Una trama per duecento città. I circondari del Regno

The chapter focuses on the history of the Italian districts named "circondari", smaller than provinces and larger than municipal districts. They were stated by the first Italian law for public territorial organization in 1865 and abolished in 1927 by the fascist Government. The work follows up long political debates questioning wether circondari were useful and efficient or not. Inspite of the attempts to eliminate them, they lasted for more than sixty years, playing a significant role in a number of fields and in some cases causing identification processes in the local élites, aiming at some growth of the small cities and rural towns that could not immediately aspire to be the centre of a province.