Italian street naming practices and anti-mafia memory policies

The essay reviews the phenomenon of anti-mafia street names in Italy and dis-cusses their meaning within the broader historical context of Italian street-nam-ing policies. A particular focus is brought to bear on the challenges inherent in anti-mafia street-naming process and on the essential role of civic associations.Anti-mafia street naming emerges as key to Italians’ civic memory of the “second republic” period that has followed the major anti-mafia and anti-corrup-tion trials of the 1990s. Nevertheless, the opposition and bitter public debate generated by these same street-naming practices show that the “anti-mafia” approach remains divisive.