Automated cartographic generalization has been a challenging research field for over 30 years; nowadays thanks to the continuous research is becoming a concrete opportunity to increase the speed of map sets production and maintenance. As some National mapping agencies are working in this direction, in Italy automated cartographic generalization is still a research field, although recent researches show its applicability to the Italian data models for the production of maps. This paper illustrates how the production of cartography in Italy is organized and the situation of the research on generalization in the country. The paper reports the most interesting results of the research, especially those brought by the on-going CARGEN project, that testify how automated cartographic generalization could play a key role also in the Italian cartographic processes.