Administrative divisions of Italy
Regions (black borders)
Provinces (grey borders)
Comuni (white borders)
In Italy, the
comune (plural
comuni) is the basic
administrative division of both provinces and regions, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word
township or
municipality.
Importance and function
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 1,285.30 km² and a population of 2,726,539, and is both the largest and the most populated
comune in Italy;
Fiera di Primiero, in the
province of
Trento, is the smallest
comune by area, with only 0.15 km², and
Morterone (province of
Lecco) is the smallest by population, with only 33 inhabitants. The smallest non-alpine
comune in Italy is
Montelapiano, the fourth is
Carapelle Calvisio, 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
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 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.).
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).
See also
Category:Administrative divisionsCategory:Subdivisions of Italyan:Comunas d'Italiade:Italienische Gemeindenes:Municipios de Italiafr:Commune d'Italiegl:Comunas de Italiahr:Talijanske općineit:Comune italianonl:Lijst van Italiaanse gemeentenja:コムーネnn:Kommunar i Italiapt:Comuna italianaru:Коммуна (Италия)sv:Comunetr:İtalya'nın komünleri
