The chapter delves into the historical and current general features of Italian arbitration law and investigates the approach of Italian judges toward arbitral proceedings and awards. It focuses first on the way in which arbitration agreements are construed by Italian courts and then moves to courts’ approaches to parties’ requests for vacating Italian arbitral awards and for recognizing/enforcing foreign arbitral awards. As the chapter makes clear, Italy’s bad reputation in the field of commercial arbitration is largely a remnant of the most recent past and is nowadays largely undeserved.
