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Abstract: In this essay the author investigates the effects the great nineteenth century transformation had on the dominant social groups and on the relationship between the center and the periphery. After examining the distinctive difficulties of defining the middle-class of the Papal States (and ex Papal), the author, by means of numerous examples, concludes that the small provincial nobility preserved its centrality for the entire nineteenth century. Furthermore, the lesser nobility was decidedly more open-minded in accepting innovations in the public than in the private sphere. In particular, the activism of the nobility emerges in the exercise of representation and overall in politics (that Michelangelo Caetani labelled precisely the "eighth daedly sin"). It happened during a historical period characterized by impressive changes between the Napoleonic age and the end of the electoral system based on property, and culminated in national unification with its consequences. The provincial aristocracy, ready to act in the renewed political and institutional arena, was more cautions in reforming the private sphere (examined in this contribution with respect to marital strategies).