The Italian enlightenment in a broad historical overview that narrates both the culture and reforms of the age of enlightenment together with the most recent findings of research. The work is divided into six parts. The first deals with demography and socio-economic history, and spans the entire eighteenth century. The second, which is focused on political, intellectual and religious theory, speaks about the reverberations in Italy of the crisis of European conscience in the first half of the century. The third and fourth, organized in chronological order and proceeding up to the crisis of the Ancien Regime, illustrate the policies and reforms of the times. The fifth concludes the debate surrounding the enlightenment in later years through an analysis of political and economic thought. The sixth shifts the focus onto the historiographic method and is concerned with how historians have reconstructed and interpreted the Italian nineteenth century, from Romanticism to today.