Fed up with corruption in mainstream politics, voters turned to mayoral candidates of the left and right and a group seeking autonomy for Italy's north, exit polls and projections showed.
In Naples, Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of World War II dictator Benito Mussolini and a prominent neo-fascist herself, made it to a runoff.Christian Democrats and Socialists, who have governed Italy for 45 years, were shut out in six major cities on Sunday, showing that voters had lost faith in both centrist parties ahead of national elections likely next year.
The parties have been deeply implicated in a scandal that has unearthed widespread, systematic corruption and produced allegations of ties between politicians and organized crime.
Financial markets reacted nervously Monday to the prospect of a changed political map. The lira and the Milan stock market, Italy's largest, both weakened.
More than 11 million Italians - one-quarter of the electorate - were eligible to vote in races for governments in 428 cities, three provinces and the northeastern region of Trentino-Alto Adige.
Turnout was reported heavy despite snow and rain up and down the peninsula.
The major tests were in Rome, Venice, Genoa, Trieste, Palermo and Naples. If no candidate wins at least half the votes cast, the top two vote-getters enter a Dec. 5 runoff.
Mussolini captured 30.8 percent of the vote - enough to force a contest against her leftist rival, Antonio Bassolino, who led with 40.6 percent, according to a projection based on early results by the Doxa polling service for state-run TV.
Mussolini, a 30-year-old former actress who represents a Naples district in Parliament, is the daughter of Benito Mussolini's son, Romano, a jazz pianist, and the sister of actress Sophia Loren, Maria Scicolone.
In Rome, neo-fascists scored another gain, with national party leader Gianfranco Fini reaching the runoff against Francesco Rutelli, a Parliament deputy backed by the environmentalist Greens party and former communists. The Doxa projection gave Rutelli an edge, but a smaller one than Sunday's exit polls showed.
With 50 seats in Parliament, the neo-fascist party holds itself up as the heir to Mussolini's Fascist movement, stressing the need for public order, immigration controls and the death penalty, outlawed since World War II. It has distanced itelf from the dictator's anti-Semitic policies and skinhead violence in Europe.
In the northern cities of Genoa, Venice and Trieste, the race tested the strength of the Northern League, which hopes to build on its success in Milan, where it won the mayor's seat and 45 percent of the vote in June.
League candidates made the runoff in Genoa and Venice, where they trailed leftist-backed candidates, and narrowly missed in Trieste, polls showed.