Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica

Percorsi di storia urbana nell’Europa sud-occidentale del Novecento

Luciano Villani — 2025-11-07

La difesa dei monumenti e lo studio della storia locale come baluardo di fronte alla trasformazione radicale delle città. Parigi, Bruxelles e Roma intorno al 1900

Angelo Bertoni — 2025-11-07

In the second half of the nineteenth century, European cities and rural areas underwent profound transformations, driven by the modernization of infrastructure and the industrialization of production processes. In response to these changes – and to the emergence of a nostalgic vision of the “vanished” city – the first voluntary associations dedicated to the protection of historical, artistic, and landscape heritage began to appear. This essay aims to explore the emergence and subsequent consolidation of these associations, which became active in major French, Belgian, and Italian cities in the study, preservation, and enhancement of
heritage elements (buildings, building complexes, neighborhoods, natural sites). Historic monuments and local identity became central themes in the public discourse of the period, while the historical study of the city enriched the evolving discipline of urban planning with a new dimension.

Tra quartieri e “dintorni”: un percorso nella Storia urbana e territoriale

Lidia Piccioni — 2025-11-07

This article aims to outline the main aspects of the author’s scholarly work in the field of Urban History. It reviews the principal lines of research that have defined her work, the methodological tools and sources she has engaged with, her most recent publications, and future research directions. In particular, starting from a reflection on the case of Rome, the guiding thread is the relationship between center and periphery, explored through two main lenses: on the one hand, the analysis of the relationship during the modern age between major Western cities and their surrounding regions; on the other, the gradual development of twentieth-century cities into a mosaic of “neighborhoods”, where the spaces and identities of civil society intertwine and find expression in the ongoing interplay between the “high” and the “low”.

Housing Revolutions in Working-Class Urban Peripheries. The Case of Barcelona

David Hernández Falagán — 2025-11-07

This article jointly and relationally considers the social circumstances and morphological aspects involved in the transformation of urban peripheries during the second half of the 20th century. The evolution of this residential territory generates a new framework of daily life, coexistence, socialization and mobilization. To this end, the Nou Barris district in Barcelona has been selected as a case study due to its significance in relation to successive revolutions in housing: the revolution of the residential landscape, the revolution of the domestic space, the homeownership revolution, and the revolution of urban social movements.

Il Centro di cultura proletaria della Magliana. Costruire appartenenze tra i giovani di un quartiere popolare romano (1971-92)

Giulia Zitelli Conti — 2025-11-07

Between May and June 1971, the inhabitants of the Prato Rotondo slum were relocated to the newly built Magliana district. In an attempt to prevent the community from disintegrating, the new inhabitants set up the Centro di cultura proletaria: a space on the street, open to the neighborhood, which in almost twenty years of activity has involved hundreds of people. Similar to other places of aggregation, but with its own specificities, the Centro di cultura proletaria experimented with forms of contro-scuola. Through field investigations, the collection of life stories and collective writing, it provided tools for raising awareness of one’s condition and claiming rights, contributing to develop clearly defined social identities and local affiliations. Based on the analysis of various sources, this contribution delves into the practices of representation and self-representation generated in this specific context, following its transformations up to the threshold of the 1990s.

La ciudad es nuestra. La dimensione comunale della Transizione spagnola alla democrazia

Paola Lo Cascio — 2025-11-07

This article analyzes the municipal dimension of the Spanish Transition to Democracy, an aspect that only in recent decades has been visited more thoroughly by historiography. Since the mid-1990s and especially in the new millennium, the importance of the local political sphere in the more general dynamics of political change from dictatorship to democracy has been recognized. Spanish cities, particularly metropolitan areas, were, in fact, a decisive setting for the conflict between dictatorship and opposition since the mid-1960s. In this context, neighborhood committees (set up in 1964) represented a very powerful driving force in the process of erosion of Francoism. They politicized the struggles for essential services and acted as real “schools of democracy”, forming a new municipal ruling class, especially of leftist opposition parties. The first democratic municipal elections, held on April 3, 1979, marked a clear victory for the oppositions in the majority of large cities. The new governing majorities – often articulated by leftist and nationalist forces – inaugurated policies of strong discontinuity with the dictatorship in such important concrete areas as public services and urbanism but also in such symbolic dimensions as toponymy. This process represented the first experiment in political alternation in the very young Spanish democracy.

La stagione delle giunte rosse nell’Italia degli anni ’70 e ’80, tra difficoltà del riformismo urbano ed esordi dell’urbanistica contrattata

Luciano Villani — 2025-11-07

In the mid-1970s, left-wing councils were formed in almost all major Italian cities, based on an alliance between the PCI and PSI. This article focuses on the urban planning choices made during that period in four major cities – Turin, Milan, Rome, and Naples – with the aim of comparing how the dynamics of change in the 1970s and 1980s influenced municipal policies. In the first five years, the logic of intervention, although adapted to different local contexts, tended to converge both in its approach, which was strongly publicistic, and in its aims, essentially seeking to compensate for social and territorial imbalances. The situation changed in the 1980s: the dirigiste approach to urban planning persisted in Rome and Naples, faced a crisis in Turin, and was abandoned in Milan. This transition, marked by a resurgence of market primacy, proved fatal for the culture of urban reformism: once those local government experiences had ended, reconciling redistributive objectives and development promotion policies would prove increasingly complicated.

Barcellona e la rete Eurocities: tra cooperazione urbana e articolazione politica (1986-91)

Oscar Monterde Mateo — 2025-11-07

After the Franco dictatorship, Barcelona emerged as a global city. The first democratic city councils opened up and projected the city into Europe and the world, launching a city brand symbolized by the 1992 Olympic Games. This initiative also created the opportunity for Barcelona to become a reference point for international municipalism. The city and the concept of municipalism are central elements in the political thought of Pasqual Maragall. As mayor of Barcelona, he promoted an international municipalist agenda that focused on cooperation in urban policies and the city’s presence on the international stage. This led to the promotion of city networks as tools for stabilizing new urban governance spaces and for engaging in the post-Cold War international relations system. This article analyzes how the creation of the Eurocities network fostered an experience of urban cooperation and political organization, proposing an inclusive approach for cities to participate in the European integration process.

From the Global City to the Global City Making. The European and (Latin) American Capitals of Culture

Perla Dayana Massó Soler — 2025-11-07

In a context of reinforced interurban competition, merit-based tools – labels, prizes, honors – have become instruments for promoting urban innovation and disseminating good practices. Initiated by the European Capital of Culture (1985), the global spread of cultural capital models aligns with neoliberal urban policies, merging political, cultural, and economic logics. A decolonial approach to policy mobilities should pay particular attention to the locus in which ideas are produced, recognizing asymmetries and historical socio-economic conditionings. This is particularly relevant to the (Latin) American Capital of Culture (2000). I argue that the “capital of culture” phenomenon is a political instrument inscribed within the macro-paradigm of neo-modernization ideology, which serves the city models based on the hegemonic urban imaginaries of creative, innovative, and smart cities. I focus on competing cultural definitions and conflicting urban imaginaries.

Cities and the Hope of a New World Order. The United Towns Organization Between Mediterranean Europe and Latin America (1984-92)

Samuel Ripoll — 2025-11-07

This article explores the history of transnational city networks, which today form a vast ecosystem connecting cities around the world, giving them a voice in international arenas (United Cities and Local Governments [UCLG], ICLEI, C40, etc.). Their massive proliferation, observed since the 1990s, builds on a long history of structuring a European and transatlantic municipal web, which began in the 19th century. However, research has paid little attention to the evolution of these municipal movements in the late 20th century, particularly their expansion towards the “Global South”. This article focuses on the United Towns Organization (which later gave birth to UCLG in 2004), an association historically rooted in Mediterranean Europe, and analyzes its expansion in Latin America during the 1980s. The author shows that this invention of new urban policy circuits was primarily based on geopolitical dynamics. It was driven by French and Catalan left-wing forces, which, at a time when authoritarian regimes were losing ground, sought to link local governance reforms to a will to spread democracy worldwide.

Demoni, linguaggio e significati nell’Europa della prima età moderna. Due anniversari e un libro recente

Gastón Garcia — 2025-11-07

The study of demonology currently occupies an important place in research concerned with early modern Europe. In this essay I analyze, from a historiographical point of view, the relevance of the conceptual contributions of Sydney Anglo and, especially, Stuart Clark to this field. After establishing the main lines of analysis that the works of these two historians have opened up for research, a book recently edited by Jan Machielsen is analyzed, with the aim of assessing the scope and perspectives of historical investigation into the science of demons between the 15th and 18th centuries.

Il viceré tra nobili e banditi. Una proposta di rilettura del governo napoletano del VII marchese del Carpio (1683-87)

Giuseppe Mrozek Eliszezynski — 2025-11-07

Of all the viceroys who governed the kingdom of Naples for over two hundred years, Gaspar de Haro, 7th Marquis of Carpio, represents a very special case: an extremely skillful propagandist of himself, he was capable not only of earning the favor of the main chroniclers of his time, but also of gaining almost unanimous appreciation, in the centuries that followed, from historians and scholars of various disciplines. A great collector and refined interpreter of the courtly culture of the Baroque age, Carpio has long been interpreted, during his four years of Neapolitan rule (1683–87), as a viceroy who was decisive in imposing a state order
on the kingdom, curbing the overpowering of the barons and defeating, at least temporarily, the rampant plague of banditry. Rereading the manuscript documentation, and building on the most recent historiography on the Spanish monarchy and the kingdom of Naples in the 17th century, the article aims to reevaluate this established view and propose different perspectives, in order to understand the government of the Marquis of Carpio within a peculiar way of doing politics in the 17th century, in the context of the still lively rivalry between France and Spain.

«Tutto l’Italia ha diritto a pretendere da noi e tutto noi le daremo». Riflessioni sulla memoria ebraica della Grande guerra

Andrea Spicciarelli — 2025-11-07

Il PSI e lo squadrismo nella Terra di Bari nel primo dopoguerra

Gabriele Mastrolillo — 2025-11-07

This article explores the causes of political violence in the province of Bari after the First World War. It examines the conflicts between squadristi and socialist militants (and, to a lesser degree, communist militants) during the period of political turmoil
that followed the war in Italy. The article is based on archival documentation preserved at the Italian Archivio Centrale dello Stato and Archivio di Stato di Bari, as well as on the analysis of “Puglia Rossa” (“Red Apulia”), the Socialist Federation’s press organ in the province of Bari.