The Italians

Washington Post bestseller
Los Angeles Times bestseller

A vivid and surprising portrait of the Italian people from an admired foreign correspondent

How did a nation that spawned the Renaissance also produce the Mafia? And why does Italian have twelve words for coat hanger but none for hangover?
 
John Hooper’s entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Fifteen years as a foreign correspondent based in Rome have sharpened Hooper’s observations, and he looks at the facts that lie behind the stereotypes, shedding new light on everything from the Italians’ bewildering politics to their love of life and beauty. Hooper persuasively demonstrates the impact of geography, history, and tradition on many aspects of Italian life, including football and Freemasonry, sex, food, and opera. Brimming with the kind of fascinating—and often hilarious—insights unavailable in guidebooks, The Italians will surprise even the most die-hard Italophile.“A compact but comprehensive study of the people of Italy. The author puts his finger on the vast diversity of the country through his descriptions of their linguistics, cultures, foods, economies and even journalism. What's not to love? A thoroughly researched, well-written, ageless narrative of a fascinating people.”—Kirkus, starred review
 
“A sophisticated portrait of the Italians at their best and their worst: charming, imaginative, generous, full of life but also unreliable, more or less corrupt and often downright infuriating. I found myself laughing out loud at some of the humorous twists Mr. Hooper has put to his very perceptive analyses. A worthy and long-overdue successor to Luigi Barzini’s classic The Italians."—Andrea Di Robilant, author of A Venetian Affair

“John Hooper takes his readers deep into the Italian labyrinth. And they come out alive, with a smile on their faces! A remarkable achievement.”—Beppe Severgnini, author of Ciao America and La Bella Figura

“In vivid and fluid prose, John Hooper has written an indispensible guide to life in Italy past and present. His incisive portrait, at turns hard-hitting and affectionate, reveals the Italians in all their complexity, from their dolce vita and transcendent art to their gut-wrenching social and political struggles.”—Joseph Luzzi, author of My Two Italies

“Thanks to his great curiosity, his splendid comparative and analytical perspective, and a fine eye for telling details, John Hooper gets under the skin of a fascinating people in a remarkable and compelling way.”—Bill Emmott, co-author of the documentary about Italy “Girlfriend in a Coma”

“Here is the history, passion, culture, and contradictions that make Italy and Italians so fascinating. John Hooper's The Italians is as enjoyable to read as taking a trip to my favorite country!” —Ann Hood, author of An Italian WifeJohn Hooper is the Italy correspondent of the Economist and a contributing editor of the Guardian (London). He has also written or broadcast for the BBC, NBC, and Reuters. His book The Spaniards won the Allen Lane Award and was revised and updated as The New Spaniards in 1995 and 2006.

The Spaniards

The New Spaniards

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First published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015

Copyright © 2015 by John Hooper

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Photographs by Christian Jungeblodt

ISBN 978-0-698-18364-3

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Also by John Hooper

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Acknowledgments

1. The Beautiful Country

Porta Pia . Glory and misery . “The crux of the Italian problem” . Islands, highlands and plains

2. A Violent Past

Leo’s legacy . Goths, Lombards and Byzantines . A holy forgery . The communes . The Venetian exception . The medieval Mezzogiorno . The Italian wars and the Sack of Rome . Under foreign yokes

3. Echoes and Reverberations

Two Italies . . . or three? . Civismo . A linguist’s playground . Superiority and sensitivity . The vincolo esterno . Of furbi and fessi . Fragile loyalties . The prime minister who vanished from history . Trasformismo

4. A Hall of Mirrors

The Minister for Simplification . A plethora of laws (and law-enforcers) . Bureaucracy . Truth and verità . Mysteries and the “misty port” . Pirandello

5. Fantasia

Myths and legends . A phantom army . Pinocchio . Copiatura . Masks and messages . Opera . Padania declares independence . Dietrologia

6. Face Values

The neo-Fascist’s bare arms . Style and look . Symbolism . Talking visually . Videocracy . Bella (and brutta) figura

7. Life as Art

Treasuring life . A thick layer of stardust . Work and leisure . La tavola . The Mediterranean diet . Slow Food and fast food . A brief history of pasta . Foreign food . . . what foreign food?

8. Gnocchi on Thursdays

D’Antona and Biagi . A love of the familiar . “Acts of God” and acts of man . One step to the right . Conservatism, technophobia and gerontocracy . The “BOT people” . From catenaccio to gambling fever

9. Holy Orders

A blurred line . The bloody end of Muslim Italy . Jews and ghettos . The Waldensians . Freemasonry . Blasphemy . The Lateran Pacts . Christian Democracy . A less Catholic Italy . Comunione e Liberazione . Sant’Egidio . Padre Pio . The “testicles of His Holiness”

10. Le Italiane—Attitudes Change

Great-aunt Clorinda . From Mozzoni to the Manifesto di rivolta femminile . Gender and language . Veline . Desperate housewives . Ricatto sessuale . The influence of Berlusconi . If Not Now, When? . Change in (and on) the air . La Mamma: glorified but unsupported

11. Lovers and Sons

Al cuore non si comanda? . A sexual revolution (within limits) . Sensuous she-cats and “Italian stallions” . Adultery . Prostitution . Contraception and the mystery of the (missing) unplanned pregnancies . Mammismo . Gender stereotyping . Homosexuality

12. Family Matters

An honored but changing institution . Divorce . The decline of marriage . The Italian family firm: myths and realities . The arrival of the badante . Stay-at-home kids: spoiled or just broke? . “Amoral familism” . Menefreghismo

13. People Who Don’t Dance

From behind shades . Wariness . The Fox and the Cat . To ciao or not to ciao? . A love of titles . Mistrust . Alcohol (and teetotalism) . Narcotics

14. Taking Sides

Il piacere di stare insieme . Guelphs and Ghibellines . From the Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club to Berlusconi’s AC Milan . Professionalism . . . and professional fouls . Gianni Brera and the footballing press . Il processo del lunedì . Fan radios . The ultras . Referees . Calciopoli

15. Restrictive Practices

Possessive instincts . Catholicism and liberalism . Lottizzazione . Capitalism without competition . Protectionism . Shareholder pacts . Enrico Cuccia and il salotto buono . The never-ending tale of the foreign lettori

16. Of Mafias and Mafiosi

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

17. Temptation and Tangenti

How corrupt is Italy? . The role of patronage . A tolerance of graft . Corruption and corruzione . Nepotism . “Everything in Rome comes at a price” . The culture of the raccomandazione . The cost of graft . A “renaissance of corruption”

18. Pardon and Justice

The navel of Italy . Abusivismo . Laws and conventions . Pardon and justice . The Sofri case . Slow-moving courts . The 1989 legal reform . Garantisti versus giustizialisti . The magistratura

19. Questions of Identity

Italy has a birthday party . Campanilismo and the frailty of separatism . Concepts of Italia . Diversity and disunity . Dialects lose ground . The north-south divide: perceptions and statistics . “Italian-ness” . Immigration . Racism . Sinti and Roma

Epilogue

Blue skies, blue seas . . . and unhappiness . Italy’s economic decline . Rules and change . The need for a dream . Jep’s smile

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This edition of the book also owes much to Christian Jungeblodt, an outstanding photographer and a good friend whose memorable glimpses of Italy and the Italians enhance the pages that follow. Many of the photographs are due to be published in a book, Bella Italia Project, supported by VG Bildkunst.

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

CHAPTER 1

The Beautiful Country

Il bel paese ch’Appennin parte, e ’il mar circonda e l’Alpe.

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

Petrarch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond the capital, the countryside gradually becomes more characteristic of Umbria or Tuscany. Even before leaving Lazio on the A1, or Autosole, Italy’s main north-south highway, you begin to see a distinctive terrain in which towering blocks of straight-sided, flat-topped rock jut out of the surrounding countryside. Some of these so-called buttes are inhabited, as is the case with Orvieto, one of the many central Italian hill towns that have been places of refuge since ancient times.

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

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

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

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