The demand for culture considered as a whole has become a case of huge importance with a steady growth of interest. Numbers do not leave any doubts: taking into consideration just the museums and exhibitions field, in Italy the percentage of visitors on the total amount of population shifted by 22,7 percent in 1993 to 28 percent in 2001, with peaks by 33,3 percent in the North-East region and by 35,8 percent in the North-West. The in total 800 interviews about the fruition of culture have been made during the last week of April in the Historic Centre, in Mestre and at the Lido of Venice and have involved: customers of clothing shops, thus willing to consider also a component which is “diversified” respect to cultural phenomenons; customers of supermarkets, aiming to capture the more generic a/o generalizing subject as to recreational cultural behaviours; library-goers, essentially students, in order to capture the habits of a component not exclusively made of residents, but steady and surely influent as to the dimension of the events market; museum and cinema-goers, in order to capture the behaviours of a component which is directly linked to cultural fruition.

The socio-cultural characteristics of the persons interviewed

A great majority of the persons interviewed lives in the Historic Centre (61,6 percent), another 23,8 percent in the mainland, about 11 percent in other commons of the Veneto region and 3,5 percent in other italian regions. Indeed, it is not a sample representing the resident population, but a representation of the resident population plus the stable city users, more than the commuters. Anyway, all age classes are widely represented. The groups which as to dimensions polarize the research’s results are, besides students (29,4 percent): employees and teachers (18,6 percent) and leaders and professionals (13,0 percent), senior citizens (16,4 percent) and housewives (11,4 percent).

The fruition of cultural structures

The analysis of cultural behaviours outlines some important macro-phenomenons: - a high attendance of libraries (24,8% at least once a week) and cinemas, with cinemas representing the most popular cultural and recreational structure (17,9% at least once a week and 38,1% at least once a month);
 the lack of attendance, by around 50% of the interviewed persons, to important cultural structures as places where lectures are held, libraries and theatres. More than one third of the interviewed persons can be defined as the faithful public of cultural events, since 30,7 percent attends to a lecture at least 2/3 times a year, 45,5 percent visits an exhibition, 33 percent goes to a theatre and 34 percent goes to a concert. Young people are great consumers of culture, indeed age classes inferior to 24 years registered a percentage of frequent visitors of all structures which is highly superior to the size of the sample taken into consideration, because people younger than 24 correspond in total to 28,5 percent, while frequent visitors of that age class are present with 37percent to lectures, with 53 percent to libraries, 36 percent to cinemas, 31 percent to theatres and 47 percent to concerts. Central age classes represent always one third of frequent visitors and form, like young age classes, a group more represented respect to the relative sample size, since they make up the 29,1 percent of the sample. People older than 45, the elderly most of all, show a low attendance if compared to their presence in the sample. Besides the absence of use modality, originated from a shortage of time together with the lack of interest, which can hide a lack of real spurs and motivation, the analysis of the attendance to cultural structures allows to spot some different behaviour tipologies:
 theatres, concerts, lectures and exhibitions-goers (even if the offer given by these structures presents deep differences) outline a wide group of evolved frequent visitors (around one third);
 film amateurs, belonging to all age classes and to all professional and non professional kinds of activities, even though the greatest part of the public is made up of students and teachers, which determine the supremacy of cinema in the attendance of cultural activities;
 students filling up all city libraries represent 55,6 percent of goers and 74,8 percent goes there at least once a week

Information and access to cultural events

The purchase modality of tickets for cultural events shows new ways to present the offer and, at the same time, links and interest on behalf of the fruitors. The box office and, in certain cases, the choice of an “impulsive consumption” are the patterns characterizing visitors of museums and, most of all, cinemas. Theatre and concerts show on the contrary the presence of a not marginal number of devoted fruitors, that is to say the season-tickets holders, and also of evolved fruitors, which pre purchase the ticket through the call-center service or through Vela sale service (around 10 percent ) or through the Web (more than 4 percent). The Web is becoming an important medium also for who purchases tickets for museums and cinemas entrance. Of all people declaring to own a season ticket to cultural or leisure events, 40,6 percent refers to theatre, 25 percent owns a season ticket for the cinema and 15,6 percent for musical events. An important factor in order to understand the routes, the needs and the ways of acting of the cultural consumption is made up by the relationship existing with instruments and information sources. It has thus been asked to the people interviewed to give an opinion concerning the quality of the information about cultural events given by the media. The local newspaper is said to be the best medium of information about cultural and performance events taking place in the city where the persons interviewed live, indeed it is given a good mark from 68,9 percent of the persons interviewed. The most traditional instrument is followed in the list of favourite media by the most modern, the Web, which obtains a positive judgement from more than half the sample (50,7 percent).