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Italy,[a] officially the Italian Republic,[b] is a country in Southern[14] and Western[15][c] Europe. It is located on a peninsula that extends into the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land border, as well as several islands, notably Sicily and Sardinia.[16] Italy shares its borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and two enclaves: Vatican City and San Marino. Its territory also includes Campione (an exclave surrounded by Switzerland) and the Pelagie Islands (an archipelago in the African Plate). It is the tenth-largest country by land area in the European continent, covering an area of 301,340 km2 (116,350 sq mi),[3] and the third-most populous member state of the European Union, with a population of nearly 60 million.[17] Its capital and largest city is Rome.
In antiquity, the Italian peninsula was home to numerous peoples; the Latin city of Rome in central Italy, founded as a Kingdom, became a Republic that conquered the Mediterranean world and ruled it for centuries as an Empire.[18][19][20] With the spread of Christianity, Rome became the seat of the Catholic Church and of the Papacy. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy experienced the fall of the Western Roman Empire and inward migration from Germanic tribes. By the 11th century, Italian city-states and maritime republics expanded, bringing renewed prosperity through commerce and laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.[21][22] The Italian Renaissance flourished in Florence during the 15th and 16th centuries and spread to the rest of Europe. Italian explorers also discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, leading the European Age of Discovery. However, centuries of rivalry and infighting between the Italian city-states among other factors left the peninsula divided into numerous states until the late modern period.[23][24] During the 17th and 18th centuries, Italian economic and commercial importance waned significantly.[25]
After centuries of political and territorial divisions, Italy was almost entirely unified in 1861, following wars of independence and the Expedition of the Thousand, establishing the Kingdom of Italy.[26] From the late 19th to the early 20th century, Italy rapidly industrialized, mainly in the north, and acquired a colonial empire,[27] while the south remained largely impoverished and excluded from industrialization, fueling a large immigrant diaspora to the Americas.[28] From 1915 to 1918, Italy took part in World War I on the side of the Entente against the Central Powers. In 1922, following a period of crisis and turmoil, the Italian fascist dictatorship was established. During World War II, Italy was first part of the Axis until its surrender to the Allied powers (1940–1943) and then, as parts of its territory were occupied by Nazi Germany with fascist collaboration, a co-belligerent of the Allies during the Italian resistance and the liberation of Italy (1943–1945). Following the end of the war, the monarchy was replaced by a republic, via a referendum; and the country enjoyed a strong recovery, which resulted in prolonged prosperity that is often termed "the economic miracle".[29]
Extent of territory named Italy in the age of the Roman empire
Extent of the ancient Roman territory named Italy, showing regional subdivisions
Hypotheses for the etymology of the name Italia are numerous.[36] One theory suggests that it originated from an Ancient Greek term that refers to the land of the Italói, a tribe that resided in the region now known as Calabria, located at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula. Originally thought to be named Vituli, some scholars suggest their totemic animal to be the calf (Latvitulus, Umbrianvitlo, OscanVíteliú).[37] Several ancient authors (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiochus of Syracuse, Aristotle) have instead given the account that Italy to have been named after a local ruler named Italus.[38][39][40]
According to Antiochus of Syracuse, the ancient Greek term for Italy initially referred only to the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (corresponding to the modern province of Reggio) and parts of the provinces of Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia in southern Italy. Nevertheless, by his time the larger concept of Oenotria and "Italy" had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. According to Strabo's Geographica, before the expansion of the Roman Republic, the name was used by ancient Greeks to indicate the land between the strait of Messina and the line connecting the gulf of Salerno and gulf of Taranto, corresponding roughly to the current region of Calabria. The ancient Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region.[41] In addition to the "Greek Italy" in the south, historians have suggested the existence of an "Etruscan Italy", which consisted of areas of central Italy.[42]
The borders of Roman Italy, Italia, are better established. Cato's Origines, the first work of history composed in Latin, describes Italy as the entire peninsula south of the Alps.[43] According to Cato and several Roman authors, the Alps formed the "walls of Italy".[44] In 264 BC, Roman Italy extended from the Arno and Rubicon rivers of the centre-north to the entire south. The northern area, Cisalpine Gaul, which was considered geographically and de facto part of Italy, was occupied by Rome in the 220s BC,[45] but remained politically and de jure separated. It was legally merged into the administrative unit of Italy in 42 BC by the triumvir Octavian, as planned by Julius Caesar.[46][47][48][49][50] The islands of Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and Malta were added to Italy by Diocletian in 292 AD,[51] which made late-ancient Italy coterminous with the modern Italian geographical region.[52] All its inhabitants were considered Italic and Roman.[53]
The Latin term Italicus was used to describe "a man of Italy" as opposed to a provincial, or one from the Roman province. For example, Pliny the Elder notably wrote in a letter Italicus es an provincialis? ("are you an Italian or a provincial"?).[54] The adjective italianus, from which the term Italian was derived (as well as in French), is from medieval Latin and was used alternatively with Italicus during the early modern period.[55]
Thousands of Lower Paleolithic artefacts, dating as far back as 850,000 years, have been recovered from Monte Poggiolo.[57] Excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Middle Palaeolithic period some 200,000 years ago,[58] while modern humans appeared about 40,000 years ago at Riparo Mochi.[59][60]
The first foreign colonizers were the Phoenicians, who initially established colonies and founded various emporiums on the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia. Some of these became small urban canters and developed parallel to the ancient Greek colonies. Among the main centres there were the cities of Motya, Zyz, Soluntum in Sicily, and Nora, Sulci, and Tharros in Sardinia.[63]
Between the 17th and the 11th centuries BC, Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Italy.[64][65][66] During the 8th and 7th centuries, a number of Greek colonies were established at Pithecusae, eventually extending along the south of the Italian Peninsula and the coast of Sicily, an area that was later known as Magna Graecia.[67]
The Italian Peninsula, named Italia, was consolidated into a unified entity during the Roman expansion, the conquest of new territories being often at the expense of the other Italic tribes, Etruscans, Celts, and Greeks. A permanent association, with most of the local tribes and cities, was formed, and Rome began the conquest of Western Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. In the wake of Julius Caesar's rise and assassination in the 1st century BC, Rome over the course of centuries grew into a massive empire stretching from Britain to the borders of Persia, engulfing the whole Mediterranean basin, in which Greek, Roman, and many other cultures merged into a unique civilisation. The long and triumphant reign of the first emperor, Augustus, began a golden age of peace and prosperity. Roman Italy remained the metropole of the empire, the homeland of the Romans and the territory of the capital.[69][70][71]
The Roman Empire was among the largest empires in world history, and it wielded great economical, cultural, political, and military power. At its greatest extent, under Emperor Trajan, it had an area of 5 million square kilometres (1.9×10^6 sq mi).[72][73] The Roman legacy has deeply influenced Western civilisation shaping most of the modern world; such as the widespread use of the Romance languages derived from Latin, the numerical system, the modern Western alphabet and calendar, and the emergence of Christianity as a major world religion are among the many legacies of Roman dominance.[74]
Middle Ages
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy fell under the power of Odoacer's kingdom, and later was seized by the Ostrogoths,[75] which was followed by a brief reconquest under Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. Invasions of the peninsula resulted in a chaotic succession of barbarian kingdoms and the supposed "dark ages". The invasion of another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, late in the same century, reduced the Byzantine presence to the rump realm of the Exarchate of Ravenna and ended political unity of the peninsula for the next 1,300 years. The peninsula was therefore divided into northern Italy and Tuscany forming the Lombard kingdom, with its capital in Pavia, and central-southern Italy, including the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, controlled by the Lombards. The remaining part of the peninsula remained under the Byzantines and was divided between the exarchate of Italy, based in Ravenna, the Duchy of Rome, the Duchy of Naples, the Duchy of Calabria, and Sicily, the latter being directly dependent on the emperor at Constantinople.[76]
The Lombard kingdom was subsequently absorbed into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne in the late 8th century and became the Kingdom of Italy.[77] The Franks helped the formation of the Papal States in central Italy. Until the 13th century, Italian politics was dominated by the relations between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Papacy, with most of the Italian city-states siding with the former (Ghibellines) or with the latter (Guelphs) for momentary advantage.[78]
The Germanic emperor and the Roman pontiff became the universal powers of medieval Europe. However, the conflict over the Investiture Controversy and the clash between Guelphs and Ghibellines led to the end of the imperial-feudal system in the north of Italy, where city-states gained independence.[79] The investiture controversy was finally resolved by the Concordat of Worms. In 1176, a league of city-states, the Lombard League, defeated the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano, thus ensuring effective independence for most of northern and central Italian cities.
Italian city-states—such as Milan, Florence, and Venice—played a crucially innovative role in financial development by devising the main instruments and practices of banking and emerging new forms of social and economic organization.[80] In coastal and southern areas, the maritime republics eventually dominated the Mediterranean and monopolised trade routes to the Orient. They were independent thalassocratic city-states, though most of them originated from territories belonging to the Byzantine Empire. All these cities during the time of their independence had similar systems of government in which the merchant class had considerable power. Although in practice these were oligarchical, and bore little resemblance to a modern democracy, the relative political freedom they afforded was conducive to academic and artistic advancement.[81] The four best-known maritime republics were Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi; the others were Ancona, Gaeta, Noli, and Ragusa.[82][83][84] Each of the maritime republics had dominion over different overseas lands, including many Mediterranean islands, lands on the Adriatic, Aegean, and Black seas, and commercial colonies in the Near East and in North Africa. Venice maintained enormous tracts of land in Greece, Cyprus, Istria, and Dalmatia until the mid-17th century.[85]
Venice and Genoa were Europe's main gateways to trade with the East, and producers of fine glass, while Florence was a centre of silk, wool, banking, and jewellery. The wealth and business brought to Italy meant that large public and private artistic projects could be commissioned. The republics were heavily involved in the Crusades, providing support and transport, but mostly taking advantage of the political and trading opportunities resulting from the wars.[81] Italy first felt the huge economic changes in Europe which led to the commercial revolution: the Republic of Venice was able to defeat the Byzantine Empire and finance the voyages of Marco Polo to Asia; the first universities were formed in Italian cities, and scholars such as Thomas Aquinas obtained international fame; Frederick I of Sicily made Italy the political-cultural centre of a reign that temporarily included the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Jerusalem; capitalism and banking families emerged in Florence, where Dante and Giotto were active around 1300.[21]
In the south, Sicily had become an Arab Islamic emirate in the 9th century, thriving until the Italo-Normans conquered it in the late 11th century, together with most of the Lombard and Byzantine principalities of southern Italy.[86] Through a complex series of events, southern Italy developed as a unified kingdom, first under the House of Hohenstaufen, then the Capetian House of Anjou, and under the House of Aragon from the 15th century. In Sardinia, the former Byzantine provinces became independent states known in Italian as Judicates, although some parts of the island fell under Genoese or Pisan rule until Aragonese annexation in the 15th century. The Black Death of 1348 left its mark on Italy by killing perhaps one third of the population.[87][88]
Early modern period
Italy was the birthplace and heart of the Renaissance during the 1400s and 1500s. The Italian Renaissance marked the transition from the medieval period to the modern age as Europe recovered, economically and culturally, from the crises of the Late Middle Ages and entered the Early Modern Period. The Italian polities were now regional states effectively ruled by princes, who were de facto monarchs in control of trade and administration, and their courts became major centres of the arts and sciences. The Italian princedoms represented the first modern states, as opposed to feudal monarchies and multinational empires. The princedoms were led by political dynasties and merchant families such as the Medici in Florence; the Visconti and Sforza in the Duchy of Milan; the Doria in the Republic of Genoa; the Loredan, Mocenigo, and Barbarigo in the Republic of Venice; the Este in Ferrara; and the Gonzaga in Mantua.[89][90] The Renaissance was fostered by the wealth accumulated by Italian merchant cities combined and the patronage of its dominant families.[89] Italian Renaissance exercised a dominant influence on subsequent European painting and sculpture for centuries afterwards, with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giotto, Donatello, and Titian, and architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Andrea Palladio, and Donato Bramante.
Following the conclusion of the western schism in favour of Rome at the Council of Constance (1415–1417), newly elected Pope Martin V returned to the Papal States after a three-year-long journey that touched many Italian cities and restored Italy as the sole centre of Western Christianity. During the course of this voyage, the Medici Bank was made the official credit institution of the Papacy, and several significant ties were established between the Church and the new political dynasties of the peninsula. The Popes' status as elective monarchs turned the conclaves and consistories of the Renaissance into political battles between the courts of Italy for primacy in the peninsula and access to the immense resources of the Catholic Church. In 1439, Pope Eugenius IV and the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos signed a reconciliation agreement between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church at the Council of Florence hosted by Cosimo the old de Medici. In 1453, Italian forces under Giovanni Giustiniani were sent by Pope Nicholas V to defend the Walls of Constantinople but the decisive battle was lost to the more advanced Turkish army, which was equipped with cannons, and Byzantium fell to Sultan Mehmed II.
Italian[d]explorers and navigators from the dominant maritime republics, eager to find an alternative route to the Indies in order to bypass the Ottoman Empire, offered their services to monarchs of Atlantic countries and played a key role in ushering the Age of Discovery and the European colonization of the Americas. The most notable among them were: Christopher Columbus, colonizer in the name of Spain, who is credited with discovering the New World and the opening of the Americas for conquest and settlement by Europeans;[95]John Cabot, sailing for England, who was the first European to set foot in "New Found Land" and explore parts of the North American continent in 1497;[96]Amerigo Vespucci, sailing for Portugal, who, around 1501, first demonstrated that the New World was not Asia as initially conjectured, but a fourth continent previously unknown to people of the Old World;[97] and Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the service of France, is renowned as the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick in 1524.[98]
Following the fall of Constantinople, the wars in Lombardy came to an end; and a defensive alliance known as Italic League was formed between Venice, Naples, Florence, Milan, and the Papacy. Lorenzo the Magnificent de Medici was the greatest Florentine patron of the Renaissance and supporter of the Italic League. His support notably allowed the League to maintain itself in the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy and aborted the invasion of Italy by the Turks. However, the military campaign of Charles VIII of France in Italy resulted in the disbandment of the League and initiated the Italian Wars between the Valois and the Habsburgs. During the High Renaissance of the 1500s, Italy was, therefore, the main European battleground as well as the cultural-economic centre of the continent. Popes such as Julius II (1503–1513) fought for the control of Italy against foreign monarchs; others, such as Paul III (1534–1549), preferred to mediate between the European powers in order to secure peace in Italy. In the middle of this conflict, the Medici popes Leo X (1513–1521) and Clement VII (1523–1534) opposed the Protestant Reformation and advanced the interests of their family. In 1559, at the end of the French invasions of Italy and of the Italian wars, many states of northern Italy remained as part of the Holy Roman Empire, indirectly subjected to the Austrian Habsburgs, while all of Southern Italy (Naples, Sicily, Sardinia) and Milan were under the Spanish Habsburg rule.
The Italian economy declined during the 1600s and 1700s. Following the European wars of succession of the 18th century, the North fell under the influence of the Habsburg-Lorraine of Austria, while the South was passed to a cadet branch of the Spanish Bourbons. During the Coalition Wars, northern and central Italy were reorganised by Napoleon as a number of Sister Republics of France and, later, as a Kingdom of Italy in personal union with the French Empire.[99] The southern half of the peninsula was administered by Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law, who was crowned as King of Naples. The 1814 Congress of Vienna restored the situation of the late 18th century, but the ideals of the French Revolution could not be eradicated, and soon re-surfaced during the political upheavals that characterised the first part of the 19th century.
Giuseppe Mazzini(left), highly influential leader of the Italian revolutionary movement; and Giuseppe Garibaldi(right), celebrated as one of the greatest generals of modern times[105] and as the "Hero of the Two Worlds",[106] who fought in many military campaigns that led to Italian unification.
The birth of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of efforts of Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to establish a united kingdom encompassing the entire Italian Peninsula. By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism—along with other social, economic, and military events—led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval.[107] Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the political and social Italian unification movement, or Risorgimento, emerged to unite Italy by consolidating the different states of the peninsula and liberating them from foreign control. A prominent radical figure was the patriotic journalist Giuseppe Mazzini, a member of the secret revolutionary society, the Carbonari, and founder of the influential political movement Young Italy in the early 1830s, who favoured a unitary republic and advocated a broad nationalist movement. His prolific output of propaganda helped the unification movement stay active.
In this context, in 1847 the first public performance of the song "Il Canto degli Italiani", which became the Italian national anthem in 1946, took place.[108][109] The anthem, written by Goffredo Mameli and set to music by Michele Novaro, is also known as the Inno di Mameli, after the author of the lyrics, or as the Fratelli d'Italia, from its opening line.
The most famous member of Young Italy was the revolutionary and general Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was renowned for his extremely loyal followers[110] and who led the Italian republican drive for unification in Southern Italy. However, the northern Italian monarchy of the House of Savoy, in the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose government was led by Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, also had ambitions of establishing a united Italian state. In the context of the 1848 liberal revolutions that swept through Europe, an unsuccessful first war of independence was declared against Austria. In 1855, the Kingdom of Sardinia became an ally of Britain and France in the Crimean War, making Cavour's diplomacy legitimate in the eyes of the great powers.[111][112] The Kingdom of Sardinia fought the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence of 1859, with the aid of France, resulting in liberating Lombardy. On the basis of the Plombières Agreement, the Kingdom of Sardinia ceded Savoy and Nice to France, an event that caused the Niçard exodus, which involved the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy,[113] and the Niçard Vespers.
In 1860–1861, Garibaldi led the drive for unification in Naples and Sicily,[114] while the House of Savoy troops occupied the central territories of the Italian peninsula, except for Rome and part of the Papal States. Teano was the site of the famous meeting (on 26 October 1860) between Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II, the last king of Sardinia, during which Garibaldi shook Victor Emanuel's hand and hailed him as King of Italy. Thus, Garibaldi sacrificed republican hopes for the sake of Italian unity under a monarch. Cavour agreed to include Garibaldi's Southern Italy in a union with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860. This allowed the Sardinian government to declare a united Italian kingdom on 17 March 1861.[115] Victor Emmanuel II then became the first king of a united Italy, and its capital was moved from Turin to Florence. The title of "King of Italy" had been unused since the abdication of Napoleon I of France on 6 April 1814.
In 1866, Victor Emmanuel II, allied with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War, waged the Third Italian War of Independence, which resulted in Italy annexing Venetia. Finally, in 1870, as France abandoned its garrisons in Rome during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War to keep the large Prussian Army at bay in France, the Italians filled the power gap by capturing the Papal States. Italian unification was completed, and shortly afterwards Italy's capital was moved to Rome. Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi, Cavour, and Mazzini have been referred as Italy's Four Fathers of the Fatherland.[105]
The new Kingdom of Italy obtained Great Power status. The Constitutional Law of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Albertine Statute of 1848, was extended to the whole Kingdom of Italy in 1861, and provided basic freedoms for the new state; but electoral laws excluded the non-propertied and uneducated classes from voting. The new kingdom was governed within a framework of parliamentary constitutional monarchy dominated by liberal forces. As northern Italy quickly industrialised, the southern and northern rural areas remained underdeveloped and overpopulated, forcing millions of people to migrate abroad and fuelling a large and influential diaspora. The Italian Socialist Party constantly increased in strength, challenging the traditional liberal and conservative establishment.
Starting in the last two decades of the 19th century, Italy developed into a colonial power by subjugating Eritrea and Somalia in East Africa, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in North Africa, and the Dodecanese islands.[116] From 2 November 1899 to 7 September 1901, Italian troops were a contingent of the Eight-Nation Alliance forces during the Boxer Rebellion in China. On 7 September 1901, a concession in Tientsin was ceded to the country, and on 7 June 1902, the concession was taken into Italian possession and administered by a consul. In 1913, male universal suffrage was adopted. The pre–World War I period was dominated by Giovanni Giolitti, who was prime minister five times between 1892 and 1921, was characterised by the economic, industrial, and political-cultural modernization of Italian society.
Italy entered into the First World War in 1915 with the aim of completing national unity: for this reason, the Italian intervention in the First World War is also considered the Fourth Italian War of Independence,[117] from a historiographical perspective that identifies the latter as the conclusion of the unification of Italy.[118][119]
The socialist agitations that followed the devastation of the Great War, inspired by the Russian Revolution, led to counter-revolution and repression throughout Italy. The liberal establishment, fearing a Soviet-style revolution, started to endorse the small National Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini. In October 1922, the Blackshirts of the National Fascist Party organized a mass demonstration and a coup named the "March on Rome"; Prime Minister Luigi Facta wished to declare a state of siege, but this was overruled by King Victor Emmanuel III, who, on 30 October 1922, appointed Mussolini as prime minister, thereby transferring political power to the fascists without armed conflict.[125][126] Over the next few years, Mussolini banned all political parties and curtailed personal liberties, thus establishing a dictatorship. These actions attracted international attention and eventually inspired similar dictatorships such as those in Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain.
Italian Fascism is based upon Italian nationalism and imperialism, and, in particular, seeks to complete what it considers as the incomplete project of the unification of Italy by incorporating Italia Irredenta (unredeemed Italy) into the state of Italy.[127][128] To the east of Italy, the Fascists claimed that Dalmatia was a land of Italian culture, whose Italians, including those of Italianized South Slavic descent, had been driven out of Dalmatia and into exile in Italy, and supported the return of Italians of Dalmatian heritage.[129] Mussolini identified Dalmatia as having had strong Italian cultural roots for centuries, similarly to Istria, via the Roman Empire and the Republic of Venice.[130] To the south of Italy, the Fascists claimed Malta, which belonged to the United Kingdom, and Corfu, which belonged to Greece; to the north they claimed Italian Switzerland; while to the west they claimed Corsica, Nice, and Savoy, which belonged to France.[131][132] The Fascist regime produced literature on Corsica that presented evidence of the island's italianità.[133] The Fascist regime produced literature on Nice that justified that Nice was an Italian land, based on historic, ethnic, and linguistic grounds.[133]
The Armistice of Villa Giusti, which ended fighting between Italy and Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I, resulted in the Italian annexation of neighbouring parts of Yugoslavia. During the interwar period, the fascist Italian government undertook a campaign of Italianisation in the annexed areas, during which it suppressed Slavic language, schools, political parties, and cultural institutions. Between 1922 and the beginning of World War II, the affected people were also the German- and Ladin-speaking populations of Trentino-Alto Adige, and the French- and Arpitan-speaking regions of the western Alps, such as the Aosta valley.[134]
An Allied invasion of Sicily began in July 1943, leading to the collapse of the Fascist regime and the fall of Mussolini on 25 July. Mussolini was deposed and arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III, in co-operation with the majority of the members of the Grand Council of Fascism, which passed a motion of no confidence. On 8 September, Italy signed the Armistice of Cassibile, ending its war with the Allies. Shortly thereafter, the Germans, with the assistance of the Italian fascists, succeeded in taking control of northern and central Italy. The country remained a battlefield for the rest of the war, with the Allies slowly moving up from the south.
In the north, the Germans set up the Italian Social Republic (RSI), a Nazi puppet state with Mussolini installed as leader after he was rescued by German paratroopers. Some Italian troops in the south were organised into the Italian Co-belligerent Army, which fought alongside the Allies for the rest of the war, while other Italian troops, loyal to Mussolini and his RSI, continued to fight alongside the Germans in the National Republican Army. Also, the post-armistice period saw the rise of a large anti-fascist resistance movement, the Resistenza.[141] As a result, the country descended into civil war;[142][143] the Italian resistance fought a guerrilla war against the Nazi German occupiers and Italian Fascist forces,[141] while clashes between the Fascist RSI Army and the Royalist Italian Co-Belligerent Army were rare.[144] In late April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape north,[145] but was captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by Italian partisans. His body was then taken to Milan, where it was hung upside down at a service station for public viewing and to provide confirmation of his demise.[146]
Hostilities ended on 29 April 1945, when the German forces in Italy surrendered. Nearly half a million Italians died in the conflict,[147] society was divided, and the Italian economy had been all but destroyed—per capita income in 1944 was at its lowest point since the beginning of the 20th century.[148] The aftermath left Italy angry with the monarchy for its endorsement of the Fascist regime for the previous twenty years. These frustrations contributed to a revival of the Italian republican movement.[149]
Fears of a possible Communist takeover proved crucial on 18 April 1948, when the Christian Democrats, under Alcide De Gasperi, won a landslide victory.[154][155] Consequently, in 1949 Italy became a member of NATO. The Marshall Plan revived the Italian economy, which, until the late 1960s, enjoyed a period of sustained economic growth commonly called the Economic Miracle. In the 1950s, Italy became one of the six founding countries of the European Communities, a forerunner of the European Union.
From the late 1960s until the early 80s, the country experienced the Years of Lead, a period characterised by economic crisis, especially after the 1973 oil crisis; widespread social conflicts; and terrorist massacres.[156][157][158]
In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945, two governments were led by non-Christian-Democrat premiers: one republican and one socialist; the Christian Democrats remained, however, the main government party. The economy recovered and Italy became the world's fifth-largest industrial nation after it gained entry into the G7 in the 1970s. However, the Italian national debt skyrocketed passing 100% of the country's GDP.
Between 1992 and 1993, Italy faced terror attacks perpetrated by the Sicilian Mafia as a consequence of new anti-mafia measures launched by the government.[159] A year later, tourist spots were attacked, leaving 10 dead and 93 injured and causing severe damage to cultural heritage sites such as the Uffizi Gallery. The Catholic Church openly condemned the Mafia and an anti-Mafia priest was shot dead in Rome.[160][161][162]
In the early 1990s, voters – disenchanted with political paralysis, massive public debt and extensive corruption uncovered by the Clean Hands investigation – demanded radical reforms. The scandals involved all major parties, but especially those in the government coalition: the Christian Democrats, who had ruled for almost 50 years, underwent a severe crisis and eventually disbanded, splitting into several factions.[163] The Communists reorganised as a social-democratic force. During the 1990s and 2000s, centre-right (dominated by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi) and centre-left coalitions (led by university professor Romano Prodi) alternately governed the country.
During the European migrant crisis of the 2010s, Italy was the entry point and leading destination for most asylum seekers entering the EU. Between 2013 and 2018, the country took in over 700,000 migrants and refugees,[166] mainly from sub-Saharan Africa,[167] which put a strain on the public purse and led to a surge in support for far-right or euro-sceptic parties.[168][169] The 2018 general election was characterised by a strong showing of the Five Star Movement and the Lega. Professor Giuseppe Conte became prime minister at the head of a populist coalition of these two parties.[170] After only fourteen months the League withdrew its support from Conte, who formed a new coalition, which consisted of the Five Star Movement and the centre-left.[171][172]
The country's total area is 301,230 square kilometres (116,306 sq mi), of which 294,020 km2 (113,522 sq mi) is land and 7,210 km2 (2,784 sq mi) is water.[180] Including the islands, Italy has a coastline of 7,600 kilometres (4,722 miles) on the Mediterranean Sea, the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas (to the west of peninsular Italy),[181] the Ionian Sea (including the Gulf of Taranto, south),[182] and the Adriatic Sea (east).[183] Its border with France runs for 488 km (303 mi); Switzerland, 740 km (460 mi); Austria, 430 km (267 mi); and Slovenia, 232 km (144 mi). The sovereign states of San Marino and Vatican City are enclaves within Italy,[184][185] while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.[186] The border with San Marino is 39 km (24 mi) long, that with Vatican City, 3.2 km (2.0 mi).[180]
Most of the rivers of Italy drain either into the Adriatic Sea or the Tyrrhenian Sea.[188] The longest Italian river is the Po, which flows, for either 652 km (405 mi) or 682 km (424 mi), from the Alps on the western border with France, and crosses the Padan plain on its way to the Adriatic Sea.[189] The Po Valley is the largest plain in Italy, with 46,000 km2 (18,000 sq mi), and it contains over 70% of the country's lowlands.[187] The five largest lakes are, in order of diminishing size: Garda (367.94 km2 or 142 sq mi), Maggiore (212.51 km2 or 82 sq mi, a minor northern part of which is in Switzerland), Como (145.9 km2 or 56 sq mi), Trasimeno (124.29 km2 or 48 sq mi) and Bolsena (113.55 km2 or 44 sq mi).[190]
Climate
The climate of Italy is influenced by the large seas that surrounds Italy on every side except the north. These seas constitute a reservoir of heat and humidity for Italy. Within the southern temperate zone, they determine a Mediterranean climate with local differences due to the geomorphology of the territory, which tends to make its mitigating effects felt, especially under high-pressure conditions.[192]
Because of the length of the peninsula and the mostly mountainous hinterland, the climate of Italy is highly diverse. In most of the inland northern and central regions, the climate ranges from humid subtropical to humid continental and oceanic. The climate of the Po valley geographical region is mostly humid subtropical, with cool winters and hot summers.[193][194] The coastal areas of Liguria, Tuscany, and most of the South generally fit the Mediterranean climate stereotype, as in the Köppen climate classification.
Conditions on the coast are different from those in the interior, particularly during winter months when the higher altitudes tend to be cold, wet, and often snowy. The coastal regions have mild winters, and hot and generally dry summers; lowland valleys are hot in summer. Average winter temperatures vary from around 0 °C (32 °F) in the Alps to 12 °C (54 °F) in Sicily; so, average summer temperatures range from 20 °C (68 °F) to over 25 °C (77 °F).
Winters can vary widely across the country with lingering cold, foggy, and snowy periods in the north, and milder, sunnier conditions in the south. Summers are hot across the country, except at high altitude, particularly in the south. Northern and central areas can experience occasional strong thunderstorms from spring to autumn.[195]
Biodiversity
Italy's varied geography, including the Alps and the Apennines, central Italian woodlands, and southern Italian Garigue and Maquis shrubland, contribute to climatic and habitat diversity. As the Italian peninsula is in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, forming a corridor between central Europe and North Africa, and having 8,000 km (5,000 mi) of coastline, Italy has received species from the Balkans, Eurasia, and the Middle East. Italy has probably the highest level of faunalbiodiversity in Europe, with over 57,000 species recorded, representing more than a third of all European fauna,[196] and the highest level of biodiversity of both animal and plant species within the European Union.[197]
Italy has many botanical and historic gardens, some of which are known outside the country.[208][209] The Italian garden is stylistically based on symmetry, axial geometry, and the principle of imposing order on nature. It influenced the history of gardening, especially French and English gardens.[210] The Italian garden was influenced by Roman and Italian Renaissance gardens.
The Italian wolf is the national animal of Italy,[211][212] while the national tree is the strawberry tree.[213] The reasons for these choices are related to the fact that the Italian wolf, which inhabits the Apennine Mountains and the Western Alps, features prominently in Latin and Italian cultures, such as the legend of the founding of Rome,[214] while the green leaves, white flowers and red berries of the strawberry tree, which is native to the Mediterranean region, recall the colours of the flag of Italy.[213]
Environmental problems
After its quick industrial growth, Italy took a long time to address its environmental problems. Many watercourses and stretches of coast have been contaminated by industrial and agricultural activity, while, because of rising water levels, Venice has experienced regular, intermittent flooding in recent years. Waste from industrial activity is not always disposed by legal means and has led to permanent adverse health effects on inhabitants of affected areas, as in the case of the Seveso disaster.
Deforestation, illegal building, and poor land-management policies have led to significant erosion all over Italy's mountainous regions, leading to major ecological disasters such as the 1963 Vajont Dam flood, and the 1998 Sarno[215] and 2009 Messinamudslides.The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.65/10, ranking it 142nd globally out of 172 countries.[216]
Air pollution remains a severe problem, especially in the industrialised north, in the 1990s having the tenth highest level of industrial carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. Overall, Italy is the twelfth-largest carbon dioxide producer.[217][218] Extensive traffic and congestion in the largest metropolitan areas continue to cause severe environmental and health issues, even if smog levels have decreased dramatically since the 1970s and 1980s, with the presence of smog becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon and levels of sulphur dioxide decreasing.[219]
The country operated several nuclear reactors between 1963 and 1990 but, after the Chernobyl disaster and a referendum on the issue, the nuclear programme was terminated, a decision that was overturned by the government in 2008, with plans to build up to four nuclear power plants with French technology. This was in turn struck down by a referendum following the Fukushima nuclear accident.[220]
In the last decade, Italy has been one of the world's leading producers of renewable energy, in 2010 ranking as the world's fourth largest provider of installed solar energy capacity[221][222] and the sixth largest provider of wind power capacity.[223] Renewable energy provided approximately 37% Italy's energy consumption in 2020.[224] After several improvements, Italy now ranks 84th in the world for ecological sustainability.[225] National parks cover about 5% of the country,[226] while the total area protected by national parks, regional parks, and nature reserves covers about 10.5% of the Italian territory,[227] and 12% of Italy's coastline is protected.[228]
Politics
Italy has been a unitaryparliamentary republic since 2 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished by a constitutional referendum. The President of Italy (Presidente della Repubblica), Sergio Mattarella since 2015, is Italy's head of state. The president is elected for a single seven-year term by the Italian Parliament and some regional voters in joint session. Italy has a written democratic constitution that resulted from a Constituent Assembly formed by the representatives of all the anti-fascist forces that contributed to the defeat of Nazi and Fascist forces during the liberation of Italy during World War II and the Italian civil war.[229]
Italy has a parliamentary government based on a mixed proportional and majoritarian voting system. The parliament is perfectly bicameral, each house with the same powers. The two houses: the Chamber of Deputies meets in Palazzo Montecitorio, and the Senate of the Republic meets in Palazzo Madama. A peculiarity of the Italian Parliament is the representation given to Italian citizens permanently living abroad: 8 Deputies and 4 Senators are elected in four distinct overseas constituencies. In addition, the Italian Senate is also characterised by a small number of senators for life, appointed by the president "for outstanding patriotic merits in the social, scientific, artistic or literary field". Former presidents are ex officio life senators.
The prime minister, officially the President of the Council of Ministers (Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri), is Italy's head of government and has executive authority but must receive a vote of approval from the Council of Ministers to execute most policies. The prime minister and the cabinet are appointed by the President of the Republic of Italy and confirmed by a vote of confidence in parliament. To remain as the prime minister, one also has to pass subsequent votes of confidence or no confidence. The role of the Italian prime minister is similar to that of most other parliamentary systems; but in Italy, the prime minister is not authorised to request the dissolution of parliament. Another difference from similar offices in other countries is that in Italy the overall political responsibility for intelligence is with the prime minister. By virtue of that, the prime minister has exclusive power to coordinate intelligence policies, determine the financial resources, and strengthen national cyber security; apply and protect State secrets; and to authorise agents to carry out operations, in Italy or abroad.[230]
The law of Italy has several sources. These are hierarchical: the law or regulation from a lower source cannot conflict with the rule of an upper source (hierarchy of sources).[231] The Constitution of 1948 is the highest source.[232] The Constitutional Court of Italy (Corte Costituzionale) rules on the conformity of laws with the constitution and is a post–World War II innovation. The judiciary of Italy also bases their decisions on Roman law modified by the Napoleonic Code and later statutes. The Supreme Court of Cassation is the highest court in Italy for both criminal and civil appeals.
Italy is regarded as lagging behind other Western European nations in terms of LGBT rights.[233] Additionally, Italy's law prohibiting torture is considered behind international standards.[234]
Since their appearance in the middle of the 19th century, Italian organised crime and criminal organisations have infiltrated the social and economic life of many regions in Southern Italy; the most notorious of which being the Sicilian Mafia, which would later expand into some foreign countries including the United States. Mafia receipts may reach 9%[237][238] of Italy's GDP.[239] A 2009 report identified 610 comuni which have a strong Mafia presence, where 13 million Italians live and 14.6% of the Italian GDP is produced.[240][241] The Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, nowadays probably the most powerful crime syndicate of Italy, accounts alone for 3% of the country's GDP.[242]
However, at 0.013 per 1,000 people, Italy has only the 47th highest murder rate,[243] compared to 61 countries, and the 43rd highest number of rapes per 1,000 people, compared to 64 countries in the world. These are relatively low figures among developed countries.
Italy strongly supports multilateral international politics, endorsing the United Nations and its international security activities. In 2013, Italy had 5,296 troops deployed abroad, engaged in 33 UN and NATO missions in 25 countries of the world.[244] Italy deployed troops in support of UN peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Mozambique, and East Timor. Italy also provides support for NATO and UN operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania, and deployed over 2,000 troops to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) from February 2003.
Italy supported international efforts to reconstruct and stabilise Iraq, but it had withdrawn its military contingent of some 3,200 troops by 2006, maintaining only humanitarian operators and other civilian personnel. In August 2006, Italy deployed about 2,450 troops in Lebanon for the United Nations' peacekeeping mission UNIFIL.[245] Italy is one of the largest financiers of the Palestinian National Authority, contributing €60 million in 2013 alone.[246]
Despite not being a branch of the armed forces, the Guardia di Finanza ("Financial Guard") has military status and is organized along military lines.[e] Since 2005, military service has been voluntary.[247] In 2010, the Italian military had 293,202 personnel on active duty,[248] of which 114,778 are Carabinieri.[249] As part of NATO's nuclear sharing strategy, Italy also hosts 90 United States B61 nuclear bombs located at the Ghedi and Aviano air bases.[250]
The Italian Navy is a blue-water navy. It was formed in 1946, after World War II, when Italy became a republic, from what remained of the Regia Marina (the "Royal Navy", which was established on the occasion of the 1861 proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy). In modern times the Italian Navy, being a member of the EU and NATO, has taken part in many coalition peacekeeping operations around the world. In 2014, the Navy operated 154 vessels in service, including minor auxiliary vessels.[251]
The Italian Air Force was founded as an independent service arm on 28 March 1923 by King Victor Emmanuel III as the Regia Aeronautica ("Royal Air Force"). After World War II, when Italy became a republic, it was renamed as the Regia Aeronautica. In 2021, the Italian Air Force operated 219 combat jets. A transport capability is guaranteed by a fleet of 27 C-130Js and C-27J Spartan. The acrobatic display team is the Frecce Tricolori ("Tricolour Arrows").
An autonomous corps of the military, the Carabinieri are the gendarmerie and military police of Italy, policing the military and civilian population alongside Italy's other police forces. While the different branches of the Carabinieri report to separate ministries according to their individual functions, the corps reports to the Ministry of Internal Affairs when maintaining public order and security.[252]
Italy is constituted of 20 regions (regioni)—five of which have special autonomous status which enables them to enact legislation on additional matters.[253]
At the beginning of 2020, Italy had 60,317,116 inhabitants.[254] The resulting population density, of 202 inhabitants per square kilometre (520/sq mi), is higher than that of most Western European countries. However, the distribution of the population is widely uneven. The most densely populated areas are the Po Valley (which accounts for almost a half of the national population) and the metropolitan areas of Rome and Naples, while vast regions such as the Alps and Apennine highlands, the plateaus of Basilicata, and the island of Sardinia, as well as much of Sicily, are sparsely populated.
The population of Italy almost doubled during the 20th century, but the pattern of growth was extremely uneven because of large-scale internal migration from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North, a consequence of the Italian economic miracle of the 1950–1960s. High fertility and birth rates persisted until the 1970s, after which they started to decline. The population rapidly aged; by 2010, one in five Italians was over 65 years old, and the country currently has the fifth oldest population in the world, with a median age of 46.5 years.[255][256] However, in recent years Italy has experienced significant growth in birth rates.[257] The total fertility rate has also climbed from an all-time low of 1.18 children per woman in 1995 to 1.41 in 2008,[258] albeit still below the replacement rate of 2.1 and considerably below the high of 5.06 children born per woman in 1883.[259] Nevertheless, the total fertility rate is expected to reach 1.6–1.8 in 2030.[260]
From the late 19th century to the 1960s, Italy was a country of mass emigration. Between 1898 and 1914, the peak years of Italian diaspora, approximately 750,000 Italians emigrated each year.[261] The diaspora included more than 25 million Italians and it is considered the greatest mass migration of recent times.[262] As a result, today more than 4.1 million Italian citizens live abroad,[263] while at least 60 million people of full or part Italian ancestry live outside of Italy, most notably in Argentina,[264] Brazil,[265] Uruguay,[266] Venezuela,[267] the United States,[268] Canada,[269] Australia,[270] and France.[271]
In the early 1980s, until then a linguistically and culturally homogeneous society, Italy begun to attract substantial flows of foreign immigrants.[272] After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the European Union, large waves of migration originated from the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe (especially Romania, Albania, Ukraine, and Poland). Another source of immigration is neighbouring North Africa (in particular, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia), with arrivals soaring as a consequence of the Arab Spring. Furthermore, in recent years, growing migration fluxes from Asia-Pacific (notably China[273] and the Philippines) and Latin America have been recorded.
As of 2010, the foreign-born population of Italy was from the following regions: Europe (54%), Africa (22%), Asia (16%), the Americas (8%), and Oceania (0.06%). The distribution of the foreign population is geographically varied in Italy: in 2020, 61.2% of foreign citizens lived in Northern Italy (in particular 36.1% in the northwest and 25.1% in the northeast), 24.2% in the centre, 10.8% in the south, and 3.9% on the islands.[274]
In 2021, Italy had about 5.17 million foreign residents,[1][275] making up 8.7% of the total population. The figures include more than half a million children born in Italy to foreign nationals (second generation immigrants) but exclude foreign nationals who have subsequently acquired Italian citizenship;[276] in 2016, about 201,000 people became Italian citizens.[277] The official figures also exclude illegal immigrants, which is estimated to be 670,000 as of 2008.[278]
Currently, about one million Romanian citizens are officially registered as living in Italy, representing the largest migrant population, followed by Albanians and Moroccans, with about 500,000 people each.[citation needed]
Languages
Italy's official language is Italian, as stated by the framework law No. 482/1999[279] and Trentino Alto-Adige's special Statute,[280] which was adopted as a constitutional law. There are an estimated 64 million native Italian speakers around the world,[281][282][283] and another 21 million who use it as a second language.[284] Italian is often natively spoken as a regional dialect, not to be confused with Italy's regional and minority languages;[285][286] however, during the 20th century, the establishment of a national education system led to a decrease in regional dialects. Standardisation was further expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, due to economic growth and the rise of mass media and television (the state broadcaster RAI helped set a standard for spoken Italian).
Twelve "historical minority languages" (minoranze linguistiche storiche) are formally recognised: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan, and Sardinian.[279] Four of these also enjoy co-official status in their respective regions: French in the Aosta Valley;[287] German in South Tyrol, and Ladin as well in some parts of the same province and in parts of the neighbouring Trentino;[288] and Slovene in the provinces of Trieste, Gorizia and Udine.[289] A number of other Ethnologue, ISO, and UNESCO languages are not recognised under Italian law. Like France, Italy has signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but has not ratified it.[290]
Due to recent immigration, Italy has sizeable populations whose native language is not Italian, nor a regional language. According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics, Romanian is the most common mother tongue among foreign residents in Italy: almost 800,000 people speak Romanian as their first language (21.9% of the foreign residents aged 6 and over). Other prevalent mother tongues are Arabic (spoken by over 475,000; 13.1% of foreign residents), Albanian (380,000), and Spanish (255,000).[291]
Religion
Religion in Italy according to the Ipsos survey, 2023 (approximately 1000 participants)[292][293]
The Holy See, the episcopal jurisdiction of Rome, contains the central government of the Catholic Church. It is recognised by other subjects of international law as a sovereign entity, headed by the Pope, who is also the Bishop of Rome, with which diplomatic relations can be maintained.[294][f] Often incorrectly referred to as "the Vatican", the Holy See is not the same entity as the Vatican City State because the Holy See is the jurisdiction and administrative entity of the Pope.[295]
In 2011, minority Christian faiths in Italy included an estimated 1.5 million Orthodox Christians. Protestantism has been growing in recent years.[300] One of the longest-established minority religious faiths in Italy is Judaism. Italy has for centuries welcomed Jews expelled from other countries, notably Spain. However, about 20% of Italian Jews were killed during the Holocaust.[301] This, together with the emigration which preceded and followed World War II, has left only around 28,400 Jews in Italy.[302] There are 120,000 Hindus[303] and 70,000 Sikhs in the country.[304]
The Italian state devolves shares of income tax to recognised religious communities, under a regime known as eight per thousand. Donations are allowed to Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu communities; however, Islam remains excluded, since no Muslim communities have yet signed a concordat with the Italian state.[305] Taxpayers who do not wish to fund a religion contribute their share to the state welfare system.[306]
Education
Education in Italy is mandatory and free from ages six to sixteen,[307] and consists of five stages: kindergarten (scuola dell'infanzia), primary school (scuola primaria), lower secondary school (scuola secondaria di primo grado), upper secondary school (scuola secondaria di secondo grado), and university (università).[308]
Primary school lasts eight years. Students are given a basic education in Italian, English, mathematics, natural sciences, history, geography, social studies, physical education, and visual and musical arts. Secondary school lasts for five years and includes three traditional types of schools focused on different academic levels: the liceo prepares students for university studies with a classical or scientific curriculum, while the istituto tecnico and the istituto professionale prepare pupils for vocations.
In 2018, the Italian secondary education was evaluated as being below the average among OECD countries.[309] Italy scored below the OECD average in reading and science, and near the OECD average in mathematics.[309] Compared to school children in other OECD countries, children in Italy missed out on a greater amount of learning due to absences and indiscipline in classrooms.[310] A wide gap exists between northern schools, which perform near average, and schools in the south, which had much poorer results.[311]
Life expectancy in the country is 80 years for males and 85 for females, placing the country 5th in the world.[317] In comparison to other Western countries, Italy has a relatively low rate of adult obesity (below 10%[318]), as there are several health benefits of the Mediterranean diet.[319] In 2013, UNESCO, prompted by Italy, added the Mediterranean diet to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of Italy, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, and Croatia.[320][321] The proportion of daily smokers was 22% in 2012, down from 24.4% in 2000 but still slightly above the OECD average.[322] Since 2005, smoking in public places—including bars, restaurants, night clubs, and offices—has been restricted to "specially ventilated rooms".[323]
Since 1978, the Italian state has run a universal public healthcare system.[324] However, healthcare is provided to all citizens and residents by a mixed public-private system. The public part is the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, which is organised under the Ministry of Health and administered on a devolved regional basis. Healthcare spending accounted for 9.7% of GDP in 2020.[325] Italy's healthcare system has been consistently ranked among the best in the world.[326][327] However, in 2018 Italy's healthcare was ranked 20th in Europe by the Euro health consumer index.
Italy is the world's sixth-largest manufacturing country,[340] characterised by a smaller number of global multinational corporations than other economies of comparable size and many dynamic small and medium-sized enterprises, clustered in several industrial districts, which are the backbone of Italian industry. This has produced a niche markets manufacturing sector often focused on the export of and luxury products. Although less capable of competing on quantity, it is more capable of facing the competition from China and other emerging Asian economies, which offer products with lower labour costs, with its higher-quality products.[341] Italy was the world's tenth-largest exporter in 2019. Its closest trade ties are with the other countries of the European Union. Its largest export partners in 2019 were Germany (12%), France (11%), and the United States (10%).[255]
The Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena is either the world's oldest or second oldest bank in continuous operation, depending on the definition, and the fourth-largest Italian commercial and retail bank.[347] Italy has a strong cooperative sector with the largest share in the EU of the population (4.5%) employed by a cooperative.[348] The Val d'Agri area, Basilicata, hosts the largest onshorehydrocarbon field in Europe.[349] Moderate natural gas reserves, mainly in the Po Valley and offshore under the Adriatic Sea, have been discovered in recent years and constitute the country's most important mineral resource. Italy is one of the world's leading producers of pumice, pozzolana, and feldspar.[350] Another notable mineral resource is marble, especially the world-famous white Carrara marble from the Massa and Carrara quarries in Tuscany.
Italy is part of a monetary union, the eurozone, which represents around 330 million citizens, and of the European single market, which represents more than 500 million consumers. Several domestic commercial policies are determined by agreements among European Union (EU) members and by EU legislation. Italy introduced the common European currency, the euro, in 2002.[351][352] Its monetary policy is set by the European Central Bank.
Italy was hit hard by the financial crisis of 2007–08, which exacerbated the country's structural problems.[353] After a strong GDP growth of 5–6% per year from the 1950s to the early 1970s,[354] and a progressive slowdown in the 1980–90s, the country virtually stagnated in the 2000s.[355][356] The political efforts to revive growth with massive government spending eventually produced a severe rise in public debt, that stood at over 131.8% of GDP in 2017,[357] the second highest in the EU, after Greece.[358] The largest chunk of Italian public debt is owned by national subjects, a major difference between Italy and Greece,[359] and the level of household debt is much lower than the OECD average.[360]
A gaping North–South divide is a major factor of socio-economic weakness.[361] It can be noted by the huge difference in statistical income between the northern and southern regions and municipalities.[362] The richest province, Alto Adige-South Tyrol, earns 152% of the national GDP per capita, while the poorest region, Calabria earns 61%.[363] The unemployment rate (11.1%) stands slightly above the eurozone average,[364] but the disaggregated figure is 6.6% in the North and 19.2% in the South.[365] The youth unemployment rate (31.7% in March 2018) is extremely high compared to EU standards.[366]
According to the last national agricultural census, there were 1.6 million farms in 2010 (−32.4% since 2000) covering 12,700,000 ha or 31,382,383 acres (63% of which are located in Southern Italy).[369] The vast majority (99%) are family-operated and small, averaging only 8 ha (20 acres) in size.[369] Of the total surface area in agricultural use (forestry excluded), grain fields take up 31%, olive tree orchards 8.2%, vineyards 5.4%, citrus orchards 3.8%, sugar beets 1.7%, and horticulture 2.4%. The remainder is primarily dedicated to pastures (25.9%) and feed grains (11.6%).[369]
Quality goods in which Italy specialises, particularly the already mentioned wines and regional cheeses, are often protected under the quality assurance labels DOC/DOP. This geographical indication certificate, which is accredited by the European Union, is considered important in order to avoid confusion with low-quality mass-produced ersatz products.
Transport
Italy was the first country in the world to build motorways, the so-called autostrade, reserved for fast traffic and for motor vehicles only.[372] Regarding the national road network, in 2002 there were 668,721 km (415,524 mi) of serviceable roads in Italy, including 6,487 km (4,031 mi) of motorways, state-owned but privately operated by Atlantia. In 2005, about 34,667,000 passenger cars (590 cars per 1,000 people) and 4,015,000 goods vehicles circulated on the national road network.[373]
The national railway network, state-owned and operated by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (FSI), in 2008 totalled 16,529 km (10,271 mi) of which 11,727 km (7,287 mi) is electrified, and on which 4,802 locomotives and railcars run. The main public operator of high-speed trains is Trenitalia, part of FSI. High-speed trains are divided into three categories: Frecciarossa (red arrow) trains operate at a maximum speed of 300 km/h on dedicated high-speed tracks; Frecciargento (silver arrow) trains operate at a maximum speed of 250 km/h on both high-speed and mainline tracks; and Frecciabianca (white arrow) trains operate on high-speed regional lines at a maximum speed of 200 km/h. Italy has 11 rail border crossings over the Alpine mountains with neighbouring countries.
Italy is fifth in Europe by the number of passengers using air transport, with about 148 million passengers or about 10% of the European total in 2011.[374] In 2022, there were 45 civil airports in Italy, including the two hubs of Malpensa International Airport in Milan and Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Rome.[375] Since October 2021, Italy's flag carrier airline is ITA Airways, which took over the brand, the IATA ticketing code, and many assets belonging to the former flag carrier Alitalia, after the latter's bankruptcy.[376][377]
In 2004, there were 43 major seaports, including that of Genoa, the country's largest and the second-largest on the Mediterranean Sea. In 2005 Italy maintained a civilian air fleet of about 389,000 units and a merchant fleet of 581 ships.[373] The national inland waterways network has a length of 2,400 km (1,491 mi) for commercial traffic in 2012.[255]
Italy has been the final destination of the Silk Road for many centuries. In particular, the construction of the Suez Canal intensified sea trade with East Africa and Asia from the 19th century. Since the end of the Cold War and with increasing European integration, the trade relations, which were often interrupted in the 20th century, have intensified again and the northern Italian ports such as the deep-water port of Trieste in the northernmost part of the Mediterranean with its extensive rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe are once again the destination of government subsidies and significant foreign investment.[378][379][380][381][382][383]
Energy
In the last decade, Italy has become one of the world's largest producers of renewable energy, ranking as the second largest producer in the European Union and the ninth in the world. Wind power, hydroelectricity, and geothermal power are also significant sources of electricity in the country. Renewable sources account for 27.5% of all electricity produced in Italy, with hydro alone reaching 12.6%, followed by solar at 5.7%, wind at 4.1%, bioenergy at 3.5%, and geothermal at 1.6%.[385] The rest of the national demand is supplied by fossil fuels (natural gas 38.2%, coal 13%, oil 8.4%) and by imports.[385]Eni, operating in 79 countries, is considered one of the seven "Supermajor" oil companies in the world, and one of the world's largest industrial companies.[386]
Solar energy production alone accounted for almost 9% of the total electric production in the country in 2014, making Italy the country with the highest contribution from solar energy in the world.[384] The Montalto di Castro Photovoltaic Power Station, completed in 2010, is the largest photovoltaic (PV) power station in Italy with 85 MW. Other examples of large PV plants in Italy are San Bellino (70.6 MW), Cellino san Marco (42.7 MW), and Sant' Alberto (34.6 MW).[387] Italy was the first country in the world to exploit geothermal energy to produce electricity.[388] Italy had managed four nuclear reactors until the 1980s. However, nuclear power in Italy was abandoned after an 1987 referendum (in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Soviet Ukraine), though Italy still imports nuclear energy from Italy-owned reactors in foreign territories.
Within this history of science and technology, modern times tell a more technologically divergent story. The North–South divide is a significant factor that leads to a vast difference in income between the Northern and Southern regions, which leads to the "digital divide" in Italy. The long history of this divided peninsula, now a unified nation-state, details the complex problems of underdeveloped areas in the South.[407] As expected, these problems of underdevelopment and poverty still linger today, also reflected in the concept of the digital divide between the North and South. The global digital divide is broadly described as the technological differences between underdeveloped and developed countries. While this does not necessarily mean that people have no access to technology, it makes clear that this equates to differences in technology, such as the Internet and household electronics.[408]
Tourism
People have visited Italy for centuries, yet the first to visit the peninsula for touristic reasons were aristocrats during the Grand Tour, which began in the 17th century, and flourished in the 18th and the 19th centuries.[411] This was a period in which European aristocrats, many of whom were British, visited parts of Europe, with Italy as a key destination.[411] For Italy, this was in order to study ancient architecture, local culture, and to admire its natural beauty.[412]
Italy is the fifth most visited country in international tourism, with a total of 52.3 million international arrivals in 2016.[413] The total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP (including wider effects from investment, the supply chain, and induced income ) was EUR162.7 billion in 2014 (10.1% of GDP) and 1,082,000 jobs directly related to tourism in 2014 (4.8% of total employment).[414]
Tourist interest in Italy is mainly in culture, cuisine, history, fashion, architecture, art, religious sites and routes, wedding tourism, naturalistic beauties, nightlife, underwater sites, and spas.[415][416] Winter and summer tourism are present in many locations in the Alps and the Apennines,[417] while seaside tourism is widespread among coastal locations on the Mediterranean Sea.[418] Italy is the leading cruise tourism destination in the Mediterranean Sea.[419] Small, historical, and artistic Italian villages are promoted through the association I Borghi più belli d'Italia (lit.'The Most Beautiful Villages of Italy').
The most visited regions of Italy, measured by nights spent in tourist accommodations, are Veneto, Tuscany, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Lazio.[420] Rome is the third most visited city in Europe, and the 12th in the world, with 9.4 million arrivals in 2017, while Milan is the 27th worldwide with 6.8 million tourists.[421] In addition, Venice and Florence are among the world's top 100 destinations.
Italy is the country with the highest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the world, with 58.[422] Out of Italy's 58 heritage sites, 53 are cultural and 5 are natural.[423] In Italy, there is a broad variety of hotels, ranging from 1 to 5 stars. According to ISTAT, in 2017, there were 32,988 hotels with 1,133,452 rooms and 2,239,446 beds.[424] As for non-hotel facilities (campsites, tourist villages, accommodations for rent, agritourism, etc.), in 2017 their number was 171,915 with 2,798,352 beds.[424]
Culture
Italy is one of the birthplaces of Western culture and a cultural superpower.[425] Divided by politics and geography for centuries until its unification in 1861, Italy's culture has been shaped by a multitude of regional customs and local centres of power and patronage.[426] Italy has had a central role in Western culture for centuries and is still recognised for its cultural traditions and artists. During the Middle Ages, courts competed to attract architects, artists, and scholars, thus producing a legacy of monuments, paintings, music, and literature. Despite the political and social isolation of these courts, Italy has made a substantial contribution to the cultural and historical heritage of Europe.[427]
Italy is known for its architectural achievements,[428] such as the construction of arches, domes, and similar structures by ancient Rome, the founding of the Renaissance architectural movement in the late 14th to 16th centuries, and being the homeland of Palladianism, a style that inspired movements such as Neoclassical architecture and influenced the designs of country houses of noblemen all over the world, notably in the UK, Australia, and the US during the late 17th to early 20th centuries.
Along with pre-historic architecture, the first people in Italy to begin a recognised sequence of designs were the Greeks and the Etruscans, progressing to classical Roman,[429] then to the revival of the classical Roman era during the Renaissance, and evolving into the Baroque era. The Christian concept of the basilica, a style of church architecture that came to dominate in the early Middle Ages, was invented in Rome. Basilicas were known for being long, rectangular buildings, built in an almost ancient Roman style often rich in mosaics and decorations. The early Christians—who decorated all their churches with statues, mosaics, and paintings—were greatly inspired by the pagan Romans.[430]
Romanesque architecture, which flourished from approximately 800 to 1100 AD, was one of the most fruitful and creative periods in Italian architecture, when masterpieces, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the Piazza dei Miracoli, and the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan were built. It was known for its usage of Roman arches, stained glass windows, and curved columns. The main innovation of Italian Romanesque architecture was the vault, which had never been seen in Western architecture.[431]
Italian architecture significantly evolved during the Renaissance. Filippo Brunelleschi contributed to architectural design with his dome for the Cathedral of Florence, a feat of engineering not seen since antiquity.[432] A popular achievement of Italian Renaissance architecture was St. Peter's Basilica, originally designed by Donato Bramante in the early 16th century. Andrea Palladio influenced architects throughout Western Europe with the villas and palaces he designed in the middle and late 16th century listed by UNESCO as the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.[433]
The Baroque period produced outstanding Italian architects in the 17th century. The most original work of late Baroque and Rococo architecture is the Palazzina di caccia di Stupinigi, dating to the 18th century.[434]Luigi Vanvitelli, in 1752, began the construction of the Royal Palace of Caserta.[435] In the late 18th and early 19th centuries Italy was influenced by the Neoclassical architectural movement. Villas, palaces, gardens, interiors, and art began again to be based on ancient Roman and Greek themes.[436]
During the Fascist period, the supposedly "Novecento movement" flourished, based on the rediscovery of imperial Rome. Marcello Piacentini, responsible for the urban transformations of cities and remembered for the disputed Via della Conciliazione in Rome, devised a form of simplified Neoclassicism.[437]
Visual art
The history of Italian visual arts is significant to the history of Western painting. Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting. The only surviving Roman paintings are wall paintings. Such paintings can be grouped into four main "styles" or periods[438] and may contain the first examples of trompe-l'œil, pseudo-perspective, and pure landscape.[439]
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the High Renaissance gave rise to a stylised art known as Mannerism. In place of the balanced compositions and rational approach to perspective that characterised art at the dawn of the 16th century, the Mannerists sought instability, artifice, and doubt. The unperturbed faces and gestures of Piero della Francesca and the calm Virgins of Raphael were replaced by the troubled expressions of Pontormo and the emotional intensity of El Greco.
Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, when the first stage play was performed in Rome.[440] Latin literature was, and still is, highly influential in the world, with numerous writers, poets, philosophers, and historians, such as Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and Livy. The Romans were famous for their oral tradition, poetry, drama, and epigrams.[441] In the early 13th century, Francis of Assisi was the first Italian poet, with his religious song Canticle of the Sun.[442]
Another Italian voice originated in Sicily. At the court of Emperor Frederick II, who ruled the Sicilian kingdom during the first half of the 13th century, lyrics modelled on Provençal forms and themes were written in a refined version of the local vernacular. One of these poets was Giacomo da Lentini, inventor of the sonnet form, though the most famous early sonneteer was Petrarch.[444]
Guido Guinizelli is the founder of the Dolce Stil Novo, a school that added a philosophical dimension to traditional love poetry. This new understanding of love, expressed in a smooth, pure style, influenced the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who established the basis of the modern Italian language. Dante's work, the Divine Comedy, is among the finest works of world literature;[443] furthermore, the poet invented the difficult terza rima. Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio, sought and imitated the works of antiquity and cultivated their own artistic personalities. Petrarch achieved fame through his collection of poems, Il Canzoniere. Equally influential was Boccaccio's The Decameron, one of the most popular collections of short stories ever written.[445]
Italian writers embraced Romanticism in the early 19th century. Romanticism coincided with some ideas of the Risorgimento, the patriotic movement that brought Italy political unity and freedom from foreign domination. Italy's rebirth was heralded by the poets Vittorio Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, and Giacomo Leopardi. The works by Alessandro Manzoni, the leading Italian Romantic, are a symbol of Italian unification for their patriotic message and because of his efforts in the development of the modern, unified Italian language. His novel The Betrothed was the first Italian historical novel to glorify Christian values of justice and providence.[451]
In the late 19th century, a literary movement called Verismo, which extolled realism, played a major role in Italian literature. Emilio Salgari, a writer of action-adventure swashbucklers and a pioneer of science fiction, published his Sandokan series.[452] In 1883, Carlo Collodi published the novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, which became the most celebrated children's classic by an Italian author and one of the most translated non-religious books in the world.[449] A movement called Futurism influenced Italian literature in the early 20th century. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote Manifesto of Futurism and called for the use of language and metaphors that glorified the speed, dynamism, and violence of the machine age.[453]
Italian Medieval philosophy was mainly Christian, and included philosophers and theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism, who reintroduced Aristotelian philosophy to Christianity.[461] Notable Renaissance philosophers include: Giordano Bruno, one of the major scientific figures of the western world; Marsilio Ficino, one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the period; and Niccolò Machiavelli, one of the founders of modern political science. Machiavelli's most famous work is The Prince, whose contribution to political thought is the fundamental break between political idealism and political realism.[462] Italy was also affected by the Enlightenment, a movement which was a consequence of the Renaissance.[463] University cities such as Padua, Bologna, and Naples remained centres of scholarship, with philosophers such as Giambattista Vico.[464]Cesare Beccaria was a significant Enlightenment figure and one of the fathers of classical criminal theory as well as modern penology.[459] Beccaria is known for his On Crimes and Punishments (1764), a treatise that served as one of the earliest prominent condemnations of torture and the death penalty and thus a landmark work in anti-death penalty philosophy.[463]
Italy had a renowned philosophical movement in the 1800s, with Idealism, Sensism, and Empiricism. Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce were two of the most significant 20th-century Idealist philosophers.[464] Criticism of the Sensist movement came from other philosophers, who affirmed that a priori relationships were synthetic.[464] During the late 19th and 20th centuries, there were other movements that gained popularity in Italy, such as Ontologism,[465]anarchism, communism, socialism, futurism, fascism, and Christian democracy. Anarcho-communism first fully formed into its modern strain within the Italian section of the First International.[466]Antonio Gramsci remains a relevant philosopher within Marxist and communist theory, credited with creating the theory of cultural hegemony. Italian philosophers were influential in the development of the non-Marxist liberal socialism philosophy. In the 1960s, many Italian left-wing activists adopted the anti-authoritarian pro-working class leftist theories that would become known as autonomism and operaismo.[467]
Italian theatre came about in the Middle Ages, with its antecedents dating back the ancient Greek colonies of Magna Graecia in southern Italy,[469] as well as to the theatre of the Italic peoples[470] and the theatre of ancient Rome. There were two main lines along which the ancient Italian theatre developed in the Middle Ages. The first, consisting of the dramatization of Catholic liturgies and of which more documentation is retained, and the second, formed by pagan forms of spectacle such as the staging for city festivals, the court preparations of the jesters, and the songs of the troubadours.[471] Renaissance theatre marked the beginning of the modern theatre due to the rediscovery and study of the classics. Ancient theatrical texts, having been recovered and translated, were soon staged at royal courts, and then moved to public theatres. In this way the idea of theatre came close to that of today: a performance in a designated place in which the public participates. In the late 15th century, two cities were important for the rediscovery and renewal of theatrical art: Ferrara and Rome. The first, vital centre of art in the second half of the fifteenth century, saw the staging of famous Latin works by Plautus, rigorously translated into Italian.[472]
During the 16th century and into the 18th century, commedia dell'arte was a form of improvisational theatre, and it is still performed today. Travelling troupes of players would set up an outdoor stage and provide amusement in the form of juggling, acrobatics, and, more typically, humorous plays based on a repertoire of established characters with a rough storyline, called canovaccio. Plays did not originate from written drama but from scenarios called lazzi, which were loose frameworks that provided the situations, complications, and outcome of the action, around which the actors would improvise. The characters of the commedia usually represent fixed social types and stock characters, each of which has a distinct costume, such as foolish old men, devious servants, or military officers full of false bravado. The main categories of these characters include servants, old men, lovers, and captains.[473]
The first recorded commedia dell'arte performances came from Rome as early as 1551,[474] and was performed outdoors in temporary venues by professional actors who were costumed and masked, as opposed to commedia erudita, which were written comedies, presented indoors by untrained and unmasked actors.[475] By the mid-16th century, specific troupes of commedia performers began to coalesce, and by 1568 the Gelosi became a distinct company. Commedia often performed inside in court theatres or halls, and in fixed theatres such as Teatro Baldrucca in Florence. Flaminio Scala published the scenarios of the commedia dell'arte around the start of the 17th century, to legitimise the form—and ensure its legacy.[476]
In commedia dell'arte, female roles were played by women, which was documented as early as the 1560s, making them the first known professional actresses in Europe since antiquity. Lucrezia Di Siena, whose name is on a contract of actors from 10 October 1564, has been referred to as the first Italian actress known by name, with Vincenza Armani and Barbara Flaminia as the first prima donnas.[480]
Ballet originated in Italy. It began during the Italian Renaissance as an outgrowth of court pageantry,[481] where aristocratic weddings were lavish celebrations. Court musicians and dancers collaborated to provide elaborate entertainment for them.[482] At first, ballets were woven into the midst of an opera to allow the audience a moment of relief from the dramatic intensity. By the mid-seventeenth century, Italian ballets in their entirety were performed between the acts of an opera. Italian ballets became part of theatrical life: ballet companies in Italy's major opera houses employed an average of four to twelve dancers; in 1815 many companies employed anywhere from eighty to one hundred dancers.[483]
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is the oldest continuously active venue for public opera in the world, opening in 1737, decades before both Milan's La Scala and Venice's La Fenice theatres.[468]
Music
From folk music to classical, music is an intrinsic part of Italian culture. Instruments associated with classical music, including the piano and violin, were invented in Italy,[484][485] and many prevailing forms, such as the symphony, concerto, and sonata, can trace their roots back to innovations in 16th- and 17th-century Italian music.
Italy's most famous composers include the Renaissance composers Palestrina, Monteverdi, and Gesualdo; the Baroque composers Scarlatti, Corelli, and Vivaldi; the Classical composers Paisiello, Paganini, and Rossini; and the Romantic composers Verdi and Puccini. Modern Italian composers such as Berio and Nono were important to the development of experimental and electronic music.[citation needed] While the classical music tradition still has a strong hold in Italy, as evidenced by the fame of its opera houses, and performers such as the pianist Maurizio Pollini and tenor Luciano Pavarotti, Italians have been no less appreciative of their thriving contemporary music scene.
Italy is known for being the birthplace of opera.[487]Italian opera was believed to have been founded in the early 17th century, in cities such as Mantua and Venice.[487] Later, works and pieces composed by native Italian composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Puccini, are among the most famous operas and performed across the world. La Scala opera house in Milan is renowned as one of the best in the world.
Italy contributed to the development of disco and electronic music, with Italo disco, known for its futuristic sound and prominent use of synthesisers and drum machines, being one of the earliest electronic dance genres, as well as European forms of disco, aside from Euro disco.[490]
After decline in the 1920s, the film industry was revitalized in the 1930s with the arrival of sound film. A popular Italian genre, the Telefoni Bianchi, consisted of comedies with glamorous backgrounds.[505]Calligrafismo was instead a sharp contrast to Telefoni Bianchi-American style comedies and is rather artistic, highly formalistic, expressive in complexity, and deals mainly with contemporary literary material.[506] Cinema was used by Benito Mussolini, who founded Rome's renowned Cinecittà studio, for the production of Fascist propaganda until World War II.[507]
The most popular sport in Italy is football.[521][522] Italy's national football team is one of the world's most successful teams, with four FIFA World Cup victories (1934, 1938, 1982, and 2006) and two UEFA Euro victories (1968 and 2021).[523] Italian clubs have won 48 major European trophies, making Italy the second most successful country in European football. Italy's top-flight club football league is named Serie A and is followed by millions of fans around the world.[524]
Italy has a long and successful tradition in individual sports. Bicycle racing is a popular sport.[528] Italians have won the UCI World Championshipsmore than any other country, except Belgium. The Giro d'Italia is a cycling race held every May and constitutes one of the three Grand Tours. Alpine skiing is a widespread sport, and the country is a popular international skiing destination.[529] Italian skiers achieved good results in Winter Olympic Games, Alpine Ski World Cup. Tennis has a significant following in Italy, ranking as the fourth most practised sport in the country.[530] The Rome Masters, founded in 1930, is one of the most prestigious tennis tournaments.[531] Italian professional tennis players won the Davis Cup in 1976 and the Fed Cup in 2006, 2009, 2010, and 2013.
Motorsports are popular in Italy.[525] Italy has won, by far, the most MotoGP World Championships. Italian Scuderia Ferrari is the oldest surviving team in Grand Prix racing,[532] having competed since 1948, and the most successful Formula One team with 232 wins. The Italian Grand Prix of Formula One is the fifth oldest surviving Grand Prix, having been held since 1921.[533] Every Formula 1 Grand Prix (except 1980) has been held at Autodromo Nazionale Monza.[534] Formula 1 was also held at Imola (1980–2006, 2020) and Mugello (2020). Other successful Italian car manufacturers in motorsports are Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati, and Fiat.[535]
Italy has been successful in the Olympics, taking part from the first Olympiad and in 47 Games out of 48, not having officially participated in the 1904 Summer Olympics.[536]Italian sportsmen have won 522 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, and 106 at the Winter Olympics, for a combined total of 628 medals, with 235 golds, which makes them the fifth most successful nation in Olympic history for total medals. The country hosted two Winter Olympics (in 1956 and 2006) and will host a third in 2026); and one Summer games (in 1960).
Fashion and design
Italian fashion has a long tradition. Milan, Florence, and Rome are Italy's main fashion capitals. Top Global Fashion Capital Rankings (2013) by Global Language Monitor, ranked Rome sixth and Milan twelfth. Previously, in 2009, Milan was declared the "fashion capital of the world" by Global Language Monitor itself.[537] Major Italian fashion labels—such as Gucci, Armani, Prada, Versace, Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni, Fendi, Moschino, Max Mara, Trussardi, and Ferragamo—are regarded as among the finest fashion houses in the world. Jewellers such as Bvlgari, Damiani, and Buccellati were founded in Italy. The fashion magazine Vogue Italia is considered one of the most prestigious fashion magazines in the world.[538] The talent of young, creative fashion designers is also promoted, such as by the ITS young fashion designer competition in Trieste.[539]
Italy is also prominent in the field of design: notably interior, architectural, industrial, and urban designs. The country has produced some well-known furniture designers, such as Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass, and Italian phrases such as Bel Disegno and Linea Italiana have entered the vocabulary of furniture design.[540] Examples of classic pieces of Italian white goods and pieces of furniture include Zanussi's washing machines and refrigerators,[541] the "New Tone" sofas by Atrium,[541] and the post-modern bookcase by Ettore Sottsass, inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again".[541] Today, Milan and Turin are the nation's leaders in architectural and industrial design. The city of Milan hosts Fiera Milano, Europe's largest design fair.[542] Milan also hosts major design- and architecture-related events and venues, such as the Fuori Salone and the Milan Furniture Fair, and has been home to the designers Bruno Munari, Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani, and Piero Manzoni.[543]
Cuisine
Italian cuisine has developed through centuries of social and political changes, with roots as far back as the 4th century BC. Italian cuisine in itself is heavily influenced by Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, and Jewish cuisines.[544][545] Significant changes occurred with the discovery of the New World, with items such as potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, and maize becoming main ingredients of the cuisine starting in the 18th century.[546][547] Italian cuisine is noted for its regional diversity,[548][549][550] abundance of difference in taste, and is known to be one of the most popular in the world,[551] wielding strong influence abroad.[552]
The Mediterranean diet forms the basis of Italian cuisine, which is rich in pasta, fish, fruits, and vegetables and is characterised by its extreme simplicity and variety, with many dishes having only four to eight ingredients.[553] Italian cooks rely chiefly on the quality of the ingredients rather than on elaborate preparation.[554] Dishes and recipes are often derivatives from local and familial tradition rather than created by chefs; so, many recipes are ideally suited for home cooking, this being the main reasons behind the ever-increasing worldwide popularity of Italian cuisine from America[555] to Asia.[556]
Italian cuisine relies heavily on traditional products; the country has a large number of traditional specialties protected under EU law.[557]Cheese, cold cuts, and wine are central to Italian cuisine, with many regional declinations and Protected Designation of Origin or Protected Geographical Indication labels, along with pizza and coffee (especially espresso) form part of Italian gastronomic culture.[558] Desserts have a long tradition of merging local flavours, such as citrus fruits, pistachio, and almonds, with sweet cheeses such as mascarpone and ricotta or exotic tastes such as cocoa, vanilla, and cinnamon. Gelato,[559]tiramisu,[560] and cassata are among the most famous examples of Italian desserts, cakes, and patisserie.
The Italian meal structure is typical of the Mediterranean region and differs from North, Central, and Eastern European meal structures, though it still often consists of breakfast (colazione), lunch (pranzo), and dinner (cena).[561] However, much less emphasis is placed on breakfast, and breakfast itself is often skipped or involves lighter portions than are seen in non-Mediterranean Western countries.[562] Late-morning and mid-afternoon snacks, called merenda (pl.: merende), are also often included in this meal structure.[563]
The marketing phenomenon consisting of words and images, colour combinations (the Italian tricolour) and geographical references for brands that are evocative of Italy to promote and market agri-food products, unrelated to Italian cuisine, is known as Italian Sounding.[564]
Public holidays, festivals and folklore
Public holidays celebrated in Italy include religious, national, and regional observances. Italy's National Day, the Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day),[565] is celebrated on 2 June each year, with the main celebration taking place in Rome, and commemorates the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946.[566] The ceremony organized in Rome includes the deposition of a laurel wreath as a tribute to the Italian Unknown Soldier at the Altare della Patria by the President of the Italian Republic and a military parade in Rome.
The Saint Lucy's Day, which takes place on 13 December, is popular among children in some Italian regions, where she plays a role similar to Santa Claus.[567] In addition, the Epiphany in Italy is associated with the folkloristic figure of the Befana, a broomstick-riding old woman who, in the night between 5 and 6 January, brings good children gifts and sweets, and bad ones charcoal or bags of ashes.[568] The Assumption of Mary coincides with Ferragosto on 15 August, the summer vacation period which may be a long weekend or most of the month.[569]