Comparison of forest definitions at the national level using dominance analysis. Despite Italian forests are subject of protection since long time, the first forest definition legally binding has been enacted only in 2001. However, thanks to the action of international, national and regional institutions, 25 forest definitions are effective today on the Italian territory. All definitions of forest are fully described and their qualification analyzed using four definition types: legislation, policies, technical and allocative. Only those that are included in the first three types were subjected to dominance analysis. Macro-criteria, criteria and sub-criteria have been defined to build an absolute valuation matrix. Concordance, discordance and dominance analysis have been cattied out after normaliztion. Forest definitions have been subdivided into two groups: dominant and dominated. The first group includes all regional definitions due to the details of their content, while the second group includes definition adopted by international and national institutions. Three aspects have been emphasized in the conclusion: (a) all definitions, except that adopted by the Lombardy Region, are based on the “forest land” and not on the “forest”; (b) most definitions do not include the multifunctional nature of the forest thus neglecting one of the most relevant forest profiles; (c) the first part of all definition is devoted to technical details as if the main motivation for their elaboration were the quantification of the forest area.