Italy

Italian Republic
*Repubblica Italiana* (Italian)
Italian Republic Repubblica Italiana (Italian)
	Flag Emblem
	Anthem: Il Canto degli Italiani (Italian); "The Song of the Italians"
	Location of Italy (dark green) – in Europe (light green & dark grey); – in the European Union (light green) – [Legend]
Capital and largest city	Rome; 41°54′N 12°29′E / 41.900°N 12.483°E
Official language; and national language	Italiana
Religion	83.3% Christians; 12.4% irreligious; 3.7% Muslims; 0.2% Buddhists; 0.1% Hindus; 0.3% other religions;
Demonym(s)	Italian
Government	Unitary constitutional; parliamentary republic
• President	Sergio Mattarella
• Prime Minister	Paolo Gentiloni
• President of the Senate	Pietro Grasso
• President of the Chamber of Deputies	Laura Boldrini
Legislature	Parliament
• Upper house	Senate of the Republic
• Lower house	Chamber of Deputies
Formation
• Italia	Roman Era
• Regnum Italicum	23 August 476
• Kingdom of the Lombards	2 April 568
• Kingdom of Italy (medieval state)	2 January 888
• Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)	17 March 1805
• Unification (modern state)	17 March 1861
• Republic	2 June 1946
• Founded the EEC (now the European Union)	1 January 1958
Area
• Total	301,338 km2 (116,347 sq mi) (71st)
• Water (%)	2.4
Population
• 31.12.2016 estimate	60,589,445 (23rd)
• Density	201.3/km2 (521.4/sq mi) (63rd)
GDP (PPP)	2016 estimate
• Total	$2.234 trillion (12th)
• Per capita	$36,833 (32nd)
GDP (nominal)	2016 estimate
• Total	$1.850 trillion (8th)
• Per capita	$30,507 (25th)
Gini (2015)	32.4; medium inequality
HDI (2015)	0.887; very high (26th)
Currency	Euro (€)b (EUR)
Time zone	UTC+1 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+2 (CEST)
Date format	dd/mm/yyyy (AD)
Drives on	right
Calling code	+39c
ISO 3166 code	IT
Internet TLD	.itd
	German is co-official in South Tyrol; French is co-official in the Aosta Valley; Slovene is co-official in the province of Trieste and the province of Gorizia; Ladin is co-official in South Tyrol, in Trentino and in other northern areas.; Before 2002, the Italian lira. The euro is accepted in Campione d'Italia but its official currency is the Swiss franc.; To call Campione d'Italia, it is necessary to use the Swiss code +41.; The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with other European Union member states.;

43°N 12°E / 43°N 12°E / 43; 12

Italy (/ˈɪtəliː/ I-tə-lee; Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja] ^ⓘ), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica italiana),^[7]^[8]^[9]^[10] is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe.^{[note 1]} Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,338 km² (116,347 sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is often referred to in Italy as lo Stivale (the Boot).^[11]^[12] With around 61 million inhabitants it is the fourth most populous EU member state.

Since classical times, ancient Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks established settlements in the south of Italy, with Etruscans and Celts inhabiting the centre and the north of Italy respectively and various ancient Italian tribes and Italic peoples dispersed throughout the Italian Peninsula and insular Italy. The Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. Ultimately the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean basin, conquering much of the ancient world and becoming the leading cultural, political and religious centre of Western civilisation. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the global distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity and the Latin script.

During the Early Middle Ages Italy suffered sociopolitical collapse amid calamitous barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics, mainly in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping, commerce and banking, laying down the groundwork for modern capitalism.^[13] These mostly independent statelets, acting as Europe's main spice trade hubs with Asia and the Near East, often enjoyed a greater degree of democracy and wealth in comparison to the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe at the time, though much of central Italy remained under the control of the theocratic Papal States, while Southern Italy remained largely feudal until the 19th century, partially as a result of a succession of Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Angevin, and Spanish conquests of the region.^[14]

The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration and art. Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Nevertheless, Italy's commercial and political power significantly waned with the opening of the Atlantic trade route and the route to the Indian Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope, both of which bypassed the Mediterranean.^[14]^[15]^[16] Furthermore, the Italian city-states constantly engaged one another in bloody warfare, culminating in the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries that left them exhausted, with no one emerging as a dominant power. The weakened Italian sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria.

By the mid-19th century, a rising movement in support of Italian nationalism and independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval known as the Risorgimento, which sought the formation of a unified nation-state. After various unsuccessful attempts, the Italian Wars of Independence, the Expedition of the Thousand and the Capture of Rome resulted in the eventual unification of the country, now a great power after centuries of foreign domination and political division.^[17] From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the new Kingdom of Italy rapidly industrialised, although mainly in the north, and acquired a colonial empire,^[18] while the south remained largely impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora.^[19] Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading the way to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and an Italian civil war. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil (e.g. Anni di piombo, Mani pulite, the Second Mafia War, the Maxi Trial and subsequent assassinations of anti-mafia officials), became a major advanced economy.^[20]^[21]^[22]

Today Italy has the third largest nominal GDP in the Eurozone and the eighth largest in the world. As an advanced economy the country also has the sixth worldwide national wealth and it is ranked third for its central bank gold reserve. Italy has a very high level of human development and it is sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, and it is both a regional power^[23]^[24] and a great power.^[25]^[26] Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and the member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus and many more. As a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 53 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country.

Etymology

The assumptions on the etymology of the name "Italia" are very numerous and the corpus of the solutions proposed by historians and linguists is very wide.^[27] According to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Template:Lang-lat,^[28] was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" (cf. Lat vitulus "calf", Umb vitlo "calf").^[29] The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus,^[30] mentioned also by Aristotle^[31] and Thucydides.^[32]

The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria: province of Reggio, and part of the provinces of Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia). But by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region, but it was during the reign of Emperor Augustus (end of the 1st century BC) that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula until the Alps.^[33]

History

Prehistory and antiquity

Excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago,^[34] modern Humans appeared about 40,000 years ago. Archaeological sites from this period include Addaura cave, Altamura, Ceprano, Monte Poggiolo and Gravina in Puglia.^[35]

The Ancient peoples of pre-Roman Italy – such as the Umbrians, the Latins (from which the Romans emerged), Volsci, Oscans, Samnites, Sabines, the Celts, the Ligures, and many others – were Indo-European peoples; the main historic peoples of possible non-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, the Elymians and Sicani in Sicily and the prehistoric Sardinians, which includes the Nuragic civilisation. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible non-Indo-European origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni, known for their rock carvings.

Between the 17th and the 11th centuries BC Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Italy^[36]^[37]^[38]^[39] and in the 8th and 7th centuries BC Greek colonies were established all along the coast of Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula became known as Magna Graecia. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily.

Ancient Rome

The Colosseum in Rome, built c. 70 – 80 AD, is considered one of the greatest works of architecture and engineering of ancient history

The Roman Empire at its greatest extent, 117 AD

Rome, a settlement around a ford on the river Tiber conventionally founded in 753 BC, was ruled for a period of 244 years by a monarchical system, initially with sovereigns of Latin and Sabine origin, later by Etruscan kings. The tradition handed down seven kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus. In 509 BC, the Romans expelled the last king from their city and established an oligarchic republic.

In the wake of Julius Caesar's rise and death in the first century B.C., Rome grew over the course of centuries into a massive empire stretching from Britain to the borders of Persia, and engulfing the whole Mediterranean basin, in which Greek and Roman and many other cultures merged into a unique civilisation. The long and triumphant reign of its first emperor, Augustus, began a golden age of peace and prosperity.

The Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history. At its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres.^[40]^[41] The Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world; among the many legacies of Roman dominance are 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.^[42]

In a slow decline since the third century AD, the Empire split in two in 395 AD. The Western Empire, under the pressure of the barbarian invasions, eventually dissolved in 476 AD, when its last Emperor was deposed by the Germanic chief Odoacer, while the Eastern half of the Empire survived for another thousand years.

Middle Ages

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy was seized by the Ostrogoths,^[43] followed in the 6th century by a brief reconquest under Byzantine Emperor Justinian. The invasion of another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, late in the same century, reduced the Byzantine presence to a rump realm (the Exarchate of Ravenna) and started the end of political unity of the peninsula for the next 1,300 years. The Lombard kingdom was subsequently absorbed into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne in the late 8th century. The Franks also 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 for the former (Ghibellines) or for the latter (Guelphs) from momentary convenience.^[44]

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, for centuries symbol of the Kings of Italy

Castel del Monte, built by German Emperor Frederick II, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

It was during this chaotic era that Italian towns saw the rise of a peculiar institution, the medieval commune. Given the power vacuum caused by extreme territorial fragmentation and the struggle between the Empire and the Holy See, local communities sought autonomous ways to maintain law and order.^[45] 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. In coastal and southern areas, the maritime republics, the most notable being Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi, heavily involved in the Crusades, grew to eventually dominate the Mediterranean and monopolise trade routes to the Orient.^[46]

In the south, Sicily had become an 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.^[47] Through a complex series of events, southern Italy developed as a unified kingdom, first under the House of Hohenstaufen, then under the Capetian House of Anjou and, from the 15th century, the House of Aragon. In Sardinia, the former Byzantine provinces became independent states known as Giudicati, although some parts of the island were under Genoese or Pisan control until the Aragonese conquered it in the 15th century. The Black Death pandemic of 1348 left its mark on Italy by killing perhaps one third of the population.^[48]^[49] However, the recovery from the plague led to a resurgence of cities, trade and economy which allowed the bloom of Humanism and Renaissance, that later spread in Europe.

Early Modern

In the 14th and 15th centuries, northern-central Italy was divided into a number of warring city-states, the rest of the peninsula being occupied by the larger Papal States and the Kingdom of Sicily, referred to here as Naples. Though many of these city-states were often formally subordinate to foreign rulers, as in the case of the Duchy of Milan, which was officially a constituent state of the mainly Germanic Holy Roman Empire, the city-states generally managed to maintain de facto independence from the foreign sovereigns that had seized Italian lands following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The strongest among these city-states gradually absorbed the surrounding territories giving birth to the Signorie, regional states often led by merchant families which founded local dynasties. War between the city-states was endemic, and primarily fought by armies of mercenaries known as condottieri, bands of soldiers drawn from around Europe, especially Germany and Switzerland, led largely by Italian captains.^[50] Decades of fighting eventually saw Florence, Milan and Venice emerged as the dominant players that agreed to the Peace of Lodi in 1454, which saw relative calm brought to the region for the first time in centuries. This peace would hold for the next forty years.

The Renaissance, a period of vigorous revival of the arts and culture, originated in Italy thanks to a number of factors, as the great wealth accumulated by merchant cities, the patronage of its dominant families,^[51] and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Conquest of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.^[52]^[53]^[54] The Italian Renaissance peaked in the mid-16th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil of the Italian Wars.

The Medici became the leading family of Florence and fostered and inspired the birth of the Italian Renaissance,^[51]^[55] along with other families of Italy, such as the Visconti and Sforza of Milan, the Este of Ferrara, and the Gonzaga of Mantua. Greatest artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Giotto, Donatello, Titian and Raphael produced inspired works – their paintwork was more realistic-looking than had been created by Medieval artists and their marble statues rivalled and sometimes surpassed those of Classical Antiquity. Humanist historian Leonardo Bruni also split the history in the antiquity, Middle Ages and modern period.^[56] The ideas and ideals of the Renaissance soon spread into Northern Europe, France, England and much of Europe. In the meantime, the discovery of the Americas, the new routes to Asia discovered by the Portuguese and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, all factors which eroded the traditional Italian dominance in trade with the East, caused a long economic decline in the peninsula.

Following the Italian Wars (1494 to 1559), ignited by the rivalry between France and Spain, the city-states gradually lost their independence and came under foreign domination, first under Spain (1559 to 1713) and then Austria (1713 to 1796). In 1629–1631, a new outburst of plague claimed about 14% of Italy's population.^[57] In addition, as the Spanish Empire started to decline in the 17th century, so did its possessions in Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Milan. In particular, Southern Italy was impoverished and cut off from the mainstream of events in Europe.^[58]

In the 18th century, as a result of the War of Spanish Succession, Austria replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power, while the House of Savoy emerged as a regional power expanding to Piedmont and Sardinia. In the same century, the two-century long decline was interrupted by the economic and state reforms pursued in several states by the ruling élites.^[59] During the Napoleonic Wars, northern-central Italy was invaded and reorganised as a new Kingdom of Italy, a client state of the French Empire,^[60] while 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.

Italian unification

The birth of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of efforts by Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to establish a united kingdom encompassing the entire Italian Peninsula. In the context of the 1848 liberal revolutions that swept through Europe, an unsuccessful war was declared on Austria. The Kingdom of Sardinia again attacked the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence of 1859, with the aid of France, resulting in liberating Lombardy.

In 1860–1861, general Giuseppe Garibaldi led the drive for unification in Naples and Sicily,^[63] allowing the Sardinian government led by the Count of Cavour to declare a united Italian kingdom on 17 March 1861. In 1866, Victor Emmanuel II allied with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War, waging the Third Italian War of Independence which allowed Italy to annex Venetia. Finally, as France abandoned its garrisons in Rome during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Italians rushed to fill the power gap by taking over the Papal States.

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 for basic freedoms of the new State, but electoral laws excluded the non-propertied and uneducated classes from voting. The government of the new kingdom took place in a framework of parliamentary constitutional monarchy dominated by liberal forces. In 1913, male universal suffrage was adopted. As Northern Italy quickly industrialised, the South and rural areas of the North remained underdeveloped and overpopulated, forcing millions of people to migrate abroad, while the Italian Socialist Party constantly increased in strength, challenging the traditional liberal and conservative establishment. Starting from the last two decades of the 19th century, Italy developed into a colonial power by forcing Somalia, Eritrea and later Libya and the Dodecanese under its rule.^[64]

Italy, nominally allied with the German Empire and the Empire of Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance, in 1915 joined the Allies into the war with a promise of substantial territorial gains, that included western Inner Carniola, former Austrian Littoral, Dalmatia as well as parts of the Ottoman Empire. The war was initially inconclusive, as the Italian army get struck in a long attrition war in the Alps, making little progress and suffering very heavy losses. Eventually, in October 1918, the Italians launched a massive offensive, culminating in the victory of Vittorio Veneto. The Italian victory^[65]^[66]^[67] marked the end of the war on the Italian Front, secured the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was chiefly instrumental in ending the First World War less than two weeks later.

During the war, more than 650,000 Italian soldiers and as many civilians died^[68] and the kingdom went to the brink of bankruptcy. Under the Peace Treaties of Saint-Germain, Rapallo and Rome, Italy obtained most of the promised territories, but not Dalmatia (except Zara), allowing nationalists to define the victory as "mutilated". Moreover, Italy annexed the Hungarian harbour of Fiume, that was not part of territories promised at London but had been occupied after the end of the war by Gabriele D'Annunzio.

Fascist regime

File:Benito Mussolini Duce.jpg

Benito Mussolini, duce of Fascist Italy

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 attempted a coup (the "March on Rome") which failed but at the last minute, King Victor Emmanuel III refused to proclaim a state of siege and appointed Mussolini prime minister. Over the next few years, Mussolini banned all political parties and curtailed personal liberties, thus forming a dictatorship. These actions attracted international attention and eventually inspired similar dictatorships such as Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain.

In 1935, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, resulting in an international alienation and leading to Italy's withdrawal from the League of Nations; Italy allied with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan and strongly supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish civil war. In 1939, Italy annexed Albania, a de facto protectorate for decades. Italy entered World War II on 10 June 1940. After initially advancing in British Somaliland and Egypt, the Italians were defeated in East Africa, the Balkans, Russia and North Africa.

After the attack on Yugoslavia by Germany and Italy, suppression of the Yugoslav Partisans resistance and attempts to Italianisation resulted in the Italian war crimes^[69] and deportation of about 25,000 people to the Italian concentration camps, such as Rab, Gonars, Monigo, Renicci di Anghiari and elsewhere. After the war, due to the Cold war, a long period of censorship, disinterest and denial occurred about the Italian war crimes and the Yugoslav's foibe killings.^[70]^[71]^[72]^[73] Meanwhile, about 250,000 Italians and anti-communist Slavs fled to Italy in the Istrian exodus.

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. On 8 September, Italy surrendered. The Germans helped by the Italian fascists shortly succeeded in taking control of northern and central Italy. The country remained a battlefield for the rest of the war, as the Allies were 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. The post-armistice period saw the rise of a large anti-fascist resistance movement, the Resistenza. In late April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape north,^[74] but was captured and summarly 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.^[75] Hostilities ended on 29 April 1945, when the German forces in Italy surrendered. Nearly half a million Italians (including civilians) died in the conflict,^[76] 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.^[77]

Republican Italy

Italy became a republic after a referendum^[78] held on 2 June 1946, a day celebrated since as Republic Day. This was also the first time that Italian women were entitled to vote.^[79] Victor Emmanuel III's son, Umberto II, was forced to abdicate and exiled. The Republican Constitution was approved on 1 January 1948. Under the Treaty of Peace with Italy of 1947, most of Julian March was lost to Yugoslavia and, later, the Free Territory of Trieste was divided between the two states. Italy also lost all its colonial possessions, formally ending the Italian Empire.

Fears in the Italian electorate of a possible Communist takeover proved crucial for the first universal suffrage electoral outcome on 18 April 1948, when the Christian Democrats, under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi, obtained a landslide victory. Consequently, in 1949 Italy became a member of NATO. The Marshall Plan helped to revive the Italian economy which, until the late 1960s, enjoyed a period of sustained economic growth commonly called the "Economic Miracle". In 1957, Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC), which became the European Union (EU) in 1993.

From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, 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 carried out by opposing extremist groups, with the alleged involvement of US and Soviet intelligence.^[80]^[81]^[82] The Years of Lead culminated in the assassination of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978 and the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, where 85 people died.

In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945, two governments were led by non-Christian-Democrat premiers: one republican (Giovanni Spadolini) and one socialist (Bettino Craxi); the Christian Democrats remained, however, the main government party. During Craxi's government, the economy recovered and Italy became the world's fifth largest industrial nation, gaining entry into the G7 Group. However, as a result of his spending policies, the Italian national debt skyrocketed during the Craxi era, soon passing 100% of the GDP.

In the early 1990s, Italy faced significant challenges, as voters – disenchanted with political paralysis, massive public debt and the extensive corruption system (known as Tangentopoli) 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 ruled for almost 50 years, underwent a severe crisis and eventually disbanded, splitting up into several factions.^[83] The Communists reorganised as a social-democratic force. During the 1990s and the 2000s (decade), centre-right (dominated by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi) and centre-left coalitions (led by university professor Romano Prodi) alternatively governed the country.

In the late 2000s, Italy was severely hit by the Great Recession. From 2008 to 2013, the country suffered 42 months of GDP recession. The economic crisis was one of the main problems that forced Berlusconi to resign in 2011. The government of the conservative Prime Minister was replaced by the technocratic cabinet of Mario Monti. Following the 2013 general election, the Vice-Secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta formed a new government at the head of a right-left Grand coalition. In 2014, challenged by the new Secretary of the PD Matteo Renzi, Letta resigned and was replaced by Renzi. The new government started important constitutional reforms such as the abolition of the Senate and a new electoral law. On 4 December the constitutional reform was rejected in a referendum and Renzi resigned after few days on 12 December; the Foreign Affairs Minister Paolo Gentiloni was appointed new Prime Minister.

Italy was affected by the European migrant crisis in 2015 as it became the entry point and leading destination for most asylum seekers entering the EU. The country took in over half a million refugees, which caused great strain on the public purse and a surge in the support for far-right and euroskeptic political parties.^[84]^[85]

Geography

Italy is located in Southern Europe, between latitudes 35° and 47° N, and longitudes 6° and 19° E. To the north, Italy borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia, and is roughly delimited by the Alpine watershed, enclosing the Po Valley and the Venetian Plain. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula and the two Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Sardinia, in addition to many smaller islands. The sovereign states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.

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. Including the islands, Italy has a coastline and border of 7,600 kilometres (4,722 miles) on the Adriatic, Ionian, Tyrrhenian seas (740 km (460 mi)), and borders shared with France (488 km (303 mi)), Austria (430 km (267 mi)), Slovenia (232 km (144 mi)) and Switzerland (740 km (460 mi)). San Marino (39 km (24 mi)) and Vatican City (3.2 km (2.0 mi)), both enclaves, account for the remainder.

The Apennine Mountains form the peninsula's backbone and the Alps form most of its northern boundary, where Italy's highest point is located on Monte Bianco (4,810 m or 15,780 ft).^{[note 2]} The Po, Italy's longest river (652 kilometres or 405 miles), flows from the Alps on the western border with France and crosses the Padan plain on its way to the Adriatic Sea. The five largest lakes are, in order of diminishing size:^[86] Garda (367.94 km² or 142 sq mi), Maggiore (212.51 km² or 82 sq mi, shared with 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).

Although the country includes the Italian peninsula, adjacent islands and most of the southern Alpine basin, some of Italy's territory extends beyond the Alpine basin and some islands are located outside the Eurasian continental shelf. These territories are the comuni of: Livigno, Sexten, Innichen, Toblach (in part), Chiusaforte, Tarvisio, Graun im Vinschgau (in part), which are all part of the Danube's drainage basin, while the Val di Lei constitutes part of the Rhine's basin and the islands of Lampedusa and Lampione are on the African continental shelf.

Monte Bianco in Aosta Valley, the highest point in the European Union
Dolomites in the Italian alps
Lake Como, often cited as the most beautiful lake in the world.^[87]
The Riviera in Liguria
Delta of the Po river
The Marmore Falls in Umbria
Undulating landscape in Tuscany
Faraglioni rocks, Capri
The rocky coastline of the Isle of Sant'Antioco, Sardinia
Island of Lampedusa in the South of Sicily

Volcanology

The country is situated at the meeting point of the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate, leading to considerable seismic and volcanic activity. There are 14 volcanoes in Italy, four of which are active: Etna (the traditional site of Vulcan's smithy), Stromboli, Vulcano and Vesuvius. The latter one is the only active volcano in mainland Europe and is most famous for the destruction of Pompeii and Herculanum in the eruption in 79 AD. Several islands and hills have been created by volcanic activity, and there is still a large active caldera, the Campi Flegrei north-west of Naples.

The high volcanic and magmatic neogenic activity is subdivided into provinces:

Magmatic Tuscan (Monti Cimini, Tolfa and Amiata);
Magmatic Latium (Monti Volsini, Vico nel Lazio, Colli Albani, Roccamonfina);
Ultra-alkaline Umbrian Latium District (San Venanzo, Cupaello and Polino);

Mount Vesuvius, as seen from the Mount Somma

Vulcanic bell (Vesuvius, Campi Flegrei, Ischia);
Windy arch and Tyrrhenian basin (Aeolian Islands and Tyrrhenian seamounts);
African-Adriatic Avampa (Channel of Sicily, Graham Island, Etna and Mount Vulture).^[88]

Until the 1950s, Italy was the first and only country to exploit geothermal energy to produce electricity in the Larderello area, and later in the Mount Amiata area. The high geothermal gradient that forms part of the peninsula makes potentially exploitable also other provinces: research carried out in the 1960s and 1970s identifies potential geothermal fields in Lazio and Tuscany, as well as in most volcanic islands.^[89]

Environment

After its quick industrial growth, Italy took a long time to confront its environmental problems. After several improvements, it now ranks 84th in the world for ecological sustainability.^[90] National parks cover about 5% of the country.^[91] In the last decade, Italy has become one of the world's leading producers of renewable energy, ranking as the world's fourth largest holder of installed solar energy capacity^[92]^[93] and the sixth largest holder of wind power capacity in 2010.^[94] Renewable energies now make up about 12% of the total primary and final energy consumption in Italy, with a future target share set at 17% for the year 2020.^[95]

However, air pollution remains a severe problem, especially in the industrialised north, reaching the tenth highest level worldwide of industrial carbon dioxide emissions in the 1990s.^[96] Italy is the twelfth largest carbon dioxide producer.^[97]^[98] 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, and the presence of smog is becoming an increasingly rarer phenomenon and levels of sulphur dioxide are decreasing.^[99]

Many watercourses and coastal stretches have also been contaminated by industrial and agricultural activity, while because of rising water levels, Venice has been regularly flooded throughout recent years. Waste from industrial activity is not always disposed of by legal means and has led to permanent health effects on inhabitants of affected areas, as in the case of the Seveso disaster. The country has also 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, planning 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.^[100]

Deforestation, illegal building developments and poor land-management policies have led to significant erosion all over Italy's mountainous regions, leading to major ecological disasters like the 1963 Vajont Dam flood, the 1998 Sarno^[101] and 2009 Messina mudslides.

Fauna and flora

Italy has the highest level of faunal biodiversity in Europe, with over 57,000 species recorded, representing more than a third of all European fauna.^[103] The Italian peninsula is in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, forming a corridor between central Europe and North Africa, and has 8,000 km of coastline. Italy also receives species from the Balkans, Eurasia, the Middle East. Italy's varied geological structure, including the Alps and the Apennines, Central Italian woodlands, and Southern Italian Garigue and Maquis shrubland, also contribute to high climate and habitat diversity.

Italian fauna includes 4777 endemic animal species, such as the Sardinian long-eared bat, Sardinian red deer, spectacled salamander, Brown cave salamander, Italian cave salamander, Monte Albo cave salamander, Sardinian brook newt, Italian newt, Italian frog, Apennine yellow-bellied toad, Aeolian wall lizard, Sicilian wall lizard, Italian Aesculapian snake, and Sicilian pond turtle. There are 102 mammals species in Italy, such as the Alpine marmot, Etruscan shrew (the smallest mammal in the world), and European snow vole; notable large mammals are the Italian wolf, Marsican brown bear, Pyrenean chamois, Alpine ibex, rough-toothed dolphin, crested porcupine and Mediterranean monk seal. Italy has also recorded 516 bird species and 56213 invertebrates species.

The flora was traditionally estimated to comprise about 5,500 vascular plant species.^[104] However, as of 2005^[update], 6,759 species are recorded in the Data bank of Italian vascular flora.^[105] Geobotanically, the Italian flora is shared between the Circumboreal Region and Mediterranean Region. Italy is a signatory to the Berne Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats and the Habitats Directive both affording protection to the Italian fauna and flora.

Climate

Thanks to the great longitudinal extension of the peninsula and the mostly mountainous internal conformation, 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. In particular, the climate of the Po valley geographical region is mostly continental, with harsh winters and hot summers.^[106]^[107]

The coastal areas of Liguria, Tuscany and most of the South generally fit the Mediterranean climate stereotype (Köppen climate classification Csa). Conditions on peninsular coastal areas can be very different from the interior's higher ground and valleys, particularly during the winter months when the higher altitudes tend to be cold, wet, and often snowy. The coastal regions have mild winters and warm and generally dry summers, although lowland valleys can be quite hot in summer. Average winter temperatures vary from 0 °C (32 °F) on the Alps to 12 °C (54 °F) in Sicily, like so the average summer temperatures range from 20 °C (68 °F) to over 25 °C (77 °F).^[108]

Politics

Italy has been a unitary parliamentary republic since 2 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished by a constitutional referendum. The President of Italy (Presidente della Repubblica), currently Sergio Mattarella since 2015, is Italy's head of state. The President is elected for a single seven years mandate by the Parliament of Italy in joint session. Italy has a written democratic constitution, resulting from the work of 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 Civil War.^[109]

Government


Paolo Gentiloni Prime Minister since 2016	Sergio Mattarella President since 2015

Italy has a parliamentary government based on a proportional voting system. The parliament is perfectly bicameral: the two houses, the Chamber of Deputies (that meets in Palazzo Montecitorio) and the Senate of the Republic (that meets in Palazzo Madama), have the same powers. The Prime Minister, officially President of the Council of Ministers (Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri), is Italy's head of government. The Prime Minister and the cabinet are appointed by the President of the Republic, but must pass a vote of confidence in Parliament to come into office. The incumbent Prime Minister is Paolo Gentiloni of the Democratic Party.

The prime minister is the President of the Council of Ministers—which holds effective executive power— and he must receive a vote of approval from it to execute most political activities. The office is similar to those in most other parliamentary systems, but the leader of the Italian government is not authorised to request the dissolution of the Parliament of Italy.

Another difference with similar offices is that the overall political responsibility for intelligence is vested in the President of the Council of Ministers. By virtue of that, the Prime Minister has exclusive power to: coordinate intelligence policies, determining the financial resources and strengthening national cyber security; apply and protect State secrets; authorise agents to carry out operations, in Italy or abroad, in violation of the law.^[110]

A peculiarity of the Italian Parliament is the representation given to Italian citizens permanently living abroad: 12 Deputies and 6 Senators elected in four distinct overseas constituencies. In addition, the Italian Senate is characterised also 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 of the Republic are ex officio life senators.

Italy's three major political parties are the Democratic Party, Forza Italia and the Five Star Movement. During the 2013 general election these three parties won 579 out of 630 seats available in the Chamber of Deputies and 294 out of 315 in the Senate.^[111] Most of the remaining seats were won by a short-lived electoral bloc formed to support the outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, the far left party Left, Ecology, Freedom or by parties that contest elections only in one part of Italy: the Northern League, the South Tyrolean People's Party, Vallée d'Aoste and Great South. On 15 November 2013, 58 splinter MPs from Forza Italia founded New Centre-Right.

Law and criminal justice

The Italian judicial system is based 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 appeal cases. The Constitutional Court of Italy (Corte Costituzionale) rules on the conformity of laws with the constitution and is a post–World War II innovation. 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%^[112]^[113] of Italy's GDP.^[114]

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.^[115]^[116] The Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, nowadays probably the most powerful crime syndicate of Italy, accounts alone for 3% of the country's GDP.^[117] However, at 0.013 per 1,000 people, Italy has only the 47th highest murder rate^[118] (in a group of 62 countries) and the 43rd highest number of rapes per 1,000 people in the world (in a group of 65 countries), relatively low figures among developed countries.

Law enforcement

A Alfa Romeo vehicle of the Carabinieri corps

Law enforcement in Italy is provided by multiple police forces, five of which are national, Italian agencies. The Polizia di Stato (State Police) is the civil national police of Italy. Along with patrolling, investigative and law enforcement duties, it patrols the Autostrada (Italy's Express Highway network), and oversees the security of railways, bridges and waterways. The Carabinieri is the common name for the Arma dei Carabinieri, a Gendarmerie-like military corps with police duties. They also serve as the military police for the Italian armed forces.

The Guardia di Finanza, (English: Financial Guard) is a corps under the authority of the Minister of Economy and Finance, with a role as police force. The Corps is in charge of financial, economic, judiciary and public safety. The Polizia Penitenziaria (Prison Guards, literally Penitentiary Police) operate the Italian prison system and handle the transportation of inmates.

Foreign relations

Italy is a founding member of the European Community, now the European Union (EU), and of NATO. Italy was admitted to the United Nations in 1955, and it is a member and strong supporter of a wide number of international organisations, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, and the Central European Initiative. Its recent or upcoming turns in the rotating presidency of international organisations include the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2018, the G7 in 2017 and the EU Council from July to December 2014. Italy is also a recurrent Non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, the most recently in 2017.

Italy strongly supports multilateral international politics, endorsing the United Nations and its international security activities. As of 2013^[update], Italy was deploying 5,296 troops abroad, engaged in 33 UN and NATO missions in 25 countries of the world.^[119] Italy deployed troops in support of UN peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Mozambique, and East Timor and provides support for NATO and UN operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Italy deployed over 2,000 troops in 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.^[120] Italy is one of the largest financiers of the Palestinian National Authority, contributing €60 million in 2013 alone.^[121]

Military

The Italian Army, Navy, Air Force and Carabinieri collectively form the Italian Armed Forces, under the command of the Supreme Defence Council, presided over by the President of Italy. Since 2005, military service is voluntary.^[122] In 2010, the Italian military had 293,202 personnel on active duty,^[123] of which 114,778 are Carabinieri.^[124] Total Italian military spending in 2010 ranked tenth in the world, standing at $35.8 billion, equal to 1.7% of national GDP. As part of NATO's nuclear sharing strategy Italy also hosts 90 United States nuclear bombs, located in the Ghedi and Aviano air bases.^[125]

The Italian Army is the national ground defence force, numbering 109,703 in 2008. Its best-known combat vehicles are the Dardo infantry fighting vehicle, the Centauro tank destroyer and the Ariete tank, and among its aircraft the Mangusta attack helicopter, in the last years deployed in EU, NATO and UN missions. It also has at its disposal a large number of Leopard 1 and M113 armoured vehicles.

The Italian Navy in 2008 had 35,200 active personnel with 85 commissioned ships and 123 aircraft.^[126] It is a blue-water navy. 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.

The Italian Air Force in 2008 had a strength of 43,882 and operated 585 aircraft, including 219 combat jets and 114 helicopters. A transport capability is guaranteed by a fleet of 27 C-130Js and C-27J Spartan.

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 for each of their individual functions, the corps reports to the Ministry of Internal Affairs when maintaining public order and security.^[127]

Administrative divisions

Italy is subdivided into 20 regions (regioni), five of these regions having a special autonomous status that enables them to enact legislation on some of their local matters. The country is further divided into 14 metropolitan cities (città metropolitane) and 96 provinces (province), which in turn are subdivided in 8,047 municipalities (comuni).^[128]

Region	Capital	Area (km²)	Area (sq mi)	Population
Abruzzo	L'Aquila	10,763	4,156	1,331,574
Aosta Valley	Aosta	3,263	1,260	128,298
Apulia	Bari	19,358	7,474	4,090,105
Basilicata	Potenza	9,995	3,859	576,619
Calabria	Catanzaro	15,080	5,822	1,976,631
Campania	Naples	13,590	5,247	5,861,529
Emilia-Romagna	Bologna	22,446	8,666	4,450,508
Friuli-Venezia Giulia	Trieste	7,858	3,034	1,227,122
Lazio	Rome	17,236	6,655	5,892,425
Liguria	Genoa	5,422	2,093	1,583,263
Lombardy	Milan	23,844	9,206	10,002,615
Marche	Ancona	9,366	3,616	1,550,796
Molise	Campobasso	4,438	1,713	313,348
Piedmont	Turin	25,402	9,808	4,424,467
Sardinia	Cagliari	24,090	9,301	1,663,286
Sicily	Palermo	25,711	9,927	5,092,080
Tuscany	Florence	22,993	8,878	3,752,654
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol	Trento	13,607	5,254	1,055,934
Umbria	Perugia	8,456	3,265	894,762
Veneto	Venice	18,399	7,104	4,927,596

Economy

Italy has a major advanced^[129] capitalist mixed economy, ranking as the third-largest in the Eurozone and the eighth-largest in the world.^[130] A founding member of the G7, the Eurozone and the OECD, it is regarded as one of the world's most industrialised nations and a leading country in world trade and exports.^[131]^[132]^[133] It is has a very high level of development, with the world's 8th highest quality of life in 2005^[134] and the 26th Human Development Index. The country is well known for its creative and innovative business,^[135] a large and competitive agricultural sector^[136] (Italy is the world's largest wine producer),^[137] and for its influential and high-quality automobile, machinery, food, design and fashion industry.^[138]^[139]^[140]

Italy is the world's sixth largest manufacturing country,^[143] characterised by a smaller number of global multinational corporations than other economies of comparable size and a large number of dynamic small and medium-sized enterprises, notoriously clustered in several industrial districts, which are the backbone of the Italian industry. This has produced a manufacturing sector often focused on the export of niche market and luxury products, that if on one side is less capable to compete on the quantity, on the other side is more capable of facing the competition from China and other emerging Asian economies based on lower labour costs, with higher quality products.^[144] Italy was the world's 7th largest exporter in 2016. Its closest trade ties are with the other countries of the European Union, with whom it conducts about 59% of its total trade. Its largest EU trade partners, in order of market share, are Germany (12.9%), France (11.4%), and Spain (7.4%).^[145]

Italy is part of a monetary union, the Eurozone (dark blue) and of the EU single market.

The automotive industry is a significant part of the Italian manufacturing sector, with over 144,000 firms and almost 485,000 employed people in 2015,^[146] and a contribution of 8.5% to Italian GDP.^[147] Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (abbreviated in FCA) is currently the world's seventh-largest auto maker.^[148] The country boasts a wide range of acclaimed products, from very compact city cars to luxury supercars such as Maserati, Lamborghini, and Ferrari, which was rated the world's most powerful brand by Brand Finance.^[149] Italian cars have also won 12 times at the European Car of the Year, with 9 awards won by Fiat (the most of any manufacturer), 2 by Alfa Romeo, and one by Lancia.

Italy is part 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.^[150]^[151] It is a member of the Eurozone which represents around 330 million citizens. Its monetary policy is set by the European Central Bank.

Italy has been hit hard by the Financial crisis of 2007–08, that exacerbated the country's structural problems.^[152] Effectively, after a strong GDP growth of 5–6% per year from the 1950s to the early 1970s,^[153] and a progressive slowdown in the 1980-90s, the country virtually stagnated in the 2000s.^[154]^[155] The political efforts to revive growth with massive government spending eventually produced a severe rise in public debt, that stood at over 135% of GDP in 2014, ranking second in the EU only after the Greek one (at 174%).^[156] For all that, the largest chunk of Italian public debt is owned by national subjects, a major difference between Italy and Greece,^[157] and the level of household debt is much lower than the OECD average.^[158]

A gaping North–South divide is a major factor of socio-economic weakness.^[159] It can be noted by the huge difference in statistical income between the northern and southern regions and municipalities.^[160] The richest department,Alto Adige-South Tyrol, earns 152% of the national GDP per capita, while the poorest region, Calabria, 61%.^[161] The unemployment rate (11.1%) stands slightly above the Eurozone average,^[162] but the disaggregated figure is 6.6% in the North and 19.2% in the South.^[163]

Agriculture

According to the last national agricultural census, there were 1.6 million farms in 2010 (−32.4% since 2000) covering 12.7 million hectares (63% of which are located in Southern Italy).^[164] The vast majority (99%) are family-operated and small, averaging only 8 hectares in size.^[164] 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%).^[164]

Italy is the world's top wine producer,^[165] and one of the leading in olive oil, fruits (apples, olives, grapes, oranges, lemons, pears, apricots, hazelnuts, peaches, cherries, plums, strawberries and kiwifruits), and vegetables (especially artichokes and tomatoes). The most famous Italian wines are probably the Tuscan Chianti and the Piedmontese Barolo. Other famous wines are Barbaresco, Barbera d'Asti, Brunello di Montalcino, Frascati, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Morellino di Scansano, and the sparkling wines Franciacorta and Prosecco. 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 attributed by the European Union, is considered important in order to avoid confusion with low-quality mass-produced ersatz products.

Infrastructure

In 2004 the transport sector in Italy generated a turnover of about 119.4 billion euros, employing 935,700 persons in 153,700 enterprises. 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.^[167]

The national railway network, state-owned and operated by Ferrovie dello Stato, 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 national inland waterways network comprised 1,477 km (918 mi) of navigable rivers and channels in 2002. In 2004 there were approximately 30 main airports (including the two hubs of Malpensa International in Milan and Leonardo da Vinci International in Rome) and 43 major seaports (including the seaport of Genoa, the country's largest and second largest in the Mediterranean Sea). In 2005 Italy maintained a civilian air fleet of about 389,000 units and a merchant fleet of 581 ships.^[167]

Italy needs to import about 80% of its energy requirements.^[168]^[169]^[170]

Italy does not invest enough to maintain its drinking water supply and sanitation infrastructure, while water and sanitation tariffs are among the lowest in the European Union. The Galli Law, passed in 1993, aimed at raising the level of investment and to improve service quality by consolidating service providers, making them more efficient and increasing the level of cost recovery through tariff revenues. Despite these reforms, investment levels have declined and remain far from sufficient.^[171]^[172]^[173]

Science and technology

Through the centuries, Italy has fostered the scientific community that produced many major discoveries in physics and the other sciences. During the Renaissance Italian polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72) made important contributions to a variety of fields, including biology, architecture, and engineering. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), a physicist, mathematician and astronomer, played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include key improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and ultimately the triumph of Copernicanism over the Ptolemaic model.
Other astronomers suchs as Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625–1712) and Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910) made many important discoveries about the Solar System. In mathematics, Joseph Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia, 1736–1813) was active before leaving Italy. Fibonacci (c. 1170 – c. 1250), and Gerolamo Cardano (1501–76) made fundamental advances in mathematics. Luca Pacioli established accounting to the world. Physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–54), a Nobel prize laureate, led the team in Chicago that developed the first nuclear reactor and is also noted for his many other contributions to physics, including the co-development of the quantum theory and was one of the key figures in the creation of the nuclear weapon. He, Emilio G. Segrè ((1905–89) who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton), Bruno Rossi ((1905–93) a pioneer in Cosmic Rays and X-ray astronomy) and a number of Italian physicists were forced to leave Italy in the 1930s by Fascist laws against Jews,.^[178]

Other prominent physicists include: Amedeo Avogadro (most noted for his contributions to molecular theory, in particular the Avogadro's law and the Avogadro constant), Evangelista Torricelli (inventor of barometer), Alessandro Volta (inventor of electric battery), Guglielmo Marconi (inventor of radio), Ettore Majorana (who discovered the Majorana fermions), Carlo Rubbia (1984 Nobel Prize in Physics for work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN). Antonio Meucci is known for developing a voice-communication device which is often credited as the first telephone.^[179]^[180] In biology, Francesco Redi has been the first to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies and he described 180 parasites in details and Marcello Malpighi founded microscopic anatomy, Lazzaro Spallanzani conducted important research in bodily functions, animal reproduction, and cellular theory, Camillo Golgi, whose many achievements include the discovery of the Golgi complex, paved the way to the acceptance of the Neuron doctrine, Rita Levi-Montalcini discovered the nerve growth factor (awarded 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). In chemistry, Giulio Natta received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963 for his work on high polymers. Giuseppe Occhialini received the Wolf Prize in Physics for the discovery of the pion or pi-meson decay in 1947. Ennio de Giorgi, a Wolf Prize in Mathematics recipient in 1990, solved Bernstein's problem about minimal surfaces and the 19th Hilbert problem on the regularity of solutions of Elliptic partial differential equations.

Tourism

Italy is the fifth most visited country in the world, with a total of 50.7 million international arrivals in 2015.^[182] The total contribution of travel & tourism to GDP (including wider effects from investment, the supply chain and induced income impacts) was EUR162.7bn in 2014 (10.1% of GDP) and generated 1,082,000 jobs directly in 2014 (4.8% of total employment).^[183]

Italy is well known for its cultural and environmental tourist routes and is home to 53 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the most in the world.^[184] Milan is the 6th most visited city in Europe and the 14th in the world, with an average of 7.65 million international arrivals in 2016 while Rome is the 8th and 16th resptectively, with 7.12 million toruists.^[185] In addition, Venice and Florence are also among the world's top 100 destinations.

Italy's most-visited landmarks include e.g. Coloseum and Roman Forum, Pompeii, Uffizi Gallery, Galleria dell'Accademia, Castel Sant'Angelo, Boboli Garden, Venaria Reale, Turin Egyptian Museum, the Borghese Gallery, the Royal Palace of Caserta, Cenacolo Vinciano Museum, Villa d'Este, Pitti Palace, the Excavations of Hercolaneum, Naples National Archaeological Museum, the Medici Chapels, Ostia Antica Excavations and Museum, Blu Grotto, Venice National Archaeological Museum, Lake Como and Pinacoteca di Brera.^[186]

Demographics

At the end of 2013, Italy had 60,782,668 inhabitants.^[187] The resulting population density, at 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 (that 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 Apennines highlands, the plateaus of Basilicata and the island of Sardinia are very 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 phenomenon which happened as a consequence of the Italian economic miracle of the 1950–1960s. High fertility and birth rates persisted until the 1970s, after which they start to dramatically decline, leading to rapid population ageing. At the end of the 2000s (decade), one in five Italians was over 65 years old.^[188] However, in recent years Italy experienced a significant growth in birth rates.^[189] 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.^[190] The TFR is expected to reach 1.6–1.8 in 2030.^[191]

From the late 19th century until 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.^[192] The diaspora concerned more than 25 million Italians and it is considered the biggest mass migration of contemporary times.^[193] As a result, today more than 4.1 million Italian citizens are living abroad,^[194] while at least 60 million people of full or part Italian ancestry live outside of Italy, most notably in Argentina,^[195] Brazil,^[196] Uruguay,^[197] Venezuela,^[198] the United States,^[199] Canada,^[200] Australia^[201] and France.^[202]

v t e Largest cities or towns in Italy ISTAT estimates for 31 December 2022
	Rank	Name	Region	Pop.	Rank	Name	Region	Pop.
Rome Milan	1	Rome	Lazio	2,748,109	11	Verona	Veneto	255,588	Naples Turin
	2	Milan	Lombardy	1,354,196	12	Venice	Veneto	250,369
	3	Naples	Campania	913,462	13	Messina	Sicily	218,786
	4	Turin	Piedmont	841,600	14	Padua	Veneto	206,496
	5	Palermo	Sicily	630,167	15	Trieste	Friuli-Venezia Giulia	198,417
	6	Genoa	Liguria	558,745	16	Parma	Emilia-Romagna	196,885
	7	Bologna	Emilia-Romagna	387,971	17	Brescia	Lombardy	196,567
	8	Florence	Tuscany	360,930	18	Prato	Tuscany	195,820
	9	Bari	Apulia	316,015	19	Taranto	Apulia	188,098
	10	Catania	Sicily	298,762	20	Modena	Emilia-Romagna	184,153

Metropolitan cities and larger urban zone

Source:^[203]^[204]

Metropolitan city	Region	Area (km²)	Population1 January 2016	Functional Urban Areas (FUA) Population (2014)
Rome	Lazio	5,352	4,340,474	4,370,538
Milan	Lombardy	1,575	3,208,509	4,252,246
Naples	Campania	1,171	3,113,898	3,627,021
Turin	Piedmont	6,829	2,282,127	1,801,729
Palermo	Sicily	5,009	1,271,406	1,006,602
Bari	Apulia	3,821	1,263,820	589,407
Catania	Sicily	3,574	1,115,535	657,293
Florence	Tuscany	3,514	1,113,348	760,325
Bologna	Emilia-Romagna	3,702	1,005,831	770,998
Genoa	Liguria	1,839	854,099	723,959
Venice	Veneto	2,462	855,696	499,966
Messina	Sicily	3,266	640,675	277,584
Reggio Calabria	Calabria	3,183	555,836	221,789
Cagliari	Sardinia	1,248	430,413	476,974

Immigration

In 2016, Italy had about 5.05 million foreign residents,^[205] making up 8.3% 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;^[206] In 2016, about 201,000 people acquired Italian citizenship^[207] (130,000 in 2014).^[208] The official figures also exclude illegal immigrants, that were estimated in 2008 to number at least 670,000.^[209]

Starting from the early 1980s, until then a linguistically and culturally homogeneous society, Italy begun to attract substantial flows of foreign immigrants.^[210] After the fall of the Berlin Wall and, more recently, 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). An equally important source of immigration is neighbouring North Africa (in particular, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia), with soaring arrivals as a consequence of the Arab Spring. Furthermore, in recent years, growing migration fluxes from Asia-Pacific (notably China^[211] and the Philippines) and Latin America have been recorded.

Currently, about one million Romanian citizens (around 10% of them being from the Romani people ethnic group^[212]) are officially registered as living in Italy, representing thus the most important individual country of origin, followed by Albanians and Moroccans with about 500,000 people each. The number of unregistered Romanians is difficult to estimate, but the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network suggested in 2007 that there might have been half a million or more.^[213]^{[note 3]} Overall, at the end of the 2000s (decade) the foreign born population of Italy was from: Europe (54%), Africa (22%), Asia (16%), the Americas (8%) and Oceania (0.06%). The distribution of immigrants is largely uneven in Italy: 87% of immigrants live in the northern and central parts of the country (the most economically developed areas), while only 13% live in the southern half of the peninsula.

Languages

Italy's official language is Italian.^[215] It is estimated that there are about 64 million native Italian speakers^[216]^[217]^[218] while the total number of Italian speakers, including those who use it as a second language, is about 85 million.^[219] Italy has numerous regional dialects;^[220] however, the establishment of a national education system has led to a decrease in variation in the languages spoken across the country during the 20th century. Standardisation was further expanded in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to economic growth and the rise of mass media and television (the state broadcaster RAI helped set a standard Italian).

Twelve historical minority languages are legally recognised: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian (Law number 482 of 15 December 1999).^[222] French is co-official in the Valle d’Aosta—although in fact Franco-Provencal is more commonly spoken there.^[223] German has the same status in South Tyrol as, in some parts of that province and in parts of the neighbouring Trentino, does Ladin. Slovene is officially recognised in the provinces of Trieste, Gorizia and Udine.

Because of significant recent immigration, Italy has sizeable populations whose native language is not Italian. 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 people; 13.1% of foreign residents), Albanian (380,000 people) and Spanish (255,000 people). Other languages spoken in Italy are Ukrainian, Hindi, Polish and Tamil amongst others.^[224]

Religion

Italy is home to many of the world's largest churches and masterpieces of architecture. Clockwise from left: Florence Cathedral, which has the biggest brick dome in the world;^[225]^[226] St. Peter's Basilica, the largest church of Christendom;^[227] Milan Cathedral, the largest Italian church and the third largest in the world;^[228] and St Mark's Basilica, one of the best known examples of Italo-Byzantine architecture^[229]

Roman Catholicism is, by far, the largest religion in the country, although since 1985 no longer officially the state religion.^[230] In 2010, the proportion of Italians that identify themselves as Roman Catholic was 81.2%.^[231]

The Holy See, the episcopal jurisdiction of Rome, contains the central government of the entire Roman Catholic Church, including various agencies essential to administration. Diplomatically, 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.^[232]^[233] Often incorrectly referred to as "the Vatican", the Holy See is not the same entity as the Vatican City State, which came into existence only in 1929; the Holy See dates back to early Christian times. Ambassadors are officially accredited not to the Vatican City State but to "the Holy See", and papal representatives to states and international organisations are recognised as representing the Holy See, not the Vatican City State.

Minority Christian faiths in Italy include Eastern Orthodox, Waldensians and other Protestant communities. In 2011, there were an estimated 1.5 million Orthodox Christians in Italy, or 2.5% of the population;^[234] 0.5 million Pentecostals and Evangelicals (of whom 0.4 million are members of the Assemblies of God), 235,685 Jehovah's Witnesses,^[235] 30,000 Waldensians,^[236] 25,000 Seventh-day Adventists, 22,000 Latter-day Saints, 15,000 Baptists (plus some 5,000 Free Baptists), 7,000 Lutherans, 4,000 Methodists (affiliated with the Waldensian Church).^[237]

One of the longest-established minority religious faiths in Italy is Judaism, Jews having been present in Ancient Rome since before the birth of Christ. Italy has for centuries welcomed Jews expelled from other countries, notably Spain. However, as a result of the Holocaust, about 20% of Italian Jews lost their lives.^[238] This, together with the emigration that preceded and followed World War II, has left only a small community of around 28,400 Jews in Italy.^[239]

Soaring immigration in the last two decades has been accompanied by an increase in non-Christian faiths. In 2010, there were 1.6 million Muslims in Italy, forming 2.6% of population.^[231] In addition, there are more than 200,000 followers of faiths originating in the Indian subcontinent with some 70,000 Sikhs with 22 gurdwaras across the country,^[240] 70,000 Hindus, and 50,000 Buddhists.^[241] There were an estimated 4,900 Bahá'ís in Italy in 2005.^[242]

The Italian state, as a measure to protect religious freedom, devolves shares of income tax to recognised religious communities, under a regime known as Eight per thousand (Otto per mille). 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.^[243] Taxpayers who do not wish to fund a religion contribute their share to the state welfare system.^[244]

Education

Bologna University is the oldest academic institution of the world, founded in AD 1088

Education in Italy is free and mandatory from ages six to sixteen,^[245] and consists of five stages: kindergarten (scuola dell'infanzia, formerly known as asilo), primary school (scuola primaria, formerly known as scuola elementare), lower secondary school (scuola secondaria di primo grado, formerly known as scuola media), upper secondary school (scuola secondaria di secondo grado, formerly known as scuola superiore) and university (università).^[246]

Primary education lasts eight years. The students are given a basic education in Italian, English, mathematics, natural sciences, history, geography, social studies, physical education and visual and musical arts. Secondary education 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 vocational education. In 2012, the Italian secondary education has been evalued as slightly below the OECD average, with a strong and steady improvement in science and mathematics results since 2003;^[247] however, a wide gap exists between northern schools, which performed significantly better than the national average (among the best in the world in some subjects), and schools in the South, that had much poorer results.^[248]

Tertiary education in Italy is divided between public universities, private universities and the prestigious and selective superior graduate schools, such as the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. The university system in Italy is generally regarded as poor for a world cultural powerhouse, with no universities ranked among the 100 world best and only 20 among the top 500.^[249] However, the current government has scheduled major reforms and investments in order to improve the overall internationalisation and quality of the system.^[250]

Health

The Italian state runs a universal public healthcare system since 1978.^[251] 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 in Italy accounted for 9.2% of the national GDP in 2012, very close the OECD countries' average of 9.3%.^[252] Italy in 2000 ranked as having the world's 2nd best healthcare system,^[251]^[253] and the world's 2nd best healthcare performance.

Life expectancy in Italy is 80 for males and 85 for females, placing the country 6th in the world for life expectancy.^[254] In comparison to other Western countries, Italy has a relatively low rate of adult obesity (below 10%^[255]), probably thanks to the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet. The proportion of daily smokers was 22% in 2012, down from 24.4% in 2000 but still slightly above the OECD average.^[252] Smoking in public places including bars, restaurants, night clubs and offices has been restricted to specially ventilated rooms since 2005.^[256] In 2013, UNESCO added the Mediterranean diet to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of Italy (promoter), Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Croatia.^[257]^[258]

Culture

The city of Venice, built on 117 islands

The Leaning Tower and the Duomo of Pisa

The Royal Palace of Caserta

For centuries divided by politics and geography until its eventual unification in 1861, Italy has developed a unique culture, shaped by a multitude of regional customs and local centres of power and patronage.^[259] During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a number of magnificent courts competed for attracting the best architects, artistis and scholars, thus producing an immense legacy of monuments, paintings, music and literature.^[260]

Italy has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites (53) than any other country in the world, and has rich collections of art, culture and literature from many different periods. The country has had a broad cultural influence worldwide, also because numerous Italians emigrated to other places during the Italian diaspora. Furthermore, the nation has, overall, an estimated 100,000 monuments of any sort (museums, palaces, buildings, statues, churches, art galleries, villas, fountains, historic houses and archaeological remains).^[261]

Architecture

Italy has a very broad and diverse architectural style, which cannot be simply classified by period, but also by region, because of Italy's division into several regional states until 1861. This has created a highly diverse and eclectic range in architectural designs.

Italy is known for its considerable architectural achievements,^[262] such as the construction of arches, domes and similar structures during ancient Rome, the founding of the Renaissance architectural movement in the late-14th to 16th centuries, and being the homeland of Palladianism, a style of construction which inspired movements such as that of Neoclassical architecture, and influenced the designs which noblemen built their country houses all over the world, notably in the UK, Australia and the US during the late 17th to early 20th centuries. Several of the finest works in Western architecture, such as the Colosseum, the Milan Cathedral and Florence cathedral, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the building designs of Venice are found in Italy.

Italian architecture has also widely influenced the architecture of the world. British architect Inigo Jones, inspired by the designs of Italian buildings and cities, brought back the ideas of Italian Renaissance architecture to 17th-century England, being inspired by Andrea Palladio.^[263] Additionally, Italianate architecture, popular abroad since the 19th century, was used to describe foreign architecture which was built in an Italian style, especially modelled on Renaissance architecture.

Visual art

The history of Italian visual art is part of Western painting history. Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting. However, Roman painting does have important unique characteristics. The only surviving Roman paintings are wall paintings, many from villas in Campania, in Southern Italy. Such painting can be grouped into 4 main "styles" or periods^[264] and may contain the first examples of trompe-l'œil, pseudo-perspective, and pure landscape.^[265]

Panel painting becomes more common during the Romanesque period, under the heavy influence of Byzantine icons. Towards the middle of the 13th century, Medieval art and Gothic painting became more realistic, with the beginnings of interest in the depiction of volume and perspective in Italy with Cimabue and then his pupil Giotto. From Giotto on, the treatment of composition by the best painters also became much more free and innovative. They are considered to be the two great medieval masters of painting in western culture.

The Italian Renaissance is said by many to be the golden age of painting; roughly spanning the 14th through the mid-17th centuries with a significant influence also out of the borders of modern Italy. In Italy artists like Paolo Uccello, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Titian took painting to a higher level through the use of perspective, the study of human anatomy and proportion, and through their development of an unprecedented refinement in drawing and painting techniques. Michelangelo was an active sculptor from about 1500 to 1520, and his great masterpieces including his David, Pietà, Moses. Other prominent Renaissance sculptors include Lorenzo Ghiberti, Luca Della Robbia, Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi and Andrea del Verrocchio.

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 are replaced by the troubled expressions of Pontormo and the emotional intensity of El Greco. In the 17th century, among the greatest painters of Italian Baroque are Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, Artemisia Gentileschi, Mattia Preti, Carlo Saraceni and Bartolomeo Manfredi. Subsequently, in the 18th century, Italian Rococo was mainly inspired by French Rococo, since France was the founding nation of that particular style, with artists such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Canaletto. Italian Neoclassical sculpture focused, with Antonio Canova's nudes, on the idealist aspect of the movement.

In the 19th century, major Italian Romantic painters were Francesco Hayez, Giuseppe Bezzuoli and Francesco Podesti. Impressionism was brought from France to Italy by the Macchiaioli, led by Giovanni Fattori, and Giovanni Boldini; Realism by Gioacchino Toma and Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. In the 20th century, with Futurism, primarily through the works of Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla, Italy rose again as a seminal country for artistic evolution in painting and sculpture. Futurism was succeeded by the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who exerted a strong influence on the Surrealists and generations of artists to follow.

Literature and theatre

Italian literature began after the founding of Rome in 753 BC. Roman, or 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 also famous for their oral tradition, poetry, drama and epigrams.^[266] In early years of the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi was considered the first Italian poet by literary critics, with his religious song Canticle of the Sun.^[267]

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 modeled on Provençal forms and themes were written in a refined version of the local vernacular. The most important of these poets was the notary Giacomo da Lentini, inventor of the sonnet form, though the most famous early sonneteer was Petrarch.^[268]

Guido Guinizelli is considered 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 Guido Cavalcanti and the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who established the basis of the modern Italian language; his greatest work, the Divine Comedy, is considered among the foremost literary statements produced in Europe during the Middle Ages; furthermore, the poet invented the difficult terza rima. The two great writers of the 14th century, Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio, sought out and imitated the works of antiquity and cultivated their own artistic personalities. Petrarch achieved fame through his collection of poems, Il Canzoniere. Petrarch's love poetry served as a model for centuries. Equally influential was Boccaccio's The Decameron, one of the most popular collections of short stories ever written.^[269]

Italian Renaissance authors produced a number of important works. Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is one of the world's most famous essays on political science and modern philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. Another important work of the period, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato, is perhaps the greatest chivalry poem ever written. Baldassare Castiglione's dialogue The Book of the Courtier describes the ideal of the perfect court gentleman and of spiritual beauty. The lyric poet Torquato Tasso in Jerusalem Delivered wrote a Christian epic, making use of the ottava rima, with attention to the Aristotelian canons of unity.

Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile, which have written The Facetious Nights of Straparola (1550-1555) and the Pentamerone (1634) respectively, printed some of the first known versions of fairy tales in Europe.^[270]^[271]^[272] In the early 17th century, some literary masterpieces were created, such as Giambattista Marino's long mythological poem, L'Adone. The Baroque period also produced the clear scientific prose of Galileo as well as Tommaso Campanella's The City of the Sun, a description of a perfect society ruled by a philosopher-priest. At the end of the 17th century, the Arcadians began a movement to restore simplicity and classical restraint to poetry, as in Metastasio's heroic melodramas. In the 18th century, playwright Carlo Goldoni created full written plays, many portraying the middle class of his day.

Pinocchio, the title character of *The Adventures of Pinocchio* by Carlo Collodi, is an icon of children's literature.^[273]^[274]

The Romanticism coincided with some ideas of the Risorgimento, the patriotic movement that brought Italy political unity and freedom from foreign domination. Italian writers embraced Romanticism in the early 19th century. The time of Italy's rebirth was heralded by the poets Vittorio Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, and Giacomo Leopardi. The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, the leading Italian Romantic, was the first Italian historical novel to glorify Christian values of justice and Providence, and it has been called the most famous and widely read novel in the Italian language.^[275]

In the late 19th century, a realistic literary movement called Verismo played a major role in Italian literature; Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana were its main exponents. In the same period, Emilio Salgari, writer of action adventure swashbucklers and a pioneer of science fiction, published his Sandokan series.^[276] In 1883, Carlo Collodi also published the novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, the most celebrated children's classic by an Italian author and the most translated non-religious book in the world.^[273] A movement called Futurism influenced Italian literature in the early 20th century. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote Manifesto of Futurism, called for the use of language and metaphors that glorified the speed, dynamism, and violence of the machine age.^[277]

Modern literary figures and Nobel laureates are Gabriele D'Annunzio from 1889 to 1910, nationalist poet Giosuè Carducci in 1906, realist writer Grazia Deledda in 1926, modern theatre author Luigi Pirandello in 1936, short stories writer Italo Calvino in 1960, poets Salvatore Quasimodo in 1959 and Eugenio Montale in 1975, Umberto Eco in 1980, and satirist and theatre author Dario Fo in 1997.^[278]

Prominent Italian philosophers include Cesare Beccaria, Giordano Bruno, Benedetto Croce, Marsilio Ficino, and Giambattista Vico.

Italian theatre can be traced back to the Roman tradition which was heavily influenced by the Greek; as with many other literary genres, Roman dramatists tended to adapt and translate from the Greek. For example, Seneca's Phaedra was based on that of Euripides, and many of the comedies of Plautus were direct translations of works by Menander. During the 16th century and on 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.

Music

Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer whose operas, including *La bohème*, *Tosca*, *Madama Butterfly* and *Turandot*, are among the most frequently worldwide performed in the standard repertoire^[279]^[280]

From folk music to classical, music has always played an important role in Italian culture. Instruments associated with classical music, including the piano and violin, were invented in Italy, and many of the prevailing classical music forms, such as the symphony, concerto, and sonata, can trace their roots back to innovations of 16th- and 17th-century Italian music.

Italy's most famous composers include the Renaissance composers Palestrina and Monteverdi, the Baroque composers Scarlatti, Corelli and Vivaldi, the Classical composers Paganini and Rossini, and the Romantic composers Verdi and Puccini. Modern Italian composers such as Berio and Nono proved significant in the development of experimental and electronic music. While the classical music tradition still holds strong in Italy, as evidenced by the fame of its innumerable opera houses, such as La Scala of Milan and San Carlo of Naples, and performers such as the pianist Maurizio Pollini and the late tenor Luciano Pavarotti, Italians have been no less appreciative of their thriving contemporary music scene.

Italy is widely known for being the birthplace of opera.^[281] Italian opera was believed to have been founded in the early 17th century, in Italian cities such as Mantua and Venice.^[281] 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 ever written and today are performed in opera houses across the world. La Scala operahouse in Milan is also renowned as one of the best in the world. Famous Italian opera singers include Enrico Caruso and Alessandro Bonci.

Introduced in the early 1920s, jazz took a particularly strong foothold in Italy, and remained popular despite the xenophobic cultural policies of the Fascist regime. Today, the most notable centres of jazz music in Italy include Milan, Rome, and Sicily. Later, Italy was at the forefront of the progressive rock and pop movement of the 1970s, with bands like PFM, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, Goblin, and Pooh. The same period saw diversification in the cinema of Italy, and Cinecittà films included complex scores by composers including Ennio Morricone, Armando Trovaioli, Piero Piccioni and Piero Umiliani. The Italian hip hop scene began in the early 1990s with Articolo 31 duo, mainly influenced by the East Coast rap.

Italy was also an important country in the development of disco and electronic music, with Italo disco, known for its futuristic sound and prominent usage of synthesisers and drum machines, being one of the earliest electronic dance genres, as well as European forms of disco aside from Euro disco (which later went on to influence several genres such as Eurodance and Nu-disco). Notable Italian DJs and remixers include Benny Benassi, Gigi D'Agostino, and Gabry Ponte, member of the Eiffel 65 group.

Producers such as Giorgio Moroder, who won three Academy Awards for his music, were highly influential in the development of electronic dance music. Today, Italian pop music is represented annually with the Sanremo Music Festival, which served as inspiration for the Eurovision song contest, and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto. Singers such as Mina, Andrea Bocelli, Grammy winner Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti and Tiziano Ferro have attained international acclaim.

Cinema

The history of Italian cinema began a few months after the Lumière brothers began motion picture exhibitions. The first Italian film was a few seconds, showing Pope Leo XIII giving a blessing to the camera. The Italian film industry was born between 1903 and 1908 with three companies: the Società Italiana Cines, the Ambrosio Film and the Itala Film. Other companies soon followed in Milan and in Naples. In a short time these first companies reached a fair producing quality, and films were soon sold outside Italy. Cinema was later used by Benito Mussolini, who founded Rome's renowned Cinecittà studio for the production of Fascist propaganda until World War II.^[283]

After the war, Italian film was widely recognised and exported until an artistic decline around the 1980s. Notable Italian film directors from this period include Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni and Roberto Rossellini; some of these are recognized among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.^[284]^[285]^[286] Movies include world cinema treasures such as Bicycle Thieves, La dolce vita, 8½, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West. The mid-1940s to the early 1950s was the heyday of neorealist films, reflecting the poor condition of post-war Italy.^[287]^[288]

As the country grew wealthier in the 1950s, a form of neorealism known as pink neorealism succeeded, and other film genres, such as sword-and-sandal followed as spaghetti westerns, were popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Actresses such as Sophia Loren, Giulietta Masina and Gina Lollobrigida achieved international stardom during this period. Erotic Italian thrillers, or giallos, produced by directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento in the 1970s, also influenced the horror genre worldwide. In recent years, the Italian scene has received only occasional international attention, with movies like Life Is Beautiful directed by Roberto Benigni, Il Postino: The Postman with Massimo Troisi and The Great Beauty directed by Paolo Sorrentino.

The aforementioned Cinecittà studio is today the largest film and television production facility in continental Europe and the centre of the Italian cinema, where a large number of biggest box office hits are filmed, and one of the biggest production communities in the world. In the 1950s, the number of international productions being made there led to Rome's being dubbed "Hollywood on the Tiber". More than 3,000 productions have been made on its lot, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it, from some cinema classics to recent rewarded features (such as Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, The English Patient, Gladiator, The Passion of the Christ, and Gangs of New York).^[289]

Italy is the most awarded country at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, with 14 awards won, 3 Special Awards and 31 nominations. As of 2016, Italian films have also won 12 Palmes d'Or (the second-most of any country), 11 Golden Lions and 7 Golden Bears.

Sport

The most popular sport in Italy is, by far, football.^[290] Italy's national football team (nicknamed Gli Azzurri – "the Blues") is one of the world's most successful team as it has won four FIFA World Cups (1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006).^[291] 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 ranks as the fourth best in Europe and is followed by millions of fans around the world.

Other popular team sports in Italy include volleyball, basketball and rugby. Italy's male and female national teams are often featured among the world's best. The Italian national basketball team's best results were gold at Eurobasket 1983 and EuroBasket 1999, as well as silver at the Olympics in 2004. Lega Basket Serie A is widely considered one of the most competitive in Europe. Rugby union enjoys a good level of popularity, especially in the north of the country. Italy's national team competes in the Six Nations Championship, and is a regular at the Rugby World Cup. Italy ranks as a tier-one nation by World Rugby. Italy men's national volleyball team winning three World Championships in a row 1990, 1994 and 1998 an three silver medal in Olympics 1996, 2004, 2016.

Italy has a long and successful tradition in individual sports as well. Bicycle racing is a very familiar sport in the country.^[294] Italians have won the UCI World Championships more 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, along with the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, each of which last approximately three weeks. Alpine skiing is also a very widespread sport in Italy, and the country is a popular international skiing destination, known for its ski resorts.^[295] Italian skiers achieved good results in Winter Olympic Games, Alpine Ski World Cup, and World Championship. Tennis has a significant following in Italy, ranking as the fourth most practised sport in the country.^[296] The Rome Masters, founded in 1930, is one of the most prestigious tennis tournaments in the world. Italian professional tennis players won the Davis Cup in 1976 and the Fed Cup in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2013. Motorsports are also extremely popular in Italy. Italy has won, by far, the most MotoGP World Championships. Italian Scuderia Ferrari is the oldest surviving team in Grand Prix racing, having competed since 1948, and statistically the most successful Formula One team in history with a record of 228 wins.

Historically, Italy has been successful in the Olympic Games, taking part from the first Olympiad and in 47 Games out of 48. Italian sportsmen have won 522 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, and another 106 at the Winter Olympic Games, 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 one Summer games (in 1960).

Fashion and design

Italian fashion has a long tradition, and is regarded as one most important in the world. Milan, Florence and Rome are Italy's main fashion capitals. According to Top Global Fashion Capital Rankings 2013 by Global Language Monitor, Rome ranked sixth worldwide when Milan was twelfth.^[297] Major Italian fashion labels, such as Gucci, Armani, Prada, Versace, Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni, Fendi, Moschino, Max Mara, Trussardi, and Ferragamo, to name a few, are regarded as among the finest fashion houses in the world. Also, the fashion magazine Vogue Italia, is considered one of the most prestigious fashion magazines in the world.^[298]

Italy is also prominent in the field of design, notably interior design, architectural design, industrial design and urban design. 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.^[299] Examples of classic pieces of Italian white goods and pieces of furniture include Zanussi's washing machines and fridges,^[300] the "New Tone" sofas by Atrium,^[300] and the post-modern bookcase by Ettore Sottsass, inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again".^[300] Today, Milan and Turin are the nation's leaders in architectural design and industrial design. The city of Milan hosts Fiera Milano, Europe's largest design fair.^[301] Milan also hosts major design and architecture-related events and venues, such as the "Fuori Salone" and the Salone del Mobile, and has been home to the designers Bruno Munari, Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni.^[302]

Cuisine

The 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 takes heavy influences, including Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, and Jewish.^[303] Significant changes occurred with the discovery of the New World with the introduction of items such as potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers and maize, now central to the cuisine but not introduced in quantity until the 18th century.^[304]^[305] Italian cuisine is noted for its regional diversity,^[306]^[307]^[308] abundance of difference in taste, and is known to be one of the most popular in the world,^[309] wielding strong influence abroad.^[310]

The Mediterranean diet forms the basis of Italian cuisine, rich in pasta, fish, fruits and vegetables and characterised by its extreme simplicity and variety, with many dishes having only four to eight ingredients.^[311] Italian cooks rely chiefly on the quality of the ingredients rather than on elaborate preparation.^[312] 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 one of the main reasons behind the ever-increasing worldwide popularity of Italian cuisine, from America^[313] to Asia.^[314] Ingredients and dishes vary widely by region.

A key factor in the success of Italian cuisine is its heavy reliance on traditional products; Italy has the most traditional specialities protected under EU law.^[315] Cheese, cold cuts and wine are a major part of Italian cuisine, with many regional declinations and Protected Designation of Origin or Protected Geographical Indication labels, and along with coffee (especially espresso) make up a very important part of the Italian gastronomic culture.^[316] Desserts have a long tradition of merging local flavours such as citrus fruits, pistachio and almonds with sweet cheeses like mascarpone and ricotta or exotic tastes as cocoa, vanilla and cinnamon. Gelato,^[317] tiramisù^[318] and cassata are among the most famous examples of Italian desserts, cakes and patisserie.

Public holidays and festivals

Public holidays celebrated in Italy include religious, national and regional observances.^[321] Italy's National Day, the Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day) is celebrated on 2 June each year, and commemorates the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946.

The Epiphany in Italy is associated with the figure of the Befana, a broomstick-riding old woman who, in the night between January 5 and 6, brings gifts to children, or a lump of "coal" (really black candy) for the times they have not been good during the year.^[322] The Saint Lucy's Day, which take place on 13 December, is very popular among children in some Italian regions, where she plays a role similar to Santa Claus.^[323]

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.^[324] Each city or town also celebrates a public holiday on the occasion of the festival of the local patron saint, for example: Rome on 29 June (Saints Peter and Paul) and Milan on 7 December (S. Ambrose).^[325]

There are many festivals and festivities in Italy. Some of them include the Palio di Siena, Holy Week rites, Saracen Joust of Arezzo, Saint Ubaldo Day in Gubbio, Giostra della Quintana in Foligno, and the Calcio Fiorentino. In 2013, UNESCO has included among the intangible cultural heritage some Italian festivals and pasos, such as the Varia di Palmi, the Macchina di Santa Rosa in Viterbo, the Festa dei Gigli in Nola, and faradda di li candareri in Sassari.^[326]

Other festivals include the carnivals in Venice, Viareggio, Satriano di Lucania, Mamoiada, and Ivrea, mostly known for its Battle of the Oranges. The prestigious Venice International Film Festival, awarding the "Golden Lion" and held annually since 1932, is the oldest film festival in the world.^[319]

Notes

^ The Italian peninsula is geographically located in Southern Europe, while North Italy can be placed partly or totally in Central Europe. Due to cultural, political and historical reasons, Italy is a Western European country.
^ Official French maps show the border detouring south of the main summit, and claim the highest point in Italy is Mont Blanc de Courmayeur (4,748 m or 15,577 ft), but these are inconsistent with an 1861 convention and topographic watershed analysis.
^ According to Mitrica, an October 2005 Romanian report estimates that 1,061,400 Romanians are living in Italy, constituting 37% of 2.8 million immigrants in that country^[214] but it is unclear how the estimate was made, and therefore whether it should be taken seriously.

References

^ "The Global Religious Landscape" (PDF). Pewforum.org. Retrieved 2 October 2015.
^ "National demographic estimate, December 2016". ISTAT. Retrieved 23 October 2017.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "World Economic Outlook Database, April 2016 – Italy". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
^ "Gini coefficient of equivalsed disposable income (source: SILC)". Luxembourg: Eurostat. 15 June 2017. Retrieved 24 June 2017.
^ "2016 Human Development Report" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. 2016. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
^ "Comune di Campione d'Italia". Comune.campione-d-italia.co.it. 14 July 2010. Retrieved 30 October 2010.
^ Search the agreements database Archived 29 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine Council of the European Union (retrieved 13 October 2013).
^ Italy: The World Factbook Central Intelligence Agency (retrieved 13 October 2013).
^ "Country names".
^ "BBC News – Italy profile – Facts". BBC News.
^ "Maltempo, è emergenza su tutto lo Stivale. Si cercano due dispersi". RomagnaOggi.
^ "L'Italia vista dallo spazio: lo stivale illuminato di notte è uno spettacolo". Tgcom24. 4 August 2014.
^ Sée, Henri. "Modern Capitalism Its Origin and Evolution" (PDF). University of Rennes. Batoche Books. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
^ ^a ^b Jepson, Tim (2012). National Geographic Traveler: Italy. National Geographic Books,.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
^ Bonetto, Cristian (2010). Discover Italy. Lonely Planet.
^ Bouchard, Norma; Ferme, Valerio (2013). Italy and the Mediterranean: Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era. Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved 17 December 2015.
^ "Unification of Italy". Library.thinkquest.org. 4 April 2003. Archived from the original on 7 March 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "The Italian Colonial Empire". All Empires. Retrieved 17 June 2012. At its peak, just before WWII, the Italian Empire comprehended the territories of present time Italy, Albania, Rhodes, Dodecaneses, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the majority of Somalia and the little concession of Tientsin in China
^ "Microsoft Word - 447F3DE3-55E9-08D35E.doc" (PDF). Retrieved 15 March 2017.
^ "IMF Advanced Economies List. World Economic Outlook, April 2016, p. 148" (PDF).
^ CIA (2008). "Appendix B. International Organizations and Groups". World Factbook. Retrieved 10 April 2008.
^ Country and Lending Groups. World Bank. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
^ Gabriele Abbondanza, Italy as a Regional Power: the African Context from National Unification to the Present Day (Rome: Aracne, 2016)
^ "Operation Alba may be considered one of the most important instances in which Italy has acted as a regional power, taking the lead in executing a technically and politically coherent and determined strategy." See Federiga Bindi, Italy and the European Union (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), p. 171.
^ Canada Among Nations, 2004: Setting Priorities Straight. McGill-Queen's Press – MQUP. 17 January 2005. p. 85. ISBN 0773528369. Retrieved 13 June 2016. ("The United States is the sole world's superpower. France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom are great powers")
^ Sterio, Milena (2013). The right to self-determination under international law : "selfistans", secession and the rule of the great powers. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. xii (preface). ISBN 0415668182. Retrieved 13 June 2016. ("The great powers are super-sovereign states: an exclusive club of the most powerful states economically, militarily, politically and strategically. These states include veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia), as well as economic powerhouses such as Germany, Italy and Japan.")
^ Alberto Manco, Italia. Disegno storico-linguistico, 2009, Napoli, L'Orientale, ISBN 978-88-95044-62-0
^ OLD, p. 974: "first syll. naturally short (cf. Quint.Inst.1.5.18), and so scanned in Lucil.825, but in dactylic verse lengthened metri gratia."
^ J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (London: Fitzroy and Dearborn, 1997), 24.
^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.35, on LacusCurtius
^ Aristotle, Politics, 7.1329b, on Perseus
^ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 6.2.4, on Perseus
^ Pallottino, M., History of Earliest Italy, trans. Ryle, M & Soper, K. in Jerome Lectures, Seventeenth Series, p. 50
^ Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2001, ch. 2. ISBN 0-306-46463-2.
^ "Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria". IIPP. 29 January 2010.
^ The Mycenaeans and Italy: the archaeological and archaeometric ceramic evidence, University of Glasgow, Department of Archaeology
^ Emilio Peruzzi, Mycenaeans in early Latium, (Incunabula Graeca 75), Edizioni dell'Ateneo & Bizzarri, Roma, 1980
^ Gert Jan van Wijngaarden, Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery in the Levant, Cyprus and Italy (1600–1200 B.C.): The Significance of Context, Amsterdam Archaeological Studies, Amsterdam University Press, 2001
^ Bryan Feuer, Mycenaean civilization: an annotated bibliography through 2002, McFarland & Company; Rev Sub edition (2 March 2004)
^ Taagepera, Rein (1979). "Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D". Social Science History. 3 (3/4). Duke University Press: 125. doi:10.2307/1170959. JSTOR 1170959.
^ Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires" (PDF). Journal of world-systems research. 12 (2): 222. ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
^ Richard, Carl J. (2010). Why we're all Romans : the Roman contribution to the western world (1st pbk. ed.). Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. xi–xv. ISBN 0-7425-6779-6.
^ Sarris, Peter (2011). Empires of faith : the fall of Rome to the rise of Islam, 500 – 700 (1st. pub. ed.). Oxford: Oxford UP. p. 118. ISBN 0-19-926126-1.
^ Nolan, Cathal J. (2006). The age of wars of religion, 1000–1650 : an encyclopedia of global warfare and civilization (1. publ. ed.). Westport (Connecticut): Greenwood Press. p. 360. ISBN 0-313-33045-X.
^ Jones, Philip (1997). The Italian city-state : from Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 55–77. ISBN 978-0-19-822585-0.
^ Lane, Frederic C. (1991). Venice, a maritime republic (4. print. ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 73. ISBN 0-8018-1460-X.
^ Ali, Ahmed Essa with Othman (2010). Studies in Islamic civilization : the Muslim contribution to the Renaissance. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought. pp. 38–40. ISBN 1-56564-350-X.
^ Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, "The Biggest Epidemics of History" (La plus grande épidémie de l'histoire), in L'Histoire n° 310, June 2006, pp. 45–46
^ "Plague". Brown University. Archived 31 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
^ Jensen 1992, p. 64.
^ ^a ^b Strathern, Paul The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2003)
^ Encyclopædia Britannica, Renaissance, 2008, O.Ed.
^ Har, Michael H. History of Libraries in the Western World, Scarecrow Press Incorporate, 1999, ISBN 0-8108-3724-2
^ Norwich, John Julius, A Short History of Byzantium, 1997, Knopf, ISBN 0-679-45088-2
^ Peter Barenboim, Sergey Shiyan, Michelangelo: Mysteries of Medici Chapel, SLOVO, Moscow, 2006. ISBN 5-85050-825-2
^ Leonardo Bruni; James Hankins (9 October 2010). History of the Florentine People. Vol. 1. Boston: Harvard University Press.
^ Karl Julius Beloch, Bevölkerungsgeschichte Italiens, volume 3, pp. 359–360.
^ Thomas James Dandelet, John A. Marino (2007). Spain in Italy: Politics, Society, and Religion 1500–1700. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-15429-2.
^ Galasso, Giuseppe (1972). Storia d'Italia 1: I caratteri originali. Turin: Einaudi. pp. 509–10.
^ Napoleon Bonaparte, "The Economy of the Empire in Italy: Instructions from Napoleon to Eugène, Viceroy of Italy," Exploring the European Past: Texts & Images, Second Edition, ed. Timothy E. Gregory (Mason: Thomson, 2007), 65–66.
^ "Scholar and Patriot". Manchester University Press – via Google Books.
^ "Giuseppe Garibaldi (Italian revolutionary)". Retrieved 6 March 2014.
^ Mack Smith, Denis (1997). Modern Italy; A Political History. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10895-6
^ (Bosworth (2005), pp. 49.)
^ Burgwyn, H. James: Italian foreign policy in the interwar period, 1918–1940. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. Page 4. ISBN 0-275-94877-3
^ Schindler, John R.: Isonzo: The Forgotten Sacrifice of the Great War. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. Page 303. ISBN 0-275-97204-6
^ Mack Smith, Denis: Mussolini. Knopf, 1982. Page 31. ISBN 0-394-50694-4
^ Mortara, G (1925). La Salute pubblica in Italia durante e dopo la Guerra. New Haven: Yale University Press.
^ James H. Burgwyn (2004). General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Volume 9, Number 3, pp. 314–329(16)
^ Italy's bloody secret (archived by WebCite), written by Rory Carroll, Education, The Guardian, June 2001
^ Effie Pedaliu (2004) JSTOR 4141408? Britain and the 'Hand-over' of Italian War Criminals to Yugoslavia, 1945–48. Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue: Collective Memory, pp. 503–529
^ Oliva, Gianni (2006) «Si ammazza troppo poco». I crimini di guerra italiani. 1940–43, Mondadori, ISBN 88-04-55129-1
^ Baldissara, Luca & Pezzino, Paolo (2004). Crimini e memorie di guerra: violenze contro le popolazioni e politiche del ricordo, L'Ancora del Mediterraneo. ISBN 978-88-8325-135-1
^ Viganò, Marino (2001), "Un'analisi accurata della presunta fuga in Svizzera", Nuova Storia Contemporanea (in Italian), 3
^ "1945: Italian partisans kill Mussolini". BBC News. 28 April 1945. Retrieved 17 October 2011.
^ "Italy – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2 August 2010.
^ Adrian Lyttelton (editor), "Liberal and fascist Italy, 1900–1945", Oxford University Press, 2002. pp. 13
^ Damage Foreshadows A-Bomb Test, 1946/06/06 (1946). Universal Newsreel. 1946. Retrieved 22 February 2012.
^ "Italia 1946: le donne al voto, dossier a cura di Mariachiara Fugazza e Silvia Cassamagnaghi" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabili delle stragi (Parliamentary investigative commission on terrorism in Italy and the failure to identify the perpetrators)" (PDF) (in Italian). 1995. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 August 2006. Retrieved 2 May 2006.
^ Template:En icon / Template:It icon / Template:Fr icon /Template:De icon "Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies". Swiss Federal Institute of Technology / International Relation and Security Network. Archived from the original on 25 April 2006. Retrieved 2 May 2006. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Clarion: Philip Willan, Guardian, 24 June 2000, page 19". Cambridgeclarion.org. 24 June 2000. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
^ The so-called Second Republic was born by forceps: not with a revolt of Algiers, but formally under the same Constitution, with the mere replacement of one ruling class to another: Buonomo, Giampiero (2015). "Tovaglie pulite". Mondoperaio edizione online. – via Questia (subscription required)
^ "Italy starts to show the strains of migrant influx". The Local. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
^ "Italy's far right jolts back from dead". Politico. 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
^ "Morphometric and hydrological characteristics of some important Italian lakes". Largo Tonolli 50, 28922 Verbania Pallanza: Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi. Archived from the original on 5 February 2010. Retrieved 3 March 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
^ "Clima, cibo e ville. Il lago più bello è quello di Como". Il Corriere della Sera. 2014. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
^ {{citation}}: Empty citation (help).
^ "Inventario delle risorse geotermiche nazionali". UNMIG. 2011. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
^ "Italy – Environment". Dev.prenhall.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "National Parks in Italy". Parks.it. 1995–2010. Retrieved 15 March 2010.
^ REN21 (15 July 2010). "Renewables 2010 Global Status Report" (PDF). REN21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 August 2011. Retrieved 16 July 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ "Photovoltaic energy barometer 2010 – EurObserv'ER". Retrieved 30 October 2010.^{[permanent dead link]}
^ "World Wind Energy Report 2010" (PDF). Report. World Wind Energy Association. February 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 September 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ wwea
^ "Italy – Environment". Encyclopedia of the Nations. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
^ United Nations Statistics Division, Millennium Development Goals indicators: Carbon dioxide emissions (CO₂), thousand metric tons of CO₂ (collected by CDIAC)
^ Human-produced, direct emissions of carbon dioxide only. Excludes other greenhouse gases; land-use, land-use-change and forestry (LULUCF); and natural background flows of CO₂ (See also: Carbon cycle)
^ [1] Archived 3 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine
^ Duncan Kennedy (14 June 2011). "Italy nuclear: Berlusconi accepts referendum blow". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2013.
^ Nick Squires (2 October 2009). "Sicily mudslide leaves scores dead". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
^ Livy (1797). The history of Rome. George Baker (trans.). Printed for A. Strahan.
^ "ITALY'S FIFTH NATIONAL REPORT TO THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY" (PDF). Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
^ Pignatti, S.,1982 Flora d’Italia. Edagricole, Bologna, vol. 1–3, 1982
^ Riccardo Guarino, Sabina Addamiano, Marco La Rosa, Sandro Pignatti Flora Italiana Digitale:an interactive identification tool for the Flora of Italy
^ Adriana Rigutti, Meteorologia, Giunti, p. 95, 2009.
^ Thomas A. Blair, Climatology: General and Regional, Prentice Hall pages 131–132
^ "Climate Atlas of Italy". Network of the Air Force Meteorological Service. Retrieved 30 September 2012.
^ Smyth, Howard McGaw Italy: From Fascism to the Republic (1943–1946) The Western Political Quarterly vol. 1 no. 3 (pp. 205–222), September 1948.JSTOR 442274
^ "About us - Sistema di informazione per la sicurezza della Repubblica". www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it.
^ "Elezioni politiche 2013, Riepilogo Nazionale". Il Sole 24 Ore. Retrieved 6 December 2014.
^ Claudio Tucci (11 November 2008). "Confesercenti, la crisi economica rende ancor più pericolosa la mafia". Confesercenti (in Italian). Ilsole24ore.com. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
^ Nick Squires (9 January 2010). "Italy claims finally defeating the mafia". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
^ Kiefer, Peter (22 October 2007). "Mafia crime is 7% of GDP in Italy, group reports". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 April 2011.
^ Maria Loi (1 October 2009). "Rapporto Censis: 13 milioni di italiani convivono con la mafia". Censis (in Italian). Antimafia Duemila. Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 21 April 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ Kington, Tom (1 October 2009). "Mafia's influence hovers over 13 m Italians, says report". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 5 May 2010.
^ ANSA (14 March 2011). "Italy: Anti-mafia police arrest 35 suspects in northern Lombardy region". adnkronos.com. Mafia Today. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
^ "Crime Statistics – Murders (per capita) (most recent) by country". NationMaster.com. Retrieved 4 April 2010.
^ "MISSIONI/ATTIVITA' INTERNAZIONALI DAL 1 October 2013 AL 31 December 2013 – SITUAZIONE AL 11.12.2013" (PDF). Italian Ministry of Defence. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
^ "Italian soldiers leave for Lebanon Corriere della Sera, 30 August 2006
^ "Italy donates 60 million euros to PA". Ma'an News Agency. 4 September 2013. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
^ "Law n°226 of August 23, 2004". Camera.it. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
^ "The Military Balance 2010", pp. 141–145. International Institute for Strategic Studies, 3 February 2010.
^ Italian Ministry of Defence. "Nota aggiuntiva allo stato di previsione per la Difesa per l'anno 2009" (PDF) (in Italian). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 May 2011. Retrieved 11 July 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ Hans M. Kristensen / Natural Resources Defense Council (2005). "NRDC: U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe – part 1" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 January 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Marina Militare (Italian military navy website)" (in Italian). Marina.difesa.it. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
^ "The Carabinieri Force is linked to the Ministry of Defence". Carabinieri. Retrieved 14 May 2010.
^ "Codici comuni, province e regioni". www.istat.it (in Italian). Retrieved 24 May 2015.
^ https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2017/02/weodata/weoselgr.aspx
^ "Gross domestic product (2015)" (PDF). The World Bank: World Development Indicators database. World Bank. 28 April 2017. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
^ Sensenbrenner, Frank; Arcelli, Angelo Federico. "Italy's Economy Is Much Stronger Than It Seems". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
^ Dadush, Uri. "Is the Italian Economy on the Mend?". Carnegie Europe. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
^ "Doing Business in Italy: 2014 Country Commercial Guide for U.S. Companies" (PDF). United States Commercial Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 July 2014. Retrieved 25 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ The Economist Intelligence Unit's quality-of-life index, Economist, 2005
^ "The Global Creativity Index 2011" (PDF). Martin Prosperity Institute. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
^ Aksoy, M. Ataman; Ng, Francis. "The Evolution of Agricultural Trade Flows" (PDF). The World Bank. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
^ Pisa, Nick (12 June 2011). "Italy overtakes France to become world's largest wine producer". The Telegraph. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
^ "Automotive Market Sector Profile – Italy" (PDF). The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
^ "Data & Trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2013–2014" (PDF). FoodDrinkEurope. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 December 2014. Retrieved 26 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Italy fashion industry back to growth in 2014". Reuters. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
^ Leblanc, John (25 April 2014). "The top 10 largest automakers in the world". Driving. Retrieved 29 April 2017. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
^ "Trade in goodsExports, Million US dollars, 2016". OECD. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
^ "Manufacturing, value added (current US$)". accessed on 17 May 2017.
^ "Knowledge Economy Forum 2008: Innovative Small And Medium Enterprises Are Key To Europe & Central Asian Growth". The World Bank. 19 May 2005. Retrieved 17 June 2008.
^ "CIA – The World Factbook". CIA. Retrieved 26 January 2011.
^ "Auto: settore da 144mila imprese in Italia e 117 mld fatturato". adnkronos.com. Retrieved 23 September 2015. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Country Profiles – Italy". acea.thisconnect.com. Archived from the original on 11 February 2008. Retrieved 9 February 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Fiat Chrysler to spin off Ferrari, issue $2.5 billion convertible bond". Retrieved 29 October 2014.
^ Haigh, Robert (18 February 2014). "Ferrari – The World's Most Powerful Brand". Brand Finance. Retrieved 9 February 2015.
^ Andrews, Edmund L. (1 January 2002). "Germans Say Goodbye to the Mark, a Symbol of Strength and Unity". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2011.
^ Taylor Martin, Susan (28 December 1998). "On Jan. 1, out of many arises one Euro". St. Petersburg Times. p. National, 1.A.
^ Orsi, Roberto. "The Quiet Collapse of the Italian Economy". The London School of Economics. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
^ Nicholas Crafts, Gianni Toniolo (1996). Economic growth in Europe since 1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 428. ISBN 0-521-49627-6.
^ Balcerowicz, Leszek. "Economic Growth in the European Union" (PDF). The Lisbon Council. Retrieved 8 October 2014.
^ ""Secular stagnation" in graphics". The Economist. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
^ "Government debt increased to 93.9% of GDP in euro area and to 88.0% in EU28" (PDF). Eurostat. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
^ "Could Italy Be Better Off than its Peers?". CNBC. 18 May 2010. Archived from the original on 30 April 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Household debt and the OECD's surveillance of member states" (PDF). OECD Economics Department. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 January 2015. Retrieved 26 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Oh for a new risorgimento". The Economist. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
^ "Comune per Comune, ecco la mappa navigabile dei redditi dichiarati in Italia". www.lastampa.it.
^ "GDP per capita at regional level" (PDF). Istat. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
^ "Euro area unemployment rate at 11%". Eurostat. Retrieved 26 October 2017.
^ Istat. "Employment and unemployment: second quarter 2017" (PDF). Retrieved 26 October 2017.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Censimento Agricoltura 2010". ISTAT. 24 October 2010. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
^ "OIV report on the State of the vitiviniculture world market". news.reseau-concept.net. Réseau-CONCEPT. 2010. Archived from the original (PowerPoint presentation) on 28 July 2011.
^ "Frecciarossa 1000 in Figures". Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. Archived from the original on 18 December 2014. Retrieved 24 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ ^a ^b European Commission. "Panorama of Transport" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 April 2009. Retrieved 3 May 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Energy imports, net (% of energy use)". World Bank. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
^ Eurostat. "Energy, transport and environment indicators" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 November 2009. Retrieved 10 May 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ Eurostat. "Panorama of energy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 June 2010. Retrieved 10 May 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ L. Anwandter and P. Rubino (2006). "Risks, uncertainties and conflicts of Interest in the Italian water sector: A review and proposals for reform". Materiali UVAL (Public Investment Evaluation Unit of the Department for Development and Cohesion Policies (DPS) in the Ministry for Economic Development), According to ISTAT figures analysed by the Water Resources Surveillance Committee (CoViRi),. p. 9. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
^ Bardelli, Lorenzo. "Pro aqua Italian policy to get prices and governance right". Utilitatis, 29th International Congress of CIRIEC, Wien, 14 September 2012. p. 16. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
^ Albasser, Francesco (May 2012). "The Italian Water industry – Beyond the Public/Private debate & back to basics, Presentation at the Conference Water Loss Europe". in3act Energy. p. 12. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
^ Giuliano Pancaldi, "Volta: Science and culture in the age of enlightenment", Princeton University Press, 2003.
^ Weidhorn, Manfred (2005). The Person of the Millennium: The Unique Impact of Galileo on World History. iUniverse. p. 155. ISBN 0-595-36877-8.
^ Bondyopadhyay, Prebir K. (1995). "Guglielmo Marconi – The father of long distance radio communication – An engineer's tribute". 25th European Microwave Conference, 1995. p. 879. doi:10.1109/EUMA.1995.337090.
^ "Enrico Fermi, architect of the nuclear age, dies". Autumn 1954.
^ Lucia Orlando, "Physics in the 1930s: Jewish Physicists' Contribution to the Realization of the" New Tasks" of Physics in Italy." Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences (1998): 141–181. JSTOR 27757806
^ Wheen, Andrew. Dot-Dash to Dot.com: How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet. Springer, 2010. p. 45. Web. 23 Sep. 2011.
^ Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author) ; Saundry, Peter (Topic Editor). Meucci, Antonio. Encyclopedia of Earth, 2006. Web. 22 Jul. 2012.
^ "Foreign tourist numbers in Italy head towards new record", Retrieved 21 May 2017.
^ "2016 Tourism Highlights". World Tourism Organization. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
^ "Travel & Tourism Economic Impact 2015 Italy" (PDF). World Travel and Tourism Council. Retrieved 20 May 2017.
^ "The World Heritage Convention". UNESCO. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
^ "Global Destination Cities Index by Mastercard, 2016 edition" (PDF).
^ "2013 Survey on Museums, Monuments and Archeological sites" (PDF). Italian Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities. Retrieved 20 May 2017.
^ "National demographic balance, 2013" (PDF). Istat. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
^ EUROSTAT. "Ageing characterises the demographic perspectives of the European societies – Issue number 72/2008" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 January 2009. Retrieved 28 April 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ ISTAT. "Crude birth rates, mortality rates and marriage rates 2005–2008" (PDF) (in Italian). Retrieved 10 May 2009.
^ ISTAT. "Average number of children born per woman 2005–2008" (PDF) (in Italian). Retrieved 3 May 2009.
^ "Previsioni della popolazione, 2011–2065, dati al 1° gennaio". Demo.istat.it. Archived from the original on 6 March 2013. Retrieved 12 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Causes of the Italian mass emigration". ThinkQuest Library. 15 August 1999. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
^ Favero, Luigi e Tassello, Graziano. Cent'anni di emigrazione italiana (1861–1961) Introduction
^ "Statistiche del Ministero dell'Interno". Archived from the original on 27 February 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ Lee, Adam (3 April 2006). "Unos 20 millones de personas que viven en la Argentina tienen algún grado de descendencia italiana" (in Spanish). Retrieved 27 June 2008.
^ Consulta Nazionale Emigrazione. Progetto ITENETs – "Gli italiani in Brasile"; pp. 11, 19 Archived 12 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved 10 September 2008.
^ "Ethnic origins, 2006 counts, for Uruguay, provinces and territories – 20% sample data".
^ Santander Laya-Garrido, Alfonso. Los Italianos forjadores de la nacionalidad y del desarrollo economico en Venezuela. Editorial Vadell. Valencia, 1978
^ American FactFinder, United States Census Bureau. "U.S Census Bureau – Selected Population Profile in the United States". American FactFinder, United States Census Bureau. Archived from the original on 30 April 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Ethnic origins, 2006 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories – 20% sample data".
^ "20680-Ancestry by Country of Birth of Parents – Time Series Statistics (2001, 2006 Census Years) – Australia". Australian Bureau of Statistics. 27 June 2007. Archived from the original on 1 October 2007. Retrieved 30 December 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "The Cambridge survey of world migration". Robin Cohen (1995). Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN 0-521-44405-5
^ Roberto, Vincenzo Patruno, Marina Venturi, Silvestro. "Demo-Geodemo. - Mappe, Popolazione, Statistiche Demografiche dell'ISTAT". demo.istat.it.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=urb_lpop1&lang=en
^ "Resident Foreigners on 31st December 2016". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
^ "Immigrants.Stat". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
^ "National demographic balance 2016". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
^ "National demographic balance 2014". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
^ Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Italy cracks down on illegal immigration". The Boston Globe. 16 May 2008.
^ Allen, Beverly (1997). Revisioning Italy national identity and global culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-8166-2727-1.
^ "Milan police in Chinatown clash". BBC News. 13 April 2007.
^ "EUROPE: Home to Roma, And No Place for Them". IPS ipsnews.net. Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
^ "Balkan Investigative Reporting Network". Birn.eu.com. 8 November 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2008.^{[permanent dead link]}
^ Mitrica, Mihai Un milion de romani s-au mutat in Italia ("One million Romanians have moved to Italy"). Evenimentul Zilei, 31 October 2005. Visited 11 April 2006.
^ "Legge 15 Dicembre 1999, n. 482 "Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche" pubblicata nella Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 297 del 20 dicembre 1999". Italian Parliament. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
^ Italian language Ethnologue.com
^ "Eurobarometer – Europeans and their languages" (485 KB). February 2006.
^ Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2007" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007
^ Italian language University of Leicester
^ "Italian language". Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 November 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2009.
^ "Lingue di Minoranza e Scuola: Carta Generale". www.minoranze-linguistiche-scuola.it.
^ Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche, Italian parliament
^ [L.cost. 26 febbraio 1948, n. 4, Statuto speciale per la Valle d'Aosta; L.cost. 26 febbraio 1948, n. 5, Statuto speciale per il Trentino-Alto Adige; L. cost. 31 gennaio 1963, n. 1, Statuto speciale della Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia]
^ "Linguistic diversity among foreign citizens in Italy". Italian National Institute of Statistics. Retrieved 27 July 2014.
^ "The Duomo of Florence | Tripleman". tripleman.com. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
^ "Brunelleschi's Dome". Brunelleschi's Dome.com. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
^ "St. Peter's Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro) in Rome, Italy". reidsitaly.com.
^ See List of largest church buildings in the world; note that the #3 entry, First Family Church building in Kansas, is now a school education complex.
^ "Basilica di San Marco". Archived from the original on 5 March 2015. Retrieved 10 February 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Catholicism No Longer Italy's State Religion". Sun Sentinel. 4 June 1985. Retrieved 7 September 2013.
^ ^a ^b "The Global Catholic Population". pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
^ Text taken directly from "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 31 December 2010. Retrieved 5 February 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) (viewed on 14 December 2011), on the website of the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
^ The Holy See's sovereignty has been recognized explicitly in many international agreements and is particularly emphasized in article 2 of the Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929, in which "Italy recognizes the sovereignty of the Holy See in international matters as an inherent attribute in conformity with its traditions and the requirements of its mission to the world" (Lateran Treaty, English translation).
^ Leustean, Lucian N. (2014). Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge. p. 723. ISBN 978-0-415-68490-3.
^ "Le religioni in Italia: I Testimoni di Geova (Religions in Italy: The Jehovah's Witnesses)" (in Italian). Center for Studies on New Religions. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
^ "Chiesa Evangelica Valdese – Unione delle chiese Metodiste e Valdesi (Waldensian Evangelical Church – Union of Waldensian and Methodist churches)" (in Italian). Chiesa Evangelica Valdese – Unione delle chiese Metodiste e Valdesi (Waldensian Evangelical Church – Union of Waldensian and Methodist churches). Archived from the original on 11 February 2006. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "World Council of Churches – Evangelical Methodist Church in Italy". World Council of Churches. Archived from the original on 9 July 2008. Retrieved 30 October 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1986). The war against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-34302-5.p. 403
^ "THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ITALY Unione delle Comunita Ebraiche Italiane". The European Jewish Congress. Retrieved 25 August 2014.
^ "NRI Sikhs in Italy". Nriinternet.com. 15 November 2004. Retrieved 30 October 2010.
^ "Unione Buddhista Italiana – UBI: L'Ente". Buddhismo.it. 18 August 2009. Archived from the original on 4 April 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Most Baha'i Nations (2005)". QuickLists > Compare Nations > Religions >. The Association of Religion Data Archives. 2005. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
^ "Italy: Islam denied income tax revenue – Adnkronos Religion". Adnkronos.com. 7 April 2003. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
^ Camera dei deputati Dossier BI0350. Documenti.camera.it (10 March 1998). Retrieved on 12 July 2013.
^ "Law 27 December 2007, n.296". Italian Parliament. Retrieved 30 September 2012.
^ "| Human Development Reports" (PDF). Hdr.undp.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 18 January 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "PISA 2012 Results" (PDF). OECD. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
^ "The literacy divide: territorial differences in the Italian education system" (PDF). Parthenope University of Naples. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
^ "Academic Ranking of World Universities 2015". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2015.
^ "Italy's Budget/4: 500 new university "chairs of excellence" open up to foreign professors and scholars". Il Sole 24 Ore Digital Edition. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
^ ^a ^b "Italy – Health". Dev.prenhall.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ ^a ^b "OECD Health Statistics 2014 How Does Italy Compare?" (PDF). OECD. 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems". ΦΩΤΗΣ ΚΟΥΤΣΟΥΚΗΣ (Photius Coutsoukis). Retrieved 27 October 2009.
^ "World Health Statistics 2016: Monitoring health for the SDGs Annex B: tables of health statistics by country, WHO region and globally". World Health Organization. 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.
^ "Global Prevalence of Adult Obesity" (PDF). International Obesity Taskforce. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 December 2009. Retrieved 29 January 2008.
^ "Smoking Ban Begins in Italy | Europe | DW.COM | 10.01.2005". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 1 August 2010.
^ "UNESCO Culture Sector, Eighth Session of the Intergovernmental Committee (8.COM) – from 2 to 7 December 2013". Retrieved 3 April 2014.
^ "UNESCO – Culture – Intangible Heritage – Lists & Register – Inscribed Elements – Mediterranean Diet". Retrieved 3 April 2014.
^ Killinger, Charles (2005). Culture and customs of Italy (1. publ. ed.). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-313-32489-1.
^ Cole, Alison (1995). Virtue and magnificence : art of the Italian Renaissance courts. New York: H.N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-2733-0.
^ Eyewitness Travel (2005), pg. 19
^ Architecture in Italy, ItalyTravel.com
^ "History – Historic Figures: Inigo Jones (1573–1652)". BBC. 1 January 1970. Retrieved 12 March 2013.
^ "Roman Painting". art-and-archaeology.com.
^ "Roman Wall Painting". accd.edu. Archived from the original on 19 March 2007. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Poetry and Drama: Literary Terms and Concepts.". The Rosen Publishing Group. 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2011.
^ Brand, Peter; Pertile, Lino, eds. (1999). "2 - Poetry. Francis of Assisi (pp. 5ff.)". The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52166622-0. Retrieved 31 December 2015. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |editor2link= ignored (|editor-link2= suggested) (help)
^ Ernest Hatch Wilkins, The invention of the sonnet, and other studies in Italian literature (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1959), 11–39
^ "Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron.". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
^ Steven Swann Jones, The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1995, ISBN 0-8057-0950-9, p38
^ Bottigheimer 2012a, 7; Waters 1894, xii; Zipes 2015, 599.
^ Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1974), The Classic Fairy Tales, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-211559-6 See page 20. The claim for earliest fairy-tale is still debated, see for example Jan M. Ziolkowski, Fairy tales from before fairy tales: the medieval Latin past of wonderful lies, University of Michigan Press, 2007. Ziolkowski examines Egbert of Liège's Latin beast poem Fecunda natis (The Richly Laden Ship, c. 1022/24), the earliest known version of "Little Red Riding Hood". Further info: Little Red Pentecostal, Peter J. Leithart, July 9, 2007.
^ ^a ^b Giovanni Gasparini. La corsa di Pinocchio. Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1997. p. 117. ISBN 88-343-4889-3
^ "Pinocchio: Carlo Collodi - Children's Literature Review". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
^ Archibald Colquhoun. Manzoni and his Times. J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1954.
^ "Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies - Google Books". Books.google.co.uk. 26 December 2006. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
^ The 20th-Century art book (Reprinted. ed.). dsdLondon: Phaidon Press. 2001. ISBN 0714835420.
^ "All Nobel Prizes in Literature". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
^ "Quick Opera Facts 2007". OPERA America. 2007. Archived from the original on 1 October 2006. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
^ Alain P. Dornic (1995). "An Operatic Survey". Opera Glass. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
^ ^a ^b Kimbell, David R. B (29 April 1994). Italian Opera. Google Books. ISBN 978-0-521-46643-1. Retrieved 20 December 2009.
^ "This record was a collaboration between Philip Oakey, the big-voiced lead singer of the techno-pop band the Human League, and Giorgio Moroder, the Italian-born father of disco who spent the '80s writing synth-based pop and film music." Evan Cater. "Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder: Overview". AllMusic. Retrieved 21 December 2009.
^ "The Cinema Under Mussolini". Ccat.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 30 October 2010.
^ Ebert, Roger. "The Bicycle Thief / Bicycle Thieves (1949)". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 8 September 2011.
^ "The 25 Most Influential Directors of All Time". MovieMaker Magazine.
^ "10 Most Influential Directors Of All Time". WhatCulture.com.
^ "Historical origins of italian neorealism – Neorealism – actor, actress, film, children, voice, show, born, director, son, cinema, scene". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 7 September 2011.
^ "Italian Neorealism – Explore – The Criterion Collection". Criterion.com. Retrieved 7 September 2011.
^ Bondanella, Peter E. (2001). Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. Continuum. p. 13. ISBN 9780826412478.
^ Hamil, Sean; Chadwick, Simon (2010). Managing football : an international perspective (1st ed., dodr. ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann. p. 285. ISBN 1-85617-544-8.
^ "Previous FIFA World Cups". FIFA.com. Retrieved 8 January 2011.
^ "Union Cycliste Internationale".
^ "Ferrari". Formula 1 - The Official F1 Website. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
^ Foot, John. Pedalare! Pedalare! : a history of Italian cycling. London: Bloomsbury. p. 312. ISBN 978-1-4088-2219-7.
^ Hall, James (23 November 2012). "Italy is best value skiing country, report finds". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
^ "Il tennis è il quarto sport in Italia per numero di praticanti". Federazione Italiana Tennis. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
^ "New York Takes Top Global Fashion Capital Title from London, edging past Paris". Languagemonitor.com. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 25 February 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ Press, Debbie (2000). "Your Modeling Career: You Don't Have to Be a Superstar to Succeed". ISBN 978-1-58115-045-2. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ Miller (2005) p. 486
^ ^a ^b ^c Insight Guides (2004) p.220
^ "Design City Milan". Wiley. Retrieved 3 January 2010.
^ "Frieze Magazine – Archive – Milan and Turin". Frieze. Archived from the original on 10 January 2010. Retrieved 3 January 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Italian Cooking: History of Food and Cooking in Rome and Lazio Region, Papal Influence, Jewish Influence, The Essence of Roman Italian Cooking". Inmamaskitchen.com. Archived from the original on 10 April 2010. Retrieved 24 April 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "The Making of Italian Food...From the Beginning". Epicurean.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
^ Del Conte, 11–21.
^ Related Articles (2 January 2009). "Italian cuisine – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
^ "Italian Food – Italy's Regional Dishes & Cuisine". Indigoguide.com. Archived from the original on 2 January 2011. Retrieved 24 April 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ "Regional Italian Cuisine". Rusticocooking.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
^ "Which country has the best food?". CNN. 6 January 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2013.
^ Freeman, Nancy (2 March 2007). "American Food, Cuisine". Sallybernstein.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
^ The Silver Spoon ISBN 88-7212-223-6, 1997 ed.
^ Mario Batali Simple Italian Food: Recipes from My Two Villages (1998), ISBN 0-609-60300-0
^ "Most Americans Have Dined Outin the Past Month and, Among Type of Cuisine, American Food is Tops Followed by Italian" (PDF). Harris interactive. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
^ Kazmin, Amy (26 March 2013). "A taste for Italian in New Delhi". Financial Times. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
^ Keane, John. "Italy leads the way with protected products under EU schemes". Bord Bia. Retrieved 5 September 2013.
^ Marshall, Lee (30 September 2009). "Italian coffee culture: a guide". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 September 2013.
^ Jewkes, Stephen (13 October 2012). "World's first museum about gelato culture opens in Italy". Times Colonist. Retrieved 5 September 2013.
^ Squires, Nick (23 August 2013). "Tiramisu claimed by Treviso". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 September 2013.
^ ^a ^b Anderson, Ariston. "Venice: David Gordon Green's 'Manglehorn,' Abel Ferrara's 'Pasolini' in Competition Lineup". The Hollywood Reporter.
^ "Addio, Lido: Last Postcards from the Venice Film Festival". TIME.
^ "Festività nazionali in Italia" (in Italian). Italian Embassy in London. Retrieved 15 April 2012.
^ Roy, Christian (2005). Traditional Festivals. ABC-CLIO. p. 144. ISBN 9781576070895. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
^ Alio, Jacqueline. "Saint Lucy – Sicily's Most Famous Woman", Best of Sicily Magazine, 2009
^ Jonathan Boardman. Rome: A Cultural and Literary Companion (Google Books). University of California: Signal Books. p. 219. ISBN 1902669150.
^ "Festività nazionali in Italia" (in Italian). Governo Italiano - Dipartimento per il Cerimoniale dello Stato. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
^ "Celebrations of big shoulder-borne processional structures". UNESCO.org. Retrieved 29 November 2014.

Bibliography

Hacken, Richard. "History of Italy: Primary Documents". EuroDocs: Harold B. Lee Library: Brigham Young University. Retrieved 6 March 2010.
"FastiOnline: A database of archaeological excavations since the year 2000". International Association of Classical Archaeology (AIAC). 2004–2007. Retrieved 6 March 2010.
Hibberd, Matthew. The media in Italy (McGraw-Hill International, 2007)
Sarti, Roland, ed. Italy: A reference guide from the Renaissance to the present (2004)
Sassoon, Donald. Contemporary Italy: politics, economy and society since 1945 (Routledge, 2014)
"Italy History – Italian History Index" (in Italian and English). European University Institute, The World Wide Web Virtual Library. 1995–2010. Retrieved 6 March 2010.

External links

Government

Economy

Site of the Ministry of Economy and Finance

General information

Italy from the BBC News
"Italy". The World Factbook (2024 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency.
Italy from UCB Libraries GovPubs
Template:Dmoz
Italy Encyclopædia Britannica entry
Italy from the OECD
Italy at the EU
Wikimedia Atlas of Italy
Geographic data related to Italy at OpenStreetMap
Key Development Forecasts for Italy from International Futures

[11] The Italian peninsula is geographically located in Southern Europe, while North Italy can be placed partly or totally in Central Europe. Due to cultural, political and historical reasons, Italy is a Western European country.

[87] Official French maps show the border detouring south of the main summit, and claim the highest point in Italy is Mont Blanc de Courmayeur (4,748 m or 15,577 ft), but these are inconsistent with an 1861 convention and topographic watershed analysis.

[217] According to Mitrica, an October 2005 Romanian report estimates that 1,061,400 Romanians are living in Italy, constituting 37% of 2.8 million immigrants in that country^[214] but it is unclear how the estimate was made, and therefore whether it should be taken seriously.

[Survey-1] "The Global Religious Landscape" (PDF). Pewforum.org. Retrieved 2 October 2015.

[2] "National demographic estimate, December 2016". ISTAT. Retrieved 23 October 2017.

[WEO2016-3] "World Economic Outlook Database, April 2016 – Italy". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 2 August 2016.

[4] "Gini coefficient of equivalsed disposable income (source: SILC)". Luxembourg: Eurostat. 15 June 2017. Retrieved 24 June 2017.

[HDI-5] "2016 Human Development Report" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. 2016. Retrieved 23 March 2017.

[6] "Comune di Campione d'Italia". Comune.campione-d-italia.co.it. 14 July 2010. Retrieved 30 October 2010.

[7] Search the agreements database Archived 29 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine Council of the European Union (retrieved 13 October 2013).

[8] Italy: The World Factbook Central Intelligence Agency (retrieved 13 October 2013).

[9] "Country names".

[10] "BBC News – Italy profile – Facts". BBC News.

[12] "Maltempo, è emergenza su tutto lo Stivale. Si cercano due dispersi". RomagnaOggi.

[13] "L'Italia vista dallo spazio: lo stivale illuminato di notte è uno spettacolo". Tgcom24. 4 August 2014.

[14] Sée, Henri. "Modern Capitalism Its Origin and Evolution" (PDF). University of Rennes. Batoche Books. Retrieved 29 August 2013.

[natgeo-15] Jepson, Tim (2012). National Geographic Traveler: Italy. National Geographic Books,.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

[16] Bonetto, Cristian (2010). Discover Italy. Lonely Planet.

[bouchard-17] Bouchard, Norma; Ferme, Valerio (2013). Italy and the Mediterranean: Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era. Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved 17 December 2015.

[18] "Unification of Italy". Library.thinkquest.org. 4 April 2003. Archived from the original on 7 March 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[allempires.com-19] "The Italian Colonial Empire". All Empires. Retrieved 17 June 2012. At its peak, just before WWII, the Italian Empire comprehended the territories of present time Italy, Albania, Rhodes, Dodecaneses, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the majority of Somalia and the little concession of Tientsin in China

[20] "Microsoft Word - 447F3DE3-55E9-08D35E.doc" (PDF). Retrieved 15 March 2017.

[qq-21] "IMF Advanced Economies List. World Economic Outlook, April 2016, p. 148" (PDF).

[cia-22] CIA (2008). "Appendix B. International Organizations and Groups". World Factbook. Retrieved 10 April 2008.

[wb-23] Country and Lending Groups. World Bank. Retrieved August 1, 2016.

[24] Gabriele Abbondanza, Italy as a Regional Power: the African Context from National Unification to the Present Day (Rome: Aracne, 2016)

[25] "Operation Alba may be considered one of the most important instances in which Italy has acted as a regional power, taking the lead in executing a technically and politically coherent and determined strategy." See Federiga Bindi, Italy and the European Union (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), p. 171.

[Canada_Among_Nations-26] Canada Among Nations, 2004: Setting Priorities Straight. McGill-Queen's Press – MQUP. 17 January 2005. p. 85. ISBN 0773528369. Retrieved 13 June 2016. ("The United States is the sole world's superpower. France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom are great powers")

[Milena_Sterio-27] Sterio, Milena (2013). The right to self-determination under international law : "selfistans", secession and the rule of the great powers. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. xii (preface). ISBN 0415668182. Retrieved 13 June 2016. ("The great powers are super-sovereign states: an exclusive club of the most powerful states economically, militarily, politically and strategically. These states include veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia), as well as economic powerhouses such as Germany, Italy and Japan.")

[Manco-28] Alberto Manco, Italia. Disegno storico-linguistico, 2009, Napoli, L'Orientale, ISBN 978-88-95044-62-0

[29] OLD, p. 974: "first syll. naturally short (cf. Quint.Inst.1.5.18), and so scanned in Lucil.825, but in dactylic verse lengthened metri gratia."

[30] J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (London: Fitzroy and Dearborn, 1997), 24.

[31] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.35, on LacusCurtius

[32] Aristotle, Politics, 7.1329b, on Perseus

[33] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 6.2.4, on Perseus

[34] Pallottino, M., History of Earliest Italy, trans. Ryle, M & Soper, K. in Jerome Lectures, Seventeenth Series, p. 50

[35] Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2001, ch. 2. ISBN 0-306-46463-2.

[36] "Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria". IIPP. 29 January 2010.

[37] The Mycenaeans and Italy: the archaeological and archaeometric ceramic evidence, University of Glasgow, Department of Archaeology

[38] Emilio Peruzzi, Mycenaeans in early Latium, (Incunabula Graeca 75), Edizioni dell'Ateneo & Bizzarri, Roma, 1980

[39] Gert Jan van Wijngaarden, Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery in the Levant, Cyprus and Italy (1600–1200 B.C.): The Significance of Context, Amsterdam Archaeological Studies, Amsterdam University Press, 2001

[40] Bryan Feuer, Mycenaean civilization: an annotated bibliography through 2002, McFarland & Company; Rev Sub edition (2 March 2004)

[size-41] Taagepera, Rein (1979). "Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D". Social Science History. 3 (3/4). Duke University Press: 125. doi:10.2307/1170959. JSTOR 1170959.

[cliodynamics.info-42] Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires" (PDF). Journal of world-systems research. 12 (2): 222. ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 6 February 2016.

[43] Richard, Carl J. (2010). Why we're all Romans : the Roman contribution to the western world (1st pbk. ed.). Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. xi–xv. ISBN 0-7425-6779-6.

[44] Sarris, Peter (2011). Empires of faith : the fall of Rome to the rise of Islam, 500 – 700 (1st. pub. ed.). Oxford: Oxford UP. p. 118. ISBN 0-19-926126-1.

[45] Nolan, Cathal J. (2006). The age of wars of religion, 1000–1650 : an encyclopedia of global warfare and civilization (1. publ. ed.). Westport (Connecticut): Greenwood Press. p. 360. ISBN 0-313-33045-X.

[46] Jones, Philip (1997). The Italian city-state : from Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 55–77. ISBN 978-0-19-822585-0.

[47] Lane, Frederic C. (1991). Venice, a maritime republic (4. print. ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 73. ISBN 0-8018-1460-X.

[48] Ali, Ahmed Essa with Othman (2010). Studies in Islamic civilization : the Muslim contribution to the Renaissance. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought. pp. 38–40. ISBN 1-56564-350-X.

[49] Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, "The Biggest Epidemics of History" (La plus grande épidémie de l'histoire), in L'Histoire n° 310, June 2006, pp. 45–46

[50] "Plague". Brown University. Archived 31 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine

[51] Jensen 1992, p. 64.

[strathern-52] Strathern, Paul The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2003)

[Britannica1-53] Encyclopædia Britannica, Renaissance, 2008, O.Ed.

[Harris-54] Har, Michael H. History of Libraries in the Western World, Scarecrow Press Incorporate, 1999, ISBN 0-8108-3724-2

[Norwich-55] Norwich, John Julius, A Short History of Byzantium, 1997, Knopf, ISBN 0-679-45088-2

[56] Peter Barenboim, Sergey Shiyan, Michelangelo: Mysteries of Medici Chapel, SLOVO, Moscow, 2006. ISBN 5-85050-825-2

[hankins-2001-57] Leonardo Bruni; James Hankins (9 October 2010). History of the Florentine People. Vol. 1. Boston: Harvard University Press.

[58] Karl Julius Beloch, Bevölkerungsgeschichte Italiens, volume 3, pp. 359–360.

[59] Thomas James Dandelet, John A. Marino (2007). Spain in Italy: Politics, Society, and Religion 1500–1700. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-15429-2.

[60] Galasso, Giuseppe (1972). Storia d'Italia 1: I caratteri originali. Turin: Einaudi. pp. 509–10.

[61] Napoleon Bonaparte, "The Economy of the Empire in Italy: Instructions from Napoleon to Eugène, Viceroy of Italy," Exploring the European Past: Texts & Images, Second Edition, ed. Timothy E. Gregory (Mason: Thomson, 2007), 65–66.

[62] "Scholar and Patriot". Manchester University Press – via Google Books.

[Garibaldi_on_Encyclopædia_Britannica-63] "Giuseppe Garibaldi (Italian revolutionary)". Retrieved 6 March 2014.

[64] Mack Smith, Denis (1997). Modern Italy; A Political History. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10895-6

[65] (Bosworth (2005), pp. 49.)

[66] Burgwyn, H. James: Italian foreign policy in the interwar period, 1918–1940. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. Page 4. ISBN 0-275-94877-3

[67] Schindler, John R.: Isonzo: The Forgotten Sacrifice of the Great War. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. Page 303. ISBN 0-275-97204-6

[68] Mack Smith, Denis: Mussolini. Knopf, 1982. Page 31. ISBN 0-394-50694-4

[69] Mortara, G (1925). La Salute pubblica in Italia durante e dopo la Guerra. New Haven: Yale University Press.

[JamesBurgwyn_2004-70] James H. Burgwyn (2004). General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Volume 9, Number 3, pp. 314–329(16)

[RoryCarroll_2001-71] Italy's bloody secret (archived by WebCite), written by Rory Carroll, Education, The Guardian, June 2001

[Pedaliu_JContHistory-72] Effie Pedaliu (2004) JSTOR 4141408? Britain and the 'Hand-over' of Italian War Criminals to Yugoslavia, 1945–48. Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue: Collective Memory, pp. 503–529

[oliva06-73] Oliva, Gianni (2006) «Si ammazza troppo poco». I crimini di guerra italiani. 1940–43, Mondadori, ISBN 88-04-55129-1

[blpp2004-74] Baldissara, Luca & Pezzino, Paolo (2004). Crimini e memorie di guerra: violenze contro le popolazioni e politiche del ricordo, L'Ancora del Mediterraneo. ISBN 978-88-8325-135-1

[75] Viganò, Marino (2001), "Un'analisi accurata della presunta fuga in Svizzera", Nuova Storia Contemporanea (in Italian), 3

[76] "1945: Italian partisans kill Mussolini". BBC News. 28 April 1945. Retrieved 17 October 2011.

[britannica.com-77] "Italy – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2 August 2010.

[78] Adrian Lyttelton (editor), "Liberal and fascist Italy, 1900–1945", Oxford University Press, 2002. pp. 13

[79] Damage Foreshadows A-Bomb Test, 1946/06/06 (1946). Universal Newsreel. 1946. Retrieved 22 February 2012.

[80] "Italia 1946: le donne al voto, dossier a cura di Mariachiara Fugazza e Silvia Cassamagnaghi" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[81] "Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabili delle stragi (Parliamentary investigative commission on terrorism in Italy and the failure to identify the perpetrators)" (PDF) (in Italian). 1995. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 August 2006. Retrieved 2 May 2006.

[Docs-82] Template:En icon / Template:It icon / Template:Fr icon /Template:De icon "Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies". Swiss Federal Institute of Technology / International Relation and Security Network. Archived from the original on 25 April 2006. Retrieved 2 May 2006. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[83] "Clarion: Philip Willan, Guardian, 24 June 2000, page 19". Cambridgeclarion.org. 24 June 2000. Retrieved 24 April 2010.

[84] The so-called Second Republic was born by forceps: not with a revolt of Algiers, but formally under the same Constitution, with the mere replacement of one ruling class to another: Buonomo, Giampiero (2015). "Tovaglie pulite". Mondoperaio edizione online. – via Questia (subscription required)

[85] "Italy starts to show the strains of migrant influx". The Local. Retrieved 10 January 2017.

[86] "Italy's far right jolts back from dead". Politico. 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2017.

[88] "Morphometric and hydrological characteristics of some important Italian lakes". Largo Tonolli 50, 28922 Verbania Pallanza: Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi. Archived from the original on 5 February 2010. Retrieved 3 March 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: location (link)

[89] "Clima, cibo e ville. Il lago più bello è quello di Como". Il Corriere della Sera. 2014. Retrieved 24 January 2014.

[Scro-90] {{citation}}: Empty citation (help).

[91] "Inventario delle risorse geotermiche nazionali". UNMIG. 2011. Retrieved 14 September 2011.

[dev.prenhall-92] "Italy – Environment". Dev.prenhall.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[93] "National Parks in Italy". Parks.it. 1995–2010. Retrieved 15 March 2010.

[REN21-94] REN21 (15 July 2010). "Renewables 2010 Global Status Report" (PDF). REN21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 August 2011. Retrieved 16 July 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

[BaroPhoto2010-95] "Photovoltaic energy barometer 2010 – EurObserv'ER". Retrieved 30 October 2010.^{[permanent dead link]}

[wwea-96] "World Wind Energy Report 2010" (PDF). Report. World Wind Energy Association. February 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 September 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[97] wwea

[Encyclopedia_of_the_Nations-98] "Italy – Environment". Encyclopedia of the Nations. Retrieved 7 April 2010.

[99] United Nations Statistics Division, Millennium Development Goals indicators: Carbon dioxide emissions (CO₂), thousand metric tons of CO₂ (collected by CDIAC)

[100] Human-produced, direct emissions of carbon dioxide only. Excludes other greenhouse gases; land-use, land-use-change and forestry (LULUCF); and natural background flows of CO₂ (See also: Carbon cycle)

[101] [1] Archived 3 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine

[102] Duncan Kennedy (14 June 2011). "Italy nuclear: Berlusconi accepts referendum blow". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2013.

[Sicily_mudslide_leaves_scores_dead-103] Nick Squires (2 October 2009). "Sicily mudslide leaves scores dead". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 2 October 2009.

[104] Livy (1797). The history of Rome. George Baker (trans.). Printed for A. Strahan.

[105] "ITALY'S FIFTH NATIONAL REPORT TO THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY" (PDF). Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea. Retrieved 17 May 2015.

[106] Pignatti, S.,1982 Flora d’Italia. Edagricole, Bologna, vol. 1–3, 1982

[107] Riccardo Guarino, Sabina Addamiano, Marco La Rosa, Sandro Pignatti Flora Italiana Digitale:an interactive identification tool for the Flora of Italy

[108] Adriana Rigutti, Meteorologia, Giunti, p. 95, 2009.

[109] Thomas A. Blair, Climatology: General and Regional, Prentice Hall pages 131–132

[110] "Climate Atlas of Italy". Network of the Air Force Meteorological Service. Retrieved 30 September 2012.

[111] Smyth, Howard McGaw Italy: From Fascism to the Republic (1943–1946) The Western Political Quarterly vol. 1 no. 3 (pp. 205–222), September 1948.JSTOR 442274

[112] "About us - Sistema di informazione per la sicurezza della Repubblica". www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it.

[113] "Elezioni politiche 2013, Riepilogo Nazionale". Il Sole 24 Ore. Retrieved 6 December 2014.

[114] Claudio Tucci (11 November 2008). "Confesercenti, la crisi economica rende ancor più pericolosa la mafia". Confesercenti (in Italian). Ilsole24ore.com. Retrieved 21 April 2011.

[115] Nick Squires (9 January 2010). "Italy claims finally defeating the mafia". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 April 2011.

[nytimes.com-116] Kiefer, Peter (22 October 2007). "Mafia crime is 7% of GDP in Italy, group reports". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 April 2011.

[117] Maria Loi (1 October 2009). "Rapporto Censis: 13 milioni di italiani convivono con la mafia". Censis (in Italian). Antimafia Duemila. Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 21 April 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[118] Kington, Tom (1 October 2009). "Mafia's influence hovers over 13 m Italians, says report". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 5 May 2010.

[119] ANSA (14 March 2011). "Italy: Anti-mafia police arrest 35 suspects in northern Lombardy region". adnkronos.com. Mafia Today. Retrieved 21 April 2011.

[NationMaster.com-120] "Crime Statistics – Murders (per capita) (most recent) by country". NationMaster.com. Retrieved 4 April 2010.

[121] "MISSIONI/ATTIVITA' INTERNAZIONALI DAL 1 October 2013 AL 31 December 2013 – SITUAZIONE AL 11.12.2013" (PDF). Italian Ministry of Defence. Retrieved 27 January 2014.

[NewsMax-122] "Italian soldiers leave for Lebanon Corriere della Sera, 30 August 2006

[123] "Italy donates 60 million euros to PA". Ma'an News Agency. 4 September 2013. Retrieved 27 January 2014.

[124] "Law n°226 of August 23, 2004". Camera.it. Retrieved 13 July 2012.

[IISS-125] "The Military Balance 2010", pp. 141–145. International Institute for Strategic Studies, 3 February 2010.

[126] Italian Ministry of Defence. "Nota aggiuntiva allo stato di previsione per la Difesa per l'anno 2009" (PDF) (in Italian). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 May 2011. Retrieved 11 July 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[127] Hans M. Kristensen / Natural Resources Defense Council (2005). "NRDC: U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe – part 1" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 January 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[128] "Marina Militare (Italian military navy website)" (in Italian). Marina.difesa.it. Retrieved 30 May 2011.

[129] "The Carabinieri Force is linked to the Ministry of Defence". Carabinieri. Retrieved 14 May 2010.

[130] "Codici comuni, province e regioni". www.istat.it (in Italian). Retrieved 24 May 2015.

[131] ttps://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2017/02/weodata/weoselgr.aspx

[132] "Gross domestic product (2015)" (PDF). The World Bank: World Development Indicators database. World Bank. 28 April 2017. Retrieved 17 May 2017.

[133] Sensenbrenner, Frank; Arcelli, Angelo Federico. "Italy's Economy Is Much Stronger Than It Seems". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 25 November 2014.

[134] Dadush, Uri. "Is the Italian Economy on the Mend?". Carnegie Europe. Retrieved 25 November 2014.

[135] "Doing Business in Italy: 2014 Country Commercial Guide for U.S. Companies" (PDF). United States Commercial Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 July 2014. Retrieved 25 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[economist.com-136] The Economist Intelligence Unit's quality-of-life index, Economist, 2005

[137] "The Global Creativity Index 2011" (PDF). Martin Prosperity Institute. Retrieved 26 November 2014.

[138] Aksoy, M. Ataman; Ng, Francis. "The Evolution of Agricultural Trade Flows" (PDF). The World Bank. Retrieved 25 November 2014.

[139] Pisa, Nick (12 June 2011). "Italy overtakes France to become world's largest wine producer". The Telegraph. Retrieved 17 August 2011.

[140] "Automotive Market Sector Profile – Italy" (PDF). The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service. Retrieved 26 November 2014.

[141] "Data & Trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2013–2014" (PDF). FoodDrinkEurope. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 December 2014. Retrieved 26 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[142] "Italy fashion industry back to growth in 2014". Reuters. Retrieved 26 November 2014.

[143] Leblanc, John (25 April 2014). "The top 10 largest automakers in the world". Driving. Retrieved 29 April 2017. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

[OECDtrade-144] "Trade in goodsExports, Million US dollars, 2016". OECD. Retrieved 17 May 2017.

[145] "Manufacturing, value added (current US$)". accessed on 17 May 2017.

[146] "Knowledge Economy Forum 2008: Innovative Small And Medium Enterprises Are Key To Europe & Central Asian Growth". The World Bank. 19 May 2005. Retrieved 17 June 2008.

[cia.gov-147] "CIA – The World Factbook". CIA. Retrieved 26 January 2011.

[148] "Auto: settore da 144mila imprese in Italia e 117 mld fatturato". adnkronos.com. Retrieved 23 September 2015. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[acea.thisconnect.com-149] "Country Profiles – Italy". acea.thisconnect.com. Archived from the original on 11 February 2008. Retrieved 9 February 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[150] "Fiat Chrysler to spin off Ferrari, issue $2.5 billion convertible bond". Retrieved 29 October 2014.

[151] Haigh, Robert (18 February 2014). "Ferrari – The World's Most Powerful Brand". Brand Finance. Retrieved 9 February 2015.

[euroc-152] Andrews, Edmund L. (1 January 2002). "Germans Say Goodbye to the Mark, a Symbol of Strength and Unity". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2011.

[153] Taylor Martin, Susan (28 December 1998). "On Jan. 1, out of many arises one Euro". St. Petersburg Times. p. National, 1.A.

[154] Orsi, Roberto. "The Quiet Collapse of the Italian Economy". The London School of Economics. Retrieved 24 November 2014.

[155] Nicholas Crafts, Gianni Toniolo (1996). Economic growth in Europe since 1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 428. ISBN 0-521-49627-6.

[156] Balcerowicz, Leszek. "Economic Growth in the European Union" (PDF). The Lisbon Council. Retrieved 8 October 2014.

[157] ""Secular stagnation" in graphics". The Economist. Retrieved 24 November 2014.

[158] "Government debt increased to 93.9% of GDP in euro area and to 88.0% in EU28" (PDF). Eurostat. Retrieved 24 November 2014.

[159] "Could Italy Be Better Off than its Peers?". CNBC. 18 May 2010. Archived from the original on 30 April 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[160] "Household debt and the OECD's surveillance of member states" (PDF). OECD Economics Department. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 January 2015. Retrieved 26 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[161] "Oh for a new risorgimento". The Economist. Retrieved 24 November 2014.

[162] "Comune per Comune, ecco la mappa navigabile dei redditi dichiarati in Italia". www.lastampa.it.

[163] "GDP per capita at regional level" (PDF). Istat. Retrieved 25 October 2017.

[164] "Euro area unemployment rate at 11%". Eurostat. Retrieved 26 October 2017.

[165] Istat. "Employment and unemployment: second quarter 2017" (PDF). Retrieved 26 October 2017.

[agrocensus-166] "Censimento Agricoltura 2010". ISTAT. 24 October 2010. Retrieved 11 February 2015.

[OIVstats-167] "OIV report on the State of the vitiviniculture world market". news.reseau-concept.net. Réseau-CONCEPT. 2010. Archived from the original (PowerPoint presentation) on 28 July 2011.

[168] "Frecciarossa 1000 in Figures". Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. Archived from the original on 18 December 2014. Retrieved 24 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[European_Commission-169] European Commission. "Panorama of Transport" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 April 2009. Retrieved 3 May 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[170] "Energy imports, net (% of energy use)". World Bank. Retrieved 24 November 2014.

[171] Eurostat. "Energy, transport and environment indicators" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 November 2009. Retrieved 10 May 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[172] Eurostat. "Panorama of energy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 June 2010. Retrieved 10 May 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[173] L. Anwandter and P. Rubino (2006). "Risks, uncertainties and conflicts of Interest in the Italian water sector: A review and proposals for reform". Materiali UVAL (Public Investment Evaluation Unit of the Department for Development and Cohesion Policies (DPS) in the Ministry for Economic Development), According to ISTAT figures analysed by the Water Resources Surveillance Committee (CoViRi),. p. 9. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

[174] Bardelli, Lorenzo. "Pro aqua Italian policy to get prices and governance right". Utilitatis, 29th International Congress of CIRIEC, Wien, 14 September 2012. p. 16. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)

[175] Albasser, Francesco (May 2012). "The Italian Water industry – Beyond the Public/Private debate & back to basics, Presentation at the Conference Water Loss Europe". in3act Energy. p. 12. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)

[wmnqsy-176] Giuliano Pancaldi, "Volta: Science and culture in the age of enlightenment", Princeton University Press, 2003.

[Einstein-177] Weidhorn, Manfred (2005). The Person of the Millennium: The Unique Impact of Galileo on World History. iUniverse. p. 155. ISBN 0-595-36877-8.

[178] Bondyopadhyay, Prebir K. (1995). "Guglielmo Marconi – The father of long distance radio communication – An engineer's tribute". 25th European Microwave Conference, 1995. p. 879. doi:10.1109/EUMA.1995.337090.

[179] "Enrico Fermi, architect of the nuclear age, dies". Autumn 1954.

[180] Lucia Orlando, "Physics in the 1930s: Jewish Physicists' Contribution to the Realization of the" New Tasks" of Physics in Italy." Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences (1998): 141–181. JSTOR 27757806

[181] Wheen, Andrew. Dot-Dash to Dot.com: How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet. Springer, 2010. p. 45. Web. 23 Sep. 2011.

[182] Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author) ; Saundry, Peter (Topic Editor). Meucci, Antonio. Encyclopedia of Earth, 2006. Web. 22 Jul. 2012.

[183] "Foreign tourist numbers in Italy head towards new record", Retrieved 21 May 2017.

[WTO_Tourism_Highlights_2016_Edition-184] "2016 Tourism Highlights". World Tourism Organization. Retrieved 4 August 2016.

[185] "Travel & Tourism Economic Impact 2015 Italy" (PDF). World Travel and Tourism Council. Retrieved 20 May 2017.

[convention-186] "The World Heritage Convention". UNESCO. Retrieved 17 September 2010.

[187] "Global Destination Cities Index by Mastercard, 2016 edition" (PDF).

[188] "2013 Survey on Museums, Monuments and Archeological sites" (PDF). Italian Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities. Retrieved 20 May 2017.

[189] "National demographic balance, 2013" (PDF). Istat. Retrieved 1 October 2014.

[190] EUROSTAT. "Ageing characterises the demographic perspectives of the European societies – Issue number 72/2008" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 January 2009. Retrieved 28 April 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[191] ISTAT. "Crude birth rates, mortality rates and marriage rates 2005–2008" (PDF) (in Italian). Retrieved 10 May 2009.

[192] ISTAT. "Average number of children born per woman 2005–2008" (PDF) (in Italian). Retrieved 3 May 2009.

[193] "Previsioni della popolazione, 2011–2065, dati al 1° gennaio". Demo.istat.it. Archived from the original on 6 March 2013. Retrieved 12 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[194] "Causes of the Italian mass emigration". ThinkQuest Library. 15 August 1999. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 11 August 2014.

[195] Favero, Luigi e Tassello, Graziano. Cent'anni di emigrazione italiana (1861–1961) Introduction

[aire-196] "Statistiche del Ministero dell'Interno". Archived from the original on 27 February 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[197] Lee, Adam (3 April 2006). "Unos 20 millones de personas que viven en la Argentina tienen algún grado de descendencia italiana" (in Spanish). Retrieved 27 June 2008.

[198] Consulta Nazionale Emigrazione. Progetto ITENETs – "Gli italiani in Brasile"; pp. 11, 19 Archived 12 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved 10 September 2008.

[199] "Ethnic origins, 2006 counts, for Uruguay, provinces and territories – 20% sample data".

[200] Santander Laya-Garrido, Alfonso. Los Italianos forjadores de la nacionalidad y del desarrollo economico en Venezuela. Editorial Vadell. Valencia, 1978

[201] American FactFinder, United States Census Bureau. "U.S Census Bureau – Selected Population Profile in the United States". American FactFinder, United States Census Bureau. Archived from the original on 30 April 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[202] "Ethnic origins, 2006 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories – 20% sample data".

[203] "20680-Ancestry by Country of Birth of Parents – Time Series Statistics (2001, 2006 Census Years) – Australia". Australian Bureau of Statistics. 27 June 2007. Archived from the original on 1 October 2007. Retrieved 30 December 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[204] "The Cambridge survey of world migration". Robin Cohen (1995). Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN 0-521-44405-5

[205] Roberto, Vincenzo Patruno, Marina Venturi, Silvestro. "Demo-Geodemo. - Mappe, Popolazione, Statistiche Demografiche dell'ISTAT". demo.istat.it.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[206] ttp://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=urb_lpop1&lang=en

[207] "Resident Foreigners on 31st December 2016". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.

[208] "Immigrants.Stat". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.

[209] "National demographic balance 2016". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.

[210] "National demographic balance 2014". Istat. Retrieved 15 June 2017.

[211] Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Italy cracks down on illegal immigration". The Boston Globe. 16 May 2008.

[212] Allen, Beverly (1997). Revisioning Italy national identity and global culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-8166-2727-1.

[213] "Milan police in Chinatown clash". BBC News. 13 April 2007.

[214] "EUROPE: Home to Roma, And No Place for Them". IPS ipsnews.net. Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine

[215] "Balkan Investigative Reporting Network". Birn.eu.com. 8 November 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2008.^{[permanent dead link]}

[216] Mitrica, Mihai Un milion de romani s-au mutat in Italia ("One million Romanians have moved to Italy"). Evenimentul Zilei, 31 October 2005. Visited 11 April 2006.

[218] "Legge 15 Dicembre 1999, n. 482 "Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche" pubblicata nella Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 297 del 20 dicembre 1999". Italian Parliament. Retrieved 2 December 2014.

[219] Italian language Ethnologue.com

[europa2006-220] "Eurobarometer – Europeans and their languages" (485 KB). February 2006.

[221] Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2007" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007

[Italian_language-222] Italian language University of Leicester

[223] "Italian language". Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 November 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2009.

[224] "Lingue di Minoranza e Scuola: Carta Generale". www.minoranze-linguistiche-scuola.it.

[parl-225] Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche, Italian parliament

[226] [L.cost. 26 febbraio 1948, n. 4, Statuto speciale per la Valle d'Aosta; L.cost. 26 febbraio 1948, n. 5, Statuto speciale per il Trentino-Alto Adige; L. cost. 31 gennaio 1963, n. 1, Statuto speciale della Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia]

[227] "Linguistic diversity among foreign citizens in Italy". Italian National Institute of Statistics. Retrieved 27 July 2014.

[228] "The Duomo of Florence | Tripleman". tripleman.com. Retrieved 25 March 2010.

[229] "Brunelleschi's Dome". Brunelleschi's Dome.com. Retrieved 25 March 2010.

[230] "St. Peter's Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro) in Rome, Italy". reidsitaly.com.

[231] See List of largest church buildings in the world; note that the #3 entry, First Family Church building in Kansas, is now a school education complex.

[232] "Basilica di San Marco". Archived from the original on 5 March 2015. Retrieved 10 February 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[233] "Catholicism No Longer Italy's State Religion". Sun Sentinel. 4 June 1985. Retrieved 7 September 2013.

[pewresearch-234] "The Global Catholic Population". pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 24 August 2014.

[235] Text taken directly from "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 31 December 2010. Retrieved 5 February 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) (viewed on 14 December 2011), on the website of the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

[236] The Holy See's sovereignty has been recognized explicitly in many international agreements and is particularly emphasized in article 2 of the Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929, in which "Italy recognizes the sovereignty of the Holy See in international matters as an inherent attribute in conformity with its traditions and the requirements of its mission to the world" (Lateran Treaty, English translation).

[237] Leustean, Lucian N. (2014). Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge. p. 723. ISBN 978-0-415-68490-3.

[238] "Le religioni in Italia: I Testimoni di Geova (Religions in Italy: The Jehovah's Witnesses)" (in Italian). Center for Studies on New Religions. Retrieved 30 May 2011.

[239] "Chiesa Evangelica Valdese – Unione delle chiese Metodiste e Valdesi (Waldensian Evangelical Church – Union of Waldensian and Methodist churches)" (in Italian). Chiesa Evangelica Valdese – Unione delle chiese Metodiste e Valdesi (Waldensian Evangelical Church – Union of Waldensian and Methodist churches). Archived from the original on 11 February 2006. Retrieved 30 May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[240] "World Council of Churches – Evangelical Methodist Church in Italy". World Council of Churches. Archived from the original on 9 July 2008. Retrieved 30 October 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[isbn0553343025-241] Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1986). The war against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-34302-5.p. 403

[242] "THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ITALY Unione delle Comunita Ebraiche Italiane". The European Jewish Congress. Retrieved 25 August 2014.

[243] "NRI Sikhs in Italy". Nriinternet.com. 15 November 2004. Retrieved 30 October 2010.

[244] "Unione Buddhista Italiana – UBI: L'Ente". Buddhismo.it. 18 August 2009. Archived from the original on 4 April 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[WCE-05-245] "Most Baha'i Nations (2005)". QuickLists > Compare Nations > Religions >. The Association of Religion Data Archives. 2005. Retrieved 30 January 2010.

[246] "Italy: Islam denied income tax revenue – Adnkronos Religion". Adnkronos.com. 7 April 2003. Retrieved 2 June 2013.

[247] Camera dei deputati Dossier BI0350. Documenti.camera.it (10 March 1998). Retrieved on 12 July 2013.

[248] "Law 27 December 2007, n.296". Italian Parliament. Retrieved 30 September 2012.

[249] "| Human Development Reports" (PDF). Hdr.undp.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 18 January 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[250] "PISA 2012 Results" (PDF). OECD. Retrieved 16 November 2015.

[251] "The literacy divide: territorial differences in the Italian education system" (PDF). Parthenope University of Naples. Retrieved 16 November 2015.

[252] "Academic Ranking of World Universities 2015". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2015.

[253] "Italy's Budget/4: 500 new university "chairs of excellence" open up to foreign professors and scholars". Il Sole 24 Ore Digital Edition. Retrieved 16 November 2015.

[dev.prenhall_a-254] "Italy – Health". Dev.prenhall.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[OECD-255] "OECD Health Statistics 2014 How Does Italy Compare?" (PDF). OECD. 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[photius.com-256] "The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems". ΦΩΤΗΣ ΚΟΥΤΣΟΥΚΗΣ (Photius Coutsoukis). Retrieved 27 October 2009.

[257] "World Health Statistics 2016: Monitoring health for the SDGs Annex B: tables of health statistics by country, WHO region and globally". World Health Organization. 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.

[IOTF2008-258] "Global Prevalence of Adult Obesity" (PDF). International Obesity Taskforce. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 December 2009. Retrieved 29 January 2008.

[259] "Smoking Ban Begins in Italy | Europe | DW.COM | 10.01.2005". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 1 August 2010.

[260] "UNESCO Culture Sector, Eighth Session of the Intergovernmental Committee (8.COM) – from 2 to 7 December 2013". Retrieved 3 April 2014.

[261] "UNESCO – Culture – Intangible Heritage – Lists & Register – Inscribed Elements – Mediterranean Diet". Retrieved 3 April 2014.

[262] Killinger, Charles (2005). Culture and customs of Italy (1. publ. ed.). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-313-32489-1.

[263] Cole, Alison (1995). Virtue and magnificence : art of the Italian Renaissance courts. New York: H.N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-2733-0.

[Eyewitness_Travel_2005,_pg._19-264] Eyewitness Travel (2005), pg. 19

[265] Architecture in Italy, ItalyTravel.com

[266] "History – Historic Figures: Inigo Jones (1573–1652)". BBC. 1 January 1970. Retrieved 12 March 2013.

[267] "Roman Painting". art-and-archaeology.com.

[268] "Roman Wall Painting". accd.edu. Archived from the original on 19 March 2007. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[269] "Poetry and Drama: Literary Terms and Concepts.". The Rosen Publishing Group. 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2011.

[270] Brand, Peter; Pertile, Lino, eds. (1999). "2 - Poetry. Francis of Assisi (pp. 5ff.)". The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52166622-0. Retrieved 31 December 2015. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |editor2link= ignored (|editor-link2= suggested) (help)

[271] Ernest Hatch Wilkins, The invention of the sonnet, and other studies in Italian literature (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1959), 11–39

[Britannica-Shakespeare-272] "Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron.". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 18 December 2013.

[273] Steven Swann Jones, The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1995, ISBN 0-8057-0950-9, p38

[274] Bottigheimer 2012a, 7; Waters 1894, xii; Zipes 2015, 599.

[275] Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1974), The Classic Fairy Tales, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-211559-6 See page 20. The claim for earliest fairy-tale is still debated, see for example Jan M. Ziolkowski, Fairy tales from before fairy tales: the medieval Latin past of wonderful lies, University of Michigan Press, 2007. Ziolkowski examines Egbert of Liège's Latin beast poem Fecunda natis (The Richly Laden Ship, c. 1022/24), the earliest known version of "Little Red Riding Hood". Further info: Little Red Pentecostal, Peter J. Leithart, July 9, 2007.

[Gasparini-276] Giovanni Gasparini. La corsa di Pinocchio. Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1997. p. 117. ISBN 88-343-4889-3

[277] "Pinocchio: Carlo Collodi - Children's Literature Review". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 1 October 2015.

[Archibald_Colquhoun_1954-278] Archibald Colquhoun. Manzoni and his Times. J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1954.

[279] "Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies - Google Books". Books.google.co.uk. 26 December 2006. Retrieved 18 April 2015.

[280] The 20th-Century art book (Reprinted. ed.). dsdLondon: Phaidon Press. 2001. ISBN 0714835420.

[281] "All Nobel Prizes in Literature". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 30 May 2011.

[282] "Quick Opera Facts 2007". OPERA America. 2007. Archived from the original on 1 October 2006. Retrieved 23 April 2007.

[283] Alain P. Dornic (1995). "An Operatic Survey". Opera Glass. Retrieved 23 April 2007.

[books.google.co.uk-284] Kimbell, David R. B (29 April 1994). Italian Opera. Google Books. ISBN 978-0-521-46643-1. Retrieved 20 December 2009.

[285] "This record was a collaboration between Philip Oakey, the big-voiced lead singer of the techno-pop band the Human League, and Giorgio Moroder, the Italian-born father of disco who spent the '80s writing synth-based pop and film music." Evan Cater. "Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder: Overview". AllMusic. Retrieved 21 December 2009.

[286] "The Cinema Under Mussolini". Ccat.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 30 October 2010.

[287] Ebert, Roger. "The Bicycle Thief / Bicycle Thieves (1949)". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 8 September 2011.

[288] "The 25 Most Influential Directors of All Time". MovieMaker Magazine.

[289] "10 Most Influential Directors Of All Time". WhatCulture.com.

[290] "Historical origins of italian neorealism – Neorealism – actor, actress, film, children, voice, show, born, director, son, cinema, scene". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 7 September 2011.

[291] "Italian Neorealism – Explore – The Criterion Collection". Criterion.com. Retrieved 7 September 2011.

[292] Bondanella, Peter E. (2001). Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. Continuum. p. 13. ISBN 9780826412478.

[293] Hamil, Sean; Chadwick, Simon (2010). Managing football : an international perspective (1st ed., dodr. ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann. p. 285. ISBN 1-85617-544-8.

[294] "Previous FIFA World Cups". FIFA.com. Retrieved 8 January 2011.

[295] "Union Cycliste Internationale".

[296] "Ferrari". Formula 1 - The Official F1 Website. Retrieved 6 February 2016.

[297] Foot, John. Pedalare! Pedalare! : a history of Italian cycling. London: Bloomsbury. p. 312. ISBN 978-1-4088-2219-7.

[298] Hall, James (23 November 2012). "Italy is best value skiing country, report finds". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 29 August 2013.

[299] "Il tennis è il quarto sport in Italia per numero di praticanti". Federazione Italiana Tennis. Retrieved 29 August 2013.

[300] "New York Takes Top Global Fashion Capital Title from London, edging past Paris". Languagemonitor.com. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 25 February 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[301] Press, Debbie (2000). "Your Modeling Career: You Don't Have to Be a Superstar to Succeed". ISBN 978-1-58115-045-2. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

[302] Miller (2005) p. 486

[Insight_Guides_2004_p.220-303] Insight Guides (2004) p.220

[wiley.com-304] "Design City Milan". Wiley. Retrieved 3 January 2010.

[305] "Frieze Magazine – Archive – Milan and Turin". Frieze. Archived from the original on 10 January 2010. Retrieved 3 January 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[306] "Italian Cooking: History of Food and Cooking in Rome and Lazio Region, Papal Influence, Jewish Influence, The Essence of Roman Italian Cooking". Inmamaskitchen.com. Archived from the original on 10 April 2010. Retrieved 24 April 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[307] "The Making of Italian Food...From the Beginning". Epicurean.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.

[308] Del Conte, 11–21.

[309] Related Articles (2 January 2009). "Italian cuisine – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.

[310] "Italian Food – Italy's Regional Dishes & Cuisine". Indigoguide.com. Archived from the original on 2 January 2011. Retrieved 24 April 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[311] "Regional Italian Cuisine". Rusticocooking.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.

[312] "Which country has the best food?". CNN. 6 January 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2013.

[313] Freeman, Nancy (2 March 2007). "American Food, Cuisine". Sallybernstein.com. Retrieved 24 April 2010.

[314] The Silver Spoon ISBN 88-7212-223-6, 1997 ed.

[315] Mario Batali Simple Italian Food: Recipes from My Two Villages (1998), ISBN 0-609-60300-0

[316] "Most Americans Have Dined Outin the Past Month and, Among Type of Cuisine, American Food is Tops Followed by Italian" (PDF). Harris interactive. Retrieved 31 August 2013.

[317] Kazmin, Amy (26 March 2013). "A taste for Italian in New Delhi". Financial Times. Retrieved 31 August 2013.

[318] Keane, John. "Italy leads the way with protected products under EU schemes". Bord Bia. Retrieved 5 September 2013.

[319] Marshall, Lee (30 September 2009). "Italian coffee culture: a guide". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 September 2013.

[320] Jewkes, Stephen (13 October 2012). "World's first museum about gelato culture opens in Italy". Times Colonist. Retrieved 5 September 2013.

[321] Squires, Nick (23 August 2013). "Tiramisu claimed by Treviso". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 September 2013.

[VeniceFilmFest-322] Anderson, Ariston. "Venice: David Gordon Green's 'Manglehorn,' Abel Ferrara's 'Pasolini' in Competition Lineup". The Hollywood Reporter.

[323] "Addio, Lido: Last Postcards from the Venice Film Festival". TIME.

[324] "Festività nazionali in Italia" (in Italian). Italian Embassy in London. Retrieved 15 April 2012.

[325] Roy, Christian (2005). Traditional Festivals. ABC-CLIO. p. 144. ISBN 9781576070895. Retrieved 13 January 2015.

[alio-326] Alio, Jacqueline. "Saint Lucy – Sicily's Most Famous Woman", Best of Sicily Magazine, 2009

[327] Jonathan Boardman. Rome: A Cultural and Literary Companion (Google Books). University of California: Signal Books. p. 219. ISBN 1902669150.

[328] "Festività nazionali in Italia" (in Italian). Governo Italiano - Dipartimento per il Cerimoniale dello Stato. Retrieved 25 April 2013.

[329] "Celebrations of big shoulder-borne processional structures". UNESCO.org. Retrieved 29 November 2014.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[note 1]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

[25]

[26]

[27]

[28]

[29]

[30]

[31]

[32]

[33]

[34]

[35]

[36]

[37]

[38]

[39]

[40]

[41]

[42]

[43]

[44]

[45]

[46]

[47]

[48]

[49]

[50]

[51]

[52]

[53]

[54]

[55]

[56]

[57]

[58]

[59]

[60]

[61]

[62]

[63]

[64]

[65]

[66]

[67]

[68]

[69]

[70]

[71]

[72]

[73]

[74]

[75]

[76]

[77]

[78]

[79]

[80]

[81]

[82]

[83]

[84]

[85]

[note 2]

[86]

[87]

[88]

[89]

[90]

[91]

[92]

[93]

[94]

[95]

[96]

[97]

[98]

Authority control databases
International	ISNI VIAF FAST WorldCat
National	Germany United States France BnF data Japan Australia Czech Republic Spain Portugal Croatia Korea Vatican Israel Catalonia
Geographic	MusicBrainz area
Academics	CiNii
People	UK Parliament
Other	IdRef Historical Dictionary of Switzerland NARA 2 Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine İslâm Ansiklopedisi