Many think that the closing down has to do with the fact juventus.it will have a forum soon, rumors say administrated by the former j1897 admin.
Anyway, now most of the Italian users will start posting at VecchiaSignora, the concurrent forum. It's very similar to j1897, moderated by ex j1897 mods and partly frequented by the same users.
Their server is not able to support the quantity of users j1897 had, though, and they will have many problems, expecially in the first weeks.
It'd be nice to open an Italian section to welcome some the former j1897 users and VS would be the best place to promote it.