Sky Italia

Type	Società a responsabilità limitata
Industry	Telecommunication
Founded	31 July 2003
Founder(s)	Rupert Murdoch
Headquarters	Milan and Rome, Italy
Area served	Nationwide
Key people	James Murdoch (Chairman) Andrea Zappia (CEO)
Products	Direct broadcast satellite
Parent	News Corporation
Website	www.sky.it

Sky Italia S.r.l. is an Italian digital satellite television platform owned by News Corporation launched on 1 August 2003, when the former platforms TELE+ (Canal+) and Stream TV (News Corporation and Telecom Italia) merged. It is similar in many ways to BSkyB's Sky Digital in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and like that network it is a major sports broadcaster.

Pay TV services on Sky Italia are encrypted in NDS Videoguard. The Videoguard set-top boxes that have been provided since July 2010 are identical to the Sky+ HD boxes used in the UK. Pace, Amstrad and Thomson, all Digibox licensors, have been producing Sky Italia boxes (Sky Box, Sky HD, My Sky and My Sky HD) identical to their Sky Digital, Sky+ and Sky+ HD offerings, albeit with the potential removal of the second card slot and UHF modulator.

Since July 2010 Sky Italia has been giving the 'Sky Digital Key' and the My Sky HD box for free to every new customer (since July 2009 HD channels have been available with no extra cost to all Sky Italia subscribers). The 'Sky Digital Key' is a USB device which has to be connected to the 'My Sky HD' box and to the aerial cable, allowing the customer to receive every DTT SD and HD free channel on the Sky HD or My Sky HD box.

The 'My Sky' boxes launched on 22 November 2005 - based on a new digital receiver with HDD recording capabilities and surround sound output (not previously available on the normal box). Subsequently, the 'My Sky HD' boxes (High Definition with HDD recorder) were added. The 'My Sky HD' service had been provided with an extra charge until July 2010, when it became a base-line service. The service is functionally identical to the BSkyB Sky+ HD.

On 28 June 2010, Sky Italia changed its brands and logos, making them identical to the BSkyB ones.

Sky Italia offers eight packages of channels: five base-level 'Channel Packs' and three optional 'Sky Packs' enhancements. The 'Channel Packs' are: 'Entertainment' with 33 variety, series and semi-generalist channels (3 of them in HD); 'Documentaries and Lifestyle' with 17 channels (2 of them in HD); 'Music' with 16 channels and 27 audio channels; 'Kids' with 21 channels; 'News' with 15 national, local and international news channels and 5 basic sport channels. The 'Sky Packs' are the following: 'Cinema' with 12 movie channels (10 of them in HD), and a 3D channel, Sky Cinema 3D (PPV Sky Primafila movies are 50% off for 'Cinema' subscribers); 'Sport' with 8 channels (5 of them in HD), and a 3D channel, Sky Sport 3D; 'Calcio' with 15 channels (9 of them in HD) covering Italian and international football, the most popular sport in Italy, along with Sky Sport 24 (sport all-news channel), offered as bonus channel for 'Calcio' subscribers. The 'Sky Primafila' service offers pay-per-view movies, sport events and adult content (at night); the pay-per-view movies and some non-sport events are disseminated in 28 'Primafila' channels (8 of them in HD); one channel airs daily Penthouse TV HD programmes, available as a stand-alone premium channel. Sky Primafila has got some similarities to BSkyB's Sky Movies Box Office.

The HD service has been offered without any extra charge since 2009. There are 37 HDTV channels so far broadcasting on Sky, due to become 50 by the end of 2011.

On 1 October 2010, Sky activated its first 3D channel, Sky Sport 3D, available without any extra cost to the Sport pack subscribers. The very first event Sky Sport 3D aired was the 2010 Ryder Cup. On 25 December 2010, Sky launched another 3D channel: Sky Cinema 3D, airing 3D movies, available for free for Cinema pack subscribers. These channel have been replaced by Sky 3D on 6 September 2011.

On many channels, foreign-sourced content is broadcast either with an option to choose between Italian and English language soundtracks (rarely other languages), or with Italian subtitties.

Sky Italia uses the Hot Bird 6/8/9 satellites at 13.0°E, the same satellite fleet used by RAI, Tivù Sat, NOVA Greece, NOVA Cyprus, Cyfra+ and Cyfrowy Polsat.

Tom Mockridge, the then head of Sky Italia replaced Rebekah Brooks as chief executive of News International after she had resigned on 15 July 2011.^[1]

Andrea Zappia replaces Tom Mockridge as CEO on 1 August 2011.^[2] On 7 October 2011 Sky Italia announced it reached the 5 million subscribers benchmark.

Channels[link]

External links[link]

• Sky Italia official site (Italian)
• Sky Italia on NewsCorp.com

Sources[link]

Italian Republic Repubblica italiana
Flag Emblem
Anthem: Il Canto degli Italiani   The Song of the Italians
Location of  Italy  (dark green) – in Europe  (green & dark grey) – in the European Union  (green)  —  [Legend]
Capital (and largest city)		Rome 41°54′N 12°29′E / 41.9°N 12.483°E / 41.9; 12.483
Official language(s)		Italian[1]
Demonym		Italian
Government		Unitary parliamentary constitutional republic
-	President	Giorgio Napolitano
-	Prime Minister	Mario Monti
Legislature		Parliament
-	Upper house	Senate of the Republic
-	Lower house	Chamber of Deputies
Formation
-	Unification	17 March 1861
-	Republic	2 June 1946
Area
-	Total	301,338 km2 (71st) 116,346 sq mi
-	Water (%)	2.4
Population
-	2011 estimate	60,681,514[2] (23rd)
-	2011 (preliminary results) census	59,464,644
-	Density	201.2/km2 (61st) 521.2/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$1.847 trillion[3] (10th)
-	Per capita	$30,464[3] (30th)
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$2.198 trillion[3] (8th)
-	Per capita	$36,267[3] (24th)
Gini (2006)		32[4]
HDI (2011)		0.874[5] (very high) (24th)
Currency		Euro (€)2 (EUR)
Time zone		CET (UTC+1)
-	Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Drives on the		right
ISO 3166 code		IT
Internet TLD		.it3
Calling code		394
1	French is co-official in the Aosta Valley; Slovene is co-official in the province of Trieste and the province of Gorizia; German and Ladin are co-official in the province of South Tyrol.
2	Before 2002, the Italian Lira. The euro is accepted in Campione d'Italia, but the official currency there is the Swiss Franc.[6]
3	The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with other European Union member states.
4	To call Campione d'Italia, it is necessary to use the Swiss code +41.

Italy ⁱ/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic^[7] or the Republic of Italy^[8] (Italian: Repubblica italiana^{[note 1]}), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km² (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.

Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance,^[9] an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.

Through much of its post-Roman history, Italy was fragmented into numerous city and regional states (such as the Republic of Venice and the Church State), but was unified in 1861,^[10] following a tumultuous period in history known as "Il Risorgimento" ("The Resurgence"). In the late 19th century, through World War I, and to World War II, Italy possessed a colonial empire, which extended its rule to Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Albania, the Dodecanese and a concession in Tianjin, China.^[11]

Modern Italy is a democratic republic. It has been ranked as the world's 24th most-developed country^[5] and its Quality-of-life index has been ranked in the world's top ten in 2005.^[12] Italy enjoys a very high standard of living, and has a high GDP per capita.^[13][14] It is a founding member of what is now the European Union and part of the Eurozone. Italy is also a member of the G8, G20 and NATO. It has the world's third-largest gold reserves, eighth-largest nominal GDP, tenth highest GDP (PPP)^[15] and the sixth highest government budget in the world.^[16] It is also a member state of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, the Council of Europe, the Western European Union and the United Nations. Italy has the world's ninth-largest defence budget and shares NATO's nuclear weapons.

Italy plays a prominent role in European and global military, cultural and diplomatic affairs. The country's European political, social and economic influence make it a major regional power.^[17][18] The country has a high public education level and is a highly globalised nation.^[19]

Etymology[link]

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.^[20] According to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin: Italia,^[21] was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" (cf. Lat vitulus "calf", Umb vitlo "calf").^[22] The bull was a symbol of the southern Italian 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,^[23] mentioned also by Aristotle^[24] and Thucydides.^[25]

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 first century BC) that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula until the Alps.^[26]

History[link]

Prehistory and antiquity[link]

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

Excavations throughout Italy reveal a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Paleolithic period, some 200,000 years ago,^[27] modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. The Ancient peoples of pre-Roman Italy – such as the Umbrians, the Latins (from which the Romans emerged), Volsci, Samnites, the Celts and the Ligures which inhabited northern Italy, and many others – were Indo-European peoples; the main historic peoples of non-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, the Elymians and Sicani in Sicily and the prehistoric Sardinians.

Between the 17th and the 11th century BC Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Italy^{[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]} 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 was at first a small agricultural community founded c. the 8th century BC, that grew over the course of the centuries into a colossal empire encompassing the whole Mediterranean Sea, in which Ancient Greek and Roman cultures merged into one civilization. This civilization was so influential that parts of it survive in modern law, administration, philosophy and arts, forming the ground that Western civilization is based upon. In a slow decline since the late 2th century AD, the empire finally broke into two parts in 395 AD: the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The western part – under the pressure of the Franks, the Vandals, the Huns, the Goths and other populations from Eastern Europe – finally dissolved in 476 AD, when the last western Emperor was deposed by the Barbarian chief Odoacer.

Middle Ages[link]

Italy's Naval Jack, featuring the coats of arms of the four major Maritime Republics. Clockwise from upper left: Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi.

After the fall of Rome, Italy was conquered by the Germanic Tribe of the Ostrogoths, but in the 6th century the East Roman Emperor Justinian reconquered it. The invasion of another Germanic tribe (the Lombards) late in the same century reduced the Byzantine presence to a strip of land between Ravenna and Rome plus other lands in southern Italy, breaking the unity of the peninsula until 1870.

The Lombard reign of northern and central Italy was absorbed into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne in the late 8th century. The Frankish kings also helped the formation of the Papal States in central Italy, extending from Rome to Ravenna, although for most of the Middle Ages the Papacy effectively controlled only Latium. The existence of this theocratic state hindered for centuries the unification of the peninsula. Until the 13th century, Italian politics were dominated by the relationship between the German Holy Roman Emperors and the popes, with most of the Italian cities siding for the former (Ghibellini) or for the latter (Guelfi) depending from momentary convenience.

It was during this vacuum of authority that the Italy saw the rise of a peculiar institution, the medieval commune. In the anarchic conditions that often prevailed in medieval Italian city-states, people organised themselves to restore order and disarm the feuding elites. In the 12th century, a league of comuni, the Lombard League, defeated the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa, leading to a process granting effective independence to most of northern and central Italian cities. Despite the devastation of the numerous wars, Italy maintained, especially in the north and center, a relatively developed urban civilization.

During the same period, Italy saw the rise of numerous Maritime Republics, the most notable being Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi. Heavily involved in the Crusades, they took advantage of political and trading opportunities. Venice and Genoa soon became Europe's main gateways to trade with the East, establishing colonies as far as the Black Sea and often controlling most of the trade with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Mediterranean world. The county of Savoy expanded its territory into the peninsula in the late Middle Ages, while Florence developed into a highly organized commercial and financial city-state, becoming for many centuries the European capital of silk, wool, banking and jewelry.

In the south, Byzantine 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 states of southern Italy. 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 (although Sicily was a separate Aragonese kingdom from the late 13th to the 15th century). In Sardinia, the former Byzantine provinces became independent states known as giudicati, although most of the island was under Genoese or Pisan control until the Aragonese conquered it in the 15th century.

Early Modern[link]

The Vitruvian man by Leonardo da Vinci, representing the ideal human proportions as described by Roman architect Vitruvius, is a quintessential masterpiece of the Renaissance.

The Black Death pandemic in 1348 left its mark on Italy by killing one third of the population.^[35][36] However, the recovery from the disaster of the Black Death led to a resurgence of cities, trade and economy which greatly stimulated the successive phases of Humanism and Renaissance, cultural movements both born in the peninsula, and later spread in Europe.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, Northern and upper Central Italy were divided into a number of warring city-states, the rest of the peninsula being occupied by the larger Papal States and Naples. The strongest among these city-states annexed the surrounding territories giving birth to the Signorie, regional states led by merchant families which founded local dynasties. Dominated by merchant oligarchies, they enjoyed a relative freedom and nurtured academic and artistic advancement. Warfare between the states was common, invasion from outside Italy confined to intermittent sorties of Holy Roman Emperors. These wars were primarily fought by armies of mercenaries known as condottieri, bands of soldiers drawn from around Europe, but especially Germany and Switzerland, led largely by Italian captains.^[37]

Decades of fighting eventually saw Florence, Milan and Venice emerge 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, and Venice's unquestioned hegemony over the sea also led to unprecedented peace for much of the rest of the 15th century. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the mid-16th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil of the Italian Wars. However, the ideas and ideals of the Renaissance endured and even spread into the rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance, and the English Renaissance.

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 – started the economic decline of the peninsula.

The triumph of Napoleon at the Battle of Marengo placed Italy under French control and paved him the way to become Emperor.

Following the Italian Wars (1494 to 1559), Italy saw a long period of relative peace, first under Habsburg Spain (1559 to 1713) and then under Habsburg Austria (1713 to 1796). The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Italy throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. In the first half of the 17th century, a plague claimed some 1.7 million victims, or about 14% of Italy’s population.^[38] As Spain declined in the 17th century, so did its Italian possessions in Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Milan. Southern Italy was impoverished, stagnant, and cut off from the mainstream of events in Europe.^[39] Despite that, Italy kept making its contribution to the European culture, giving birth to the Baroque Style.

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 major regional power expanding to Piedmont and Sardinia. In this century, the ideas of the Enlightenment influenced the Italian rulers, paving the way to reforms which started an economic recovery in northern Italy and Tuscany.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the northern and central parts of the country were invaded and later partly annexed to the Empire and partly reorganized as a new Kingdom of Italy—essentially a client state of the French Empire —^[40] 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.

Italian unification and Liberal Italy[link]

The legendary "handshake of Teano" between Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II: on 26 October 1860, General Garibaldi sacrificed republican hopes for the sake of Italian unity under a monarchy.

The creation 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 state 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 1860–61, Giuseppe Garibaldi led the drive for unification in Naples and Sicily,^[41] 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 during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870 abandoned its garrisons in Rome, the Savoy rushed to fill the power gap by taking over the Papal States.

Italian infantrymen in 1916. More than 650,000 Italian soldiers lost their lives on the battlefields of World War I.

The Sardinian Albertine Statute of 1848, extended to the whole Kingdom of Italy in 1861, provided for basic freedoms, 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 industrialized, the South and rural areas of 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.^[42] During World War I, Italy at first stayed neutral, but in 1915 signed the Treaty of London, entering the Entente on the promise of receiving Trento, Trieste, Gorizia and Gradisca, Istria and northern Dalmatia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire—as well as parts of the Ottoman Empire. During the war, more than 650,000 Italian soldiers died,^[43] and the economy collapsed. Under the Peace Treaties of Saint-Germain, Rapallo and Rome, Italy obtained most of the promised territories, including the Hungarian harbour of Fiume, but not Dalmatia (except Zara), allowing nationalists to define the victory as "mutilated".

Fascist regime[link]

The turbulence that followed the devastation of World War I, inspired by the Russian Revolution, led to turmoil and anarchy. The liberal establishment, fearing a socialist revolution, started to endorse the small National Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini. In October 1922 the fascists attempted a coup (the "March on Rome"), supported by king Victor Emmanuel III. Over the next few years, Mussolini banned all political parties and curtailed personal liberties, thus forming a dictatorship.

In 1935, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, resulting in an international alienation and leading to Italy's withdrawal from the League of Nations. Consequently, Italy allied with Nazi Germany and Empire of Japan and strongly supported Franco in the Spanish civil war.

In 1939, Italy occupied Albania, a de facto protectorate for decades, and entered World War II in June 1940 on the side of the Axis powers. Mussolini, wanting a quick victory like Hitler's Blitzkriegs in Poland and France, invaded Greece in October 1940, but was forced to accept a humiliating stalemate after a few months. At the same time, Italy, after initially conquering British Somalia and parts of Egypt, saw an allied counter-attack lead to the loss of all possessions in the Horn of Africa and in North Africa.

Italy was then invaded by the Allies in July 1943, leading to the collapse of the Fascist regime and the fall of Mussolini. In September 1943, Italy surrendered. The country remained a battlefield for the rest of the war, as the allies were moving up from the south as the north was the base for loyalist Italian fascist and German Nazi forces, fought also by the Italian resistance movement. The hostilities ended on 2 May 1945. Nearly half a million Italians (including civilians) died in the conflict,^[44] 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.^[45]

Italian Republic[link]

The Constitution of Italy, come into force in 1948.

Italy became a republic after a referendum^[46] 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.^[47] Victor Emmanuel III's son, Umberto II, was forced to abdicate and exiled. The Republican Constitution was approved on 1 January 1948. Under the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947, the eastern border area was lost to Yugoslavia, and, later, the Free Territory of Trieste was divided between the two states.

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.

The 1957 Treaties of Rome signing ceremony. Italy is a founding member of the European Union.

From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, the country experienced the Years of Lead, a period characterized 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 intelligence.^[48][49][50] The Years of Lead culminated in the assassination of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978, an event that deeply affected the whole country.

In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945, two governments were led by non-Christian-Democrat premiers: one liberal (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. The Communists reorganized as a social-democratic force. During the 1990s and the 2000s (decade), centre-right (dominated by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi) and centre-left coalitions alternatively governed the country, which entered a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

Geography[link]

Topographic map of Italy.

Italy is located in Southern Europe and comprises the boot-shaped Italian Peninsula and a number of islands including the two largest, Sicily and Sardinia. It lies between latitudes 35° and 47° N, and longitudes 6° and 19° E.

The country's total area is 301,230 km², of which 294,020 km² is land and 7,210 km² is water. Including the islands, Italy has a coastline and border of 7,600 km on the Adriatic, Ionian, Tyrrhenian seas (740 km), and borders shared with France (488 km), Austria (430 km), Slovenia (232 km) and Switzerland; San Marino (39 km) and Vatican City (3.2 km), both enclaves, account for the remainder.

Mont Blanc is the highest point in Italy and the European Union.

The Apennine Mountains form the peninsula's backbone and the Alps form its northern boundary, where Italy's highest point is located on Mont Blanc (4,810 m/15,782 ft).^{[note 2]} The Po, Italy's longest river (652 km/405 mi), 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:^[51] Garda (367.94 km²/142 sq mi), Maggiore (212.51 km²/82 sq mi, shared with Switzerland), Como (145.9 km²/56 sq mi), Trasimeno (124.29 km²/48 sq mi) and Bolsena (113.55 km²/44 sq mi).

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, three of which are active: Etna (the traditional site of Vulcan’s smithy), Stromboli and Vesuvius. Vesuvius is the only active volcano in mainland Europe and is most famous for the destruction of Pompeii and Herculanum. 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.

Although the country comprises the Italian peninsula 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.

Environment[link]

Map of national parks in Italy.

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.^[52] National parks cover about five percent of the country.^[53] 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^[54][55] and the sixth largest holder of wind power capacity in 2010.^[56] 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.^[57]

Asinara island with the Aragonese Torre della Pelosa (16th century), Sardinia.

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.^[58] Italy is the twelfth largest carbon dioxide producer.^[59][60] 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.^[61]

Many watercourses and coastal stretches have also been contaminated by industrial and agricultural activity, while due to 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 program was terminated, a decision that was overturned by the government in 2008, planning up to four French nuclear power plants. This was in turn struck down by a referendum following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.^[62] 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^[63] and 2009 Messina mudslides.

Climate[link]