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Italy (Italian: Repubblica Italiana or Italia) is a country in southern Europe. It comprises a boot-shaped peninsula and two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia, and shares its northern alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The independent countries of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italian territory.
Living in Italy
Italy is well-known for its art, culture, and several monuments, among them the leaning tower of Pisa and the Roman Colosseum, as well as for its food (pizza, pasta, etc.), wine, lifestyle, elegance, design, cinema, theatre, literature, poetry, visual arts, music (notably Opera), holidays, and generally speaking, for taste.
Italy is largely homogeneous in language and religion but is diverse culturally, economically, and politically. The country has the fifth-highest population density in Europe at 196 persons per square kilometre. Indigenous minority groups are small. For a country of 58 million people, Italy has a smaller number of migrants compared to Spain, France, and Germany. According to ISTAT, the national statistical office, Italy has 2 million (3.5%) foreigners, including legal immigrants and their children. The largest immigrant groups are Romanian (445,812) (unnoficially 1,000,000 ), Albanian (270,383), Moroccan (253,362) and Chinese (86,738). The are many other ethnic groups, like Filipinos, Tunisians, Serbians, and Ukrainians, but they make very small numbers.
Although Roman Catholicism is the majority religion (85% of native-born citizens are nominally Catholic) there are mature Protestant and Jewish communities and a growing Muslim (see: Islam in Italy) immigrant community, as many come from Albania, Morocco, and Tunisia.
Italy consists predominantly of a large peninsula with a distinctive boot shape that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, where together with its two main islands Sicily and Sardinia it creates distinct bodies of water, such as the Adriatic Sea to the north-east, the Ionian Sea to the south-east, the Tyrrhenian Sea to the south-west and finally the Ligurian Sea to the north-west.
The Apennine mountains form the backbone of this peninsula, leading north-west to where they join the Alps, the mountain range that then forms an arc enclosing Italy from the north. Here is also found a large alluvial plain, the Po-Venetian plain, drained by the Po River and its many tributaries flowing down from the Alps, Apennines and Dolomites. Other well-known rivers include the Tiber, Adige and Arno.
Its highest point is Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco) at 4,810 m, but Italy is more typically associated with two famous volcanoes: the currently dormant Vesuvius near Naples and the very active Etna on Sicily.
Italy is subdivided into 20 regions (regioni, singular regione), of which five enjoy a special autonomous status that enables them to enact legislation on some of their specific local matters, marked by an:
- Abruzzo
- Basilicata
- Calabria
- Campania
- Emilia-Romagna
- Friuli-Venezia Giulia
- Latium (Lazio)
- Liguria
- Lombardy (Lombardia)
- Marche
- Molise
- Piedmont (Piemonte)
- Apulia (Puglia)
- Sardinia (Sardegna)
- Sicily (Sicilia)
- Tuscany (Toscana)
- Trentino-South Tyrol (Trentino-Alto Adige)
- Umbria
- Aosta Valley (Valle d'Aosta)*
- Veneto
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