Статті в журналах з теми "Macro area Italia Centrale"

Il presente lavoro intende fornire una ricostruzione dell'assetto di controllo dei gruppi di imprese di grandi dimensioni presenti in Italia, tramite l'utilizzo di microdati contenuti nella Centrale dei bilanci. L'analisi dei legami esistenti nelle diverse macro-aree tra assetto di controllo e struttura produttiva ha evidenziato come, tra il 1998 e il 2006, i gruppi del Centro-Nord operativi nei diversi settori di attivitŕ, a eccezione del terziario, abbiano intensificato il controllo delle imprese del Sud. Il controllo delle imprese al Sud da parte dei gruppi esteri ha invece manifestato un declino generalizzato in tutti i settori di attivitŕ economica. Infine, considerando il ruolo ricoperto dai grandi gruppi del capitalismo italiano, si č evidenziato come questi abbiano mantenuto un interesse attivo nel Mezzogiorno sostenendo la crescita dimensionale delle imprese controllate nell'area.

Aims and background Cancer burden estimates in Italian regions are available for the period 1970-2010 as a result of the project “I TUMORI IN ITALIA” connected with EUROCHIP, the European project on cancer control. The Italian health-care system is organized at a regional level, so regional estimates of cancer indicators are useful to identify priorities for cancer plans. We compared cancer site-specific epidemiological estimates by 3 macro-areas (obtained by grouping regions) to suggest priorities for Italian cancer control plans, both at national and regional levels. Methods Mortality and incidence estimates for all cancers combined and for stomach, colorectal, lung, breast and prostate cancers were downloaded from the website www.tumori.net and aggregated in broad age classes (0-54, 55-74 and 75-84 years) and macro-areas (northern, central and southern Italy). Results Historically, Southern Italy had a lower cancer risk than the Center and North. After 2000 this epidemiological picture disappeared and the incidence and mortality rates in the Center are reaching those of the North. Also the weight of various cancer sites on all cancers has changed in Italy in the last decades. Lung cancer is still the most frequent cancer in the male population in the South, while in the Center-North it has been surpassed by prostate cancer and colorectal cancer. The lung cancer weight on all cancer deaths is increasing in women. Prostate cancer has become the most frequent male cancer in the Center-North in the age class 55-84. Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in the female population and its incidence rates in the North are higher than those in the Center-South for all age classes. Colorectal cancer incidence rates have dramatically increased in men and colorectal cancer is nowadays the second cancer diagnosed in women in all age classes and macro-areas. Discussion From the epidemiological data here presented we derived the following suggestions and observations for cancer control plans: a) tobacco prevention should focus on the male population in the South, and on female populations in the country as a whole; b) prevention concerning diet and physical activity (risk factors for colorectal cancer) should be considered mainly for men at a national level; c) the coverage of breast cancer screening programs should be increased in the Center-South; d) colorectal cancer screening should be promoted at a national level; e) PSA testing (that is not actually included among the screening programs recommended) for prostate cancer is probably more widespread in the Center-North, resulting in an increased incidence without any evident decline in mortality as yet.

The paper aims at analyzing the effect of institutional quality on labor productivity in the agricultural sector. To meet this aim, a Gaussian log-linear model was applied to 773 vineyard farms, located in 71 Italian provinces. The applied methodology enabled to quantify the overall impact of the institutional quality on labor productivity by discriminating with respect to the Italian regions and macro-areas (i.e. North, South or Central Italy). The findings of the investigation show a positive effect of the institutional quality on labor productivity, with an overall impact of 39%. Moreover, huge differences among Italian regions and macro-areas were detected. The study findings provide recommendations for academics and policy-makers to improve both theoretical and practical aspects.

Il processo di formazione dell’alfabeto etrusco segue principi molto diversi rispetto a processi analoghi che hanno portato alla nascita delle altre scritture alfabetiche di area mediterranea. La ricerca passata ha spesso mancato di cogliere questa anomalia, o ha tentato di spiegarla attraverso modelli teorici non sempre soddisfacenti. Partendo dalla constatazione che le città etrusco-meridionali, al momento della formazione della scrittura alfabetica, comprendevano componenti alloglotte, evidenti soprattutto ai livelli sociali più alti, e introducendo confronti con situazioni analoghe riscontrabili in vari sistemi scrittori del mondo, l’articolo propone di spiegare il singolare processo formativo dell’alfabeto etrusco come il risultato di un tentativo di creare una scrittura che potesse servire a rendere più lingue diverse.

We report the results of a visual survey of floating natural (NML) and anthropogenic (AML) macro-litter (>2.5 cm) performed in the central part of the Mediterranean Sea during a dual-use campaign onboard the Italian Navy tall ship “Amerigo Vespucci” which circumnavigated the Italian peninsula during May-June 2016. The distribution, abundance and composition of floating marine litter were assessed using a 10 m fixed-width strip transect method. Over 88 h of transect counts were performed, for a total of 168 transects, covering an overall survey length of 1026.35 km. 4756 anthropogenic litter items were counted during the transects, 96.9 % of which were classified as plastic items. Floating litter was found throughout the entire study area with densities ranging from 0 to 9205 items/km2 and with a mean abundance of 492 AML items/km2 and 77 NML items/km2 across all surveyed locations. Maximum AML densities (>3500 items/km2) were recorded in the Adriatic Sea, while the lowest densities (<50 items/km2) were found along the coastline of Sardinia and in the Strait of Messina. Our results document the ubiquitous presence of floating plastic litter around the Italian peninsula and underline the need to expand our knowledge about the main sources, transport, accumulation and fate of marine litter in the entire Mediterranean region.

The central aim of this paper is to examine the relationships and implications of the education-employment nexus for recent university graduates in Italy by analysing the main elements that influence college graduates' employment probabilities three years after graduation. In addition, it provides a comparison among Italian macro-areas regarding graduates' region of residence in 2010. In this sample, continuous work experience during undergraduate studies, further postgraduate studies, older graduation ages and being married or divorced are characteristics that increase the probability of being employed compared to being unemployed three years after graduation. We used micro-data from a nation-wide survey carried out by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in 2011 on a representative sample of 33,696 graduates belonging to the 2007 cohort. The results confirmed the existence of significant differences in graduates' employment among Italian macro-areas. Graduates who were employed in the South in 2010 have shown a strong marked profile that is unfavorable to women and is distinguished by the oldest ages of graduates at the time of graduation and in post-graduation pursuits.

Outdoor air quality guidelines have been constantly implemented during the last decades. Nonetheless, no international regulations have been put into action in terms of indoor air quality standards and standardized procedures for indoor pollution measurements. In this study, we investigated the chemical composition of PM2.5 collected outdoors and indoors at six dwellings located in two Italian areas. The selected sites concerned inland/central and southern Italy, including urban, peri-urban, rural and coastal settings. The seasonal and site-specific particulate matter (PM) variations were analyzed outdoors and indoors, by estimating the impact of the main macro-sources and the contribution of the macro- and micro-components. Outdoors, organic matter represented the main contribution at inland and coastal sites, respectively during winter and summer. A clear, seasonal variation was also observed for secondary inorganic species. A site-specific dependence was exhibited by traffic-related components. Indoors, organic and soil-related species were influenced by the presence of the inhabitants. Some specific tracers allowed to identify additional local source contributions and indoor activities. Although the sampling season and site location defined the outdoor air quality, the higher PM concentrations and the chemical composition indoors were influenced by the infiltration of outdoor air and by the indoor activities carried out by its inhabitants.

L'autore analizza i caratteri della presenza a Grumo Appula, un comune della Puglia centrale, di ex internati, profughi e partigiani jugoslavi — e delle memorie che di essa permangono. Egli sviluppa e approfondisce i risultati di una laboriosa ricostruzione delle vicende dei gruppi jugoslavi attivi nella lotta partigiana in Italia, esposti nel volume collettaneo I partigiani jugoslavi nella Resistenza italiana. Storie e memorie di una vicenda ignorata. Sulla base del riesame di fonti di varia natura, il saggio conferma l'importante ruolo svolto dalla Puglia sia come duplice retrovia per coloro che avevano combattuto lungo l'Appennino e per quanti combattevano nei Balcani (luogo di cure mediche, di reclutamento, di addestramento, di formazione delle Brigate d'oltremare che successivamente si sarebbero unite all'Esercito popolare di liberazione della Jugoslavia, Eplj), sia come area di complessa mediazione fra i diversi soggetti attivi nel periodo dell'occupazione alleata.

The transition toward more sustainable food systems, which already represents a central element of the European Farm to Fork and Green Deal strategies, could be an effective measure to contribute to global decarbonization and greenhouse gas (GHGs) reduction goals; concurrently, it could improve the health status and nutrition of the global population. In this context, the Mediterranean diet (MD) could play a considerable role, as it is generally recognized as a more balanced, healthy, and sustainable eating pattern than Western consumption patterns, which are characterized by excess food and high energy content, thus causing undesirable effects on both human health and the environment. Although traditionally linked to MD, Italy sees relatively moderate adherence by its citizens, as they consume about +75% of the daily caloric intake recommended by MD. Therefore, this study aims to quantitatively assess the potential environmental, economic, and health impacts of this lower adherence to MD by Italians. Current Italian Food Patterns (CIFP) in 2019 were analyzed and compared to the MD recommended amounts through a Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) approach (LCA) and carbon footprint (CF) analysis. The results show that CIFP, compared to MD, has +133% greater impacts on the environmental macro-area, +100% greater impacts on the human health macro-area, and +59% greater impacts on the economic macro-area (with annual fossil and mineral resource savings of $53.35 per person, $3.2 billion per year). The analysis also shows that CIFP has a CF of 6.54 × 101 kg CO2 eq, +142% over MD (2.7 × 101 kg CO2 eq), resulting in a lower environmental impact of the Mediterranean diet.

Phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) are plasticizers used in many industrial products that can act as endocrine disruptors and lead to metabolic diseases. During the LIFE PERSUADED project, we measured the urinary concentrations of BPA and Di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) metabolites in 900 Italian women representative of the Italian female adult population (living in the north, centre, and south of Italy in both rural and urban areas). The whole cohort was exposed to DEHP and BPA with measurable levels above limit of detection in more than 99% and 95% of the samples, respectively. The exposure patterns differed for the two chemicals in the three macro-areas with the highest urinary levels for DEHP in south compared to central and northern Italy and for BPA in northern compared to central and southern Italy. BPA levels were higher in women living in urban areas, whereas no difference between areas was observed for DEHP. The estimated daily intake of BPA was 0.11 μg/kg per day, about 36-fold below the current temporary tolerable daily intake of 4 μg/kg per day established by the EFSA in 2015. The analysis of cumulative exposure showed a positive correlation between DEHP and BPA. Further, the reduction of exposure to DEHP and BPA, through specific legislative measures, is necessary to limit the harmfulness of these substances.

This paper proposes a meaning-based contrastive methodology for the study of prefixation in English, French and Italian which is easily adaptable to other languages and word-formation processes. Our discussion centres on some of the central methodological and theoretical issues involved in contrastive lexical morphology, an area which, to date, has largely remained under-researched. Precise defining criteria for derivative (and prefix) status are presented in order to decide what counts as a derivative (or as a prefix) and what does not. Emphasis is also put on a fined-grained semantic tertium comparationis elaborated for the cross-linguistic investigation of lexical morphology and based on a six-tiered semantic categorisation, viz. location, evaluation, negation, quantity, modality, and inchoativity, most of which are further divided into finer subcategories. This macro-approach makes it possible to draw important generalisations about the use of word-formation devices across languages.

The 6th of April 2009 a strong earthquake (rated 5.8 on the Richter scale) struck the Abruzzo region in central Italy, causing hundreds of casualties and devastating the historical city of L’Aquila and several small towns in the area. The toll in terms of structural damage was enormous, also considered that a vast amount of buildings was made of poorly arranged masonry composed by round pebbles and mortar of scarce mechanical characteristics. In particular, the buildings belonging to cultural heritage (e.g. churches and monumental buildings) were between the structures that suffered more from seismic damage, considered their dimensions, mass and general lack of adequate connections. Few weeks after the seismic event, a church in the historical city centre of L’Aquila, the S. Marco church, was “adopted” by the Italian Veneto Region, which paid and provided the necessary technical support for the first necessary provisional structural interventions. The paper describes the steps undertaken in order to provide the building with the minimum safety conditions necessary to face the aftershocks, and to survive without further collapses to be subsequently retrofitted. A static and dynamic structural monitoring system was also installed in the church since the beginning of the works, in order to control the safety conditions of the area during the execution of the interventions and to assess the damage progression or stationariness.

Background:SARS-CoV-2 infection poses a serious challenge for patients with rheumatic autoimmune systemic diseases (ASD), characterized by marked immune-system dysregulation and frequent visceral organ involvement.Objectives:To evaluate the impact of Covid-19 pandemic in a large series of Italian patients with ASD.Methods:Our multicenter telephone survey (8-week period, March-April 2020) included a large series of 2,994 patients (584 M, 2,410 F, mean age 58.9±13.4SD years) with ASD followed at 34 tertiary referral centers of 14 regions of northern, central, and southern Italian macro areas, characterized by different prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. According to currently used criteria, Covid-19 was classified as definite Covid-19 (signs or symptoms of Covid-19 confirmed by positive oral/nasopharyngeal swabs at PCR testing) or highly suspected Covid-19 (signs or symptoms highly suggestive of Covid-19, but not confirmed by PCR testing due to limited availability of virological tests in that period). The results were analyzed performing the Odds Ratio by Java-Stat 2-way Contingency Table Analysis.Results:The main findings of the survey study revealed a significantly increased prevalence of Covid-19 in:a.the whole series of ASD patients (definite Covid-19: 22/2994, 0.73%; p=0.0007;definite Covid-19 plus highly suspected Covid-19: 74/2,994, 2.47%; p<0.0001) when compared to Italian general population of Covid-19 infected individuals (349/100000 = 0.34%; data from Italian Superior Institute of Health;https://www.epicentro.iss.it/en/coronavirus/sars-cov-2-national-surveillance-system).b.the subgroup of patients with connective tissue diseases or systemic vasculitis (n = 1,901) compared to the subgroup of inflammatory arthritis (n = 1,093), namely rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis (definite Covid-19: 19/1,901, 0.99%, vs 3/1,093, 0.27%; p=0.036; definite Covid-19 plus highly suspected Covid-19: 69/1,901, 3.6%, vs 5/1,093, 0.45%; p<0.0001)c.the subgroup of patients with pre-existing interstitial lung involvement (n = 526) compared to those without (n = 2,468) (definite Covid-19: 10/526, 1.90%, vs 12/2,468, 0.48%; p=0.0015; definite Covid-19 plus highly suspected Covid-19: 33/526, 6.27%, vs 41/2,468, 1.66%; p<0.0001).Of interest, the prevalence of Covid-19 did not correlate with presence/absence of different comorbidities, mainly diabetes, cardio-vascular and/or renal disorders, as well as of ongoing treatments with biological DMARDs; while patients treated with conventional DMARDs showed a significantly lower prevalence of Covid-19 compared to those without. Covid-19 was more frequently observed in the patients’ populations from northern and central compared to southern Italian macro area with lower diffusion of pandemic. Clinical manifestations of Covid-19, observed in 74 patients, were generally mild or moderate; 4/9 individuals requiring hospital admission died for severe pneumonia.Conclusion:The prevalence of Covid-19 observed in ASD patients during the first wave of pandemic was significantly higher than that observed in Italian general population; moreover, the actual prevalence of Covid-19 might be underestimated due to the high number of mild variants as well as the possible clinical overlapping between these two conditions. Patients with ASD should be invariably regarded as ‘frail patients’ during the pandemic course, considering the risk of worse outcome in the acute phase of Covid-19, as well as the potential long-term effects of viral infection.The statistically significant association of Covid-19 with connective tissue diseases/systemic vasculitis, as well as with pre-existing interstitial lung involvement, suggests the presence of distinct clinico-pathological ASD subsets, characterized by markedly different patients’ vulnerability to SARS-CoV-2 infection.Disclosure of Interests:None declared

The zoonotic hepatitis E virus genotype 3 (HEV-3) causes most autochthonous human hepatitis E cases in Europe, which are due to the consumption of raw or undercooked food products of animal origin. Pigs and wild boars are considered the main reservoirs of this genotype, while rabbits are the reservoir of a distinct phylogenetic group named HEV-3ra, which is classified within the HEV-3 genotype but in a separate clade. Evidence for the zoonotic potential of HEV-3ra was suggested by its detection in immunocompromised patients in several European countries. HEV-3ra infection was found in farmed and feral rabbit populations worldwide and its circulation was reported in a few European countries, including Italy. Furthermore, Italy is one of the major rabbit meat producers and consumers across Europe, but only a few studies investigated the presence of HEV in this reservoir. The aim of this study was to assess the presence of HEV in 328 Italian hares and 59 farmed rabbits collected in 3 Italian macro-areas (North, North-Central, and South-Central), between 2019 and 2021. For this purpose, liver samples were used to detect HEV RNA using broad-range real-time RT-PCR and nested RT-PCR. Using 28 liver transudates from hares, the ELISA test for anti-HEV IgG detection was also performed. Neither HEV RNA nor anti-HEV antibodies were detected. Further studies will be conducted to assess the HEV presence in Italian lagomorphs to establish the role of this host and the possible risk of transmission for workers with occupational exposure, to pet owners and via food.

The paper presents a reflection on the policy of cost-cutting and spending review in the Italian public sectors. The thesis is twofold. First of all, the paradigm used by the spending reviews' policies is based on the macro-economic theory that doesn't take into account the complexity of the implementation processes. Secondly, the weakness of the administrative technical bureaucracies in coordinating modernisation processes produces an incoherent diffusion of innovations. The paper discusses, as empirical examples, two relevant national programmes in the field of the judicial sector; these programmes are mobilising an interesting governance network at the territorial (local) level and a vast number of projects in specific territorial areas. The implementation of these interventions shows, however, that many judicial offices of the Nation lack the necessary resources and capabilities to sustain modernisation projects and, at the same time, the difficulty of central bureaucracies to oversee and safeguard a coherent fulfilment of the diffusion objectives, due to the fragility of technical bodies.

Questo lavoro ha come obiettivo la stima della spesa dei turisti italiani effettuata al Centro-Nord e nel Mezzogiorno e il saldo della bilancia turistica delle due aree, entrambi non disponibili presso altre fonti. Il metodo si basa sull'ipotesi che la spesa di un turista italiano sia simile a quella di un turista straniero proveniente da un Paese dell'Unione Europea con analogo reddito pro-capite, a paritŕ di struttura ricettiva e area di soggiorno. In base alle nostre stime, la spesa dei turisti italiani in Italia ammontava nel 2008 a circa 47,4 miliardi di euro, con una spesa media giornaliera di circa 82 euro. La spesa nel Mezzogiorno dei turisti dal Centro- Nord č strutturalmente superiore a quella nel verso opposto e cresce a un ritmo piů sostenuto. In termini di PIL, il saldo della bilancia dei pagamenti turistica č in surplus per le due aree; il Mezzogiorno presenta un avanzo dovuto al turismo domestico, il Centro-Nord al turismo internazionale. Nel 2008, la spesa domestica dei turisti residenti nell'altra macro-area ha rappresentato il 2,4% del PIL nel Mezzogiorno e lo 0,5% del PIL nel Centro-Nord; considerando sia il turismo domestico sia quello straniero, la spesa turistica complessiva ammonta a circa il 5% del PIL nelle due aree.

In Italia il sistema degli Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico (IRCCS) rappresenta, da decenni, il pilastro fondamentale della ricerca condotta all'interno del Servizio Sanitario Nazionale (SSN). L'IRCCS Fatebenefratelli di Brescia è l'unico in Italia ad avere come area ufficiale di riconoscimento la psichiatria. L'obiettivo di questo capitolo è di descrivere e discutere le attività di ricerca condotte dall'Unità Operativa di Psichiatria Epidemiologica e Valutativa (UOPEV) dell'IRCCS Fatebenefratelli in oltre un decennio (2009-2020). Tali attività di ricerca si collocano all'interno di tre grandi aree: la ricerca epidemiologica, la ricerca clinica e la health services research. I progetti relativi alla ricerca epidemiologica presentati riguardano lo studio della prevalenza dei disturbi mentali e da uso di sostanze nella popolazione generale (WMHSI), le caratteristiche dei pazienti trattati nelle strutture residenziali (PERDOVE), i fattori prognostici di esito di pazienti anziani ospedalizzati (PERDOVE-anziani), la prevalenza e l'incidenza dei disturbi depressivi in persone affette da diabete di tipo 2 (INTERPRET-DD), le caratteristiche socio-demografiche, cliniche ed assistenziali di pazienti con una storia grave di violenza (VIORMED ed EU-VIORMED), e l'impiego di dispositivi di telemedicina per la gestione dei pazienti con depressione, sclerosi multipla o epilessia (RADAR-CNS). Tra i progetti di ricerca clinica verranno discussi in particolare un trial sull'impiego della ossitocina intranasale per il trattamento di pazienti con diagnosi di schizofrenia (OXIS), la psicoeducazione per pazienti con disturbo bipolare, e il progetto DIAPASON. Infine, nell'ambito del macro-settore di ricerca dei servizi di salute mentale sarà presentato il progetto MILESTONE. Tale excursus consentirà di intrecciare e discutere criticamente lo stato della pratica clinica e della ricerca in psichiatria, e consentirà di formulare delle proposte su aree di ricerca innovative nel prossimo decennio.

In the last European elections the League became the first party in Italy also because, for the first time, it collected a large number of votes in the South, exceeding the 20% of votes in the Southern italian regions. In this article we try to evaluate whether that success is temporary or if it will consolidate over time. In other words, the central question is whether the vote to the Leauge party in the South of Italy is weak and volatile or it represents the first moment of its establishment also in these areas of the Country. In details, we try to verify if the success of the Leauge party in the South of Italy can be related to traditional aspects of the parties’ organization, such as the territorial root and the recruitment of political personnel who obtain in the electoral competition personal votes which improve the success of the list. The analysis was conducted through out macro and micro analysis tools. The analysis of the preference vote distribution highlights the electoral contribution offered by all the candidates to the European Parliament by region and by size of the municipalities. The description of some emblematic local cases describes the dynamics through which some local candidates for the European Parliament have contributed to increase the political consensus of the League party in the South of Italy.

In July 2010, extensive decline of English ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) was observed near Chiusi della Verna, Tuscany, in central Italy (altitude 956 m a.s.l.; lat. 43° 41′ 54″ N, long. 11° 56′ 9″E). The symptoms on the tree trunks and leaves included lengthwise bark cracks, detached bark, withering of the crown where the bark was detached, and extensive microphyllia. In September 2010, perithecial stromata were observed in the parts of the tree that had lost their bark. They were applanate and black and fruiting bodies were recognized as Biscogniauxia mediterranea (De Not.) Kuntze (basionym Sphaeria mediterranea (De Not.), Ascomycotina, Xylaraceae), a fungus causing charcoal canker that attacks oaks, Acer spp., Castanea sativa Miller, Fagus sylvatica L., and Platanus acerifolia Willd. The biometric characteristics of 30 stromata were examined. The stromata were slightly convex, ellipsoid, and elongate, 7.2 to 20.5 × 3.5 to 4.2 cm. The perithecia were ovoid to tubular, 0.74 to 0.80 × 0.12 to 0.15 mm; the asci were short and stipitate, 7.9 to 10.0 × 120.2 to 170.4 μm. The ascospores were ovoid, brownish-black, with narrowed and roundish ends, 6.9 to 9.1 × 14.6 to 20.0 μm. Colonies grown on PDA at 25°C for 5 days were grey viewed from the top and black viewed from the dish underside. A comparison with the data in the literature (1) confirmed the macro- and microscopic identification. Traditional identification was further confirmed by sequence information from the rDNA ITS region. A BLAST search of the ITS sequence of our B. mediterranea isolate (GenBank Accession No. JX262798) revealed an exact match (100%) with several reference sequences of the fungus present in the database, mainly from oak hosts. Four branches each of five English ash trees growing in a natural environment were inoculated at the trunk junction with a 10–5 ml ascospore suspension. Control consisted of a branch per tree inoculated with an identical volume of sterile water only. After 25 days, the bark became detached and after a further 15 days the typical black stromata appeared. The pathogen was reisolated from the lesions, confirming Koch's postulates. No symptoms were observed on control branches, which presented healed wounds. B. mediterranea was first detected in 1986 on Quercus cerris L. and Q. pubescens Willd. in the Circeo natural park in central Italy (altitude 50 m a.s.l; lat. 41° 27′ 55″44 N, long. 12° 53′ 53″52 E). From there it spread north to other parts of the country. All oak species in Italy appear to be susceptible. Its northward expansion is likely associated with the high temperature and water stress that have been affecting the Italian peninsula for the last few years (4). Most recently, B. mediterranea has also been reported on Q. cerris in the Karst region of Slovenia (lat. 45° 43′ 03″7 N, long. 13° 45′ 20″ 4 E). This confirms its current spread to the more northerly territories, most likely because of ongoing changes in the climate that are creating optimal conditions for its survival in areas that were previously unsuitable to it. References: (1) P. Capretti and L. Mugnai, Inform. Fitopatol. 37:39, 1987. (2) D. Jurc and N. Ogris. Plant Pathol. 55:299, 2006. (3) A. Ragazzi. Micologia Italiana 1:29, 2009. (4) A. Vannini and R. Valentini. Tree Physiol. 14:129, 1994.

<p>The recent Amatrice strong event (M_w6.0) occurred on August 24, 2016 in Central Apennines (Italy) in a seismic gap zone, motivated us to study and provide better understanding of the seismic hazard assessment in the macro area defined as “Central Italy”. The area affected by the sequence is placed between the M_w6.0 1997 Colfiorito sequence to the north (Umbria-Marche region) the Campotosto area hit by the 2009 L’Aquila sequence M_w6.3 (Abruzzo region) to the south. The Amatrice earthquake occurred while there was an ongoing effort to update the 2004 seismic hazard map (MPS04) for the Italian territory, requested in 2015 by the Italian Civil Protection Agency to the Center for Seismic Hazard (CPS) of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia INGV. Therefore, in this study we brought to our attention new earthquake source data and recently developed ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs). Our aim was to validate whether the seismic hazard assessment in this area has changed with respect to 2004, year in which the MPS04 map was released. In order to understand the impact of the recent earthquakes on the seismic hazard assessment in central Italy we compared the annual seismic rates calculated using a smoothed seismicity approach over two different periods; the Parametric Catalog of the Historical Italian earthquakes (CPTI15) from 1871 to 2003 and the historical and instrumental catalogs from 1871 up to 31 August 2016. Results are presented also in terms of peak ground acceleration (PGA), using the recent ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) at Amatrice, interested by the 2016 sequence.</p>

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic may have a deleterious impact on patients with autoimmune systemic diseases (ASD) due to their deep immune-system alterations. Objective: To investigate the prevalence of symptomatic Covid-19 and its correlations with both organ involvement and ongoing treatments in a large series of Italian ASD patients during the first wave of pandemic. Method: Our multicenter telephone 6-week survey included 3,029 unselected ASD patients enrolled at 36 tertiary referral centers of northern, central, and southern Italian macro-areas with different diffusion of pandemic. Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection was classified as definite Covid-19 (presence of symptoms plus positive oral/nasopharyngeal swabs) or highly suspected Covid-19 (highly suggestive symptoms, in absence of a swab testing). Results: A significantly higher prevalence of definite plus highly suspected Covid-19 compared to Italian general population was detected in the whole ASD series (p=.000), as well as in patients from the three macro-areas (p=.000 in all). Statistically higher prevalence of Covid-19 was also found in connective tissue diseases compared to chronic arthritis subgroup (p=.000) and in ASD patients with pre-existing interstitial lung involvement (p=.000). Patients treated with either conventional disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and/or biological DMARDs showed a significantly lower prevalence of Covid-19 (p=.000 in both). Finally, scleroderma patients undergoing low-dose aspirin showed significantly lower rate of Covid-19 compared to those without (p=0.003). Conclusion: The higher prevalence of Covid-19 in ASD patients along with the significant correlations with important clinical features and therapeutic regimens suggests the need to develop targeted prevention/management strategies during the current pandemic wave.

During 1997, within the framework of an Italian-funded scientific cooperation between Italy and the Czech Republic, a series of magnetotelluric (MT) soundings was carried out in the region of Northwest Bohemia (Czech Republic). This is one of the most seismically active areas in Central Europe, where micro-earthquake swarms frequently occur during the apparently quiescent intervals between large macro-seismic swarms. Fifteen MT stations were installed in an area of about 15 ´ 20 km2 where 80% of the seismicity of the entire region has been recorded since 1986. The area showed a high electromagnetic noise, possibly of high cultural origin from the nearby industrial zone of the Sokolov basin, which affected both the electric and the magnetic signals. The final data, carefully selected, were modeled by 2D and 3D techniques. The results show an extensive conductive structure in the depth range from 0.5 to 3 km. This structure could be connected with the locally buried granitic massif in the inhomogeneous metamorphic basement, probably accompanied by fracturation, thermo-metamorphism or paleofluids. Moreover, the presence of a conductive anomaly in the northern part of the investigated region could be linked to a lithological change in the metamorphic rocks (prevalence of phyllites over mica schists), which would even increase the effect of the granite.

Abstract Background Canine vector-borne diseases (CVBDs) associated to ticks are among the most important health issues affecting dogs. In Italy, Ehrlichia canis, Anaplasma spp., Rickettsia conorii and Borrelia burgdorferi (s.l.) have been studied in both healthy canine populations and those clinically ill with suspected CVBDs. However, little information is currently available on the overall prevalence and distribution of these pathogens in the country. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and distribution of tick-borne pathogens (TBPs) in clinically suspect dogs from three Italian macro areas during a 15-year period (2006–2020). Methods A large dataset (n = 21,992) of serological test results for selected TBPs in three macro areas in Italy was analysed using a Chi-square test to evaluate the associations between the categorical factors (i.e. macro area, region, year, sex and age) and a standard logistic regression model (significance set at P = 0.05). Serological data were presented as annual and cumulative prevalence, and distribution maps of cumulative positive cases for TBPs were generated. Results Of the tested serum samples, 86.9% originated from northern (43.9%) and central (43%) Italy. The majority of the tests was requested for the diagnosis of E. canis (47%; n = 10,334), followed by Rickettsia spp. (35.1%; n = 7725), B. burgdorferi (s.l.) (11.6%; n = 2560) and Anaplasma spp. (6.2%; n = 1373). The highest serological exposure was recorded for B. burgdorferi (s.l.) (83.5%), followed by Rickettsia spp. (64.9%), Anaplasma spp. (39.8%) and E. canis (28.7%). The highest number of cumulative cases of Borrelia burgdorferi (s.l.) was recorded in samples from Tuscany, central Italy. Rickettsia spp. was more prevalent in the south and on the islands, particularly in dogs on Sicily older than 6 years, whereas Anaplasma spp. was more prevalent in the north and E. canis more prevalent in the south and on the islands. Conclusions The results of this study highlight the high seroprevalence and wide distribution of the four TBPs in dogs with clinically suspected CVBDs from the studied regions of Italy. The very high seroprevalence of B. burgdorferi (s.l.) exemplifies a limitation of this study, given the use of clinically suspect dogs and the possibility of cross-reactions when using serological tests. The present research provides updated and illustrative information on the seroprevalence and distribution of four key TBPs, and advocates for integrative control strategies for their prevention. Grapic abstract

AbstractThe article aims at studying the geographical variability of theatrical consumption and popularity of contemporary films imported in Italy since the beginning of the XXI century. It relies on the data about regional admissions and theatrical distribution of more than 4100 titles, namely all the films with more than 15,000 admissions that had been projected in Italy from January 2000 to the pandemic outbreak in mid-February 2020, which forced the closure of all cinemas nationwide. While the regional patterns of distribution of both domestic and foreign films are always rather homogeneous and do not undergo major regional variations, Italian and non-Italian films are consumed in very different ways, geographically. When it comes to foreign cinema, a Regional Popularity Index shows how different regions and primarily wider trans-regional areas have different preferences linked to particular themes and genres. Different films are more or less popular in different areas, even regardless of any disparities in their distribution, precisely because they meet (or fail to meet) the specific tastes of macro-regional audiences. Specifically, the data consistently show a divide in taste between the northern-central audiences and their southern counterparts, which replicates the great distance that still divides the North from the South of Italy, from an economic, social and cultural point of view.

Il Parco Regionale della Maremma è una area protetta di 8902 ha nel settore costiero centrale della provincia di Grosseto, Toscana meridionale. Gli habitat che rappresentano l’area protetta possono essere così brevemente descritti: foce del fiume Ombrone e zone umide della Palude della Trappola; Monti dell’Uccellina (cima più elevata: Poggio Lecci, 417 m s.l.m.); un ampio comprensorio interno e pianeggiante dove coesistono attività zootecniche e coltivazioni agricole. Lo sviluppo costiero raggiunge i 25 km circa. Sono presenti 6 Siti della Rete Natura 2000 classificati come ZSC − Zona Speciale di Conservazione − secondo la Direttiva “Habitat” 92/43/ CE e/o come ZPS − Zona di Protezione Speciale − secondo la Direttiva “Uccelli” 2009/147/CE. La maggior parte dell’area presenta una scarsa rete viaria e limitati insediamenti umani con copertura boschiva in larga parte dovuta a formazioni vegetali sclerofilliche mediterranee. In questo lavoro viene presentato un elenco commentato degli uccelli noti per l’area protetta a partire dalla sua istituzione avvenuta il 05/06/1975 sino al 31/12/2018. In totale, le specie di Uccelli rilevate sono 295 (62,1% delle specie della Toscana ed il 52,5% delle specie note in Italia), mentre le specie nidificanti certe o probabili in tempi recenti (2008-2018) sono 84. Le specie di interesse comunitario presenti nell’Allegato I della Direttiva “Uccelli” 2009/147/CE sono 88, mentre quelle classificate come SPEC 1-3 “Species of European Conservation Concern” sono 33. L’area, con le zone umide “Bocca d’Ombrone” e “La Trappola” comprese nella Macrozona “Maremma Grossetana”, ricade all’interno della qualifica di sito di importanza internazionale per lo svernamento di Anser anser e Mareca penelope; inoltre è sito di importanza nazionale per Mareca strepera, Anas crecca, Anas acuta, Spatula clypeata, Ardea alba, Platalea leucorodia, Phoenicopterus roseus, Recurvirostra avosetta, Pluvialis apricaria, Calidris alpina, Vanellus vanellus, Gallinago gallinago, Numenius arquata, Tringa erythropus e Tringa totanus. L’area protetta è di importanza per specie nidificanti in Direttiva 2009/147/CE legate agli specchi lacustri costieri e agli spazi marini, ad incolti, pascoli, così come a zone con vegetazione arborea e arbustiva sparsa su affioramenti rocciosi, margini di boschi, ambienti parzialmente allagati ed ai litorali sabbiosi, quali ad esempio, con dati minimi, Pandion haliaetus (1 coppia), Burhinus oedicnemus (7-8 coppie), Charadrius alexandrinus (1 coppia), Caprimulgus europaeus (25 coppie), Coracias garrulus (13-15 coppie), Lanius collurio (1-5 coppie), Lullula arborea (10 coppie) e Anthus campestris (6-7 coppie). Dal 2015 si segnala il consolidamento della nidificazione di Ardea cinerea, rilevandone per la prima volta la riproduzione come garzaia.

The Riparo Tagliente site (Verona, Italy) shows three macro phases in which high technological variability can be observed. The aim of this study is to evaluate the specific role of the Middle Paleolithic blade production within this variability. Preliminary results show a complex scenario in which the role of the blade is strictly linked with flake production through mixed reduction systems. Two different approaches were used for analysing the lithic assemblages from the site. The first analysis focused on the identification of the reduction systems by determining the techniques, methods and concepts underlying the entire chaîne opératoire. The second approach concentrated on analysing blade production in order to identify its variability. Evidence of blade technology from the Middle Pleistocene (MIS 8-6) has been found in northern Europe (France, Belgium). Later, during MIS 5 blades can be found over a larger area, this time also including north-western Germany and the central-southern part of France. A third period (MIS 4-3) marks the appearance of laminar production in southern Europe, including in the Italian peninsula. Based on the present state of research these three phases appear to be on-and-off events without clear evolutionary continuity. By repositioning the sequence of Riparo Tagliente within the Italian context we can observe that at the end of the Mousterian period the technological patterns differ greatly, with laminar production being one of its most evident expressions. The origin of this fragmentation is questionable.

Background: Italy has one of the oldest populations in the World and more than one million dementia cases can be estimated at the national level. Objective: The objectives of this national survey include: 1) to report the administrative features and the professional competencies of Centers for Cognitive Disorders and Dementias (CCDDs); 2) to document possible discrepancies by geographic macro-area; and 3) to identify the features of CCDDs that are associated with a better quality in the provision of care. Methods: A survey of Italian CCDDs was conducted between February 2014 and December 2015. A list of CCDDs was obtained through direct interactions with designed delegates from each Italian region. A questionnaire was defined on five sections concerning: 1) location of the CCDD; 2) access to the CCDD; 3) organization of the CCDD; 4) services and treatments provided; and 5) quantitative data on the activities of the CCDD. Results: Overall, 577 out of the 597 eligible CCDDs returned the completed survey questionnaire (response rate: 96.6%): 260 (45.1%) from Northern Italy, 103 (17.8%) from Central Italy, and 214 (37.1%) from Southern-Islands Italy. More than a third of CCDDs were open only once or twice weekly. A median of 450 (IQR: 200–800) patients regularly attended these services. Most patients (70%) were affected by dementia or mild cognitive impairment (19%). Conclusion: We have provided a snapshot of the organization and activities of CCDDs in Italy and documented existing inequalities in the provision of care.

Within the Italian FL grammatical tradition, the 19th century is a very fruitful period. In other contributions, we have highlighted how several Portuguese and Italian figures connected to the circle of the S. Carlos Theatre in Lisbon act as preceptors and compose some grammars, which contain a strong normative part and, at the same time, connect themselves to the conversational tradition: among these works, the Grammatica da Lingua Italiana para os Portuguezes by Antonio Prefumo (Lisbon, 1829) plays a central role, as it goes through four editions over almost forty years. The paper analyses the social and intellectual context of production of this text, besides outlining the author’s profile and providing a philological reconstruction of the sources and models adopted. Furthermore, the paper attempts an analysis of the Grammatica that, on the one hand, highlights both the heritage of the vernacular and Enlightenment grammatical traditions and its innovative aspects and, on the other hand, compares the various editions through the study of their macro-textual areas. The methodology underlying our description follows that proposed by Swiggers (2006, 168) being based on four aspects: the analysis of the author, the audience, the subject described and its form. This approach places the author at the centre of a historical conjuncture in which the traditional grammatical method was associated with that of conversation, responding to the demand of an audience that increasingly approached the study of FL for practical reasons, rather than to meet the traditional educational demands of the upper classes.

I miss the ferry to San Pietro, so after a long bus trip winding through the southern Sardinian rocky terrain past gum trees, shrubs, caper plants, and sheep, I take refuge from the rain in a bar at the port. While I order a beer and panini, the owner, a man in his early sixties, begins to chat asking me why I’m heading to the island. For the tuna, I say, to research cultural practices and changes surrounding the ancient tuna trap la tonnara, and for the Girotonno international tuna festival, which coincides with the migration of the Northern Bluefin Tuna and the harvest season. This year the slogan of the festival reads Dal Sulcis a Sushi ("From Sulcis to Sushi"), a sign of the diverse tastes to come. Tuna here is the best in the world, he exclaims, a sentiment I hear many times over whilst doing fieldwork in southern Italy. He excitedly gestures for me to follow. We walk into the kitchen and on a long steel bench sits a basin covered with cloth. He uncovers it, and proudly poised, waits for my reaction. A large pinkish-brown loin of cooked tuna sits in brine. I have never tasted tuna in this way, so to share in his enthusiasm I conjure my interest in the rich tuna gastronomy found in this area of Sardinia called Sulcis. I’m more familiar with the clean taste of sashimi or lightly seared tuna. As I later experience, traditional tuna preparations in San Pietro are far from this. The most notable characteristic is that the tuna is thoroughly cooked or the flesh or organs are preserved with salt by brining or drying. A tuna steak cooked in the oven is robust and more like meat from the land than the sea in its flavours, colour, and texture. This article is about taste: the taste of, and tastes for, tuna in a traditional fishing community. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork and is part of a wider inquiry into the place of tradition and culture in seafood sustainability discourses and practices. In this article I use the notion of a taste network to explore the relationship between macro forces—international markets, stock decline and marine regulations—and transformations within local cultures of tuna production and consumption. Taste networks frame the connections between taste in a gustatory sense, tastes as an aesthetic preference and tasting as a way of learning about and attuning to modes and meanings surrounding tuna. As Antoine Hennion asserts, taste is more than a connoisseurship of an object, taste represents a cultural activity that concerns a wide range of practices, exchanges and attachments. Elspeth Probyn suggests that taste “acts as a connector between history, place, things, and people” (65) and “can also come to form communities: local places that are entangled in the global” (62). Within this framework, taste moves away from Bourdieu’s notion of taste as a social distinction towards an understanding of taste as created through a network of entities—social, biological, technological, and so forth. It turns attention to the mundane activities and objects of tuna production and consumption, the components of a taste network, and the everyday spaces where tradition and transformation are negotiated. For taste to change requires a transformation of the network (or components of that network) that bring such tastes into existence. These networks and their elements form the very meaning, matter, and moments of tradition and culture. As Hennion reminds us through his idea of “reservoir(s) of difference” (100), there are a range of diverse tastes that can materialise from the interactions of humans with objects, in this case tuna. Yet, taste networks can also be rendered obsolete. When a highly valued and endangered species like Bluefin is at the centre of such networks, there are material, ethical, and even political limitations to some tastes. In a study that follows three scientists as they attempt to address scallop decline in Brest and St Brieuc Bay, Michael Callon advocates for “the abandonment of all prior distinction between the natural and the social” (1). He draws attention to networks of actors and significant moments, rather than pre-existing categories, to figure the contours of power. This approach is particularly useful for social research that involves science, technology and the “natural” world. In my own research in San Pietro, the list of human and non-human actors is long and spans the local to the global: Bluefin (in its various meanings and as an entity with its own agency), tonnara owners, fishermen, technologies, fish shops and restaurants, scientific observers, policy (local, regional, national, European and international), university researchers, the sea, weather, community members, Japanese and Spanish buyers, and markets. Local discourses surrounding tuna and taste articulate human and non-human entanglements in quite particular ways. In San Pietro, as with much of Italy, notions of place, environment, identity, quality, and authenticity are central to the culture of tuna production and consumption. Food products are connected to place through ecological, cultural and technological dimensions. In Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch’s terms this frames food and tastes in relation to a spatial dimension (its place of origin), a social dimension (its methods of production and distribution), and a cultural dimension (its perceived qualities and reputation). The place name labelling of canned tuna from San Pietro is an example of a product that represents the notion of provenance. The practice of protecting traditional products is well established in Italy through appellation programs, much like the practice of protecting terroir products in France. It is no wonder that the eco-gastronomic movement Slow Food developed in Italy as a movement to protect traditional foods, production methods, and biodiversity. Such discourses and movements like Slow Food create local/global frameworks and develop in relation to the phenomenon and ideas like globalisation, industrialization, and homogenisation. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Pietro over the 2013 tuna season. This included interviews with some thirty participants (fishers, shop keepers, locals, restaurateurs, and tonnara owners), secondary research into international markets, marine regulations, and environmental movements, and—of course—a gustatory experience of tuna. Walking down the main street the traditions of the tonnara and tuna are palpable. On a first impression there’s something about the streets and piazzas that is akin to Zukin’s notion of “vernacular spaces”, “sources of identity and belonging, affective qualities that the idea of intangible culture expresses, refines and sustains” (282). At the centre is the tonnara, which refers to the trap (a labyrinth of underwater nets) as well as the technique of tuna fishing and land based processing activities. For centuries, tuna and the tonnara have been at the centre of community life, providing employment, food security, and trade opportunities, and generating a wealth of ecological knowledge, a rich gastronomy based on preserved tuna, and cultural traditions like the famous harvest ritual la mattanza (the massacre). Just about every organ is preserved by salting and drying. The most common is the female ovary sac, which becomes bottarga. Grated onto pasta it has a strong metallic offal flavour combined with the salty tang of the sea. There is also the male equivalent lusciami, a softer consistency and flavour, as well as dried heart and lungs. There is canned tuna, a continuation of the tradition of brining and barrelling, but these are no ordinary cans. Each part of the tuna is divided into parts corresponding loosely to anatomy but more closely to quality based on textures, colour, and taste. There is the ventresca from the belly, the most prized cut because of its high fat content. Canned in olive oil or brine, a single can of this cut sells for around 30 Euros. Both the canned variety or freshly grilled ventresca is a sumptuous experience, soft and rich. Change is not new to San Pietro. In the long history of the tonnara there have been numerous transformations resulting from trade, occupation, and dominant economic systems. As Stefano Longo describes, with the development of capitalism and industrialization, the socio-economic structure of the tonnara changed and there was a dramatic decline in tonnare (plural) throughout the 1800s. The tonnare also went through different phases of ownership. In 1587 King Philip II formally established the Sardinian tonnare (Emery). Phillip IV then sold a tonnara to a Genovese man in 1654 and, from the late 18th century until today, the tonnara has remained in the Greco family from Genova. There were also changes to fishing and preservation technologies, such as the replacement of barrels after the invention of the can in the early 1800s, and innovations to recipes, as for example in the addition of olive oil. Yet, compared to recent changes, the process of harvesting, breaking down and sorting flesh and organs, and preserving tuna, has remained relatively stable. The locus of change in recent years concerns the harvest, the mattanza. For locals this process seems to be framed with concepts of before, and after, the Japanese arrived on the island. Owner Giuliano Greco, a man in his early fifties who took over the management of the tonnara from his father when it reopened in the late 1990s, describes these changes: We have two ages—before the Japanese and after. Before the Japanese, yes, the tuna was damaged. It was very violent in the mattanza. In the age before the pollution, there was a crew of 120 people divided in a little team named the stellati. The more expert and more important at the centre of the boat, the others at the side because at the centre there was more tuna. When there was mattanza it was like a race, a game, because if they caught more tuna they had more entrails, which was good money for them, because before, part of the wage was in nature, part of the tuna, and for this game the tuna was damaged because they opened it with a knife, the heart, the eggs etc. And for this method it was very violent because they wanted to get the tuna entrails first. The tuna remained on the boat without ice, with blood everywhere. The tonnara operated within clear social hierarchies made up of tonnarotti (tuna fishermen) under the guidance of the Rais (captain of tonnara) whose skills, charisma and knowledge set him apart. The Rais liaised with the tonnarotti, the owners, and the local community, recruiting men and women to augment the workforce in the mattanza period. Goliardo Rivano, a tonnarotto (singular) since 1999 recalls “all the town would be called on for the mattanza. Not only men but women too would work in the cannery, cutting, cleaning, and canning the tuna.” The mattanza was the starting point of supply and consumption networks. From the mattanza the tuna was broken down, the flesh boiled and brined for local and foreign markets, and the organs salted and dried for the (mainly) local market. Part of the land-based activities of tonnarotti involved cleaning, salting, pressing and drying the organs, which supplemented their wage. As Giuliano described, the mattanza was a bloody affair because of the practice of retrieving the organs; but since the tuna was boiled and then preserved in brine, it was not important whether the flesh was damaged. At the end of the 1970s the tonnara closed. According to locals and reportage, pollution from a nearby factory had caused a drastic drop in tuna. It remained closed until the mid 1990s when Japanese buyers came to inquire about tuna from the trap. Global tastes for tuna had changed during the time the tonnara was closed. An increase in western appetites for sushi had been growing since the early 1970s (Bestore). As Theadore Bestore describes in detail, this coincided with a significant transformation of the Japanese fishing industry’s international role. In the 1980s, the Japanese government began to restructure its fleets in response to restricted access to overseas fishing grounds, which the declaration of Excusive Economic Zones enforced (Barclay and Koh). At this time, Japan turned to foreign suppliers for tuna (Bestore). Kate Barclay and Sun-Hui Koh describe how quantity was no longer a national food security issue like it had been in post war Japan and “consumers started to demand high-quality high-value products” (145). In the late 1990s, the Greco family reopened the tonnara and the majority of the tuna went to Japan leaving a smaller portion for the business of canning. The way mattanza was practiced underwent profound changes and particular notions of quality emerged. This was also the beginning of new relationships and a widening of the taste network to include international stakeholders: Japanese buyers and markets became part of the network. Giuliano refers to the period as the “Japanese Age”. A temporal framing that is iterated by restaurant and fish shop owners who talk about a time when Japanese began to come to the island and have the first pick of the tuna. Giuliano recalls “there was still blood but there was not the system of opening tuna, in total, like before. Now the tuna is opened on the land. The only operation we do on the boat is blooding and chilling.” Here he references the Japanese technique of ikejime. Over several years the technicians taught Giuliano and some of the crew about killing the tuna faster and bleeding it to maintain colour and freshness. New notions of quality and taste for raw or lightly cooked tuna entered San Pietro. According to Rais Luigi “the tuna is of higher quality, because we treat it in a particular way, with ice.” Giuliano describes the importance of quality. “Before they used the stellati and it took five people, each one with a harpoon to haul the tuna. Now they only use one hook, in the mouth and use a chain, by hand. On board there is bleeding, and there is blood, but now we must keep the quality of the meat at its best.” In addition to the influence of Japanese tastes, the international Girotonno tuna festival had its inauguration in 2003, and, along with growing tourism, brought cosmopolitan and international tastes to San Pietro. The impact of a global taste for tuna has had devastating effects on their biomass. The international response to the sharp decline was the expansion of the role of inter-governmental monitoring bodies like International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the introduction of quotas, and an increase in the presence of marine authorities on fleets, scientific research and environmental campaigns. In San Pietro, international relationships further widened and so did the configuration of taste networks, this time to include marine regulators, a quota on Bluefin, a Spanish company, and tuna ranches in Malta. The mattanza again was at the centre of change and became a point of contention within the community. This time because as a practice it is endangered, occurring only once or twice a year, “for the sake of tradition, culture” as Giuliano stated. The harvest now takes place in ranches in Malta because for the last three years the Greco family have supplied the tonnara’s entire quota (excluding tuna from mattanza or those that die in the net) to a major Spanish seafood company Riccardo Fuentes e Hijos, which transports them live to Malta where they are fattened and slaughtered, predominantly for a Japanese market. The majority of tuna now leave the island whole, which has profoundly transformed the distribution networks and local taste culture, and mainly the production and trade in tuna organs and canned tuna. In 2012, ICCAT and the European Union further tightened the quotas, which along with competition with industrial fisheries for both quota and markets, has placed enormous pressure on the tonnara. In 2013, it was allocated a quota that was well under what is financially sustainable. Add to the mix the additional expense of financing the obligatory scientific observers, and the tonnara has had to modify its operations. In the last few years there has been a growing antagonism between marine regulations, global markets, and traditional practices. This is exemplified in the limitations to the tuna organ tradition. It is now more common to find dried tuna organs in vacuum packs from Sicily rather than local products. As the restaurateur Secondo Borghero of Tonno della Corsa says “the tonnara made a choice to sell the live tuna to the Spanish. It’s a big problem. The tuna is not just the flesh but also the interior—the stomach, the heart, the eggs—and now we don’t have the quantity of these and the quality around is also not great.” In addition, even though preserved organs are available for consumption, local preserving activities have almost ceased along with supplementary income. The social structures and the types of actors that are a part of the tonnara have also changed. New kinds of relationships, bodies, and knowledge are situated side by side because of the mandate that there be scientific observers present at certain moments in the season. In addition, there are coast guards and, at various stages of the season, university staff contracted by ICCAT take samples and tag the tuna to generate data. The changes have also introduced new types of knowledge, activities, and institutional affiliations based on scientific ideas and discourses of marine biology, conservation, and sustainability. These are applied through marine management activities and regimes like quotas and administered through state and global institutions. This is not to say that the knowledge informing the Rais’s decisions has been done away with but as Gisli Palsson has previously argued, there is a new knowledge hierarchy, which places a significant focus on the notion of expert knowledge. This has the potential to create unequal power dynamics between the marine scientists and the fishers. Today in San Pietro tuna tastes are diverse. Tuna is delicate, smooth, and rich ventresca, raw tartare clean on the palate, novel at the Girotono, hearty tuna al forno, and salty dry bottarga. Tasting tuna in San Pietro offers a material and affective starting point to follow the socio-cultural, political, and ecological contours and contentions that are part of tuna traditions and their transformations. By thinking of gustatory and aesthetic tastes as part of wider taste networks, which involve human and non-human entities, we can begin to unpack and detail better what these changes encompass and figure forms and moments of power and agency. At the centre of tastes and transformation in San Pietro are the tonnara and the mattanza. Although in its long existence the tonnara has endured many changes, those in the past 15 years are unprecedented. Several major global events have provided conditions for change and widened the network from its once mainly local setting to its current global span. First, Japanese and global tastes set a demand for tuna and introduced different tuna production and preparation techniques and new styles of serving tuna raw or lightly cooked tuna. Later, the decline of Bluefin stocks and the increasing involvement of European and international monitoring bodies introduced catch limitations along with new processes and types of knowledge and authorities. Coinciding with this was the development of relationships with middle companies, which again introduced new techniques and technologies, namely the gabbie (cage) and ranches, to the taste network. In the cultural setting of Italy where the conservation of tradition is of particular importance, as I have explained earlier through the notion of provenance, the management of a highly regulated endangered marine species is a complex project that causes much conflict. Because of the dire state of the stocks and continual rise in global demand, solutions are complex. Yet it would seem useful to recognise that tuna tastes are situated within a network of knowledge, know-how, technology, and practices that are not simple modes of production and consumption but also ways of stewarding the sea and its species. Ethics Approval Original names have been used when participants gave consent on the official consent form to being identified in publications relating to the study. This is in accordance with ethics approval granted through the University of Sydney on 21 March 2013. Project number 2012/2825. References Barclay, Kate, and Koh Sun-Hui “Neo-liberal Reforms in Japan’s Tuna Fisheries? A History of Government-business Relations in a Food-producing Sector.” Japan Forum 20.2 (2008): 139–170. Bestor, Theadore “Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World.” Foreign Policy 121 (2000): 54–63. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Harvard UP, 1984. Callon, Michael “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay” Power, Action, Belief: a New Sociology of Knowledge? Ed. John Law. London: Routledge, 1986. 196–223. Emery, Katherine “Tonnare in Italy: Science, History and Culture of Sardinian Tuna Fishing.” Californian Italian Studies 1 (2010): 1–40. Hennion, Antoine “Those Things That Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology” Cultural Sociology 1 (2007): 97–114. Longo, Stefano “Global Sushi: A Socio-Ecological Analysis of The Sicilian Bluefin Tuna Fishery.” Dissertation. Oregon: University of Oregon, 2009. Morgan, Kevin, Marsden, Terry, and Johathan Murdoch. Worlds of Food: Place, Power, and provenance in the Food Chain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Palsson, Gisli. Coastal Economies, Cultural Accounts: Human Ecology and Icelandic Discourse. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1991. Probyn, Elspeth “In the Interests of Taste & Place: Economies of Attachment.” The Global Intimate. Eds. G. Pratt and V. Rosner. New York: Columbia UP (2012). Zukin, Sharon “The Social Production of Urban Cultural Heritage: Identity and Ecosystem on an Amsterdam Shopping Street.” City, Culture and Society 3 (2012): 281–291.

Introduction: At the Crossroad Well, I’ve been an important pawn [in regeneration], for instance, changing doors and windows, enlarging them, eliminating shutters and thus having big open windows, light […] Then came the florist, through a common friend, who was the second huge pawn who trusted in this […] then came the pastry shop. (Alberto, 54, shop owner). Alberto is the owner of Pleasure Factory, one of two upmarket restaurants in a gentrifying crossroads area in northern Milan. He started buying apartments and empty stores in the 1980s, later becoming property manager of the building where he still lives. He also opened two restaurants, and then set up a neighbourhood commercial organisation. Alberto’s activities, and those of people like him, have been able to reverse the image and the usage of this public crossroad. This is something of which all of the involved actors are well aware. They have “bet,” as they say, and somehow “won” by changing people’s common understanding of, and approach to, this zone. This paper argues for the necessity of a closer look at the ways that place is produced through the multiple activities of small entrepreneurs and social actors, such as Alberto. This is because these activities represent the softer side of gentrification, and can create zones of pleasure and authenticity. Whilst market forces and multiple public interventions of gentrification’s “hard” side can lead to the displacement of people and uneven development, these softer zones of authenticity and pleasure have the power to shape the general neighbourhood brand (Atkinson 1830). Speaking rhetorically, these zones act as synecdoche for the surrounding environment. Places are in part built through the “atmosphere” that consumers seek throughout their daily routines. Following Gernot Böhme’s approach to spatial aesthetics, atmosphere can be viewed as the “relation between environmental qualities and human states” (114) and this relation is worked out daily in gentrified neighbourhoods. Not only do the passer-bys, local entrepreneurs, and sociologists contribute to the local making of atmosphere, but so does the production of the environmental qualities. These are the private and public interventions aimed at refurbishing, and somehow sanitising, specific zones of central neighbourhoods in order to make them suitable for middle class tastes (Julier 875). Not all gentrification processes are similar however, because of the unique influence of each city’s scalar rearrangements. The following section therefore briefly describes the changes in Milan in recent times. The paper will then describe the making of a zone of authentic pleasure at the Isola crossroads. I will show that soft gentrification happens through the making of specific zones where supply and demand match in ways that make for pleasant living. Milan, from Global to Local and Back Milan has a peculiar role in both the Italian and European contexts. Its metropolitan area, of 7.4 million inhabitants on a 12 000 km² surface, makes it the largest in Italy and the fifth in Europe (following Ruhr, Moscow, Paris and London). The municipal power has been pushing for a long-term strategy of population growth that would make Milan the “downtown” of the overall metropolitan area (Bricocoli and Savoldi 19), and take advantage of scalar rearrangements, such as State reconfigurations and setbacks. The overall goal of the government of Milan has been to increase the tax base and the local government’s political power. Milan also demonstrates the entrepreneurial turn adopted by many global cities, evident in the amount of project-based interventions, the involvement of international architecture studios (“La città della Moda” by Cesar Pelli; “Santa Giulia” by Norman Foster; “City-Life” and “the Fair” by Zaha Hadid and David Libeskind), and the hosting of mega-events, such as the Expo 2015. The Milan growth machine works then at different scales (global, national, city-region, neighbourhood) with several organisational actors involved, enormous investments and heavy political struggles to decide which coalition of winning actors will ride the tiger of uneven development. However, when we look at those transformations through the lens of the neighbourhood what we see is the making of zones within the larger texture of its streets and squares. This zone-making is similar to leopard’s spots within a contained urban space, it works for some time in specific streets and crossroads, then moves throughout the neighbourhood, as the process of gentrification goes on. The neighbourhood, which the zone of authentic pleasure I’m describing occurs, is called Isola (Island) because of its clustered shape between a railroad on the southern border and three major roads on the others. Isola was, until the 1980s, a working-class residential space with a strong tradition of left-wing political activism, with some small manufacturing businesses and minor commercial activities. This area remained quite removed from the overall urban development that radically shifted Milan towards a service economy in the 1960s and 1970s. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, the land price impacts of private activities and public policies in surrounding neighbourhoods increasingly pushed people and activities in the direction of Isola. Alberto explains this drift through the example of his first apartment: Just look at the evolution of my apartment. I bought it [in the 1980s] for 57 million lira, I remember, then sold it in 1992 for 160, then it was sold again for 200 000 euros, then four years ago for 250 000 and you have to understand that we’re talking about 47 square metres. If you consider the last price, 250 000, I’ll tell you that when I first came to the neighbourhood you could easily buy an entire building with that money. The building at number five in this street was entirely sold for 550 millions lira—you understand now why Isola is a huge real estate investment, people like it, its central, well served by the underground—well it still has to grow from a commercial standpoint… This evolution in land prices is clear when translated into the price for square metre: 2.4 euros for square meter in 1985, 3.4 in 1992, 4.2 in 2000 and 5.3 in 2006. The ratio increase is 120% in 20 years, demonstrating both the general boost in the economy of the area and also what is at stake within uneven development. What this paper argues is that parallel to this political economy dimension, which may be called the “hard side” of gentrification, there is also a “soft side” that deserves a closer attention. Pastry shops, cafés, bars, restaurants are as strategic as real estate investments (Zukin, Landscapes 195). The spatial concept that best captures the rationale of these activities is the zone, meaning a small and localised cluster of activities. I chose to add the features of pleasure and authenticity because of the role they play in ordinary consumption practices. In order to illustrate the specific relevance of soft gentrification I will now turn to the description of the Isola crossroad, a place that has been re-created through the interventions of several actors, such as Alberto above, and also Franca and her pastry shop. A Zone of Authentic Pleasure: Franca’s Pleasure Corner We’re walking through a small residential street and arrive at a crossroad. We turn to look to the four corners, one is occupied by a public school building, the second and the third by upmarket restaurants, and the last by a “typical” Sicilian pastry shop and café. We decide to enter here, find a seat and order a coffee together with a small cassata, a cake made with sweet cheese, almonds, pistachios and candied fruit. While we are experiencing this southern Italian breakfast at some thousand miles of spatial distance from its original site, a short man enters. He’s a well renowned TV comedian, best known for his would-be-magician gags. Everybody in the café recognises him but pretends to ignore his presence, he buys some pastries and leaves. Other customers come and go. The shop owner, an Italian lady in her forties called Franca, approaches to me and declares: “as you can see for yourself, we see elegant people here.” In this kind of neighbourhood it is common to see and share space with such “elegant” and well-known people, and to feel that a pleasant atmosphere is created through this public display. Franca opened the pastry shop three years ago, a short time after the upmarket restaurants on the other corners. However, when we interviewed her she wasn’t yet satisfied with the atmosphere: “when I go downtown and come back, I feel depressed … it’s developing but still has not grown enough … Isn’t one of the classic rich places in Milan—it’s kind of a weird place.” Through these and other similar statements she expressed a feeling of delusion toward the neighbourhood—a feeling on which she’s building her tale—that emerged in contrast to the kind of environment Franca would consider more apt for her shop. Franca’s a newcomer, but knows that the neighbourhood has been “sanitised.” “It really was a criminal area” she states, using overtly derogatory terms just like they were neutral: “riffraff” for the customers of ordinary bars, “dull” for the northern part of the neighbourhood where “there even are kebab shops.” In contrast she lists her beloved customers: journalists, architects, two tenors, people working at the theatre nearby, and the local TV celebrity described earlier. When she refers to the crossroad she speaks of it as, “maybe the gem of the neighbourhood.” At some point she declares what makes her proud: A place like this regenerates the neighbourhood—to be sure, if I ever open a harbour bar I’d attract riffraff who would discredit the place. In short it’s not, to make an example, a club where you play cards, that bring in the underworld, noise, nuisance—here the customer is the typical middle class, all right people. The term “all right people” reoccurs in several of Franca’s statements. Her initial economic sacrifices, relative though if, as she says, she’s able to open another shop in a more central place (“we would like to become a chain-store”), are now compensated by the recognition she gets from her more polished clients. She also expresses a personal satisfaction in the role she has played in the changes in Isola: “until now it’s just a matter of personal satisfaction—of seeing, I’ve built this stuff.” Franca’s story demonstrates that the soft side of gentrification is also produced by individuals that have little in common with the huge capital investment that is at stake in real estate development, or the chain stores that are also opening in the neighbourhood. In one way, Franca is alone in her quest for regeneration, as most entrepreneurs are. In another way, though, she is not. Not only is she participating in the “upgrading” together with other small business owners and consumers who all agree on the direction to follow, thus building together a zone of authentic pleasure, but she can also rely on a “critical infrastructure” of architects, designers and consultants (Zukin, Landscapes 202) that knows perfectly how to do the job. With much pride in her interior design choices, Franca pointed out how her café mixes chic with classic and opposing them to a flashy and folk décor. She showed us the black-and-white pictures at the wall depicting Paris in the 1960s, the unique design coffee machine model she owns, and the flower vases conceived by a famous designer and filled by her neighbour florist. The colours chosen for the interior are orange, tied to oranges—a typical product of Sicily, whereas the brown colour relates to the land, and the gold is linked to elegance. The mixing of warm colours, Franca explained, makes the atmosphere cosy. Where did this owner get all these idea(l)s? Franca relied on an Italian interior design studio, which works at a global scale furnishing hotels, restaurants, bars, shops, bathing establishments, and airports in New York, Barcelona, Paris, and Milan. The architect with whom she dealt with let her “work together” in order to have an autonomous set of choices that match the brand’s offer. Authenticity thus becomes part of the décor in a systematic way, and the feeling of a pleasant atmosphere is constantly reproduced through the daily routines of consumption. Again, not alone in the regeneration process but feeling as if she is “on her own,” Franca struggles daily to protect the atmosphere she’s building: “My point is avoiding having kids or tramps as customers—I don’t want an indiscriminate presence, like people coming here for a glass of wine and maybe getting drunk. I mean, this is not the place to come and have a bianchino [cheap white wine]. People coming here have a spumante, and behave in a completely different fashion.” The opposition between a bianchino, the cheap white wine, and the spumante is one that clarifies the moral boundary between the targets of soft gentrification. In Italian popular culture, and especially in the past, it was a common male habit to have bianchino from late morning onwards. Bars therefore served as gendered public spaces where common people would rest from working activities and the family sphere. Franca, together with many new bars and cafes that construct zones of authentic pleasure in gentrifying neighbourhoods, is trying to update this cultural practice. The spumante adds a sparkling element to consumption and is branded as a trendy aperitif wine, which appeals to younger tastes and lifestyles. By utilising a global design studio, Franca connects to global patterns of urban development and the homogenising of local atmospheres. Furthermore, by preferencing different consumption behaviours she contributes to the social transformation of the neighbourhood by selecting customers. This tendency towards segregation, rather than mixing, is a relevant feature here, since the Franca’s favourite clientele are clearly “people like us” (Butler 2469). Zones like the one described above are thus places where uneven development shows its social, interactive and public façade. Pleasure and Authenticity in Soft Gentrification The production of “atmosphere” in a gentrifying neighbourhood goes together with customers’ taste and preferences. The supply-side of building the environmental landscape for a “pleasant” zone needs a demand-side, consumers buying, supporting, and appreciating the outcome of the activities of business people like Franca. The two are one, most of the time, because tastes and preferences are linked to class, gender, and ethnicity, which makes a sort of mutual redundancy. To put it abruptly: similar people, spending their time in the same places and in a similar way. As I have shown above, the pastry shop owner Franca went for mixing chic and classic in her interior design. That is distinctiveness and familiarity, individualisation and commonality in one unique environment. Seen from the consumer’s perspective, this leads to what has been depicted by Sharon Zukin in her account of the crisis of authenticity in New York. People, she says, are yearning for authenticity because this: reflects the separation between our experience of space and our sense of self that is so much a part of modern mentalities. Though we think authenticity refers to a neighbourhood’s innate qualities, it really expresses our own anxieties about how places change. The idea of authenticity is important because it connects our individual yearning to root ourselves in a singular time and place to a cosmic grasp or larger social forces that remake our world from many small and often invisible actions. (220) Among the “many small and invisible actions” are the ones made by Franca and the global interior design firm she hired, but also those done daily by her customers. For instance, Christian a young advertising executive who lives two blocks away from the pastry shop. He defines himself an “executive creative director” [in English, while the interview was in Italian]. Asked on cooking practices and the presentation he makes to his guests, he declares that the main effort is on: The mise en place—the mise en place with no doubt. The mise en place must be appropriate to what you’re doing. Sometimes you get the mise en place simply serving a plateau, when you correctly couple cheese and salami, even better when you couple fresh cheese with vegetables or you give a slightly creative touch with some fruit salad, like seitan with avocado, no? They become beautiful to see and the mise en place saves it, the aesthetics does its job …Do you feel there are foods, beverages or consumption occasions you consider not worth giving up at all? The only thing I wouldn’t give up is going out in the morning, and having a cappuccino down there in the tiny pastry shop and having some brioches while I’m at the bar. Those that are not frozen beforehand but cooked just in time and have a breakfast, for just two euros, two euros and ten […] cappuccino and fresh brioche, baked just then, otherwise I cannot even think—if I’m in Milan I hardly think correctly—I mean I can’t wake up really without a good cappuccino and a good brioche. Christian is one of the new residents that was attracted to this neighbourhood because of the benefits of its uneven development: relatively affordable rent prices, services, and atmosphere. Commonality is among them, but also distinctiveness. Each morning he can have his “good cappuccino and good brioche” freshly baked to suit his taste and that allows him to differentiate between other brioches, namely the industrialised ones, those “frozen beforehand.” More importantly, he can do this by simply crossing the street and entering one of the pleasure zones that are making Isola, there and now, the new gentrified Milanese neighbourhood. Zones of Authentic Pleasure In this paper I have argued that a closer attention to the softer side of gentrification can help to understand how taste and uneven development mesh together, to produce the common shape we find in gentrified neighbourhoods. These typical urban spaces are made of streets, sidewalks, squares, and walls, but also shop windows and signs, pavement cafés, planters, and the street-life that turns around all of this. Both built environment and interaction produces the atmosphere of authentic pleasure, which is offered by local entrepreneurs and sought by the people who go there. Pleasure is a central feature because of the increasing role of consumption activities in the city and the role of individual consumption practices. I f we observe closely the local scale where all of these practices take place, we can clearly distinguish one zone from another because of their localised effervescence. Neighbourhoods are not equally affected by gentrification. Internally specific zones emerge as those having the capacity to subsume the entire process. These are the ones I have described in this paper—zones of authentic pleasure, where the supply and demand for an authentic distinctive and communal atmosphere takes place. Ephemeral spaces; if one looks at the political economy of place through a macro lens. But if the aim is to understand why certain zones prove to be successful and others not, then exploring how soft gentrification is daily produced and consumed is fundamental.Acknowledgments This article draws on data produced by the research team for the CSS project ‘Middle Class and Consumption: Boundaries, Standards and Discourses’. The team comprised Marco Santoro, Roberta Sassatelli and Giovanni Semi (Coordinators), Davide Caselli, Federica Davolio, Paolo Magaudda, Chiara Marchetti, Federico Montanari and Francesca Pozzi (Research Fellows). The ethnographic data on Milan were mainly produced by Davide Caselli and by the Author. The author wishes to thank the anonymous referees for wise and kind remarks and Michelle Hall for editing and suggestions. References Atkinson, Rowland. “Domestication by Cappuccino or a Revenge on Urban Space? Control and Empowerment in the Management of Public Spaces.” Urban Studies 40.9 (2003): 1829–1843. Böhme, Gernot. “Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics.” Thesis Eleven 36 (1993): 113–126. Bricocoli, Massimo, and Savoldi Paola. Milano Downtown: Azione Pubblica e Luoghi dell’Abitare. Milano: et al./Edizioni, 2010. Butler, Tim. “Living in the Bubble: Gentrification and Its ‘Others’ in North London.” Urban Studies 40.12 (2003): 2469–2486. Julier, Guy. “Urban Designscapes and the Production of Aesthetic Consent.” Urban Studies 42.5/6 (2005): 869–887. Zukin, Sharon. Landscapes of Power. From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. ———. Naked City. The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.

Federico Zuliani: Una raccolta di scritture politiche della fine del sedicesimo secolo. Giacomo Castelvetro e la biblioteca di Christian Barnekow. Alla pagina 68 recto del manoscritto Vault Case Ms. 5086, 73/2, Newberry Library, Chicago, ha inizio il “Registro di tutte le scritture politiche del S[igno]r Christiano Bernicò”. Il testo è preceduto da un altro elenco simile, sebbene più breve, che va sotto il titolo di “Memoriale D’alcune scritture politiche, che furon donate alla Reina Maria Stuarda Prigioniera in Inghilterra l’anno di salute m.d.lxxxiii. Dal S[igno]re di Cherelles”. Il manoscritto 5086, 73/2 fa parte di una collezione di dieci volumi (originariamente undici) appartenuti a Giacomo Castelvetro e oggi conservati negli Stati Uniti. I codici, le cui vicende di trasmissione sono, in parte, ancora poco chiare, furono sicuramente compilati da Castelvetro durante il periodo che passò in Danimarca, tra l’estate del 1594 e l’autunno del 1595. Il soggiorno danese di Castelvetro ha ricevuto attenzioni decisamente minori di quelle che invece meriterebbe. Alla permanenza in Danimarca è riconducibile infatti l’opera più ambiziosa dell’intera carriera del letterato italiano: vi vennero assemblati, con l’idea di darli poi alle stampe, proprio i volumi oggi negli Stati Uniti. La provenienza è provata tanto dall’indicazione, nei frontespizi, di Copenaghen come luogo di composizione, quanto dalle annotazioni autografe apportate da Castelvetro, a conclusione dei testi, a ricordare quando e dove fossero stati trascritti; oltre a Copenaghen vi si citano altre due località, Birkholm e Tølløse, entrambe sull’isola danese di Sjællad, ed entrambe amministrate da membri dell’influente famiglia Barnekow. E’ a Giuseppe Migliorato che va il merito di aver identificato per primo in Christian Barnekow il “Christiano Bernicò” della lista oggi alla Newberry Library. Christian Barnekow, nobile danese dalla straordinaria cultura (acquisita in uno studierejse durato ben diciassette anni), a partire dal 1591 fu al servizio personale di Cristiano IV di Danimarca. Barnekow e Castelvetro si dovettero incontrare a Edimburgo, dove il primo era giunto quale ambasciatore del monarca danese e dove il secondo si trovava già dal 1592, come maestro di italiano di Giacomo Stuart e di Anna di Danimarca, sorella di Cristiano IV. Sebbene non si possa escludere un ruolo di Anna nell’introdurli, è più probabile che sia stata la comune amicizia con Johann Jacob Grynaeus a propiziarne la conoscenza. Il dotto svizzero aveva infatti dato ospitalità a Barnekow, quando questi era studente presso l’università di Basilea, ne era divenuto amico e aveva mantenuto i rapporti nel momento in cui il giovane aveva lasciato la città elvetica. Grynaeus era però anche il cognato di Castelvetro il quale aveva sposato Isotta de’ Canonici, vedova di Thomas Liebler, e sorella di Lavinia, moglie di Grynaeus sin dal 1569. Isotta era morta però nel marzo del 1594, in Scozia, ed è facile immaginare come Barnekow abbia desiderato esprimere le proprie condoglianze al marito, cognato di un suo caro amico, e vedovo di una persona che doveva aver conosciuto bene quando aveva alloggiato presso la casa della sorella. Castelvetro, inoltre, potrebbe essere risultato noto a Barnekow anche a causa di due edizioni di opere del primo marito della moglie curate postume dal letterato italiano, tra il 1589 e il 1590. Thomas Liebler, più famoso con il nome latinizzato di Erasto, era stato infatti uno dei più acerrimi oppositori di Pietro Severino, il celebre paracelsiano danese; Giacomo Castelvetro non doveva essere quindi completamente ignoto nei circoli dotti della Danimarca. La vasta cultura di Christian Barnekow ci è nota attraverso l’apprezzamento di diversi suoi contemporanei, quali Grynaeus, Jon Venusinus e, soprattutto, Hans Poulsen Resen, futuro vescovo di Sjælland e amico personale di Barnekow a cui dobbiamo molte delle informazioni in nostro possesso circa la vita del nobile danese, grazie all’orazione funebre che questi tenne nel 1612 e che venne data alle stampe l’anno successivo, a Copenaghen. Qui, ricordandone lo studierejse, il vescovo raccontò come Barnekow fosse ritornato in Danimarca “pieno di conoscenza e di storie” oltre che di “relazioni e discorsi” in diverse lingue. Con questi due termini l’ecclesiastico danese alludeva, con tutta probabilità, a quei documenti diplomatici, relazioni e discorsi di ambasciatori, per l’appunto, che rientravano tra le letture preferite degli studenti universitari padovani. La lista compilata da Castelvetro, dove figurano lettere e istrutioni ma, soprattutto, relationi e discorsi, era un catalogo di quella collezione di manoscritti, portata dall’Italia, a cui fece riferimento l’ecclesiastico danese commemorando Christian Barnekow. Tutti coloro i quali si sono occupati dei volumi oggi negli Stati Uniti si sono trovati concordi nel ritenerli pronti per la pubblicazione: oltre alle abbondanti correzioni (tra cui numerose alle spaziature e ai rientri) i volumi presentano infatti frontespizi provvisori, ma completi (con data di stampa, luogo, impaginazione dei titoli – a loro volta occasionalmente corretti – motto etc.), indici del contenuto e titolature laterali per agevolare lettura e consultazione. Anche Jakob Ulfeldt, amico e compagno di viaggi e di studi di Barnekow, riportò a casa una collezione di documenti (GKS 500–505 fol.) per molti aspetti analoga a quella di Barnekow e che si dimostra di grande importanza per comprendere peculiarità e specificità di quella di quest’ultimo. I testi di Ulfeldt risultano assemblati senza alcuna coerenza, si rivelano ricchi di errori di trascrizione e di grammatica, e non offrono alcuna divisione interna, rendendone l’impiego particolarmente arduo. Le annotazioni di un copista italiano suggeriscono inoltre come, già a Padova, potesse essere stato difficoltoso sapere con certezza quali documenti fossero effettivamente presenti nella collezione e quali si fossero smarriti (prestati, perduti, pagati ma mai ricevuti…). La raccolta di Barnekow, che aveva le stesse fonti semi-clandestine di quella dell’amico, doveva trovarsi in condizioni per molti versi simili e solo la mano di un esperto avrebbe potuto portarvi ordine. Giacomo Castelvetro – nipote di Ludovico Castelvetro, uno dei filologi più celebri della propria generazione, e un filologo egli stesso, fluente in italiano, latino e francese, oltre che collaboratore di lunga data di John Wolfe, editore londinese specializzato nella pubblicazione di opere italiane – possedeva esattamente quelle competenze di cui Barnekow aveva bisogno e ben si intuisce come mai quest’ultimo lo convinse a seguirlo in Danimarca. I compiti di Castelvetro presso Barnekow furono quelli di passarne in rassegna la collezione, accertarsi dell’effettivo contenuto, leggerne i testi, raggrupparli per tematica e area geografica, sceglierne i più significativi, emendarli, e prepararne quindi un’edizione. Sapendo che Castelvetro poté occuparsi della prima parte del compito nei, frenetici, mesi danesi, diviene pure comprensibile come mai egli portò con sé i volumi oggi negli Stati Uniti quando si diresse in Svezia: mancava ancora la parte forse più delicata del lavoro, un’ultima revisione dei testi prima che questi fossero passati a un tipografo perché li desse alle stampe. La ragione principale che sottostò all’idea di pubblicare un’edizione di “scritture politiche” italiane in Danimarca fu la presenza, in tutta l’Europa centro settentrionale del tempo, di una vera e propria moda italiana che i contatti tra corti, oltre che i viaggi d’istruzione della nobiltà, dovettero diffondere anche in Danimarca. Nel tardo Cinquecento gli autori italiani cominciarono ad essere sempre più abituali nelle biblioteche private danesi e la conoscenza dell’italiano, sebbene non completamente assente anche in altri settori della popolazione, divenne una parte fondamentale dell’educazione della futura classe dirigente del paese nordico, come prova l’istituzione di una cattedra di italiano presso l’appena fondata Accademia di Sorø, nel 1623. Anche in Danimarca, inoltre, si tentò di attrarre esperti e artisti italiani; tra questi, l’architetto Domenico Badiaz, Giovannimaria Borcht, che fu segretario personale di Frederik Leye, borgomastro di Helsingør, il maestro di scherma Salvator Fabris, l’organista Vincenzo Bertolusi, il violinista Giovanni Giacomo Merlis o, ancora, lo scultore Pietro Crevelli. A differenza dell’Inghilterra non si ebbero in Danimarca edizioni critiche di testi italiani; videro però la luce alcune traduzioni, anche se spesso dal tedesco, di autori italiani, quali Boccaccio e Petrarca, e, soprattutto, si arrivò a pubblicare anche in italiano, come dimostrano i due volumi di madrigali del Giardino Novo e il trattato De lo schermo overo scienza d’arme di Salvator Fabris, usciti tutti a Copenaghen tra il 1605 e il 1606. Un’ulteriore ragione che motivò la scelta di stampare una raccolta come quella curata da Castelvetro è da ricercarsi poi nello straordinario successo che la letteratura di “maneggio di stato” (relazioni diplomatiche, compendi di storia, analisi dell’erario) godette all’epoca, anche, se non specialmente, presso i giovani aristocratici centro e nord europei che studiavano in Italia. Non a caso, presso Det Kongelige Bibliotek, si trovano diverse collezioni di questo genere di testi (GKS 511–512 fol.; GKS 525 fol.; GKS 500–505 fol.; GKS 2164–2167 4º; GKS 523 fol.; GKS 598 fol.; GKS 507–510 fol.; Thott 576 fol.; Kall 333 4º e NKS 244 fol.). Tali scritti, considerati come particolarmente adatti per la formazione di coloro che si fossero voluti dedicare all’attività politica in senso lato, supplivano a una mancanza propria dei curricula universitari dell’epoca: quella della totale assenza di qualsivoglia materia che si occupasse di “attualità”. Le relazioni diplomatiche risultavano infatti utilissime agli studenti, futuri servitori dello Stato, per aggiornarsi circa i più recenti avvenimenti politici e religiosi europei oltre che per ottenere informazioni attorno a paesi lontani o da poco scoperti. Sebbene sia impossibile stabilire con assoluta certezza quali e quante delle collezioni di documenti oggi conservate presso Det Kongelige Bibliotek siano state riportate in Danimarca da studenti danesi, pare legittimo immaginare che almeno una buona parte di esse lo sia stata. L’interesse doveva essere alto e un’edizione avrebbe avuto mercato, con tutta probabilità, anche fuori dalla Danimarca: una pubblicazione curata filologicamente avrebbe offerto infatti testi di gran lunga superiori a quelli normalmente acquistati da giovani dalle possibilità economiche limitate e spesso sprovvisti di una padronanza adeguata delle lingue romanze. Non a caso, nei medesimi anni, si ebbero edizioni per molti versi equivalenti a quella pensata da Barnekow e da Castelvetro. Nel 1589, a Colonia, venne pubblicato il Tesoro politico, una scelta di materiale diplomatico italiano (ristampato anche nel 1592 e nel 1598), mentre tra il 1610 e il 1612, un altro testo di questo genere, la Praxis prudentiae politicae, vide la luce a Francoforte. La raccolta manoscritta di Barnekow ebbe però anche caratteristiche a sé stanti rispetto a quelle degli altri giovani danesi a lui contemporanei. Barnekow, anzitutto, continuò ad arricchire la propria collezione anche dopo il rientro in patria come dimostra, per esempio, una relazione d’area fiamminga datata 1594. La biblioteca manoscritta di Barnekow si distingue inoltre per l’ampiezza. Se conosciamo per Ulfeldt trentadue testi che questi portò con sé dall’Italia (uno dei suoi volumi è comunque andato perduto) la lista di “scritture politiche” di Barnekow ne conta ben duecentoottantaquattro. Un’altra peculiarità è quella di essere composta inoltre di testi sciolti, cioè a dirsi non ancora copiati o rilegati in volume. Presso Det Kongelige Bibliotek è possibile ritrovare infatti diversi degli scritti registrati nella lista stilata da Castelvetro: dodici riconducibili con sicurezza e sette per cui la provenienza parrebbe per lo meno probabile. A lungo il problema di chi sia stato Michele – una persona vicina a Barnekow a cui Castelvetro afferma di aver pagato parte degli originali dei manoscritti oggi in America – è parso, di fatto, irrisolvibile. Come ipotesi di lavoro, e basandosi sulle annotazioni apposte ai colophon, si è proposto che Michele potesse essere il proprietario di quei, pochi, testi che compaiono nei volumi oggi a Chicago e New York ma che non possono essere ricondotti all’elenco redatto da Castelvetro. Michele sarebbe stato quindi un privato, legato a Barnekow e a lui prossimo, da lui magari addirittura protetto, ma del quale non era al servizio, e che doveva avere presso di sé una biblioteca di cui Castelvetro provò ad avere visione al fine di integrare le scritture del nobile danese in vista della sua progettata edizione. Il fatto che nel 1596 Michele fosse in Italia spiegherebbe poi come potesse avere accesso a questo genere di opere. Che le possedesse per proprio diletto oppure che, magari, le commerciasse addirittura, non è invece dato dire. L’analisi del materiale oggi negli Stati Uniti si rivela ricca di spunti. Per quanto riguarda Castelvetro pare delinearsi, sempre di più, un ruolo di primo piano nella diffusione della cultura italiana nell’Europa del secondo Cinquecento, mentre Barnekow emerge come una figura veramente centrale nella vita intellettuale della Danimarca a cavallo tra Cinque e Seicento. Sempre Barnekow si dimostra poi di grandissima utilità per iniziare a studiare un tema che sino ad oggi ha ricevuto, probabilmente, troppa poca attenzione: quello dell’importazione in Danimarca di modelli culturali italiani grazie all’azione di quei giovani aristocratici che si erano formati presso le università della penisola. A tale proposito l’influenza esercitata dalla letteratura italiana di “maneggio di stato” sul pensiero politico danese tra sedicesimo e diciassettesimo secolo è tra gli aspetti che meriterebbero studi più approfonditi. Tra i risultati meno esaurienti si collocano invece quelli legati all’indagine e alla ricostruzione della biblioteca di Barnekow e, in particolare, di quanto ne sia sopravvissuto. Solo un esame sistematico, non solo dei fondi manoscritti di Det Kongelige Bibliotek, ma, più in generale, di tutte le altre biblioteche e collezioni scandinave, potrebbe dare in futuro esiti soddisfacenti.