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. Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Examples of administrative divisions English terms In many of the following terms corresponding to British cultural influence areas of relatively low mean population A township (or Municipality) is a settlement which has the status and powers of a unit of local government A municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a City, Town, or Village, or

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. Recorder of deeds refers to the government office tasked with maintaining a record of Real estate ownership as well as other Deeds that provide persons other than

It is headed by a mayor (sindaco) assisted by a council of aldermen, the Consiglio Comunale. An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions The offices of the comune are housed in a building usually called the Municipio, or Palazzo Comunale.

As of the 2001 census, there were 8,101 comuni in Italy; they vary considerably in area and population. Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar.

For example, the comune of Rome (Lazio) has an area of 1,285. Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 For the football club see SS Lazio Lazio ( Latium in Latin) is a regione of central 30 km² and a population of 2,546,804, 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. Fiera di Primiero is a Comune (municipality in the Province of Trento in the Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located In Italy, a Province (in Italian provincia) is an administrative division of intermediate level between Municipality ( Comune The Province of Trento (Provincia autonoma di Trento also called Trentino, is an Autonomous province of Italy. 10 km², and Morterone (province of Lecco) is the smallest by population, with only 33 inhabitants. Morterone is a Comune (municipality in the Province of Lecco in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 50 km northeast of The Province of Lecco (It Provincia di Lecco) is a province in the Lombardy region of Italy.

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. A province is a territorial unit almost always an Administrative division. The article is about the geographic sense of the term For other uses including Regions and Regional, see Region (disambiguation. The Province of Bari (Provincia di Bari is a province in the Apulia (or Puglia region of Italy. 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. The Polizia Municipale are the Municipal police of Italy responsible to the mayors of the various Municipalities of Italy and are usually Traffic control is their main function in addition to controlling commercial establishments to ensure they open and close according 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”) 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: for fuller details, see the article Frazione. A frazione, in Italy, is the name given in administrative law to a type of territorial subdivision of a Comune; for other Administrative 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. The ancient town of Pollentia on the left bank of the Tanaro is known today as Pollenzo, a Frazione of Bra in the Province A frazione, in Italy, is the name given in administrative law to a type of territorial subdivision of a Comune; for other Administrative Bra is a town and commune (population 29169 of the Cuneo province in the north-west Italian region of Piedmont. 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. ).

Some few frazioni are 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.

Eventually, some "comuni" have not a "capoluogo" but only some "frazioni": in these cases, the "frazione" which comprises the town hall is called "sede municipale" (town hall seat).

See also

• Municipality
• Municipio
• Communes of France
• Medieval commune
• Frazione
• Località
• Contrada
• Circoscrizione
• Rione
  • Rioni of Rome
• Terziere
• Quartiere
• Sestiere

• Category:Cities and towns in Abruzzo
• Category:Cities and towns in the Aosta Valley
• Category:Cities and towns in Basilicata
• Category:Cities and towns in Calabria
• Category:Cities and towns in Campania
• Category:Cities and towns in Emilia-Romagna
• Category:Cities and towns in Friuli-Venezia Giulia
• Category:Cities and towns in the Lazio
• Category:Cities and towns in Liguria
• Category:Cities and towns in Lombardy
• Category:Cities and towns in the Marche
• Category:Cities and towns in Molise
• Category:Cities and towns in Piedmont
• Category:Cities and towns in Apulia
• Category:Cities and towns in Sardinia
• Category:Cities and towns in Sicily
• Category:Cities and towns in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol
• Category:Cities and towns in Tuscany
• Category:Cities and towns in Umbria
• Category:Cities and towns in the Veneto

A municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a City, Town, or Village, or Municipio ( Spanish and Italian) and Município ( Portuguese) are terms used for subnational entities. The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. Communes in Europe in the Middle Ages were sworn allegiances of mutual defense (both physical defense and of traditional freedoms among community members of a town or city A frazione, in Italy, is the name given in administrative law to a type of territorial subdivision of a Comune; for other Administrative A località, in Italy, is the name given to inhabited places that are not accorded a more significant distinction in administrative law such as a Frazione Contrada (plural contrade) is a generic name given to various types of Italian city subdivisions now unofficial Circoscrizione (plural circoscrizioni) can refer to two different administrative units of Italy. Rione (plural rioni) is the name given to a ward in several Italian cities the best-known of which is Rome. The word rione (pl rioni) comes from the Latin regio (pl regiones, meaning region during the Middle Ages the Latin word A terziere (plural terzieri) is a subdivision of certain Italian towns A quartiere (plural quartieri) is a subdivision of certain Italian towns A sestiere (plural sestieri) is a subdivision of certain Italian towns and cities

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