Source: JTA
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13592&intcategoryid=2#
On December 21, 2003 JTA reported, "Twenty years ago, an Italian television channel hired Annie Sacerdoti, a Jewish writer and editor in Milan, to produce a documentary about Jewish history in Italy’s northern Lombardy region... In small provincial towns around the region, she found Jewish cemeteries abandoned to the elements and deserted synagogues standing empty or used as carpenter shops or other places of business. 'It was then that I realized that the story of Italian Jewry was not just written in the big ghettos, such as Rome or Venice,' she recalled. 'It was also written, just as richly, in numerous hidden places, little centers and hamlets almost totally forgotten by Italian Jews themselves.' Those first discoveries sent Sacerdoti on a quest to discover and publicize the wealth of Jewish heritage in Italy, which has continued to the present...This fall, Sacerdoti — the editor of Milan’s monthly Jewish magazine, Il Bollettino — published a new, revised and updated “Guide to Jewish Italy,” which combines tourist itineraries with an overview of contemporary Jewish life throughout the country, including addresses of kosher restaurants and other useful information."