reading

Maps

1. The Beautiful Country

Porta Pia – glory and misery – ‘the crux of the Italian problem’ – islands, highlands and plains

2. A Violent Past

Leo’s legacy – Goths, Lombards and Byzantines – a holy forgery – the communes – the Venetian exception – the medieval Mezzogiorno – the Italian Wars and the Sack of Rome – under foreign yokes

3. Echoes and Reverberations

Two Italies … or three? – civismo – a linguist’s playground – superiority and sensitivity – the vincolo esterno – of furbi and fessi – fragile loyalties – the prime minister who vanished from history – trasformismo

4. A Hall of Mirrors

The Minister for Simplification – a plethora of laws (and law-enforcers) – bureaucracy – truth and verità – mysteries and the ‘misty port’ – Pirandello

5. Fantasia

Myths and legends – a phantom army – Pinocchio – copiatura – masks and messages – opera – Padania declares independence – dietrologia

6. Face Values

The neo-fascist’s bare arms – style and look – symbolism – talking visually – videocracy – bella (and brutta) figura

7. Life as Art

Treasuring life – a thick layer of stardust – work and leisure – la tavola – the Mediterranean diet – Slow Food and fast food – a brief history of pasta – foreign food … what foreign food?

8. Gnocchi on Thursdays

D’Antona and Biagi – a love of the familiar – ‘acts of God’ and acts of man – one step to the right – conservatism, technophobia and gerontocracy – the ‘BOT people’ – from catenaccio to gambling fever

9. Holy Orders

A blurred line – the bloody end of Muslim Italy – Jews and ghettoes – the Waldensians – Freemasonry – blasphemy – the Lateran Pacts – Christian democracy – a less Catholic Italy – Comunione e Liberazione – Sant’Egidio – Padre Pio – ‘the testicles of His Holiness’

10. Le Italiane – Attitudes Change

Great-aunt Clorinda – from Mozzoni to the Manifesto di rivolta femminile – gender and language – veline – desperate housewives – ricatto sessuale – the influence of Berlusconi – If Not Now, When? – change in (and on) the air – la mamma: glorified but unsupported

11. Lovers and Sons

Al cuore non si comanda – a sexual revolution (within limits) – sensuous she-cats and ‘Italian stallions’ – adultery – prostitution – contraception and the mystery of the (missing) unplanned pregnancies – mammismo – gender stereotyping – homosexuality

12. Family Matters

An honoured but changing institution – divorce – the decline of marriage – the Italian family firm: myths and realities – the arrival of the badante – stay-at-home kids: spoilt or just broke? – ‘amoral familism’ – menefreghismo

13. People Who Don’t Dance

From behind shades – wariness – the Fox and the Cat – to ciao or not to ciao? – a love of titles – mistrust – alcohol (and teetotalism) – narcotics

14. Taking Sides

Il piacere di stare insieme – Guelphs and Ghibellines – from the Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club to Berlusconi’s AC Milan – professionalism … and professional fouls – Gianni Brera and the footballing press – Il processo del lunedì – fan radio – the ultras – referees – Calciopoli

15. Restrictive Practices

Possessive instincts – Catholicism and liberalism – lottizzazione – capitalism without competition – protectionism – shareholder pacts – Enrico Cuccia and il salotto buono – the never-ending tale of the foreign lettori

16. Of Mafias and Mafiosi

A relatively crime-free nation – what makes a mafia? – Cosa Nostra decapitated – the rise of the Camorra and ’Ndrangheta – Sciascia’s palm tree line: organized crime creeps north – an absence of trust and the legacy of Unification

17. Temptation and Tangenti

How corrupt is Italy? – the role of patronage – a tolerance of graft – corruption and corruzione – nepotism – ‘Everything in Rome comes at a price’ – the culture of the raccomandazione – the cost of graft – a ‘renaissance of corruption’

18. Pardon and Justice

The navel of Italy – abusivismo – laws and conventions – pardon and justice – the Sofri case – slow-moving courts – the 1989 legal reform – garantisti versus giustizialisti – the magistratura

19. Questions of Identity

Italy has a birthday party – campanilismo and the frailty of separatism – concepts of Italia – diversity and disunity – dialects lose ground – the north– south divide: perceptions and statistics – ‘ Italian-ness’ – immigration – racism – Sinti and Roma

Epilogue

Blue skies, blue seas … and unhappiness – Italy’s economic decline – rules and change – the need for a dream – Jep’s smile

Notes

Acknowledgements

Follow Penguin

Acknowledgements

A book like this is built on a myriad of observations and impressions, rather as limestone is formed out of an infinitesimal number of tiny shells. So my first and most important thanks go to all the Italians I have met over the years that I have spent in their country – friends, neighbours and casual acquaintances – because it is their descriptions of themselves and their explanations of their society, their recommendations and advice, their hints and silences that have done more than anything to give substance to this work.

I first lived and worked in Italy, briefly, at the age of eighteen and might never have returned except for the odd holiday had it not been for Paul Webster, who, in 1994, while foreign editor of the Guardian, suggested that I rejoin the staff of the paper as its southern Europe correspondent based in Rome. When I left Italy again, five years later, I had no plans to come back and would probably not have embarked on the writing of this book had Xan Smiley, the then Europe editor of The Economist, and Bill Emmott, its then editor, not arranged for me to become their correspondent in Italy. Warm thanks also to Alan Rusbridger, then as now the editor of the Guardian, who proposed that I be shared between the two papers and later agreed to my taking a period of unpaid leave to begin the writing of this book. John Micklethwait, the current editor of The Economist, also agreed to that, and later generously offered me a spell of paid leave so I could finish what I had started. John Peet, who has been the Europe editor of The Economist for most of the time I have worked for the paper in Italy, has been unstintingly tolerant of my periodic retreats into book writing.

In each of my spells as a correspondent in Italy I have benefited from the hospitality of national newspapers: first, La Stampa and, more recently, Corriere della Sera. It has given me access to a wealth of information about Italy and the Italians. I am very grateful to those who edited the two papers during the periods in which I worked on their premises: Ezio Mauro, Carlo Rossella, Stefano Folli, Paolo Mieli and Ferruccio de Bortoli; as well as to the Rome bureau chiefs and Rome supplement editors who were my immediate hosts: Marcello Sorgi, Ugo Magri, Antonio Macaluso, Marco Cianca, Andrea Garibaldi and Goffredo Buccini.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the reporters, specialist writers and regional correspondents of both papers. Italian journalists are unsparing in the help and advice they offer to their foreign colleagues, and over the years I have acquired a huge debt of gratitude to those of La Stampa and Corriere della Sera for their insights and their readiness to share their knowledge with an outsider. Those who made direct contributions to the contents of this book include Massimo Franco, Lorenzo Fuccaro, Daria Gorodisky, Stefano Lepri, Dino Martirano and Ilaria Sacchettoni.

Thanks also to Eliza Apperly, Elizabeth Bailey, Lara Bryan, Simon Chambers, Bianca Cuomo, Giulia Di Michele, Bea Downing, Katharine Forster, Will Harman, Sophie Inge, Yerrie Kim of EF Education First, Tom Kington, Flavia Manini, Maria Luisa Manini, Hannah Murphy, Laura Nasso, Marie Obileye, Lorien Pilling of GBGC, Hannah Sims, Helen Tatlow, Katherine Travers, Ed Vulliamy, Tom Wachtel and Sean Wyer.

Paddy Agnew, Antonio Manca Graziadei and Isabella Clough Marinaro generously agreed to bring their specialist knowledge to bear on chapters 14, 18 and 19 respectively. Francesca Andrews and Maria Bencivenni read through large sections of the book. Their observations and suggestions, which could have come only from a rich experience of the cultures and societies of both Italy and Britain, were invaluable. It goes without saying that the errors that remain are mine alone.

I could not have wanted for a more involved, enthusiastic or charmingly persistent agent than Lucy Luck. And I have had the immense good fortune to have as my editor Simon Winder, who is not only a successful writer himself but the author of books in a similar vein to my own. This one is all the better for his perceptive comments. Melanie Tortoroli at Penguin Group USA has been every bit as supportive (and patient).

My wife, Lucinda Evans, read the entire manuscript with the keen eye of a former national newspaper sub-editor. It has benefited greatly from her good judgement and feeling for words. But her main contribution has been a subtler one: she has been with me throughout my Italian adventure, and the insights and reflections she has shared with me along the way can be found in almost every chapter of the book that follows.

1 The Beautiful Country

‘Il bel paese

ch’Appennin parte, ’l mar circonda e l’Alpe.’

‘The beautiful country that the Apennines divide, and Alps and sea surround.’

– Petrarch, Canzoniere, CXLVI, ll. 13–14, 1373*

No one would choose to start a book at Porta Pia.

It is in one of the least attractive corners of central Rome, a place where architectural styles from different periods sit uncomfortably together like mutually suspicious in-laws. The biggest building in the vicinity is the British Embassy, which dates from the 1970s. Its architect, Sir Basil Spence, was at pains to ensure it blended in with its surroundings. Not everyone is convinced he succeeded. The embassy looks rather like a colossal, concrete semiconductor, torn from the motherboard of a gargantuan computer.

The gate – the porta itself – takes its name from Pius IV, Michelangelo’s last patron and the pope who brought the Council of Trent to a successful conclusion, thereby launching the Counter-Reformation. Michelangelo’s friend and biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote that the artist offered Pius three designs, and that the pope chose the least expensive.† Nowadays, the gate he built forms one side of a bigger structure – the side that faces towards the centre of Rome. How much of Michelangelo’s design has survived is open to question. A coin minted in 1561 when work began on the gate and an engraving made three years after its completion each depict a substantially different structure.

In the nineteenth century, another Pius – Pope Pius IX – had a courtyard put behind Michelangelo’s gate (if it was any longer Michelangelo’s gate) and added a new façade in the neoclassical style that looks away from the centre of the city. Around the courtyard between the two façades, Pius IX erected some buildings for use as customs offices. Rome was still then the capital of the Papal State, a sizeable territory that had been governed by the popes since the eighth century and whose latest ruler had indignantly refused to let it be incorporated into the new state of Italy.

Either side of Porta Pia stretch the Aurelian Walls. These were begun in the third century AD for the protection of ancient Rome. Lofty and sturdy, they continued to defend the city, with greater or lesser success, for the next fifteen centuries and it was only by blasting a hole through them at a point about 50 metres west of Porta Pia that Italian troops were able to force their way into Rome, complete the unification of the peninsula and put an end to the temporal power of the popes. Many of the soldiers who poured through the breach on that September morning in 1870 belonged to an elite corps of Italy’s new army known as the Bersaglieri (‘Marksmen’). The customs offices inside Porta Pia were later turned into a museum for the Bersaglieri.

The area around the gate, then, is an eclectic muddle. But it brings together within a few hundred square metres tangible allusions to the bits of their history of which Italians are proudest: the Roman Empire, the Renaissance and the Risorgimento.* Some, though not all, would add to that list the papacy and the Counter-Reformation, which brought with it the splendours of Rome’s baroque churches.

What other people of comparable numbers can lay claim to such an extraordinary catalogue of achievements? One nation – even if it did not consider itself a nation until quite recently – produced the only empire to have united Europe and the greatest cultural transformation in the history of the West, one that shaped our entire modern view of life. Along the way, the Italian peninsula emerged as the pre-eminent seat of Christendom.

No other nation can boast such a catalogue of great painters and sculptors: Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, of course. But also Donatello and Bernini, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Titian and Caravaggio. And there are others, like Mantegna, who are nowhere close to the top of the list but who would be hailed as national cultural icons in most other European countries. Then there are the architects – Brunelleschi, Bramante, Palladio; and the writers – Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio; and the composers. Italy has given the world Vivaldi and the Scarlattis, Verdi and Puccini.

St Benedict, St Francis and St Catherine of Siena were all Italians. So, too, were Galileo, Christopher Columbus and Maria Montessori. Among other things, we owe to their country the Gregorian calendar, the language of music, time zones and double-entry bookkeeping. Italians invented the telegraph, the seismograph and the electric battery.

They gave us opera and Venice; the basilicas of St Peter’s and St Mark’s; the duomos of Milan and Florence; the leaning Tower of Pisa and the Trevi Fountain. Even if they have not actually visited them, most people know the names of historic cities such as Bologna, Perugia and Naples. But there are others scattered across Italy that few foreigners have heard of – places such as Trani and Macerata, Vercelli and Cosenza – that house more cultural treasures than are to be found in entire US states.

It is a mind-spinning legacy and one that understandably mesmerizes anyone who goes to Italy. But the picture that visitors take away in their mind’s eye when they catch the flight home is, if not misleading, then certainly unrepresentative of Italy’s post-classical history; unrepresentative of the lives of most of the people who have lived in what is now Italy since the fall of the Roman Empire. More illustrative of their experience is the heavily fortified medieval tower that stands just a few hundred metres west of Porta Pia. It was put there in the ninth century and reconstructed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. It is one of many that were built into the Aurelian Walls and which punctuate them at intervals as they stretch into the distance either side of Porta Pia.

For nearly a millennium and a half, the majority of the people we now call Italians lived in territories that were either ruled by foreigners or so tiny or so weak they were perpetually at risk of being overrun by outsiders. Why? For Luigi Barzini, the author of perhaps the best-known portrait of his people,¹ this was ‘the crux of the Italian problem, of all Italian problems’: ‘Why did Italy, a land notoriously teeming with vigorous, wide-awake and intelligent people, always behave so feebly? Why was she invaded, ravaged, sacked, humiliated in every century, and yet failed to do the simple things necessary to defend herself?’

Part of the answer is to be found in Italy’s divisive geography. For a start, almost one in every ten Italians lives on an island, physically detached from the rest of the nation. Sicily, the biggest island in the Mediterranean and with a population the size of Norway’s, is quite big enough to be a state by itself. The landscape of the island is as varied as that of many larger territories. Sandy beaches and rocky shorelines, precipitous citrus groves and undulating wheatfields are all in their different ways typically Sicilian. There is an extensive plain outside Catania in the east and several mountain ranges, one of which has a peak rising to almost 2,000 metres. Even that, though, is dwarfed by Mount Etna, Europe’s biggest active volcano, which is more than half as high again. Plans to link Sicily to the rest of Italy by means of a bridge or tunnel go back to classical times. But even though the island is only three kilometres from the mainland at the closest point, none of the plans has ever been realized – not least, in recent years, because of a fear that such a massive construction project could hand a bonanza to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta of Calabria, the region on the other side of the Straits of Messina.

Sardinia, the second-biggest Mediterranean island, is a five-hour ferry ride from the mainland port of Civitavecchia north of Rome and a ten-hour journey from Genoa. The Costa Smeralda in the north-east of the island has become a playground for Hollywood stars, European socialites, Arab royals and Russian oligarchs. But parts of the rest of Sardinia are desolate, and its uplands wild. The remote and hilly Barbagia district, once famed for brigandage, nurtures blood feuds the origins of which, in some cases, go back decades.

In winter, communities in the Aeolian and Aegadian islands off Sicily, the Pontine Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea between Rome and Naples, the Tuscan archipelago, and even on islands such as Capri in the Bay of Naples, can be cut off for days on end by bad weather. The inhabitants of Lampedusa, 112 kilometres off the coast of North Africa, live further from their fellow Italians in the Alps than do New Yorkers from the people of Atlanta, Georgia.

Mainland Italians, too, are separated from one another, but by rock more than water. Though seldom described as such, Italy is one of Europe’s most mountainous countries. The Alps stretch in a broad arc over the north so that on clear winter days their snow-capped peaks are as dramatically visible from Venice in the east as they are from Turin in the west. South of the valley of the River Po, which runs almost the width of the country at its broadest point, more mountains rear up. The Apennine range extends the length of the peninsula, stuttering out into isolated massifs as it veers into Calabria, the ‘toe’ of the Italian ‘boot’. The reason Italians are not thought of as a mountain people, however, is that the vast majority live in the lowlands that account for less than a quarter of the country’s surface and which essentially consist of the Po Valley and the coastal strip that fringes the peninsula.

The southern mainland, though often considered a single, homogeneous region, is in fact extremely varied. The coastal areas of Calabria are typical enough of the Mediterranean shoreline. But inland lie two large expanses of rugged upland terrain: Sila in the north and Aspromonte in the south. In contrast, Puglia – the ‘heel’ of the ‘boot’ – is for the most part as flat as rolled-out pizza dough. Its endless sandy beaches have made it an increasingly popular tourist destination in recent years.

Between Calabria and Puglia lies Basilicata, one of the most beautiful and least-known corners of Italy. Much of it is mountainous, and most of what is not is hilly. Though still one of Italy’s poorest regions, Basilicata stands to benefit from the discovery there of a large petroleum deposit, the Tempa Rossa field. Organized crime, which flourishes in Calabria, and to a lesser extent in Puglia, has made limited inroads here.

The same can be said of Molise and Abruzzo further north, both of which are also mountainous. The people of Abruzzo, or at least those who live in the interior (the region takes in a broad coastal strip as well), are identified with the qualities associated with highlanders the world over, including physical and mental toughness. The regional capital, L’Aquila, has the only rugby team of importance in the Mezzogiorno.* L’Aquila is in a breathtaking location, on a broad plain bounded by mountains to the north and south. But while its inhabitants are encircled by reminders of nature’s grandeur, they also live with an uneasy awareness of its ferocity. Abruzzo is intensely seismic and in 2009 L’Aquila was hit for the fourth time in its history by a major earthquake. More than three hundred people lost their lives.

Campania, the region around Naples, offers a more easily recognizable image of southern Italy. South of Naples lies the justly famed Amalfi coast. Beyond that, south of Salerno, is another enchantingly beautiful but much less celebrated area, Cilento. Naples itself has a setting at least as dramatic as that of L’Aquila. The broad sweep of its bay, overlooked by a brooding, smoking Mount Vesuvius, features on any number of old prints. When they were first made, Naples was regarded as a kind of earthly paradise. Goethe, who visited the city in 1787 and seems to have seen nothing of the poverty that has always been endemic to Naples, described it as a place where ‘everyone lives in a state of intoxicated self-forgetfulness’. One wonders what he would make of the city and its surrounding region today. Campania is Italy’s poorest region and in many respects its saddest. The holidaymakers who come to the region generally see only Capri or resorts such as Sorrento and Positano, but most of the people of Campania live in the immense hinterlands of Naples and Salerno, often in perilously sited or poorly built housing blocks – the visible manifestations of corruption and the capillary presence of the local mafia, the Camorra.

Lazio, north of Campania, is the land of the Latins, the ancient Latium. Much of it is flat, especially around Latina, which – despite its classical-sounding name – came into existence only under Mussolini in the 1930s when the surrounding marshes were drained. But Lazio also takes in the hills known as the Colli Romani, where the pope has his summer residence in a palace on the edge of an extinct volcano. Even a section of the Apennines falls within the region. Visitors to Rome in the winter who venture on to the Janicular Hill for a panoramic view of the city are astounded to see, seemingly immediately behind it, a range of snowy peaks. They are not quite as close as they look, but you can nevertheless ski at a resort less than a two-hour drive from Rome.

Beyond the capital, the countryside gradually becomes more characteristic of Umbria or Tuscany. Even before leaving Lazio on the Autosole, Italy’s main north–south highway, you begin to see a distinctive terrain in which towering blocks of straight-sided, flat-topped rock jut out of the surrounding countryside. Some of these buttes are inhabited, as is the case with Orvieto, one of the many central Italian hill towns that have been places of refuge since ancient times.

Though it is the only landlocked region on the peninsula, Umbria is not mountainous, except in the south-east. For the most part, it is a region of high green hills abundantly watered in the winter months (and sometimes in the summer ones, too). The rain that falls on Umbria also replenishes the shallow waters of Lake Trasimeno, a rare example of an endorheic lake: one that has no rivers flowing out of it.

Most people’s images of Tuscany are of the peerless, undulating landscape of the Chianti, between Siena and Florence. But in this region, too, there are ample variations within relatively short distances. South of Siena are the crete senesi (literally, ‘Sienese clays’), which when parched in summer take on a lunar aspect. North of Florence is an extensive industrial belt. And then there are the ubiquitous mountains. The most celebrated are in the north-west of Tuscany. It is here that the quarries of Carrara are to be found, which have been providing sculptors with marble since classical times. Michelangelo’s David and Pietà were both carved from blocks torn from the mountainsides near Carrara. A lesser range of the Apennines acts as a barrier to the Marche and its broad coastal plain.

Going north, as the Apennines bend westwards, the plain broadens out until it becomes part of the Po Valley in the region of Emilia-Romagna. As its name suggests, Emilia-Romagna is a composite of two regions: Romagna in the south, with its highly developed tourist resorts, which include Rimini, and Emilia, which extends as far as the Po and provides some of the best agricultural produce and most succulent cuisine to be found in Italy. Parma, home of both the eponymous ham and Parmesan cheese, is in Emilia.

The Po Valley regions par excellence are Veneto and Lombardy. What divides Veneto is not so much geography (though it extends into the Alps above Venice), but a sharp division between the inhabitants of the flat Venetian hinterland and those of the city of Venice, who have traditionally looked down on the mainlanders as uncouth peasants. Although the hinterland has a number of historic cities, including Padua, Verona and Vicenza, it was until comparatively recently one of Italy’s poorest areas. In the period leading up to the First World War, it was the biggest source of emigration outside the Mezzogiorno. And not even the years of Italy’s ‘economic miracle’ (from the early 1950s to the early 1960s) had much of an impact on the region’s backwardness. It was only in the 1970s that Veneto began to grow rapidly – so fast indeed that it is now Italy’s third-richest region after Lombardy and Lazio. Evidence of its thriving, export-driven industries can be seen in the small factories and warehouses that break the horizons of Veneto’s bleak landscapes.

Topographically, Lombardy is not dissimilar: from the plains in the south, either side of the Po, you climb through hills into mountains. But what sets the region apart are its sublimely beautiful lakes. Maggiore, which stretches into Switzerland, Como and Garda are the largest. Lombardy also includes Italy’s financial capital, Milan, and a tradition of enterprise and prosperity that, in contrast to Veneto, stretches back to the Middle Ages. Today, Milan stands roughly halfway along a vast industrial corridor with at one end Mestre on the Venice lagoon and at the other Turin, the capital of Piedmont.

Once joined politically to Savoy on the other side of the Alps in modern-day France, Piedmont is the gateway through which many ideas from France and beyond have filtered into the Italian consciousness. It was the region whose leaders played the most active part in Italy’s Unification and the one that provided the newly unified state with much of its constitutional, administrative and legal framework. Turin, home of the Fiat motor company, was to an even greater extent than Milan the hub of the Italian economic miracle. Nor is Piedmont’s importance solely political or economic: south of Turin is an area of steep, undulating hills known as the Langhe. If Emilia is by common consent Italy’s centre of gastronomic excellence, then few would dispute that the Langhe is its most outstanding wine-growing district: the home of Barolo and other less well-known but highly prized wines such as Barbaresco. The misty Langhe also yields most of Italy’s white truffles and many of the hazelnuts that go into making Nutella.

Further south is rocky Liguria. Pincered between the Apennines as they curve westwards towards the French border and the Mediterranean, Liguria is small but densely populated. Its coastline, the Italian Riviera, was among the first spots to be discovered by foreign holidaymakers in the twentieth century, along with the Amalfi coast, which it to some extent resembles. Genoa, the capital of Liguria and its main port, was for centuries the seat of a maritime republic that rivalled – and sometimes bested – that of Venice. Christopher Columbus was one of the many seagoing sons of the Genoese Republic.

Between the northern salients of Lombardy and Veneto is the composite region of Trentino-Alto Adige, which has a predominantly German-speaking north and a mainly Italian-speaking south. This Alpine territory was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was given to Italy as a reward for switching to the Allied side in the First World War. Since 1972, Alto Adige (which its German-speaking inhabitants prefer to call Südtirol; in English, South Tyrol) and Trentino have governed themselves more or less separately as autonomous provinces.

The region as a whole is one of five with a special constitutional status. The others are Sicily, Sardinia, and two more in the north. One, Alpine Valle d’Aosta, has strong links with France. The other, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, which borders Slovenia, divides roughly half and half into a mountainous north and a flatter south. Over the centuries, the rivers that flow from the Alps across the lowlands have provided useful boundaries for the division of the region, parts of which have gone back and forth more than once between the Venetian Republic, the Habsburg Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, Austria-Hungary and the former Yugoslavia.

The tortured history of Friuli-Venezia Giulia makes an important point about the Italians. Physical division helps to explain many of the differences between them. The mountains, seas and lakes that have kept them apart – and which were once vastly greater barriers than they are in the age of autostrade, jet aircraft and high-speed trains – have contributed greatly to Italy’s linguistic, cultural and gastronomic diversity. What is true of Sicily is unlikely to be true of Trieste. But then, what is true of the Umbrian town of Spoleto, say, may not even be true of Norcia, which is also in Umbria and less than 30 kilometres away, but reachable even today only by a circuitous route through the hills that takes forty-five minutes to drive.

If physical barriers had been the most significant obstacles to interaction over the centuries, however, you would expect that the most important single distinction would be between easterners and westerners, because far and away the biggest hindrance to communication is the Apennine mountain range. In fact, differences between east and west count for little. The key contrast in contemporary Italy is between north and south. Why? The answer to that question, and to the ‘question of questions’ posed by Barzini, can be found only in those passages of Italy’s history that its people would rather forget – and of which most foreigners are barely aware.

John Hooper

THE ITALIANS

ALLEN LANE

Contents

THE BEGINNING

Acknowledgements

1

The Beautiful Country