Italy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the republic. For other uses, see Italy (disambiguation). "Italia" and "Italian Republic" redirect here. For other uses, see Italia (disambiguation). For the short- lived 19th-century state, see Italian Republic (Napoleonic). Italian Republic Repubblica italiana Flag Emblem Anthem: Il Canto degli Italiani (Italian) The Song of the Italians MENU 0:00 Location of Italy (dark green) – in Europe (light green & dark grey) – in the European Union (light green) – [Legend] Capital Rome and largest city 41°54′N 12°29′E Official languages Italiana Demonym Italian Government Unitaryparliamentaryconstitutional republic - President Giorgio Napolitano - Prime Minister Matteo Renzi Legislature Parliament - Upper house Senate of the Republic - Lower house Chamber of Deputies Formation - Unification 17 March 1861 - Republic 2 June 1946 - Founded the EEC(now 1 January 1958 the European Union) Area - Total 301,338 km2(72nd) 116,347 sq mi - Water (%) 2.4 Population - 2013 estimate 60,782,668[1](23rd) - 2011 census 59,433,744[2](23rd) - Density 201.7/km2 (63rd) 522.4/sq mi GDP (PPP) 2014 estimate - Total $1.847 trillion[3](11th) - Per capita $30,803[3] (32nd) GDP (nominal) 2014 estimate - Total $2.171 trillion[3](8th) - Per capita $36,216[3] (27th) Gini (2011) 31.9[4] medium HDI (2013) 0.881[5] very high · 25th Currency Euro (€)b (EUR) Time zone CET (UTC+1) - Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2) Drives on the right c Calling code 39 ISO 3166 code IT d Internet TLD .it a. French is co-official in the Aosta Valley; Slovene is co-official in the province of Trieste and the province of Gorizia; German andLadin are co-official in South Tyrol. b. Before 2002, the Italian Lira. The euro is accepted in Campione d'Italia, but the official [6] currency there is the Swiss Franc. c. To call Campione d'Italia, it is necessary to use the Swiss code+41. d. The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with otherEuropean Union member states. Italy i/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica italiana),[7][8][9][10] is a unitary parliamentary republic in Southern Europe. To the north, Italy borders France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia, and is approximately delimited by the Alpine watershed, enclosing the Po Valley and the Venetian Plain. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula and the two biggest Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Italian territory also includes the islands of Pantelleria, 60 km (37 mi) east of the Tunisian coast and 100 km (62 mi) southwest of Sicily, and Lampedusa, at about 113 km (70 mi) from Tunisia and at 176 km (109 mi) from Sicily, in addition to many other smaller islands. The sovereign states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 (116,347 sq mi) and has a largely temperate climate. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the 5th most populous country in Europe. Among the world's most developed countries, Italy has the 4th-largest economy in the European Union, 3rd in the Eurozone and 9th in the world by GDP (IMF, 2012). Italy's capital and largest city, Rome, has for centuries been the leading political and religious centre of Western civilisation, serving as the capital of both the Roman Empire and Christianity. During the Dark Ages, Italy endured cultural and social decline in the face of repeated invasions byGermanic tribes, Muslims and Normans, with Greek-Roman heritage being preserved largely by Christian monks. Beginning around the 11th century, various Italian cities, communes and maritime republics rose to great prosperity through shipping, commerce and banking (indeed, moderncapitalism has its roots in Medieval Italy);[11] concurrently, Italian culture flourished, especially during the Renaissance, which produced many notable scholars, artists, and polymaths such asLeonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. Meanwhile, Italian explorers such asPolo, Columbus, Vespucci, and Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Nevertheless, Italy would remain fragmented into many warring states for the rest of the Middle Ages, subsequently falling prey to larger European powers such as the Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain, and later Austria. Italy would thus enter a long period of decline that lasted until the beginning of the 18th century. After many unsuccessful attempts, the second and the third wars of Italian independence resulted in the unification of most of present-day Italy between 1859 and 1866.[12] From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the new Kingdom of Italy rapidly industrialised and acquired acolonial empire becoming a Great Power.[13] However, Southern and rural Italy remained largely excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite victory in World War I as one of the Big Four with permanent membership in the security council of the League of Nations, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, which favoured the establishment of a Fascist dictatorship in 1922. The subsequent participation in World War II, at the side of Nazi Germany and Japan forming the Axis Alliance, ended in military defeat, economic destruction and civil war. In the years that followed, Italy abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, and enjoyed a prolonged economic boom, thus becoming one of the most developed nations in the world,[5][14][15][16][17] with the fifth largest economy by nominal GDP by the early 1990s. Italy was a founding member of NATO in 1949 and one of the Inner Six of the European Community in 1957, which became the EU in 1993. It is part of the Schengen Area, and has been a member of the Eurozone since 1999. Italy is considered to be both a major regional power and a leading middle power,[18][19][20][21][22][23]with membership in prominent institutions such as the UN, the EU, the NATO, the OECD, theOSCE, the DAC, the WTO, the G4, G6, G7, G8, G10, G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, theLatin Union, the Council of Europe, the Central European Initiative and the Uniting for Consensus. Italy currently maintains the world's tenth-largest nominal defence budget and is a participant in theNATO nuclear sharing policy. On 1 July 2014, Italy replaced Greece as the seat of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Contents [hide] 1 Name 2 History o 2.1 Prehistory and antiquity o 2.2 Middle Ages o 2.3 Early Modern o 2.4 Italian unification, Liberal Italy and the Great War o 2.5 Fascist Regime o 2.6 Republican Italy 3 Geography o 3.1 Environment o 3.2 Climate 4 Politics o 4.1 Government o 4.2 Law and criminal justice o 4.3 Foreign relations o 4.4 Military o 4.5 Administrative divisions 5 Economy o 5.1 Infrastructure 6 Demographics o 6.1 Ethnic groups o 6.2 Languages o 6.3 Religion o 6.4 Education o 6.5 Healthcare 7 Culture o 7.1 Architecture o 7.2 Visual art o 7.3 Literature and theatre o 7.4 Music o 7.5 Cinema o 7.6 Science and Technology o 7.7 Sport o 7.8 Fashion and design o 7.9 Cuisine 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Bibliography 12 External links Name Main article: Name of Italy The assumptions on the etymology of the name "Italia" are very numerous and the corpus of the solutions proposed by historians and linguists is very wide.[24] According to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin: Italia,[25] was borrowed through Greek from theOscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" (cf. Lat vitulus "calf", Umb vitlo "calf").[26] The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassusstates this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus,[27] mentioned also by Aristotle[28] and Thucydides.[29] The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria: province of Reggio, and part of the provinces of Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia). But by his time Oenotriaand Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region, but it was during the reign of Emperor Augustus (end of the 1st century BC) that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula until the Alps.[30] History Main article: History of Italy Prehistory and antiquity Main articles: Prehistoric Italy, Magna Graecia, Etruscan civilization, Roman Italy, Ancient Rome, Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic andRoman Empire The Colosseum in Rome, built c. 70 – 80 AD, is considered one of the greatest works of Roman architecture andengineering. Excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Paleolithic period, some 200,000 years ago,[31] modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. The Ancient peoples of pre-Roman Italy – such as the Umbrians, the Latins (from which the Romans emerged), Volsci,Samnites, the Celts and the Ligures which inhabited northern Italy, and many others – were Indo-European peoples; the main historic peoples of non-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, theElymians and Sicani in Sicily and the prehistoric Sardinians.