Book excerpt: Central-Southern Italy and the Tyrrhenian Sea are the sites of extensive Plio-Quaternary magmatic activity. The rock compositions include crustal anatectic granites and rhyolites, tholeiitic, calc-alkaline, shoshonitic volcanics, and potassic to ultrapotassic and Na-alkaline volcanics. This very wide compositional variation makes Italian magmatism one of the most complex petrological issues, the understanding of which is a challenge for modern petrology and geochemistry. This book summarises the petrological, geochemical and volcanological characteristics of Italian Plio-Quaternary volcanism, and discusses petrogenetic hypotheses and possible geodynamics settings. The book is written for petrologists and geochemists, but fundamental geochemical information is well presented and the use of excessive jargon is avoided, making the book readable to a wide audience of Earth scientists.