Italian Romanians (; ) are Romanian-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Romania during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in Romania.
Italians have been present in Romania since the first half of the 19th century, when they emigrated from some Italian regions (particularly from Veneto and Friuli) to work in the mines, railway yards or construction.
Characteristics Italian Romanians are fairly dispersed throughout the country, even though there is a higher number of them in some parts of the country (particularly Suceava County, Bacău County, Galați County, Iași County, Constanța County, Brașov County, Prahova County, Vâlcea County and Timiș County), and in Bucharest.
As an officially recognised historical ethnic minority estimated at 9,000 Romanians of Italian ancestry, Italians have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies. This was held by the Italian Community of Romania between 1992 and 2004, and the Association of Italians of Romania since 2004.
In recent years, the number of foreign-born Italians living in Romania has increased substantially. As of November 2007, there are some 12,000 foreign-born Italians in and around Timișoara. Mirel Bran, "La Roumanie, ses Italiens, ses Chinois...", Le Monde, November 28, 2007 About 3,000 square kilometres of land (2% of the agricultural land of Romania) have been bought by Italians. Many are married to Romanians that they met in Italy, which now has the largest Romanian population in the world outside of Romania and Moldova.
According to Eurostat, in 2015 there were 38,580 persons born in Italy living in Romania.
By mid-2020, there were 80,000 persons born in Italy living in Romania. Italians in Romania represent the second largest immigrant group in Romania, after Moldovans in Romania. Among immigrants in Romania, in 2021, the most common countries of birth were Republic of Moldova (40%), Italy (11%) and Spain (9%).
History
The territory of today's Romania has been part of the Italians' (especially Genoese and Venetians) trade routes on the Danube since at least the 13th century. They founded several ports on the Danube, including Vicina (near Isaccea), Sfântu Gheorghe, San Giorgio (Giurgiu) and Calafat.
The Genoese in the 13th century also created some colonies. The Turkish conquest massacred them, forcing the survivors to move elsewhere. Some managed to return to Liguria, but others remained in the area of Bessarabia and Dobruja. In fact, illustrious families of the Moldavian nobility—called boyarii (or boyars)—trace their origins back to some of these settlers. Such is the case of the Moldovan "Negruzzi" of the first half of the 19th century, a family to which Iacob Negruzzi and Costache Negruzzi belong.
Subsequently, the first Italians to emigrate permanently to the territory of present-day Romania were some families from Val di Fassa and Val di Fiemme (in Trentino) who, in 1821, were transferred to the Apuseni Mountains, in Transylvania, to work as woodcutters and lumberjacks on behalf of an Austrian timber merchant.Caritas, Immigrazioni e lavoro in Italia. Statistiche, problemi e prospettive, Roma, IDOS, 2008, p. 61. (In Italian) At the time, Triveneto, as well as Transylvania, was included in the Austrian Empire; these movements were therefore facilitated by Austria, as part of a policy of internal migration between the poorest and border regions of the Empire.Caritas, Immigrazioni e lavoro in Italia. Statistiche, problemi e prospettive, Roma, IDOS, 2008, p. 59. (In Italian)
In the Kingdom of Romania, Italian emigration was incentivized by the Romanian authorities as the Romanian ruling class felt the strategic need to strengthen the link with Latinity in order to consolidate, on the one hand, the identity of the country, surrounded by "a sea of Slavs," and, on the other hand, to proceed with the "Romanization" of the newly annexed territories.
The migratory flow continued after the unification of Italy, not only towards Austro-Hungarian Transylvania but also towards the rest of Romania (Principality of Moldavia and Wallachia) which, with the independence obtained from the Ottoman Empire (1877), and following the annexation of Veneto to Italy (1866), on the occasion of the Third Italian War of Independence, it became a migratory valve that was important for the poor and overpopulated region. At the end of the 19th century, in fact, about 10-15% of the emigrants who left from Veneto headed for Romania, even if, often made up of seasonal migrations in the construction, railway construction, forests or in mines. The number of Italian emigrants in Romania went from 830 in 1871 to more than 8,000 in 1901, according to estimates by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After 1880, Italians from Friuli and Veneto settled in Greci, Cataloi and Măcin in Northern Dobruja. Most of them worked in granite quarries in the Măcin Mountains, some became farmers, and others worked in road building.
Italian emigration continued in the interwar period, reaching a peak of around 60,000 Italians in Romania in the 1930s, and gradually decreased in the 1940s. According to historical research, about 130,000 Italians moved to Romania between the end of the 19th century and World War II, most of whom returned to their homeland after 1945.R. Scagno, Veneti in Romania, Longo Editore, Ravenna, 2008. (In Italian) Those emigrants who had renounced their Italian citizenship remained in the Romanian cities. Today the historical Italian minority is estimated at 9,000 Romanians of Italian ancestry.
In the 1990s, after the fall of Ceaușescu's communist regime, migration flows from Italy resumed and Italian emigrants were granted ethnic minority status and the right to elect their own parliamentarians.
A 2009 report indicates that Romania is home to about two hundred thousand Italians, centralized mainly in Banat and Transylvania, mostly employed in the restaurant industry. Italy continues to be since 2006, the leading investor country in terms of the number of registered companies, with about 20 percent of the total active presence, and there are 26,984 Italian companies employing 800,000 people. The 2021 Romanian census recorded 4039 ethnic Italians.
Italians in the Dobruja region At the end of the 19th century, thousands of families, mainly from Veneto and Friuli, settled in the coastal region of Dobruja, "where the climate was benign and the land munificent." Italians were mainly employed in the construction industry, as miners, loggers or farmers.
According to statistics,Censimento degli italiani all’estero alla metà dell’anno 1927 (Roma, 1928: LX) in 1899 there were 1,391 Italians living in Dobruja; by 1928 the number grew to 1,993, representing one-fifth of the Italian population in Romania. Between the late 1800s and 1945, a total of 130,000 Italians emigrated to Romania, most of whom returned home at the end of World War II.
Italian and its dialects in Greci At the beginning of the 20th century, 111 Italians lived in Greci, a village on the banks of the Danube in the historical region of Dobruja.Ionescu, 1904:90
According to recent studies by Amelia Toader,Written in 1972, Amelia Toader's thesis on the Bellunese dialect spoken by some families of Greci is considered the first academic study of the village's Italian community. about 40 families lived in the village in 1972, of which 20 were of Bellunese origin.
As of the 2002 census, the population of Greci is reported to be 5,656, with 94 Italians now in the third and fourth generations, fifth in some cases. Representatives of the third generation (who are now about sixty years old) speak Romanian as their first language, but many also speak Italian and Bellunese or Friulian dialect, steeped in Romanian expressions.
According to the testimonies of residents, including the president of the Association of Friulians of Greci, Otilia Bataiola, initially marriages took place only between Italians, and for daily communication, within the walls of the house, dialects were used, Friulian or Venetian depending on the origin.
Beginning with the second generation, mixed marriages began with members of a growing Romanian community: the beginning of the twentieth century was in fact marked by the policies of ethnic colonization and cultural homogenization of Dobruja implemented by the Romanian government, aimed at establishing an indigenous majority, thus counterbalancing the Turkish-Tatar presence that had been predominant until then.
The preservation of the language was made possible by religious celebrations in Italian in the village's Catholic church, held once a month, and by Italian courses at the village school.
The village has the Catholic church of Santa Lucia, built between 1904 and 1912 through a donation from the Vals family, and an Italian school, founded and built in 1932 by the Italians of the village. Teachers came directly from Italy, as did textbooks and uniforms for the children.
Until World War II, the priests were also Italian, but were later replaced by Romanian priests, initiating the loss of the use of the Italian language, also increased by the closure of the only Italian school in the village by the Romanian communist government.
The future of the Italians of Greci is at the center of academic discussion: some scholars see the increase in mixed marriages and the closure of the granite quarries, the main occupation of Italian workers, as the main causes of the inevitable disappearance of the village's ethnic Italian community.
Timișoara, "the eighth province of Veneto" The city of Timișoara, capital of the Timiș County within the Banat region, has experienced a strong migration flow from Italy since the 1970s, particularly from the Northeastern provinces.
The main industries, almost all foreign, come mainly from Germany, the United States and Italy. The district is called "the eighth province of Veneto" because of the high number of regional companies that have relocated production to the area: there are almost 27,000 Italian companies and, as of December 2002, the number of companies with Veneto capital participation present in Romania was 2,038. +Geographical origin of the Venetian presence in RomaniaProvinceNumber of firms% of total Venetian firms% of total Italian firmsBelluno261.28%0.21%Padua45422.28%3.67%Rovigo944.61%0.76%Treviso43421.3%3.51%Venice22511.04%1.82%Vicenza41720.46%3.37%Verona38819.04%3.14%Total2,038100%16.48% The Venetian language is the city's second language, and two weeklies are printed in Italian: Sette giorni and il Gazzettino.
"Casa Faenza" in Timisoara The city of Timisoara has been twinned with Faenza since 12 March 1991.
Casa Faenza is a health facility active in Timisoara since the end of 2000, and is a semi-residential center for the treatment of the mental needs of children up to 16 years of age, built with the contribution of the Municipality of Faenza, the Faenza-Timisoara Friendship Committee, the Opere Pie, the Faenza section of the Italian Red Cross, several local companies and individual citizens.
Antenna Veneto Romania Antenna Veneto Romania, established through an agreement between the Foreign Center of the Veneto Chambers of Commerce and the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Timisoara, serves as a counter for entrepreneurs from Veneto who intend to start or consolidate economic relations with Romania and for companies from Veneto that have already relocated to the country.
During 2003, Antenna Veneto Romania concluded the first survey on the Venetian entrepreneurial presence in Romania. The survey is still the only quantitative analysis of the Venetian presence in Romania and, as far as Italian relocation is concerned, no complete official data are available to date.
Linguistic minority and the Italian community