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This paper is divided into seven parts, each one dealing with a central theme of Italian cultural history. Our aim is to clarify the origin of today’s polemics and schools of thought; to trace yesterday’s ideas that directly or indirectly brought out today’s. The problematic revolves around a central axis: following Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile, Eugenio Garin and Norberto Bobbio, culture is discussed with a capital C, underplaying the mutations that it has gone through. The material "culture" refers to today differs from that of the past (from popular songs to travel); the people who produced it like those who consume it have changed (workers in precarious situations, an audience divided by generation and gender, etc.) The idea is to suggest a picture that deals both with ideas developed by Gramsci and pop culture, with positivism and the immaterial.