From a personal memory, this essay seeks to draw a picture of the presence of Stuart Hall’s thought and writings in Italy, first through the relation in the 1960s and 1970s between the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and the University of Naples L’Orientale, where a group of scholars and students was formed in the field of cultural and postcolonial studies. This was followed by the increasing attention to his work more recently owing to translations and critical studies. The influence of Gramsci’s thought on Hall’s theoretical formation was a significant link to Italian culture, alongside his attention to youth culture, music and the media. In the latter part of his career his interest was concentrated on diasporic visual art, particularly in connection with the Black British Art Movement. This was underlined in his writings through the complex articulation of the term «blackness» and the concept of «new ethnicities».