I found a couple Italian bike shops. I've been looking for a good bike shop, as my bikes arrived from the US of A in need of some minor repairs. The last shop I found, your standard fare of bike shop, does a great job on repairs. They trued my wheels and adjusted my brakes for about 15 euros, which I thought was a pretty good deal. Interesting thing about the bike shop, was that it took forever to find it. When I searched Google for the shop, it showed me one location, while the shop's website provided yet another location. Both locations that were provided by the internet were about 4 miles off of target! Crazy... I had to talk to locals and call the shop about 12 times to find it. Kind of frustrating, but they do good work, so I made sure to save the location in my GPS so to never lose them again! ...I thought it was interesting though that the bike shop's actual location was so far removed from where the internet placed them. I wonder if the address coding that works so well in the US for locations, isn't quite perfected here. I wonder if parts of the world should be locating business and homes by latitude and longitude. Probably more accurate where the government hasn't spend the time and money to regrid and rename streets for the benefit of GPS direction finding.

Otherwise, the other shop is very unusual, for an American. It's located closer to where I live, and they not only sell bikes manufactured by your standard European bike companies, but they also manufacture and sell their own line of bikes. The shop is pretty small, and they weld frames in the back area. They weld all their bikes out of steel, with a few of the high end road frames including carbon fiber seat/chain stays. I imagine the carbon components are purchased from a supplier and just glued in place. Overall, it's pretty interesting, as they create not only your typical fast looking Italian road bike, but also a slew of other bikes ranging from kids bikes, city bikes, tricycles and large cargo bikes. Pretty cool. Check out their site:

http://www.derosabike.it/

Yep, it's De Rosa bikes. Not the De Rosa you may have seen in the states, though. That De Rosa is from Milano in the north. This is yet another De Rosa di Pozzuoli. Interesting how the European style of manufacturing lives on (vs. American/Mass production), with local craftsmen building product for their local customer base. You'll notice the decal on the bikes highlight the geographic location of manufacture, unlike most products.