Facts about Italy
Capital Rome · Europe
10 topics · about 20 minutes
Italy is a long peninsula in southern Europe that has shaped Western law, religion, art and food more than almost any other country of its size. It was assembled into a single state only in 1861, which is why regional identity still runs deeper here than national identity for many Italians.
Italy is a republic of 20 regions, five of which hold special autonomy for linguistic or island reasons, and regional identity still runs deeper than national identity for many Italians in a state assembled only in 1861. The peninsula stretches about 1,200 kilometers from the Alps into the central Mediterranean, with the Apennines running its length like a spine and leaving little flat ground apart from the Po Valley in the north, which holds most of the farmland and heavy industry. Sicily and Sardinia are the two large offshore islands, and the country carries Europe’s only active mainland volcanoes.
Rome is the capital and holds the ancient city along with Vatican City inside it, while Milan is the financial and fashion center and Turin the historic car industry. Florence and Venice carry the Renaissance and the maritime republic respectively, Naples anchors the south beneath Vesuvius, and Palermo governs Sicily. Italy is among the most visited countries in the world, and most trips string together some combination of Rome, Florence and Venice, then branch out to the Amalfi coast, Tuscany or the lakes.
- Population
- 59 million
- Area
- 301,340 km²
- Currency
- Euro (€)
- Official language
- Italian
- Regions
- 20, five with special autonomy
- Highest point
- Mont Blanc, 4,806 m
The Italy course
Geography of Italy
A mountain spine down a 1,200-kilometer boot, with Europe’s only active mainland volcanoes.
History of Italy
An empire from Britain to Mesopotamia, then 1,400 years of city-states, then unity in 1871.
Language of Italy
The Romance language closest to Latin, and dialects that are really separate languages.
Culture of Italy
More World Heritage sites than any country, opera invented around 1600, and family at the center.
Economy of Italy
Small family firms clustered by speciality, luxury brands, and a persistent north-south gap.
Politics of Italy
Over 60 governments since 1946, because coalitions of many small parties tend to fracture.
Nature & Wildlife of Italy
Alpine glacier to Sicilian scrub, with fewer than a hundred Marsican bears left.
Food & Cuisine of Italy
Regional before national, tomatoes only after 1492, and usually the largest wine producer on Earth.
Landmarks of Italy
The largest amphitheater ever built, a 1,900-year-old concrete dome, and a ceiling by Michelangelo.
People & Society of Italy
Fifty-nine million and shrinking since 2014, with a median age around 48.
Geography of Italy
Italy stretches about 1,200 kilometers from the Alps into the central Mediterranean, taking the familiar boot shape, with Sicily and Sardinia as the two large offshore islands. The Apennine range runs the length of the peninsula like a spine, leaving little flat ground apart from the Po Valley in the north, which holds most of the farmland and heavy industry.
The country sits where the African and Eurasian plates collide, so it carries Europe’s only active mainland volcanoes. Vesuvius looms over Naples, Etna in Sicily is the most active volcano on the continent, and Stromboli has erupted almost continuously for millennia. Italy also surrounds two independent microstates, San Marino and Vatican City.
History of Italy
Rome grew from a city-state into an empire that at its height governed from Britain to Mesopotamia, spreading Latin, Roman law and eventually Christianity across three continents. The western empire collapsed in 476, and for the next 1,400 years the peninsula was a patchwork of city-states, papal territory and foreign holdings.
That fragmentation produced the Renaissance, as rival cities such as Florence, Venice and Milan competed through patronage of artists and architects. Unification, the Risorgimento, was completed in 1871 under the House of Savoy. Fascism under Mussolini took hold in 1922 and ended with defeat in the Second World War, after which a 1946 referendum abolished the monarchy and created the current republic.
Language of Italy
Italian is the Romance language closest to Latin in vocabulary and sound, and it became the national standard largely because it was the Tuscan dialect used by Dante in the Divine Comedy. At unification in 1861 only a small minority of the population spoke it at all; mass literacy, radio and television did the rest over the following century.
What Italians call dialects are in many cases separate languages rather than variants, with Neapolitan, Sicilian and Venetian each carrying their own literature. Twelve minority languages hold official recognition, among them German in South Tyrol, French in the Aosta Valley and Sardinian. Italian also supplies the international vocabulary of classical music, from allegro to crescendo.
Culture of Italy
Italy holds more UNESCO World Heritage sites than any other country, a reflection of how much of European art history was made here. The Renaissance produced Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael within a few decades of one another, and opera was invented in Florence around 1600 before Verdi and Puccini turned it into a national art form.
Family remains the central social institution, and it is normal for adult children to live at home well into their thirties. Catholicism shapes the calendar and the landscape even as regular church attendance falls, and the local patron saint’s festival is often a bigger event in a town than any national holiday.
Economy of Italy
Italy has one of the largest economies in Europe, built to an unusual degree on small and medium family firms clustered in regional industrial districts. These clusters specialise narrowly, whether in eyewear around Belluno or packaging machinery near Bologna, and together they make Italy a major exporter of machinery and precision equipment.
Luxury and design carry the brand abroad through fashion houses such as Prada and Armani and carmakers including Ferrari and Lamborghini. The persistent structural problem is the gap between a wealthy industrial north and a poorer south, where unemployment runs far higher. High public debt and weak productivity growth have constrained the economy since the euro was adopted.
Politics of Italy
Italy is a parliamentary republic. The president is head of state with mostly ceremonial duties, though the power to dissolve parliament and appoint a prime minister becomes decisive during a crisis. Real executive authority rests with the prime minister, who must hold the confidence of both chambers of parliament.
Governments are notoriously short-lived, with well over 60 since 1946, because coalitions assembled from many small parties tend to fracture. The country is divided into 20 regions, five of which hold special autonomy statutes reflecting linguistic or island status. Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Community through the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
Nature & Wildlife of Italy
Habitats range from Alpine glaciers through Apennine beech forest to the arid scrub of southern Sicily, and the surrounding sea adds a marine dimension that few European countries match. Twenty-five national parks protect roughly a tenth of the land surface.
The Marsican brown bear survives only in the central Apennines, with fewer than a hundred animals left, and the Alpine ibex was brought back from near extinction after being reduced to a single protected herd in the 1800s. Wolves have recovered strongly and now range as far north as the Alps. Offshore, the Pelagos Sanctuary protects fin whales and striped dolphins across a large stretch of the Ligurian Sea.
Food & Cuisine of Italy
Italian cooking is regional before it is national, and many dishes treated abroad as generically Italian belong to one province. Pasta shapes, sauces and even the fat used for cooking shift as you move down the peninsula, with butter and rice common in the north against olive oil and durum wheat in the south.
Several defining ingredients arrived from the Americas after 1492, tomatoes among them, so the tomato-based cooking of Naples is younger than it looks. Pizza was Neapolitan street food before it went global, and Italy protects hundreds of products under EU origin rules, including Parmigiano Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma. The country is also usually the largest wine producer in the world.
Landmarks of Italy
The Colosseum, completed in 80 AD, could seat around 50,000 spectators and remains the largest amphitheater ever built. Rome around it holds the Pantheon, whose unreinforced concrete dome is still the largest of its kind after nearly 1,900 years, alongside the ruins of the Forum at the center of the ancient city.
Vatican City contains St Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel ceiling that Michelangelo painted between 1508 and 1512. Elsewhere the leaning bell tower of Pisa, the canals of Venice, the Florence cathedral dome engineered by Brunelleschi and the streets of Pompeii buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD draw tens of millions of visitors a year.
People & Society of Italy
Italy has roughly 59 million residents and one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, close to 1.2 births per woman. The population has been shrinking since 2014, and with a median age around 48 the country is aging faster than almost any other in Europe.
Emigration shaped the national story for a century after unification, sending millions to the Americas and creating an Italian diaspora far larger than the home population. That pattern reversed in recent decades, and immigrants now make up about a tenth of residents, though young Italian graduates continue leaving for work elsewhere in Europe.
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