From Marco Polo to Gladiator: Italy’s Influence on the Published Record

Library collections globally are vast, and the collective collection of libraries around the world—the combined collecting activity of libraries everywhere—can help us understand the complete published record, from classic works to the latest contemporary releases.

OCLC Research has previously taken a deep dive into several studies of the national presence of various countries in the public record, including Scotland, New Zealand, Ireland, and Canada.[1] This study focuses on a country with significant historical contributions to art and culture: Italy.

Renowned for its contributions to world literature, Italy is the origin of many great works. In this study, we’ll investigate which classic Italian works have stood the test of time for centuries. We’ll also discover who can claim the title of “most popular Italian author,” and which film set in Italy, known for its rich history as a frequent subject or setting of great works of film, is the most popular.

And one final question: How can we use library data to answer these questions?

Let’s answer the last question first.

OCLC’s WorldCat—the world’s most comprehensive database of information about library collections—contains descriptions of nearly 600 million distinct materials, accounting for more than 3.5 billion holdings spread across thousands of libraries worldwide. These materials span prehistoric times to the present day, published in hundreds of languages and originating from hundreds of countries, territories, dependencies, and other entities assigned a unique MARC country code.

WorldCat is a remarkable resource, powering library services such as cataloging, resource sharing, collection analytics, and more. But beyond this, WorldCat is the closest approximation to the global published record available in one data source. It’s highly likely that if something has been published, it’s in a library collection somewhere, and chances are also good that it’s registered in WorldCat. So, if we want to ask questions about the global published record, like those posed above, we can do so via WorldCat data.

So, what is the most popular classic Italian work? One way to answer this question is to measure popularity by the relative frequency with which individual works appear in library collections—in other words, the total number of global library holdings associated with the work. These rankings are based on an analysis of global library holdings data aggregated in WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive database of published materials. This approach provides unique insights into the diffusion and cultural impact of Italy’s contributions to the global published record.

According to WorldCat, the top five most widely held classic Italian works (listed in reverse order) are:

What is the most popular classic Italian work?
(ranked by global library holdings)

Beginning with #5 on the list, we have The Travels of Marco Polo, perhaps the world’s most famous travelogue (which was actually written by Polo biographer Rustichello da Pisa). At #4 is Jerusalem Delivered, one of the foremost epic poems in Western literature. Number 3 is The Frenzy of Orlando, an epic poem that some consider one of the most influential works in European literature. Number 2 is The Decameron, a collection of short stories recounting the escapades of a group of Florentines trying to escape the Black Death and which leads us to the most widely held work in library collections: The Prince. At #1, Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous treatise on how to be an ideal prince is the most popular classic Italian work in library collections today, with about 41,000 global holdings.

Incidentally, it turns out that The Prince is also the only classic Italian work with the most published editions over time. In addition to being the most widely collected classic Italian work, it is also the one with the greatest breadth of publication history.

The second question posed above is the identity of the most popular Italian author. Again, we can use total global library holdings—in this case, of each author’s entire oeuvre—as a measure of popularity. We can also expand our scope to consider any Italian author, classic or modern, which leads to the following ranking:

Who is the most popular Italian author?
(ranked by library holdings)

The #5 entry, Benedetto Croce, was an Italian philosopher and historian who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 16 times but never won. Luigi Pirandello, at #4, was an Italian dramatist, poet, and novelist who did win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. At #3, we have Giovanni Boccaccio, best known for his classic work The Decameron, which ranks among the most popular classic Italian works. The #2 entry is Umberto Eco, a contemporary Italian scholar and novelist most famous for the book (and subsequent film) The Name of the Rose. And at the top of the ranking, representing the most popular Italian author in terms of library holdings, is Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet whose masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is perhaps recognized as the greatest literary work in the Italian language.

His works account for nearly a quarter of a million global library holdings, and it’s interesting to see how the ranking of popular Italian authors cuts across the time arc of the published record, from Alighieri to Eco.

Moving from literature to film, we arrive at the third and final question: What is the most popular movie set in Italy, ranked by global library holdings? As with the previous questions, WorldCat data provides an answer:

What is the most popular film set in Italy?
(ranked by global library holdings)

The English Patient is #5 in the ranking, a 1996 romantic drama partially set in Italy (among other locales), and the winner of nine Oscars, including Best Picture. The #4 entry is Romeo & Juliet, a 1968 film that is, to date, the last film adaptation of a Shakespearean play to receive a Best Picture nomination. Number 3 is Spartacus, the iconic 1960 Stanley Kubrick film. At #2 is the classic Disney animation Pinocchio from 1940, Disney’s second animated feature film. And leading the ranking as the most popular film set in Italy is: Gladiator. The 2000 epic starring Russell Crowe earned an Academy Award for Best Picture as well as the title of most popular film set in Italy, with more than 5,300 library holdings worldwide.

These insights about Italy’s creative landscape were derived solely from WorldCat bibliographic and holdings data, demonstrating that the power of WorldCat goes beyond supporting library services like cataloging and resource sharing, including a rich source of information that advances our understanding of culture and scholarship.  

This post was inspired by a series of studies conducted by OCLC Research that explore the national presence of various countries in the published record. Each of these studies—focusing on Scotland, New Zealand, Ireland, and Canada—takes a deep dive into the size, scope, and salient features of a country’s unique contribution to the published record, based on its diffusion across library collections around the world. Check out these studies to see how library data offers rich insights into the creative output of different countries, which, taken together, constitute our shared cultural and scholarly heritage. At the same time that libraries create and share information about their collections, they’re documenting the evolution of the global published record.

Thanks to Devon Smith for his work extracting the data used in this study.

WorldCat  WorldCat.org  WorldCat Discovery

[1] Lavoie, Brian. 2019. Maple Leaves: Discovering Canada through the Published Record. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/ek4v-ag09.

Lavoie, Brian, and Lorcan Dempsey. 2018. An Exploration of the Irish Presence in the Published Record. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/C3WS6R.

Lavoie, Brian. 2014. Kiwis in the Collection: The New Zealand Presence in the Published Record. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/C3QP8X.

Lavoie, Brian. 2013. Not Scotch, but Rum: The Scope and Diffusion of the Scottish Presence in the Published Record. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/C3SH0S.

Lavoie, Brian. 2026. From Marco Polo to Gladiator: Italy’s Influence on the Published Record. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/6d9v-8z98.