It has been widely reported that hypertension prevalence has been continuously and progressively growing during the last decades worldwide, due to ageing of the population, improved survival after cardiovascular events, environmental factors and ameliorated socio-economic condition of the population in large regions of the planet. However, levels of blood pressure (BP) control in treated hypertensive patients have been substantially unchanged for years, ranging between approximately 33-47 % in most European countries [1], despite an improved awareness of the disease. In Italy, analysis of observational studies and clinical surveys performed in various clinical settings during 10-year observational period (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011) showed that only 37 % of treated hypertensive patients achieved the recommended BP targets [2]. According to these reports, in the last few years several interventions have been undertaken at various levels for improving BP control rates in our Country, as well as in other parts of the world. All these educational and clinical interventions shared several common features, mostly the systematic and thorough assessment of the secular trends in prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension in the general population and the progressive and extended involvement of general practitioners (and their medical databases) in the clinical management of hypertension. This large amount of data can be used to provide a rough estimation of the burden of hypertension in various Countries in a setting of real life.Among these opportunities, World Hypertension Day (WHD) can be viewed as an useful opportunity for providing interesting insights. WHD is a worldwide initiative of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH) and World Hypertension League (WHL) with the active participation of various international and national societies. This is aimed at focusing population and media attention on the problem of hypertension and the potential lifethreatening consequences of uncontrolled hypertension. During these one-day events, open checkpoints are made available to people in public spaces or hospital areas to measure BP levels, verify awareness and control of individual BP, and, finally, evaluate presence or absence of other hypertension-related clinical conditions and risk factors. These consultations are totally free and offered by different professional figures from the health care system, who have been trained in measuring BP levels according to recommendations from international guidelines [3]. This provides a unique opportunity to access to the ''man in the street'' and obtain real-life data on hypertension awareness and control.Using these findings, for example, we were recently able to investigate hypertension prevalence, awareness and control in a very large sample of more than 10,000 adult individuals, mostly women, who were stratified into three time periods