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Italy, [a] officially the Italian Republic, [b] is a country in Southern [12] and Western Europe. [13] [c] It consists of a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land border, as well as nearly 800 islands, notably Sicily and Sardinia. [15]
The European country of Italy has been inhabited by humans since at least 850,000 years ago. Since classical antiquity, ancient Etruscans, various Italic peoples (such as the Latins, Samnites, and Umbri), Celts, Magna Graecia colonists, and other ancient peoples have inhabited the Italian Peninsula.
It is the tenth-largest country in Europe by area, covering 301,340 km 2 (116,350 sq mi), and the third-most populous member state of the European Union, with a population of nearly 60 million. Italy's capital and largest city is Rome; other major urban areas include Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice.
Italy is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe, located primarily upon the Italian Peninsula. It is where Ancient Rome originated as a small agricultural community about the 8th century BC, which spread over the course of centuries into the colossal Roman Empire , encompassing the whole Mediterranean Basin and spreading Roman ...
Italy is also known for the presence of numerous volcanoes, the most well-known being Vesuvius near Naples, Etna near Catania (which with its 3,343 m (10,968 ft) is the highest volcano in Europe), [Note 2] Stromboli and Vulcano, in the Aeolian Islands in the province of Messina, in addition to the large caldera formed by the Campi Flegrei in ...
Italy is the fifth in Europe by number of passengers by air transport, with about 148 million passengers or about 10% of the European total in 2011. [49] There are approximately 130 airports in Italy , of which 99 have paved runways (including the two hubs of Leonardo Da Vinci International in Rome and Malpensa International in Milan).
These include native communities of non-Romance and Indo-European languages such as Albanian, Croatian, and Greek in southern Italy, Slovene and German varieties in northern Italy, as well as dozens of various Romance languages, such as Arpitan, Catalan, Friulan, Ladin, Lombard, Neapolitan, Occitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, and many others.
The maritime republics of medieval Italy reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa with extensive trade networks and colonies across the Mediterranean, and had an essential role in the Crusades. [100] [101] The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages, followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500.