Italy breaks down into twenty regions, which in turn divide into different provinces. Some of these regional boundaries reflect long-standing historic borders, like Tuscany, Lombardy or the Veneto; others, like Friuli-Venezia Giulia or Molise, are more recent administrative divisions, often established in recognition of quite modern distinctions. But the sharpest division is between north and south. The north is one of the most advanced industrial societies in the world, its people speak Italian with the cadences of France or Germany and its "capital", Milan, is a thoroughly European city. The south , derogatively known as il mezzogiorno , begins somewhere between Rome and Naples, and is by contrast one of the most economically depressed areas in Europe; and its history of absolutist regimes often seems to linger in the form of the spectra of organized crime and the remote hand of central government in Rome.

The economic backwardness of the south is partly the result of the historical neglect to which it was subjected by various foreign occupiers. But it is also the result of the deliberate policy of politicians and corporate heads to industrialize the north while preserving the underdeveloped south as a convenient reservoir of labour. Italy's industrial power and dynamism, based in the north, was built on the back of exploited southerners who emigrated to the northern industrial cities of Turin, Milan and Genoa in their millions during the Fifties and Sixties. Even now, Milan and Turin have very sizeable populations of meridionali - southerners - working in every sector of the economy.

This north-south divide is something you'll come up against time and again, wherever you're traveling. To a northerner the mere mention of Naples - a kind of totem for the south - can provoke a hostile response; and you may notice graffiti in northern cities against terroni (literally "those of the land"), the derogatory northern nickname for southerners. In recent years this hostility has been articulated through the rise of the Lega Nord, who have promoted the future independence of northern Italy and campaigned vigorously against immigration from outside Italy.

Oddly enough, the Lega Nord's campaign against the entrenchment and vested interests of the Italian political establishment, not to mention organized crime and the Mafia (whose power has spread to the north of the country), backfired to some extent when it became clear that the centre of the tangentopoli ("bribesville") corruption scandals was, after all, Milan itself. Most northern Italians were forced to revise their simplistic view of the south as a drain on the country's resources, and look to sort out the problems in their own political backyard. These massive political upheavals seemed to dissipate the north-south divide for a while and give most Italians a greater sense of unity than ever before, if only by virtue of their opposition to the old political establishment.

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