Reflections on Italy
After almost four weeks in Sicily, we crossed the strait of Messina and explored the rest of Italy, getting as far north as Verona. Following a night in Villa San Giovanni, the town where the cross-strait ferry lands, we proceeded to the small beach town of Pisciotta to hang with food writer Tobias Mueller. Then we headed to our northern base of Bologna, where my former EconLog co-blogger Alberto Mingardi joined us for lunch. We took day trips to Modena, Parma, and Verona, then returned south to meet the rest of the family in Ercolano, a suburb of Naples. There, we toured the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, subsequently returning north to see Pisa. After a day trip to Cinque Terre, we rebased to Florence, where we met the awesome Luigi Achilli of the European University Institute. We ended with five days in Rome.
My top reflections:
One of my favorite questions to ask Italians was, “Where, according to you, does ‘the south’ end and ‘the north’ begin?” All Sicilians had the same answer: Everything north of Naples is “the north.” (One ominously added, “Everything north of the Po River is the deep north”). In the north, in contrast, virtually everyone said that their city of residence was the southernmost part of the north. In Padua, everything south of the Po River is “the south.” In Bologna, everything south of Bologna is “the south.” In Florence, everything south of Florence is “the south.” In Rome, everything south of Rome is “the south.”
In Verona, “the Deep North” Despite this binary thinking, a continuous model fits the data better. The further north you go, the cleaner the streets, the saner the driving, and the richer the people. (Though you definitely have to adjust for urbanization; small towns in Sicily are cleaner and saner than big northern cities, and Palermitans look richer than people in small northern towns). Nowhere in Italy looked remotely as rich as northern Virginia, Austin, Texas, or Northridge, California.
Consumer prices, in contrast, peaked in Rome. They gently fall as you go further north, and steeply fall as you go south. Even Florence is cheaper than Rome. Though I’m basing this chiefly on restaurant prices, the same works for hotel prices, except that Florence is even pricier than Rome.
As I said last week, the private sector works well even in Sicily. Little changes as you go further north. Restaurants everywhere run like clockwork, despite the rarity of tipping. But only Bologna, Florence, and Rome had Uber. In Rome, Uber worked perfectly, unless the app thought you were in Vatican City. In Bologna and Florence, Uber worked about two-thirds of the time, but occasionally gave the same “No Cars Available” warning we came to dread in Palermo.
Civil society, in contrast, works better and better as you head north. Besides the cleanliness of the streets and the sanity of the driving, you also see less and less graffiti (though only the most famous attractions like the Florence cathedral, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and Colosseum have no obvious defacement). Stereotypes about northern versus southern Italians are highly predictive when incentives for good behavior are minimal. But good incentives elicit good behavior in every part of Italy I saw.
The upshot is that Italy needs free-market policies more than most European countries, especially in the south. To repeat, Italian culture is not an insuperable impediment to Italian progress. But Italian culture plus public sector incentives is a recipe for incompetence and stagnation.
The biggest false Italian stereotype is that they’re a country of scofflaws. Yes, they ignore the rules of the road, especially in the south. Yes, they litter and graffiti. But they can also be strangely strict and self-righteous. They drive on the sidewalk - and scream at you for taking an illegal left turn on a deserted road.
This is clearest for Covid. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more observant country. Italy was the first Western country to lock down, and the oppression persists to this day. The attitudes of the population range from docile to hysterical. Total strangers really will yell at you for breaking even the most arbitrary of rules. For example: You have to wear masks in nearly-empty trains, but not packed train stations. Though Italians sense the arbitrariness, they still follow the rules and admonish scofflaws. There were no masks in busy stores, but at the Palermo opera a small army of humorless ushers ceaselessly hounded the patrons about their masks.
A Rare Sign of Opposition to Covid Oppression The entire country is covered with the iconography of the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy. Statues of Garibaldi are at least ten times as common as statues of George Washington are in America. Statues of Victor Emmanuel II, Cavour, and Mazzini are also ubiquitous. And of course there are tons of streets, piazzas, and such named after these figures. My Italian contacts told me that the national government eagerly funds this omnipresent political cult. The locals barely care. Even I was surprised that my students in Palermo had no clue who Italy’s chief enemy in World War I was.
From Rome’s Central Museum of the Risorgimento, Apparently Prior to Italy’s Entry into World War I I have long been a detractor of Italian unification. What a proverbial “solution in search of a problem”! After the Congress of Vienna, Italy was finally at peace - a peace that could have endured but for the demagogic “heroes” of the Risorgimento. (No wonder the murderous totalitarian Che Guevara gushed, "The only hero the world has ever needed is called Giuseppe Garibaldi”!) And what was the great “freedom” the Italian people enjoyed after “liberation”? For young males, the “freedom” to spend five years in military slavery. (Or maybe “just” three years; accounts vary).
Warmongers standardly claim that the short-run costs of war will pay off in the long-run. What was the amazing future so many Italians died for in the wars of Italian unification? Another half million plus Italians died in World War I, fighting to seize a few Austrian provinces. Then there was a quarter century of fascist dictatorship, culminating in the horrors of World War II, where another half million Italians perished. And ponder this: If Mussolini hadn’t inspired Hitler, perhaps the Nazi Party would have fizzled out in the early 20s and World War II would never have happened!
Is it fair to blame the Risorgimento for fascism? While almost nothing in history is literally “inevitable,” the causal chain is straightforward. The Risorgimento’s central mission was to instill the Italian people with the spirit of belligerent nationalism. This was a negligent mission: I doubt any of its leaders seriously worried that the spirit of belligerent nationalism could “go too far.” And then… this spirit wrecked Italy twice after the victory of 1870. Never mind the victims of united Italy’s wars of imperial conquest. The Italo-Ethiopian War alone had another half million victims.
Only after abject military defeat in World War II did Italy finally start to see solid catch-up growth. There’s no reason this couldn’t have started a century earlier if Italians had spurned romantic politics in favor of laissez-faire, or just hard-headed pragmatism. Given the dysfunctions of Italian culture, to repeat, the marginal payoff for strong incentives and hard budget constraints are especially high.
Italy is blanketed in Catholic churches, and the Vatican looms over Rome. Yet the religion of nationalism seems far more fervent nowadays. Garibaldi is genuinely “bigger than Jesus.” Indeed, even the second-tier figures of the Risorgimento seem bigger than Jesus.
At the top of Rome’s Spanish Steps; Vatican in the Background Everyone I asked in Italy told me that regulation harshly suppresses new construction. At the same time, Ercolano’s buildings are so poorly-maintained that you often have to squint to see where the ruins of Herculaneum end and the modern city begins. When plaster peels off today’s buildings, the brickwork looks inferior to that of ancient Rome. Do historic preservation laws prevent even the modernization of existing buildings in Naples, or what?
The ruins of both Herculaneum and Pompeii looked far more advanced than anything I’ve seen in Tikal, Chichen Itza, Uxmal, or elsewhere in the Mayan world. Rich Romans had comfortable homes, not just amazing monuments. Furthermore, Roman monuments were more functional: Mayan pyramids are solid structures, but you can enter a Roman temple or sit in a Roman amphitheater.
Pompeii We climbed a famous leaning tower in Bologna, but nothing prepared us for the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I was astounded every time I saw it, because I kept telling myself, “It can’t lean as much as you remember.” And I kept being wrong. Closed for many years, you are now again free to climb to the top.
Underrated As a big believer in CPI bias, I strive to visit other countries’ ordinary grocery stores to see what money actually buys. Italy’s supermarkets are much better than anything I saw in Scandinavia, but still markedly worse than those in Spain, Germany, France, and the UK.
We didn’t make it to South Tyrolia on this trip, but my memory is that even in the deepest north of Italy, the Italian side of town looks bad compared to the German side of town. In Bolzano/Bozen, Germans proudly beautified their properties, but the Italians didn’t much mind living in a house covered in graffiti. How do I know? Demonstrated preference.
Overall, I’d classify my seven weeks in Italy as 80% great, 20% ridiculous. We made great friends, ate great food, and marveled at an array of geological and historical wonders. We also squinted incredulously at the filth, crazy driving, and the bureaucracy’s strange mixture of apathy and petty fascism. To be Epicurean: Expect some serious aggravation in Italy and you’ll have a great time.
P.S. Further shout-outs to Fabio Nani, Michael Rossmann, and Nick Ducoff.
I suspect that if there weren’t the constant government propaganda about the Risorgimento, that the southern half of the country would see it as colonization and imposition of a foreign culture on them.
As for where the boundary between the south and north is, linguists have a line that follows the Apennines and distinguishes important linguistic differences across the whole Romance language family:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Spezia–Rimini_Line
Standard Italian is the Florentine dialect, which is from south of this line, so the Piemontese conquerors of the rest of Italy made some concessions in choosing a central culture to impose on the south.
You can tell a good observer when you see one. A lot of Italians don't get this amount of things right about Italy, even the one who have spent several years in several different countries. Bravo.
I will only point out a couple of things.
3. I have spent at least two thirds of my life in the Rome area, but I am still unable to tell if it is true that prices in Rome are the highest. It really depends on the area. Yes, it does count that you were looking at restaurant and hotel prices. I would guess you were in the historical centre. Prices are higher than anywhere in the country there, but Rome extends far beyond the historical centre, and prices can get much, much lower.
14. Italian Nationalism: I think it is difficult to grasp what value people give to the "Nation" in Italy. Yes, there is the symbolism (Garibaldi) and all, but we only celbrated the Unity Day in 1911 (50 years), 1961 (100 years) and 2011 (150 years). People barely care about the Republic Day (June 2nd). But here's the most relevant thing: most people will tell you they care about their Region or even town than their country, a lot will claim they are not Italians at all. They'll refuse to say there is any Italian national dish, for there are only local dishes (true to some extent). The Italian language was forced onto Venetians (no it wasn't) and all that rubbish. At the same time, they won't complain a lot about people from other Regions "stealing their jobs" (not anymore) but they will complain about foreigners. Too many people are still nostalgic about Fascism, so they are just people who would celebrate a very particular time of Italian history. Italy and nationalism truly are in a weird relationship.