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Administrative divisions of Italy
Regions (black borders)
Provinces (grey borders)
Comuni (white borders)

In Italy, the comune (plural comuni) is the basic administrative division, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality.

Importance and function[link]

The comune provides many of the basic civil functions: registry of births and deaths, registry of deeds, contracting for local roads and public works, etc.

It is headed by a mayor (sindaco) assisted by a legislative body, the Consiglio Comunale, and an executive body, the Giunta Comunale. Mayor and members of Consiglio Comunale are elected together by resident citizens: the coalition of the elected Mayor (who needs an absolute majority in the first or second round of voting) gains the three fifths of the Council's seats. The Giunta Comunale is chaired by mayor who appoint others members, called assessori. The offices of the comune are housed in a building usually called the Municipio, or Palazzo Comunale. Since the start of 2009 there have been 8,100 comuni in Italy; they vary considerably in area and population.

For example, the comune of Rome (Lazio) has an area of 1,307.71 km² and a population of 2,761,477, and is both the largest and the most populated comune in Italy; Fiera di Primiero, in the province of Trentino, is the smallest comune by area, with only 0.15 km², and Pedesina (province of Sondrio) is the smallest by population, with only 34 inhabitants. The smallest non-alpine comune in Italy is Montelapiano (CH), the fourth is Carapelle Calvisio (AQ), both in the mountainous region of Abruzzo.

The density of comuni varies widely by province and region: the province of Bari, for example, has 1,564,000 inhabitants in 48 municipalities, or over 32,000 inhabitants per municipality; whereas the Aosta Valley has 121,000 inhabitants in 74 municipalities, or 1,630 inhabitants per municipality – roughly twenty times more communal units per inhabitant. There are inefficiencies at both ends of the scale, and there is concern about optimizing the size of the comuni so they may best function in the modern world, but planners are hampered by the historical resonances of the comuni, which often reach back many hundreds of years, or even a full millennium: while provinces and regions are creations of the central government, and subject to fairly frequent border changes, the natural cultural unit is indeed the comune, – for many Italians, their hometown: in recent years especially, it has thus become quite rare for comuni either to merge or to break apart.

Many comuni also have a Polizia Municipale (municipal police) which is responsible for public order duties. Traffic control is their main function in addition to controlling commercial establishments to ensure they open and close according to their license.

Subdivisions[link]

A comune usually comprises:

• a principal town or village, that almost always gives its name to the comune; such a town is referred to as the capoluogo (“head place”, or “capital”; c.f. the French chef-lieu) of the comune; the word comune is also used in casual speech to refer to the town hall.
• other outlying areas called frazioni (singular: frazione, abbreviated fraz., literally “fraction”), each usually centred on a small town or village. These frazioni have usually never had any independent historical existence, but occasionally are former smaller comuni consolidated into a larger. They may also represent settlements which predated the capoluogo: the ancient town of Pollentia, for instance, today known as Pollenzo, is a frazione of Bra. In recent years the frazioni have become more important thanks to the instituction of the "Consiglio di Frazione", a local form of government which can interact with the comune and show it the local needs, requests and claims. Yet smaller places are called località (literally “localities” and often, as in the phonebook, abbreviated Loc.).
• other smaller administrative divisions called municipio or circoscrizione or rione or quartiere or terziere or sestiere or contrada which are similar to borough.

Sometimes, a frazione might be more populated than the capoluogo; and very occasionally, due to unusual circumstances or to the depopulation of the latter, the town hall and its administrative functions move to one of the frazioni: but the comune still retains the name of the capoluogo.

In some cases, a comune might not have a capoluogo but only some 'frazioni': in these cases, it is called a "comune sparso" (sparse municipality) and the frazione which houses the town hall is called "sede municipale" (compare county seat).

Homonymy[link]

There are not many perfect homonymous Italian municipalities. There are only eight cases in 16 comuni:^[1]

• Brione: Brione, Lombardy and Brione, Trentino
• Calliano: Calliano, Piedmont and Calliano, Trentino
• Castro: Castro, Apulia and Castro, Lombardy
• Livo: Livo, Lombardy and Livo, Trentino
• Peglio: Peglio, Lombardy and Peglio, Marche
• Samone: Samone, Piedmont and Samone, Trentino
• San Teodoro: San Teodoro, Sardinia and San Teodoro, Sicily
• Valverde: Valverde, Lombardy and Valverde, Sicily

This is mostly due to the fact the name of the province or region was appended to the name of the municipality in order to avoid the confusion. Remarkably two province capitals share the name "Reggio" : Reggio nell'Emilia, the capital of the Reggio Emilia province, in the Emilian part of the Emilia-Romagna region, and Reggio Calabria, the capital of the homonymous province. Many other towns or villages are likewise partial homonyms (e.g. Anzola dell'Emilia and Anzola d'Ossola).

See also[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Comuniverso.it - All of the Italian Municipalities

Media related to Municipalities in Italy at Wikimedia Commons The Wiktionary entry for comune

• (Italian) ANCI - National Association of Italian Comunes

Giorgio Gaber, byname of Giorgio Gaberscik (25 January 1939 - 1 January 2003), was an Italian singer-songwriter, actor and playwright. He was also an accomplished guitar player and author of one of the first rock songs in Italian ("Ciao ti dirò", 1958). Together with Sandro Luporini, he pioneered the musical genre known as teatro canzone ("song theatre").

The new underground auditorium of the Pirelli Tower in Milan is dedicated to him.

Biography[link]

Debut[link]

He was born in Milan into a lower middle-class family. His father, Guido Gaberscik, was born in Trieste, when the city was still part of Austria-Hungary,^[1] most probably to Italianized Slovene immigrants from the Gorizia region.^[2][3] The surname Gaberscik is in fact of Slovene origin (Gaberščik).^[4] His mother was from the Veneto region. The two met and married in Veneto and later moved to Milan, where Giorgio was born.

Gaber began to play as rehabilitation for an injury to his hand which required constant but not strenuous activity to recover his motor skill. Since his health as a child was not the best and his older brother Marcello played guitar, he was encouraged to play as well. The outcome was good both in terms of his health and artistically, and at only fourteen years of age he was engaged to play at a New Eve's party and earned his first paycheck of 1,000 lire.

Subsequently he began to frequent the Santa Tecla, a venue in Milan where he had the chance to meet musicians of the time, including Luigi Tenco, Gianfranco Reverberi, Adriano Celentano, Ricky Gianco, and Mogol, who obtained a contract for Gaber with Dischi Ricordi. He then played with the Rocky Mountains Old Time Stompers (replacing Tony Dallara who had left to pursue a solo career) and with Rolling Crew.

Because neither Tenco nor Gaber were yet members of the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers they could not trademark the song "Ciao ti dirò" ("I'll Say Hi to You", inspired by Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock"), which was signed off by Giorgio Calabrese and Giampiero Reverberi despite being composed by Tenco and Gaber.

The two went on to continue writing music together, developing at the same time a close friendship. In 1958 they toured Germany together with Adriano Celentano, Enzo Jannacci, Paolo Tomelleri e Gianfranco Reverberi.

Gaber paired up with Enzo Jannacci as I Due Corsari ("The Two Privateers"), who made their debut at the end of 1958 with two vinyl singles - "Come Facette Mammeta", a classic song of Neapolitan humour, and "Non occupatemi il telefono" ("Don't Hog the Telephone"). They continued to release singles with Dischi Ricordi throughout the following year, and in 1960 released their first album, Giorgio Gaber - Enzo Jannacci.

After a sentimental-artistic companionship with singer and actress Maria Monti, he married Ombretta Colli in 1965, then a student of languages (Chinese and Russian) at the University of Milan.

He took part to Festival di Sanremo four times, with the songs "Benzina e cerini" ("Petrol and Matches") in 1961, "Così felice" ("So Happy") in 1964, "Mai, Mai, Mai Valentina" ("Never, Never, Never Valentina") in 1966 and "...E allora dai" ("...Well Come On Then!") in 1967.

[edit] Il signor G

In 1969 he set one of his best known successes, "Com'è bella la città" ("How Beautiful the City Is"), an example of the introduction of social matters in a song. The following year, he showed at Piccolo teatro his first ediction of Il Signor G ("Mister G"), a recital he repeated in many Italian squares.

In 1974 he was given the Premio Tenco in the first edition of that musical award. Later Gaber also received the Targa Tenco in 2001 for his song "La razza in estinzione" ("The Dying Race") and in 2003 for the album Io non mi sento italiano ("I Don't Feel Italian"). After the Tenco award Gaber abandoned television and began to tour only in theatres, as one of the founders of the teatro canzone genre. He would appear again in TV, although sporadically, only in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Giorgio Gaber died, after a long illness, on 1 January 2003 in his country house in Montemagno near Camaiore (Lucca, Tuscany). He is buried in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.

Discography[link]

Giorgio Gaber live in concert

• Il signor G (1970)
• I borghesi (1971)
• Dialogo tra un impegnato e un non so (1972)
• Far finta di essere sani (1973, studio)
• Far finta di essere sani (theatre recording, 1973–74)
• Anche per oggi non si vola (1974)
• Libertà obbligatoria (1976)
• Polli di allevamento (1978)
• Pressione bassa (1980)
• Io se fossi Dio (1980)
• Anni affollati (1981)
• Il teatro di Giorgio Gaber (1982)
• Gaber (1984)
• Io se fossi Gaber (1985)
• Piccoli spostamenti del cuore (1987)
• Parlami d'amore Mariù (1987)
• Il Grigio (1989)
• Storie del signor G (1991, VHS)
• Il teatro canzone (1992)
• Ma per fortuna che c'è... Giorgio Gaber (1994)
• Io come persona (1994)
• E pensare che c'era il pensiero (1994)
• E pensare che c'era il pensiero (1995)
• Gaber 96/97 (1996)
• Un'idiozia conquistata a fatica (1997)
• Un'idiozia conquistata a fatica" (1998, 2nd version)
• Gaber 1999/2000 (1999)
• La mia generazione ha perso (2001)
• Io non mi sento italiano (2003)

There is also a large discography of LPs and 45s related to his production of pop music songs and ballads. Ja-Ga brothers (1983) with Enzo Jannacci, is the reprinting of the 1960 recordings of the two singers.

See also[link]

• Enzo Jannacci
• Luigi Tenco
• Adriano Celentano
• Festival di Sanremo

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giorgio Gaber

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Giorgio Gaber

• Far finta di essere... Gaber (Italian)
• Associazione Culturale Giorgio Gaber official website (Italian)

References[link]