Il Mondo (magazine)

Il Mondo

Cover of Il Mondo, 24 August 1979
Categories	Newsmagazine
Frequency	Weekly
First issue	19 February 1949
Final issue	February 2014
Company	Rizzoli
Country	Italy
Based in	Rome
Language	Italian

Il Mondo (meaning The World in English) was a weekly political, cultural and economic magazine founded by Gianni Mazzocchi (also founder of L'Europeo) and directed by Mario Pannunzio.

The founding group, consisting of Mario Pannunzio (managing director), Vittorio Gorresio, Ennio Flaiano, Corrado Alvaro, Mino Maccari and Vitaliano Brancati, had already worked together in the weekly magazine Omnibus (1937-1939).

Il Mondo was founded in 1949. The first issue of the magazine was released on 19 February 1949, with articles against the welfare state and Keynesian economics. In economics, the magazine was inspired by the economic theories of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Initially born as an anti-communist and laicist periodical, during the years it maintained a line of total independence from "the powers that be" in politics and finance. People writing for Il Mondo included Ernesto Rossi, Giovanni Spadolini, Enzo Forcella, Antonio Cederna, Roberto Pane, Marco Pannella, Eugenio Scalfari, Tommaso Landolfi, Indro Montanelli, Vittorio De Caprariis and Panfilo Gentile. Writers Thomas Mann and George Orwell were among the foreign contributors. The headquarters of the weekly was in Rome.

In the early years the average circulation was between 15,000 and 18,000 copies, with a peak of 20,000. In 1955 Pannunzio brought the pages of the magazine from 12 to 16 pages, while in 1956, the publisher decided to bring back Il Mondo to 12 pages. In September the magazine was yielded to a company whose main shareholders were Nicolò Carandini and Adriano Olivetti. The magazine closed in March 1966.