's 70th anniversary as a Leo, she handed him a lion cub. The animal promptly tore open his lower lip. Smiling through the blood, he was rushed to the hospital and bandaged. When not entertaining, Konrad -- at 72 an heir to a $2.9 billion fortune originally based on laundry soap -- was accused of making generous, albeit undeclared, political contributions to Germany's conservative CDU-CSU party in 1984. Fashion plates like Gabriele or Gloria Thurn und Taxis may bravely test the envelope of taste, but millions of ordinary German housewives buy their fashions ready-made from Quelle, Europe's largest mail-order catalogue company. It carries everything from housedresses to prefab houses. Among Quelle's best customers is Grete Schickedanz, the owner, who not only selects fashions for the catalogue but also wears them herself. Being in sync with customer taste has helped Schickedanz, 72, accumulate $2.2 billion. Blond, iron-willed, and stingy, this mail-order Maggie Thatcher sticks fast to a maxim of her late husband, Gustav: The penny is the soul of the billion. Europe has one billionaire less prideful. He is Vehbi Koc, 87, whose 116 manufacturing, trade, and service companies constitute Koc Holding, Turkey's largest industrial combine and source of his $1 billion fortune. Long life has taught him how a rich man should conduct himself: He prefers asking to telling, speaks little, and takes religion seriously. He saves his energy. No lover of art, he once left a performance of The Cherry Orchard when he saw he was missing his bedtime. Among Koc's admirers is Sakip Sabanci, 55, also of Istanbul, whose Sabanci Holding makes rubber and textiles. The two meet periodically to talk Turkey, and they respect each other. Both lead unostentatious lives because, in their country, to do otherwise would be considered tasteless.