Number of certified deaths, age-specific and age-standardised rates and percentages of all cancer deaths from 30 cancers or groups of cancers (plus total cancer mortality) for each five-year calendar period between 1955 and 1984 in Italy are presented in tabular form. From these data, three graphs are derived, including trends in age-standardised rates, age-specific rates centered on birth cohorts and maps plotted in different shades of grey to represent the surfaces defined by the matrix of various age-specific rates. These analyses quantified the rises in overall cancer mortality in males (from 137 to 192/100,000 world standard), chiefly due to increases in lung and other tobacco-related neoplasms. Overall cancer mortality was stable in females (around 100/100,000). Appreciable cohort effects were evident for tobacco related neoplasms, but also for other major cancer sites, such as intestines or breast, whose rates, after earlier rises, are now stable in earlier middle age. Since the early 1970's, cancer mortality rates have been declining in all age groups below 40 in males and below 55 in females. These declines reflect improvements in therapy for leukemias, lymphomas and germ cell tumors, and general improvements in food availability and storage, hygiene and early diagnosis, which have led to the declines in stomach and cervical cancer. Although moderate in absolute terms and smaller than in other western countries where tobacco-related neoplasms have also been falling in more recent cohorts, these declines are encouraging for the indication they provide on the most likely patterns over the next decades in the same and subsequent generations.