In antiquity, Italy was home to numerous peoples; the city of Rome, founded as a Kingdom, became a Republic that conquered the Mediterranean world and ruled it for centuries as an Empire. With the spread of Christianity, Rome became the seat of the Catholic Church and the Papacy. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy experienced the fall of the Western Roman Empire and inward migration from Germanic tribes. By the 11th century, Italian city-states and maritime republics expanded, bringing renewed prosperity through commerce and laying the groundwork for modern capitalism. The Italian Renaissance flourished during the 15th and 16th centuries and spread to the rest of Europe. Italian explorers discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, leading the European Age of Discovery. However, centuries of rivalry and infighting between city-states left the peninsula divided. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Italian economic importance waned significantly. (Full article...)
Largely preserved under the ash, Pompeii offers a unique snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried, as well as insight into ancient urban planning. It was a wealthy town of 10,000 to 20,000 residents at the time it was destroyed. It hosted many fine public buildings and luxurious private houses with lavish decorations, furnishings and artworks, which were the main attractions for early excavators; subsequent excavations have found hundreds of private homes and businesses reflecting various architectural styles and social classes, as well as numerous public buildings. Organic remains, including wooden objects and human bodies, were interred in the ash; their eventual decay allowed archaeologists to create moulds of figures in their final moments of life. The numerous graffiti carved on outside walls and inside rooms provide a wealth of examples of the largely lost Vulgar Latin spoken colloquially at the time, contrasting with the formal language of classical writers. (Full article...)
...that in 2002, hundreds of former mobsters incarcerated in eight jails across Italy, supposedly having no way to contact one another, joined a hunger strike to protest against article 41-bis of the Italian Penitentiary Act?
Italian wine (Italian: vino italiano) is produced in every region of Italy. Italy is the country with the widest variety of indigenous grapevine in the world, with an area of 702,000 hectares (1.73 million acres) under vineyard cultivation, as well as the world's second largest wine producer and the largest exporter as of 2023[update]. Contributing 49.8 million hl of wine in 2022, Italy accounted for over 19.3% of global production, ahead of France (17.7%) and Spain (13.8%); the following year, production decreased by 11.5 million hl, and Italy was surpassed by France. Italian wine is also popular domestically among Italians, who consume a yearly average of 46.8 litres per capita, ranking third in world wine consumption.
Image 19The Roman Empire provided an inspiration for the medieval European. Although the Holy Roman Empire rarely acquired a serious geopolitical reality, it possessed great symbolic significance. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 26The cover of the Corriere dei Piccoli on 11 July 1911 carries a cartoon strip in the Italian style without speech bubbles. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 30The espresso comes from the Italian esprimere, which means "to express," and refers to the process by which hot water is forced under pressure through ground coffee. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 60The Colosseum, originally known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, is an elliptical amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, the largest ever built in the Roman Empire. (from Culture of Italy)