Istanbul tra eredità e reinvenzione. L’italiano nel paesaggio linguistico urbano

The city of Istanbul, shaped by centuries of multilingual coexistence and cultural contact, offers fertile ground for the study of linguistic landscapes. This article examines the visibility of Italian and Italian-sounding elements in public signage across three districts of the city. While Italian is not widely spoken in Turkey today, it emerges in commercial spaces as a symbolic resource linked to style, taste, and heritage. Drawing on a corpus of photographic data and informal interviews, the study identifies the linguistic forms and semantic domains in which Italian is most frequently mobilized. Particular attention is paid to pseudo-Italian coinages and hybrid formations that reflect local appropriations of Italian for branding and aesthetic purposes. These phenomena are discussed in light of the long history of Italo-Turkish contacts and the semiotic reconfiguration of Italian as a visual and cultural signifier in a multilingual urban environment.