Pirate attacks and the shape of the Italian urban system

From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, coastal areas of Italy (especially, in the south-west) were subject to attacks by pirates launched from the shores of Northern Africa. This paper studies the long-run impact of these events. We show that in areas that were more exposed to raids, easier-to-defend but less productive locations ended up in being relatively more populated. The consequences of pirates’ attacks were still visible in the first part of the twentieth century and ceased to be statistically significant after the 1960s. •From XVI to XIX centuries, Western Mediterranean Sea was plagued by attacks coming from the North-Western shores of Africa.•In areas more exposed to raids, easier-to-defend but poorer locations ended up in being relatively more populated.•The consequences of pirates' attacks were still visible in the second half of the XX century.