Italy
Italy
country of south-central Europe, occupying a peninsula that juts
deep into the Mediterranean Sea. Italy comprises some of the most varied and scenic landscapes on Earth and is often described as a country shaped like a boot.
Italy |
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. At its broad top stand the Alps, which are among the world’s most
rugged mountains. Italy’s highest points are along Monte Rosa, which peaks in
Switzerland, and along Mont Blanc, which peaks in France. The western Alps
overlook a landscape of Alpine lakes and glacier-carved valleys that stretch
down to the Po River and the Piedmont. Tuscany, to the south of the cisalpine
region, is perhaps the country’s best-known region. From the central Alps,
running down the length of the country, radiates the tall Apennine Range, which
widens near Rome to cover nearly the entire width of the Italian peninsula.
South of Rome the Apennines narrow and are flanked by two wide coastal plains,
one facing the Tyrrhenian Sea and the other the Adriatic Sea. Much of the lower
Apennine chain is near-wilderness, hosting a wide range of species rarely seen
elsewhere in western Europe, such as wild boars, wolves, asps, and bears. The
southern Apennines are also tectonically unstable, with several active
volcanoes, including Vesuvius, which from time to time belches ash and steam
into the air above Naples and its island-strewn bay. At the bottom of the
country, in the Mediterranean Sea, lie the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
Italy
Italy
Italy’s political geography has been conditioned by this rugged
landscape. With few direct roads between them, and with passage from one point
to another traditionally difficult, Italy’s towns and cities have a history of
self-sufficiency, independence, and mutual mistrust. Visitors today remark on
how unlike one town is from the next, on the marked differences in cuisine and
dialect, and on the many subtle divergences that make Italy seem less a single
nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing
setting.
Across a span of more than 3,000 years, Italian history has been marked
by episodes of temporary unification and long separation, of intercommunal
strife and failed empires. At peace for more than half a century now, Italy’s
inhabitants enjoy a high standard of living and a highly developed culture.
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toscano italy
Though its archaeological record stretches back tens of thousands of
years, Italian history begins with the Etruscans, an ancient civilization that
rose between the Arno and Tiber rivers. The Etruscans were supplanted in the
3rd century BCE by the Romans, who soon became the chief power in the
Mediterranean world and whose empire stretched from India to Scotland by the
2nd century CE. That empire was rarely secure, not only because of the
unwillingness of conquered peoples to stay conquered but also because of power
struggles between competing Roman political factions, military leaders,
families, ethnic groups, and religions. The Roman Empire fell in the 5th
century CE after a succession of barbarian invasions through which Huns,
Lombards, Ostrogoths, and Franks—mostly previous subjects of Rome—seized
portions of Italy. Rule devolved to the level of the city-state, although the
Normans succeeded in establishing a modest empire in southern Italy and Sicily
in the 11th century. Many of those city-states flourished during the
Renaissance era, a time marked by significant intellectual, artistic, and
technological advances but also by savage warfare between states loyal to the
pope and those loyal to the Holy Roman Empire.
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Italian unification came in the 19th century, when a liberal revolution
installed Victor Emmanuel II as king. In World War I, Italy fought on the side
of the Allies, but, under the rule of the fascist leader Benito Mussolini, it
waged war against the Allied powers in World War II. From the end of World War
II to the early 1990s, Italy had a multiparty system dominated by two large
parties: the Christian Democratic Party (Partito della Democrazia Cristiana;
DC) and the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano; PCI). In the
early 1990s the Italian party system underwent a radical transformation, and
the political centre collapsed, leaving a right-left polarization of the party
spectrum that threw the north-south divide into sharper contrast and gave rise
to such political leaders as media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
The whole country is relatively prosperous, certainly as compared with
the early years of the 20th century, when the economy was predominantly
agricultural. Much of that prosperity has to do with tourism, for in good years
nearly as many visitors as citizens can be found in the country. Italy is part
of the European Union and the Council of Europe, and, with its strategic
geographic position on the southern flank of Europe, it has played a fairly
important role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
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Roman Forum
Roman Forum
Grand Canal, Venice
Grand Canal, Venice
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The capital is Rome, one of the oldest of the world’s great cities and a
favourite of visitors, who go there to see its great monuments and works of art
as well as to enjoy the city’s famed dolce vita, or "sweet life."
Other major cities include the industrial and fashion centre of Milan; Genoa, a
handsome port on the Ligurian Gulf; the sprawling southern metropolis of
Naples; and Venice, one of the world’s oldest tourist destinations. Surrounded
by Rome is an independent state, Vatican City, which is the seat of the Roman
Catholic Church and the spiritual home of Italy’s overwhelmingly Catholic
population. Each of those cities, and countless smaller cities and towns, has
retained its differences against the leveling effect of the mass media and
standardized education. Thus, many Italians, particularly older ones, are
inclined to think of themselves as belonging to families, then neighbourhoods,
then towns or cities, then regions, and then, last, as members of a nation.
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Paragraph about Italy
The intellectual and moral faculties of humankind have found a welcome
home in Italy, one of the world’s most important centres of religion, visual
arts, literature, music, philosophy, culinary arts, and sciences. Michelangelo,
the painter and sculptor, believed that his work was to free an already
existing image; Giuseppe Verdi heard the voices of the ancients and of angels
in music that came to him in his dreams; Dante forged a new language with his
incomparable poems of heaven, hell, and the world between. Those and many other
Italian artists, writers, designers, musicians, chefs, actors, and filmmakers
have brought extraordinary gifts to the world.
ايطاليا
إيطاليا
علم ايطاليا
This article treats the physical and human geography and history of
Italy. For discussion of Classical history, see the articles ancient Italic
people and ancient Rome.
Italy language
Presentation about Italy
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