Coordinates	47°05′40″N16°28′45″N
name	Treviso
official name	Città di Treviso
image shield	Treviso-Stemma.png
region	Veneto
province	Treviso (TV)
frazioni	Monigo, San Paolo, Santa Bona, San Pelajo, Santa Maria del Rovere, Selvana, Fiera, Sant'Antonino, San Lazzaro, Sant'Angelo, San Giuseppe, Canizzano
mayor	Gian Paolo Gobbo (since 2003)
area total km2	55.5
population total	82854
population as of	November 2010
population demonym	Trevigiani or Trevisani
elevation m	15
saint	St. LiberalIS
day	27 April
postal code	31100
area code	0422
website
footnotes	}}

Treviso (, Venetian: ''Trevixo'') is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 82,854 inhabitants (as of November 2010): some 3,000 live within the Venetian walls (''le Mura'') or in the historical and monumental center, some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city hinterland has a population of approximately 170,000. The city is home to the headquarters of clothing retailer Benetton, appliance maker DeLonghi, and bicycle maker Pinarello.

History

Ancient era

For some scholars, the ancient city of ''Tarvisium'' derived its name from a settlement of the Celtic tribe of the Taurusci. Others have attributed the name instead to the Indo European root ''tarvos'', meaning "bull".

Tarvisium, then a city of the Veneti, became a ''municipium'' in 89 BC after the Romans added Cisalpine Gaul to their dominions. Citizens were ascribed to the Roman tribe of Claudia. The city lay in proximity of the Via Postumia, which connected Opitergium to Aquileia, two major cities of Roman Venetia during Ancient and Early Medieval times. Treviso is rarely mentioned by ancient writers, although Pliny writes of the ''Silis'', that is the Sile River, as flowing ''ex montibus Tarvisanis''.

During the Roman Period, Christianity was spread to Treviso. Tradition records that St. Prosdocimus, a Greek who had been ordained bishop by St. Peter, brought the Catholic Faith to Treviso and surrounding areas. By the fourth century, the Christian population grew sufficient to merit a resident bishop. The first documented was named John the Pius who began his epsicopacy in 396 AD.

Early Middle Ages

Treviso went through a demographic and economic decline similar to the rest of Italy after the fall of the Western Empire; however, it was spared by Attila the Hun, and thus, remained an important center during the 6th century. According to tradition, Treviso was the birthplace of Totila, the leader of Ostrogoths during the Gothic Wars. Immediately after the Gothic Wars, Treviso fell under the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until 568 AD when it was taken by the Lombard, who made it as one of 36 ducal seat and established an important mint. The latter was especially important during the reign of the last Lombard king, Desiderius, and continued to churn out coins when northern Italy was annexed to the Frankish Empire. People from the city also played a role in the founding of Venice.

Charlemagne made it the capital of a border March, i.e., the ''Marca Trevigiana,'' which lasted for several centuries.

Middle Ages

Treviso joined the Lombard League, and gained independence after the Peace of Constance (1183). This lasted until the times when seignories started to impose in northern Italy: among the various families who ruled over Treviso, the Da Romano reigned from 1237 to 1260. Struggles between Guelph and Ghibelline factions followed, with the first triumphant in 1283 with Gherardo III da Camino, date after which Treviso lived a significant economical reprise which lasted until 1312. Treviso and her satellite cities, including Castelfranco Veneto, founded by the Trevigiani in contrapposition to Padua, had become appetible for the neighbouring powers, including the da Carrara and Scaligeri. After the fall of the last Caminesi lord, Rizzardo IV, the Marca was the site of continuous struggles and ravages (1329–1388).

Treviso's notary and physician, Oliviero Forzetta, was an avid collector of antiquities and drawings; the collection was published in a catalog in 1369, the earliest such catalog to exist to this day.

Venetian rule

After a Scaliger domination in 1329–1339, the city gave itself to the Republic of Venice, becoming the first notable mainland possession of the Serenissima. From 1318 it was also, for a short time, the seat of a university. Venetian rule brought innumerable benefits, however, Treviso necessarily became involved in the wars of Venice. From 1381–1384, the city was captured and ruled by the duke of Austria, and then by the Carraresi until 1388. Having returned to Venice, the city was fortified and given a massive line of (still existent) walls and ramparts: these were renewed in the following century under the direction of Fra Giocondo, two of the gates being built by the Lombardi. The many waterways were exploited with several waterwheels which mainly powered mills for milling grain produced locally. The waterways were all navigable and "barconi" would arrive from Venice at the Port of Treviso (Porto de Fiera) pay duty and offload their merchandise and passengers along Riviera Santa Margherita. Fishermen were able to bring fresh catch every day to the Treviso fish market, which is held still today on an island connected to the rest of the city by two small bridges at either end.

French and Austrian rules

Treviso was taken in 1797 by the French under Mortier, who was made duke of Treviso. French domination lasted until the defeat of Napoleon, after which it passed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The citizens, still at heart loyal to the fallen Venetian Republic, were displeased with imperial rule and in March 1848, drove out the Austrian garrison. However, after the town was bombarded, the people were compelled to capitulate in the following June. Austrian rule continued until Treviso was annexed with the rest of Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.

20th century

During World War I, Treviso held a strategic position close to the Austrian front. Just north, the Battle of Vittorio Veneto helped turn the tide of the War.

During World War II, an Italian concentration camp was located there and was predominately used to imprison members of the Yugoslav resistance movement and Yugoslav civilians. The camp was disbanded with the Italian capitulation in 1943. At the end of the war, it suffered an Allied bombing on 7 April 1944. A large part of the medieval parts of the city center including part of the Palazzo dei Trecento (then rebuilt) were destroyed, causing the deaths of over 7,000 people.

In recent times, at least two attacks by the so-called Italian Unabomber have taken place in the city.

Geography

Treviso stands at the confluence of Botteniga with the Sile, 30 km north of Venice and 50 km east of Vicenza, 40 km north-east of Padua, 120 km south of Cortina d'Ampezzo. The city is situated some 15 km south-west the right bank of the Piave River, on the plain between the Gulf of Venice and the Alps.

Main sights

The Late Romanesque-Early Gothic church of ''San Francesco'', built by the Franciscan community in 1231–1270. Used by Napoleonic troops as a stable, it was reopened in 1928. The interior has a single nave with five chapels. On the left wall is a Romanesque-Byzantine fresco portraying St. Christopher (later 13th century). The Grand Chapel has a painting of the ''Four Evangelists'' by a pupil of Tommaso da Modena, to whom is instead directly attributed a fresco of ''Madonna with Child and Seven Saints'' (1350) in the first chapel on the left. The next chapel has instead a fresco with ''Madonna and Four Saints'' from 1351 by one Master from Feltre. The church, among others, houses the tombs of Pietro Alighieri, son of Dante, and Francesca Petrarca, daughter of the poet Francesco.

The ''Loggia dei Cavalieri'', an example of Treviso's Romanesque influenced by Byzantine forms. It was built under the podestà Andrea da Perugia (1276) as a place for meetings, talks and games, although reserved only to the higher classes.

''Piazza dei Signori'' (Lords' Square), with the ''Palazzo di Podestà'' (later 15th century).

Church of ''San Nicolò'', a mix of 13th century Venetian Romanesque and French Gothic elements. The interior has a nave and two aisles, with five apsed chapels. It houses important frescoes by Tommaso da Modena, depicting ''St. Romuald'', ''St. Agnes and the Redemptor'' and ''St. Jerome in His Study''. Also the Glorious Mysteries of Santo Peranda can be seen. Noteworthy is also the fresco of St. Christopher on the eastern side of the church, which is the most ancient depiction in glass in Europe.

The Cathedral, dedicated to St. Peter. It was once a small church built in the Late Roman era, to which later were added a crypt and the Santissimo and Malchiostro Chapels (1520). After the numerous later restorations, only the gate remains of the original Roman edifice. The interior houses works by Il Pordenone and Titian (''Malchiostro Annunciation'') among others. The edifice has seven domes, five over the nave and two closing the chapels.

''Palazzo dei Trecento'', built in the 13th-14th centuries.

''Piazza Rinaldi''. It is the seat of three palaces of the Rinaldi family, the first built in the 12th century after their flight from Frederick Barbarossa. The second, with unusual ogival arches in the loggia of the first floor, is from the 15th century. The third was added in the 18th century.

''Ponte di Pria'' (Stone Bridge), at the confluence of the Canal Grande and the Buranelli Channels.

''Monte di pietà'' and the ''Cappella dei Rettori''. The Monte di Pietà was founded to house Jewish moneylenders. On the second floor is the Cappella dei Rettori, a lay hall for meetings, with frescoes by Pozzoserrato.

Parks and gardens

Giardino Fenologico "Alessandro Marcello"

Orto Botanico Conservativo Carlo Spegazzini, a botanical garden

Orto Botanico Conservativo Francesco Busnello, another botanical garden

Sports

Treviso is home to several notable Italian sport teams, thanks to the presence of the Benetton family, who owns and sponsors:

Sisley Treviso (volleyball), winner of 9 ''scudetti'', playing at the Palaverde.

Benetton Rugby Treviso (rugby union), winner of 15 ''scudetti'', playing at the Monigo stadium. Starting with the 2010–11 season, Benetton will be one of two Italian teams in the Magners League, alongside existing teams from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Benetton Basket, winner of 5 ''scudetti'', playing at the Palaverde.

The local football team, A.S.D. Treviso 2009, played for the first time in the Italian Serie A in 2005. Its home stadium is the Omobono Tenni.

Treviso is a popular stop on the professional cyclo-cross racing circuit and served as the site of the 2008 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.

Transportation

Treviso Centrale railway station has Trenitalia trains to Venice, Udine and Trieste. Treviso Airport west of the city specializes in low cost airlines.

People

Marco Paolini (born 1956), stage actor

Diletta Rizzo Marin (born 1984) opera singer and model

Luciano Benetton (born 13 May 1935) chairman of the Benetton Group

International relations

Twin towns — Sister cities

Treviso is twinned with:

Orléans, France Timişoara, Romania Guelph, Canada Sarasota, USA, from February 2007 Curitiba, Brazil Neuquén, Argentina Griffith, Australia

See also

March of Treviso

Da Camino

Treviso Airport, the city's airport, often used by holidaymakers wanting to go to nearby Venice.

Treviso Arithmetic, a book of mathematics published by an anonymous author in the 15th century

External links

Bookmarca Portal carried out by the Public Library of Treviso on websites relating with Treviso and the territory of the province of Treviso

Official site

Free photos of Treviso

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica entry

Map of Treviso

Interactive Google Map of Treviso with more than 70 photos.

Website and Guide of the city Treviso

References

;Notes

Category:Italian Fascist concentration camps

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Coordinates	47°05′40″N16°28′45″N
Native name
Conventional long name	Italian Republic
Common name	Italy
Nickname(s)	The Boot; The Belpaese
Image coat	Italy-Emblem.svg
Symbol type	Emblem
Map caption
National anthem	''The Song of the Italians''
Official languages	Italian
Capital	Rome
Largest city	capital
Largest metropolitan area	Milan and Naples
Demonym	Italian
Government type	Unitary parliamentary republic
Leader title1	President
Leader name1	Giorgio Napolitano
Leader title2	Prime Minister
Leader name2	Silvio Berlusconi (PdL)
Legislature	Parliament
Upper house	Senate of the Republic
Lower house	Chamber of Deputies
Accessioneudate	25 March 1957 (founding member)
Euseats	78
Area rank	71st
Area magnitude	1 E11
Area km2	301,338
Area sq mi	116,346
Percent water	2.4
Population estimate	60,642,308
Population estimate rank	23rd
Population estimate year	2010
Population census	56,995,744
Population census year	2001
Population density km2	201.2
Population density rank	61st
Population density sq mi	521.2
Gdp ppp	$1.773 trillion
Gdp ppp year	2010
Gdp ppp per capita	$29,392
Gdp nominal	$2.055 trillion
Gdp nominal year	2010
Gdp nominal per capita	$34,058
Sovereignty type	Formation
Established event1	Unification
Established date1	17 March 1861
Established event2	Republic
Established date2	2 June 1946
Hdi	0.854
Hdi rank	23rd
Hdi year	2010
Hdi category	very high
Currency	Euro (€)
Currency code	EUR
Time zone	CET
Utc offset	+1
Time zone dst	CEST
Utc offset dst	+2
Drives on	Right
Cctld	.it
Calling code	39
Gini	32
Gini year	2006
Footnote1	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.
Footnote2	Before 2002, the Italian Lira. The euro is accepted in Campione d'Italia, but the official currency there is the Swiss Franc.
Footnote3	The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with other European Union member states.
Footnote4	To call Campione d'Italia, it is necessary to use the Swiss code +41. }}

Italy (; ), officially the Italian Republic (), 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, whilst Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 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 the political centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire. After its decline, 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 the Renaissance, 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 kingdoms and city-states (such as the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Duchy of Milan), but was unified in 1861, 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.

Modern Italy is a democratic republic. It has been ranked the world's twenty-third most-developed country and its Quality-of-life index has been ranked in the top ten in the world. Italy enjoys a very high standard of living, and has a high nominal GDP per capita. 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 eighth-largest nominal GDP, tenth highest GDP (PPP) and the sixth highest government budget in the world. 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. The country has a high public education level and is a highly globalised nation.

History

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. According to one of the more common explanations, the term ''Italia'', from , was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan ''Víteliú'', meaning "land of young cattle" (''cf.'' Lat ''vitulus'' "calf", Umb ''vitlo'' "calf"). 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 Samnite Wars. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides.

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). 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 not until the time of the Roman conquests that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula.

Prehistory and ancient Rome

Excavations throughout Italy reveal a modern human presence dating back to the Paleolithic period, some 200,000 years ago. The Italic tribes 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 are most of Indo-European stock; main historic peoples of non-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, the Elymians and Sicani in Sicily and the prehistoric Sardinians.

Between the 17th to the 11th century BC Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Italy 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 4th 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, leaving the Italian peninsula divided into small independent kingdoms and feuding city states for the next 1,300 years. The eastern part sole heir to the Roman legacy.

Middle Ages

In the 6th century the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I reconquered Italy from the Ostrogoths. The invasion of a new wave of Germanic tribes, the Lombards late in the same century, reduced the Byzantine presence to the Exarchate of Ravenna and other lands in southern Italy. 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 Popes to establish a true state in central Italy, extending from Rome to Ravenna, although for most of the Middle Ages they effectively controlled only what is now Lazio. Until the 13th century, Italian politics was dominated by the relationship between the German Holy Roman Emperors and the popes, with most of the Italian states siding for one or another depending from momentary convenience.

It was during this vacuum of authority that the region saw the rise of institutions such as the Signoria and the medieval commune. In the anarchic conditions that often prevailed in medieval Italian city-states, people looked to strong men to restore order and disarm the feuding elites. Despite the devastation of the numerous wars, Italy maintained, especially in the north, a relatively developed urban civilization, which later evolved in the peculiar phenomenon of its merchant Republics. These city-states, oligarchical in reality, had a dominant merchant class which under relative freedom nurtured academic and artistic advancement. Notable amongst them, in northern Italy, was Milan: in the 12th century it led the Lombard League in the defeat of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa, which led to a process granting effective independence to most of northern and central Italian cities.

During the same period, Italy saw the rise to numerous Maritime Republics, the most famous of which were Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi. These maritime republics were also heavily involved in the Crusades, taking advantage of the new 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 trades of the Byzantine Empire and with the Islamic Mediterranean world. Milan also formed a state of its own, the Duchy of Milan, occupying western Lombardy. Piedmont evolved from the unimportant county of Savoy to a mid-size duchy in the late Middle Ages. Florence developed into a highly organized commercial and financial city, becoming for many centuries the European capital of silk, wool, banks and jewelry.

In the south, Sicily became an Islamic emirate in the 9th century, and thrived until the 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 remained an unified kingdom, first under the House of Hohenstaufen, then under the House of Anjou and, from the 15th century, the house of Aragon (although Sicily was separate, under Aragon, from the late 13th to the 15th century). In Sardinia, the former Byzantines 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.

Renaissance (15th–16th century)

The Black Death pandemic in 1348 left its mark on Italy by killing one third of the population. However, the recovery from the disaster of the Black Death led to a resurgence of cities, trade and economy which greatly stimulated the successive phase of the Humanism and Renaissance, that best known for its cultural achievements.

Accounts of Renaissance literature usually begin with Petrarch (best known for the elegantly polished vernacular sonnet sequence of ''Il Canzoniere'' and for the craze for book collecting that he initiated) and his friend and contemporary Boccaccio (author of the Decameron). Famous vernacular poets of the 15th century include the renaissance epic authors Luigi Pulci (Morgante), Matteo Maria Boiardo (Orlando Innamorato), and Ludovico Ariosto (Orlando Furioso). 15th century writers such as the poet Poliziano and the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino made extensive translations from both Latin and Greek. In the early 16th century, Castiglione (''The Book of the Courtier'') laid out his vision of the ideal gentleman and lady, while Machiavelli cast a jaundiced eye on "''la verita effetuale delle cose''"the actual truth of thingsin ''The Prince'', composed, humanist style, chiefly of parallel ancient and modern examples of Virtù.

Italian Renaissance painting exercised a dominant influence on subsequent European painting (see Western painting) for centuries afterwards, with artists such as Giotto di Bondone, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian. The same is true for architecture, as practiced by Brunelleschi, Leone Alberti, Andrea Palladio, and Bramante. Their works include Florence Cathedral, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini (to name a only a few, not to mention many splended private residences: see Renaissance architecture). Finally, the Aldine Press, founded by the printer Aldo Manuzio, active in Venice, developed Italic type and the small, relatively portable and inexpensive printed book that could be carried in one's pocket, as well as being the first to publish editions of books in Ancient Greek.

Foreign domination and Napoleonic Wars (17th–19th centuries)

The history of Italy in the early modern period was characterized by foreign domination: 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 Black Death repeatedly returned to haunt Italy throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. The plague of 1575–77 claimed some 50,000 victims in Venice. In the first half of the 17th century a plague claimed some 1,730,000 victims, or about 14% of Italy’s population. The Great Plague of Milan occurred from 1629 through 1631 in northern Italy, with the cities of Lombardy and Venice experiencing particularly high death rates. In 1656 the plague killed about half of Naples' 300,000 inhabitants.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the northern part of the country was invaded and reorganized as a new kingdom of Italy, that was a client state of the French Empire from 1796 to 1814, while the southern half of the peninsula was administered by Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother in law, that was crowned as King of Naples. The Congress of Vienna (1814) restored the situation of the late 18th century, which was however quickly overturned by the incipient movement of Italian unification.

Italian unification and Liberal Italy (1861–1922)

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 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. Giuseppe Garibaldi led the Italian republican drive for unification in southern Italy, while the northern Italian monarchy of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia whose government was led by Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour, had the ambition of establishing a united Italian state under its rule. The kingdom successfully challenged the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence with the help of Napoleon III, liberating the Lombardy-Venetia. It established Turin as capital of the newly formed state. In 1865 the capital was moved to Florence. In 1866, Victor Emmanuel II aligned the kingdom with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War, waging the Third Italian War of Independence which allowed Italy to annex Venice. In 1870, as France during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War abandoned its positions in Rome, Italy rushed to fill the power gap by taking over the Papal State from French sovereignty. thumb|right|Italian infantrymen in 1916. More than 650,000 Italian soldiers lost their lives on the battlefields of World War I. Italian unification finally was achieved, and shortly afterwards Italy's capital was moved from Florence to Rome. Whilst keeping the monarchy, the government became a parliamentary system, dominated by the liberals.

As Northern Italy became industrialized and modernized, Southern Italy and rural areas of the north remained under-developed and stagnant, forcing millions of people to migrate to the emerging Industrial Triangle or abroad. The Sardinian Albertine Statute of 1848, extended to the whole Kingdom of Italy in 1861, provided for basic freedoms, but the electoral laws excluded the non-propertied and uneducated classes from voting. In 1913, male universal suffrage was adopted. The Italian Socialist Party increased in strength, challenging the traditional liberal and conservative organisations. The highest point of Italian emigration was reached in 1913, when 872,598 persons left Italy.

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. During World War I, Italy at first stayed neutral but in 1915 signed the Treaty of London, entering 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 Ottoman Empire. During the war, more than 650,000 Italian soldiers died, and the economy collapsed. Under the Peace Treaties of Saint-Germain, Rapallo and Rome, Italy obtained most of the promised territories, including the town of Fiume. Nevertheless, the victory was described as "mutilated" by the nationalists, since most of Dalmatia was assigned to Yugoslavia.

Fascist dictatorship (1922–1943)

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 ''Marcia su Roma'', "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 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, 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.

Italian Republic (1946–present)

In 1946, Victor Emmanuel III's son, Umberto II, was forced to abdicate. Italy became a republic after a referendum 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. The Republican Constitution was approved and came into force 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.

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 probable involvement of US intelligence. The Years of Lead culminated in the assassination of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978, an event that deeply impressed the whole country. In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945, two governments were led by non-Christian-Democrat premiers: a liberal (Giovanni Spadolini) and a socialist (Bettino Craxi); the Christian Democrats remained, however, the main government party. During Craxi's government, 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 government debt and the extensive corruption system (known as ''Tangentopoli'') uncovered by the 'Clean Hands' investigation, demanded for radical reforms. The scandals involved all major parties, but especially those in the government coalition: the Christian Democrats, which 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, center-right (dominated by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi) and center-left coalitions alternatively governed the country.

Geography

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. Although the country occupies 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 island ''comune'' of Lampedusa e Linosa is on the African continental shelf.

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.

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). 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: Garda (), Maggiore (), Como (), Trasimeno () and Bolsena ().

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.

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. National parks cover about five percent of the country. In the last decade, Italy has became one of the world's largest producers of renewable energy, ranking as the world’s fifth largest solar energy producer in 2009 and the sixth largest producer of wind power in 2008.

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. Italy is the twelfth largest carbon dioxide producer. 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 80s, and the presence of smog is becoming an increasingly rarer phenomenon and levels of sulphur dioxide are decreasing.

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. A deal was signed with France in 2009 for the construction of up to four new nuclear plants. 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 and 2009 Messina mudslides.

Climate

The climate of Italy is highly diverse and can be far from the stereotypical Mediterranean climate, depending on location. Most of the inland northern regions of Italy, for example Piedmont, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, have a climate variously described as humid continental or temperate. Adriana Rigutti (in Meteorologia, Giunti 2005) states that the climte of the “Po valley region [is] continental ... with harsh winters and hot summers”. The coastal areas of Liguria and most of the peninsula south of Florence generally fit the Mediterranean 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.

Administrative divisions

Italy is subdivided into 20 regions (''regioni'', singular ''regione''). Five of these regions have a special autonomous status that enables them to enact legislation on some of their local matters; these are marked by an asterisk (*) in the table below. The country is further divided into 110 provinces (''province'') and 8,100 municipalities (''comuni'').

Politics

Italy is a unitary parliamentary republic since 2 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished by a constitutional referendum. The President of the Italian Republic (''Presidente della Repubblica''), currently Giorgio Napolitano since 2006, is Italy's head of state. The President is elected for a single seven years mandate by the Parliament 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.

Government

Italy has a parliamentary government based on a proportional voting system. The Parliament of Italy 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 become in office. While the office is similar to those in most other parliamentary systems, the Italian prime minister has less authority than some of his counterparts. The prime minister is not authorized to request the dissolution of Parliament or dismiss ministers (that are exclusive prerogatives of the President of the Republic) and must receive a vote of approval from the Council of Ministers—which holds effective executive power—to execute most political activities.

Silvio Berlusconi, since 8 May 2008, has been Prime Minister, leading a center-right coalition. The Italy's four major political parties are the People of Freedom, the Democratic Party, the Northern League and the Italy of Values. During the 2008 general elections these four parties won 590 out of 630 seats available in the Chamber of Deputies and 308 out of 315 seats available in the Senate of the Republic. Most of the remaining seats were won by minor parties that only contest election in one part of Italy, like the South Tyrolean People's Party and the Movement for Autonomies. However, during the last 3 years, a so called "Third Pole" emerged, merging the Christian Democrats of UDC with some dissident MPs coming from Mr. Berlusconi's cabinet. A peculiarity of the Italian Parliament is the representation given to Italian citizens permanently living abroad (about 3.6 million people): 12 Deputies and 6 Senators elected in four distinct overseas constituencies. In addiction, the Italian Senate is characterized also by a small number of senators for life, appointed by the President of the Italian Republic "for outstanding patriotic merits in the social, scientific, artistic or literary field". Former Presidents of the Republic are ''ex officio'' life senators.

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 organized crime and criminal organizations 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. The Mafia receipts could reach 9% of Italy's GDP 14.6% of the Italian GDP is produced in 610 comuni, where lives 13 million Italians, with a strong presence of the Mafia. The Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, nowadays probably the most powerful crime syndicate of Italy, accounts alone by 3% of the country's GDP. However, at 0.013 per 1,000 people, Italy has only the 47th highest murder rate (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.

Foreign relations

Italy is a founding member of the European Community, now the European Union (EU), and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Italy was admitted to the United Nations in 1955, and it is a member and strong supporter of a wide number of international organizations, 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 turns in the rotating presidency of international organisations include the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), the forerunner of the OSCE, in 1994; G8; and the EU in 2009 and from July to December 2003.

Italy strongly supports multilateral international politics, endorsing the United Nations and its international security activities. 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 still supports international efforts to reconstruct and stabilize Iraq, but it has withdrawn its military contingent of some 3,200 troops as of November 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.

Military

The Italian Army, Navy, Air Force and Gendarmerie collectively form the Italian armed forces, under the command of the Supreme Defence Council, presided over by the President of the Italian Republic. From 1999, military service is voluntary. In 2010, the Italian military had 293,202 personnel on active duty, of which 114,778 in the national gendarmerie. 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.

The Italian Army is the national ground defense 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, recently deployed in UN missions. It also has at its disposal a large number of Leopard 1 and M113 armored vehicles.

The Italian Navy in 2008 had 35,200 active personnel with 85 commissioned ships and 123 aircraft. It is now equipping itself with a bigger aircraft carrier, (the ''Cavour''), new destroyers, submarines and multipurpose frigates. In modern times the Italian Navy, being a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (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. As a stopgap and as replacement for leased Tornado ADV interceptors, the AMI has leased 30 F-16A Block 15 ADF and four F-16B Block 10 Fighting Falcons, with an option for more. The coming years also will see the introduction of 121 EF2000 Eurofighter Typhoons, replacing the leased F-16 Fighting Falcons. Further updates are foreseen in the Tornado IDS/IDT and AMX fleets. A transport capability is guaranteed by a fleet of 22 C-130Js and Aeritalia G.222s of which 12 are being replaced with the newly developed G.222 variant called the 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.

Economy

Italy has a free market economy characterized by high per capita GDP and low unemployment rates. In 2010, it was the eighth-largest economy in the world and the fourth-largest in Europe in terms of nominal GDP, and the tenth-largest economy in the world and fifth-largest in Europe in terms of PPP. It is a founding member of the G8, the Eurozone and the OECD.

After World War II, Italy was rapidly transformed from an agriculture based economy into one of the world's most industrialized nations and a leading country in world trade and exports. It is a developed country, with the world's 8th highest quality of life and the 23rd Human Development Index. In spite of the recent global economic crisis, Italian per capita GDP at purchasing power parity remains approximately equal to the EU average, while the unemployment rate (8.5%) stands as one of the EU's lowest. The country is well known for its influential and innovative business economic sector, an industrious and competitive agricultural sector (Italy is the world's largest wine producer), and for its creative and high-quality automobile, industrial, appliance and fashion design.

Italy has a smaller number of global multinational corporations than other economies of comparable size, but there is a large number of 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. The country was the world's 7th largest exporter in 2009. Italy's 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%). Finally, tourism is one of the fastest growing and profitable sectors of the national economy: with 43.7 million international tourist arrivals and total receipts estimated at $42.7 billion, Italy is the fourth highest tourism earner and the fifth most visited country in the world.

Despite these important achievements, the Italian economy today suffers from many and relevant problems. After a strong GDP growth of 5–6% per year from the 1950s to the early 1970s, and a progressive slowdown in the 1980s and 1990s, the last decade's average annual growth rates poorly performed at 1.23% in comparison to an average EU annual growth rate of 2.28%. The stagnation in economic growth, and the political efforts to revive it with massive government spending from the 1980s onwards, eventually produced a severe rise in public debt. According to the EU's statistics body Eurostat, Italian public debt stood at 116% of GDP in 2010, ranking as the second biggest debt ratio after Greece (with 126.8%). However, the biggest chunk of Italian public debt is owned by national subjects, a major difference between Italy and Greece. In addition, Italian living standards have a considerable north-south divide. The average GDP per capita in the north exceeds by far the EU average, whilst many regions of Southern Italy are dramatically below. Italy has often been referred the ''sick man of Europe'', characterised by economic stagnation, political instability and problems in pursuing reform programs.

More specifically, Italy suffers from structural weaknesses due to its geographical conformation and the lack of raw materials and energy resources: in 2006 the country imported more than 86% of its total energy consumption (99.7% of the solid fuels, 92.5% of oil, 91.2% of natural gas and 15% of electricity). The Italian economy is weakened by the lack of infrastructure development, market reforms and research investment, and also high public deficit. In the Index of Economic Freedom 2008, the country ranked 64th in the world and 29th in Europe, the lowest rating in the Eurozone. Italy still receives development assistance from the European Union every year. Between 2000 and 2006, Italy received €27.4 billion from the EU. The country has an inefficient state bureaucracy, low property rights protection and high levels of corruption, heavy taxation and public spending that accounts for about half of the national GDP. In addition, the most recent data show that Italy's spending in R&D; in 2006 was equal to 1.14% of GDP, below the EU average of 1.84% and the Lisbon Strategy target of devoting 3% of GDP to research and development activities. Finally, organized crime is also a strong contributing factor in Italy's economic weakness.

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 (415,612 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. The national railway network, state-owned and operated by Ferrovie dello Stato, in 2003 totalled 16,287 km (10,122 mi) of which 69% is electrified, and on which 4,937 locomotives and railcars circulated. 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.

Demographics

With a population estimated in 60.6 million, Italy has the fourth-largest population in the European Union and the 23rd-largest population worldwide. The population density, at over 200 persons per square kilometre (over 500/sq mi), is the fifth highest in the European Union. The highest density is in Northern Italy, as that one-third of the country contains almost half of the total population.

After World War II, Italy enjoyed a prolonged economic boom which caused a major rural exodus to the cities, and at the same time transformed the nation from a massive emigration country to a net immigrant-receiving country. High fertility persisted until the 1970s, when it plunged below the replacement rates, so that as of 2008, one in five Italians was over 65 years old. Despite this, thanks mainly to the massive immigration of the last two decades, in the first decade of the 21st century, Italy experienced a growth in the crude birth rate (especially in the northern regions) for the first time in many years. The total fertility rate has also significantly grown in the past few years, thanks to rising births among both in foreign-born and Italian women, as it climbed from an all-time minimum of 1.18 children per woman in 1995 to 1.41 in 2008.

Urbanization

About 68% of Italian population is classified as urban, a relatively low figure among developed countries. During the last two decades, Italy underwent a devolution process, that eventually led to the creation of administrative metropolitan areas, in order to give major cities and their metropolitan areas a provincial status (somehow similar to PRC's direct-controlled municipality). However, none of these new local authorities has yet become fully operative. According to OECD, the largest conurbations are:

Milan – 7.4 million

Rome – 3.7 million

Naples – 3.1 million

Turin – 2.2 million

Migration

Italy became a country of mass emigration soon after national reunification in the late 19th century. Between 1898 and 1914, the peak years of Italian diaspora, approximately 750,000 Italians emigrated each year. Italian communities once thrived in the former African colonies of Eritrea (nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II), Somalia and Libya (150,000 Italians settled in Libya, constituting about 18% of the total population). All of Libya's Italians were expelled from the North African country in 1970. In addition, after the communist occupation of Istria in 1945, up to 350,000 ethnic Italians left Titoist Yugoslavia. Today, large numbers of people with full or significant Italian ancestry are found in Brazil (25 million), Argentina (20 million), US (17.8 million), France (5 million), Uruguay (1.5 million), Canada (1.4 million), Venezuela (900,000) and Australia (800,000).

At the start of 2010 there were 4,235,059 foreign nationals resident in Italy and registered with the authorities. This amounted to 7.1% of the country’s population and represented a year-on-year increase of 388,000. These figures include more than half a million children born in Italy to foreign nationals—second generation immigrants are becoming an important element in the demographic picture—but exclude foreign nationals who have subsequently acquired Italian nationality; this applied to 53,696 people in 2008. They also exclude illegal immigrants, the so-called ''clandestini'' whose numbers are difficult to determine. In May 2008 ''The Boston Globe'' quoted an estimate of 670,000 for this group. Since the recent enlargements of the European Union, the biggest wave of migration has been from Eastern Europe, but also increasingly from China, replacing North Africa as the major immigration area. Some 950,000 Romanians, around 10 percent of them being Romani, are officially registered as living in Italy, replacing Albanians and Moroccans as the largest ethnic minority group. The number unregistered Romanians is difficult to estimate, but the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network suggested that in 2007 that there might have been half a million or more. As of 2009, the foreign born population origin of Italy was subdivided as follows: Europe (54%), Africa (22%), Asia (16%), the Americas (8%) and Oceania (0.06%). The distribution of foreign born population 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.

+Origin of the population of Italy as of 1 January 2010	Origin	Population	Percent
! scope="row"		92.47%
! scope="row"		1.98%
North African		1.07%
! scope="row"		0.77%
! scope="row"		0.28%
! scope="row"		0.31%
! scope="row"		0.83%
Latin American		0.54%
Sub-Saharan African		0.47%
Other		1.29%

Languages

Italy's official language is Italian. Ethnologue has estimated that there are about 55 million speakers of the language in Italy and a further 6.7 million outside of the country. However, between 120 and 150 million people use Italian as a second or cultural language, worldwide.

Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy, is based on the Florentine variety of Tuscan and is somewhat intermediate between the Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and the Gallo-Romance Northern Italian languages. Its development was also influenced by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders.

Italy has numerous dialects spoken all over the country and some Italians cannot speak Italian at all. However, the establishment of a national education system has led to decrease in variation in the languages spoken across the country. 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).

Several ethnic groups are legally recognized, and a number of minority languages have co-official status alongside Italian in various parts of the country. French is co-official in the Valle d’Aosta—although in fact Franco-Provencal is more commonly spoken there. German has the same status in the province of 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 in Friuli Venezia Giulia.

In these regions official documents are bilingual (trilingual in Ladin communities), or available upon request in either Italian or the co-official language. Traffic signs are also multilingual, except in the Valle d’Aosta where – with the exception of Aosta itself which has retained its Latin form in Italian (as in English) – French toponyms are generally used, attempts to italianise them during the Fascist period having been abandoned. Education is possible in minority languages where such schools are operating.

Religion

{{bar box |title=Religion in Italy, 2001 |titlebar=#ddd |left1=Religion |right1=Percent |float=right |bars= }}

Roman Catholicism is by far the largest religion in the country, although the Catholic Church is no longer officially the state religion. The proportion of Italians that identify themselves as Roman Catholic is 87.8%, although only about one-third of these described themselves as active members (36.8%). Most Italians believe in God, or a form of a spiritual life force. According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2005: 74% of Italian citizens responded that 'they believe there is a God', 16% answered that 'they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force' and 6% answered that 'they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force'.

;Christianity

The Italian Catholic Church is part of the global Roman Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope, curia in Rome, and the Conference of Italian Bishops. In addition to Italy, two other sovereign nations are included in Italian-based dioceses, San Marino and Vatican City. There are 225 dioceses in the Italian Catholic Church, see further in this article and in the article List of the Roman Catholic dioceses in Italy. Even though by law Vatican City is not part of Italy, it is in Rome, and along with Latin, Italian is the most spoken and second language of the Roman Curia.

Italy has a rich Catholic culture, especially as numerous Catholic saints, martyrs and popes were Italian themselves. Roman Catholic art especially flourished during the Middle-Ages, Renaissance and Baroque periods, with numerous Italian artists, such as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Caravaggio, Fra Angelico, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Sandro Botticelli, Tintoretto, Titian, Raphael and Giotto. Roman Catholic architecture in Italy is equally as rich and impressive, with churches, basilicas and cathedrals such as St Peter's Basilica, Florence Cathedral and St Mark's Basilica. Roman Catholicism is the largest religion and denomination in Italy, with around 87.8% of Italians considering themselves Catholic. Italy is also home to the greatest number of cardinals in the world, and is the country with the greatest number of Roman Catholic churches per capita.

Even though the main Christian denomination in Italy is Roman Catholicism, there are relevant minorities of Protestant, Waldensian, Eastern Orthodox and other Christian churches. In the 20th century, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalism, non-denominational Evangelicalism, and Mormonism were the fastest-growing Protestant churches. Starting from the 1980s, Immigration from Subsaharan Africa has increased the size of Baptist, Anglican, Pentecostal and Evangelical communities in Italy, while immigration from Eastern Europe has established large Eastern Orthodox communities. At the beginning of 21st century, there were more than 700,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians in Italy, including 180,000 Greek Orthodox, 550,000 Pentecostals and Evangelists (0.8%), of whom 400,000 are members of the Assemblies of God, 235,685 Jehovah's Witnesses (0.4%), 30,000 Waldensians, 25,000 Seventh-day Adventists, 22,000 Mormons, 15,000 Baptists (plus some 5,000 Free Baptists), 7,000 Lutherans, 4,000 Methodists (affiliated with the Waldensian Church).

;Other religions The longest-established religious faith in Italy is Judaism, Jews having been present in Ancient Rome before the birth of Christ. Italy has seen many influential Italian-Jews, such as Luigi Luzzatti, who took office in 1910, Ernesto Nathan served as mayor of Rome from 1907 to 1913 and Shabbethai Donnolo (died 982). During the Holocaust, Italy took in many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. However, with the creation of the Nazi-backed puppet Italian Social Republic, about 15% of Italy's Jews were killed, despite the Fascist government's refusal to deport Jews to Nazi death camps. This, together with the emigration that preceded and followed the Second World War, has left only a small community of around 45,000 Jews in Italy today. Due to rising immigration, there has been an increase in non-Christian faiths. In 2009, there were 1.0 million Muslims in Italy forming 1.6 percent of population although, only 50,000 hold Italian citizenship. Independent estimates put the Islamic population in Italy anywhere from 0.8 million to 1.5 million. There are more than 200,000 followers of faith originating in the Indian subcontinent woth some 70,000 Sikhs with 22 gurdwaras across the country, 70,000 Hindus, and 50,000 Buddhists. There are an estimated some 4,900 Bahá'ís in Italy in 2005.

Education

Italy's public education is free and compulsory from 6 to 15 years of age, and has a five-year primary stage and an eight-year secondary stage, divided into first-grade secondary school (middle school) and second-grade secondary school (or high school). Italy has a high public education standard, surpassing that of other comparable developed countries, such as the UK and Germany. The country has both public and private education systems.

According to National Science Indicators (1981–2002), a database produced by Research Services Group containing listings of output and citation statistics for more than 90 countries, Italy has an above-average output of scientific papers (in terms of number of papers written with at least one author being from Italy) in space science (9.75% of papers in the world being from Italy), mathematics (5.51% of papers in the world), computer science, neurosciences, and physics; the lowest, but still slightly above world-average, output in terms of number of papers produced is recorded in the social sciences, psychology and psychiatry, and economics and business.

Italy hosts a broad variety of universities, colleges and academies. Milan's Bocconi University, has been ranked among the top 20 best business schools in the world by The Wall Street Journal international rankings, especially thanks to its M.B.A. program, which in 2007 placed it no. 17 in the world in terms of graduate recruitment preference by major multinational companies. Also, Forbes has ranked Bocconi no. 1 worldwide in the specific category Value for Money. In May 2008, Bocconi overtook several traditionally top global business schools in the Financial Times Executive education ranking, reaching no. 5 in Europe and no. 15 in the world.

Other top universities and polytechnics include the Polytechnic University of Turin, the Politecnico di Milano (which in 2009 was ranked as the 57th technical university in the world by Top Universities, in a research conducted on behalf of Times Higher Education. This was a 6-positions growth from the 63rd position in 2008. In 2009 an Italian research ranked it as the best in Italy over indicators such as scientific production, attraction of foreign students, and others), the University of Rome La Sapienza (which in 2005 was Europe's 33rd best university, and ranks amongst Europe's 50 and the world's 150 best colleges) and the University of Milan (whose research and teaching activities have developed over the years and have received important international recognitions. The University is the only Italian member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), a prestigious group of twenty research-intensive European Universities. It also been awarded ranking positions as such: -1st in Italy and 7th in Europe (The Leiden Ranking – Universiteit Leiden).

Italy and the Western world's oldest college is the University of Bologna. In 2009, the University of Bologna is, according to The Times, the only Italian college in the top 200 World Universities. The University of Padua, also remains one of Europe's oldest.

Health

Italy has had a public healthcare system since 1978. Healthcare spending in Italy accounted for more than 9.0% of the national GDP in 2008, slightly above the OECD countries' average of 8.9%. However, Italy ranks as having the world's 2nd best healthcare system, and the world's 3rd best healthcare performance.

Italy had the 12th highest worldwide life expectancy in 2010, while, as in many others western countries, seeing an increase in the proportion of overweight and obese people, with 34.2% of Italians self reporting as overweight and 9.8% self reporting as obese. The proportion of daily smokers was 22% in 2008. Smoking in public places including bars, restaurants, night clubs and offices has been restricted to specially ventilated rooms since 2005.

Culture

Italy did not exist as a state until the country's unification in 1861. Due to this comparatively late unification, and the historical autonomy of the regions that comprise the Italian Peninsula, many traditions and customs that are now recognized as distinctly Italian can be identified by their regions of origin. Despite the political and social distinction of these regions, Italy's contributions to the cultural and historical heritage of Europe and the world remain immense. Italy is home to the greatest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites (47) to date, and has rich collections of world art, culture and literature from many different periods. Italy has had a broad cultural influence worldwide, also because numerous Italians emigrated to other countries during the Italian diaspora. Italy has, overall, an estimated 100,000 monuments of any sort (museums, palaces, buildings, statues, churches, art galleries, villas, fountains, historic houses and archaeological remains).

Architecture

Italy has a very broad and diverse architectural style, which cannot be simply classified by period, but also by region, due to Italy's division into several city-states until 1861. However, this has created a highly diverse and eclectic range in architectural designs. Italy is known for its considerable architectural achievements, 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 century, 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. Italianate architecture, popular abroad from the 16th to mid-20th century, was used to describe foreign architecture which was built in an Italian style. British architect Inigo Jones, inspired by the avant-garde designs of Italian buildings and cities, in the early-17th century, brought back these ideas with him to London, and ever since, this Italianate architecture has been popular in construction designs all over the world.

Visual art

Over the centuries, Italian art has gone through many stylistic changes. Italian painting is traditionally characterized by a warmth of colour and light, as exemplified in the works of Caravaggio and Titian, and a preoccupation with religious figures and motifs. Italian painting enjoyed preeminence in Europe for hundreds of years, from the Romanesque and Gothic periods, and through the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the latter two of which saw fruition in Italy. Notable artists who fall within these periods include Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Bernini, Titian and Raphael.

Thereafter, Italy was to experience a continual subjection to foreign powers which caused a shift of focus to political matters, leading to its decline as the artistic authority in Europe. Not until 20th century Futurism, primarily through the works of Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla, would Italy recapture any of its former prestige as a seminal place of artistic evolution. 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

The basis of the modern Italian language was established by the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, whose greatest work, the Divine Comedy, is considered amongst the foremost literary statements produced in Europe during the Middle Ages. There is no shortage of celebrated literary figures in Italy: Giovanni Boccaccio, Giacomo Leopardi, Alessandro Manzoni, Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, and Petrarch, whose best-known vehicle of expression, the sonnet, was invented in Italy.

Prominent philosophers include Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Giambattista Vico. Modern literary figures and Nobel laureates are nationalist poet Giosuè Carducci in 1906, realist writer Grazia Deledda in 1926, modern theatre author Luigi Pirandello in 1936, poets Salvatore Quasimodo in 1959 and Eugenio Montale in 1975, satirist and theatre author Dario Fo in 1997.

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

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 Alessandro 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. Italian opera was believed to have been founded in the early 17th century, in Italian cities such as Mantua and Venice. Later, works and pieces composed by native Italian composers of the 19th century and early 20th century, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, are amongst 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, Alessandro Bonci, the late Luciano Pavarotti, and Andrea Bocelli, to name a few.

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 centers of jazz music in Italy include Milan, Rome, and Sicily. Later, Italy was at the forefront of the progressive rock movement of the 1970s, with bands like PFM and Goblin. 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 pop diva Mina, classical crossover artist Andrea Bocelli, Grammy winner Laura Pausini, and European chart-topper Eros Ramazzotti 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 long, 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.

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 Dario Argento. Movies include world cinema treasures such as ''La dolce vita'', ''Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo'' and ''Ladri di biciclette''. In recent years, the Italian scene has received only occasional international attention, with movies like ''La vita è bella'' directed by Roberto Benigni and ''Il postino'' with Massimo Troisi.

Science

Through the centuries, Italy has given birth to some notable scientific minds. Amongst them, and perhaps the most famous polymath in history, Leonardo da Vinci made several contributions to a variety of fields including art, biology, and technology. Galileo Galilei was a physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. The physicist Enrico Fermi, a Nobel prize laureate, was the leader of the team that built the first nuclear reactor and is also noted for his many other contributions to physics, including the co-development of the quantum theory.

A brief overview of some other notable figures includes the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who made many important discoveries about the Solar System; the physicist Alessandro Volta, inventor of the electric battery; the mathematicians Lagrange, Fibonacci, and Gerolamo Cardano, whose Ars Magna is generally recognized as the first modern treatment on mathematics, made fundamental advances to the field; Marcello Malpighi, a doctor and founder of microscopic anatomy; the biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani, who conducted important research in bodily functions, animal reproduction, and cellular theory; the physician, pathologist, scientist, and Nobel laureate Camillo Golgi, whose many achievements include the discovery of the Golgi complex, and his role in paving the way to the acceptance of the Neuron doctrine; and Guglielmo Marconi, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of radio.

Sport

Italy has a long sporting tradition. In numerous sports, both individual and team, Italy has good representation and many successes. The most popular sport is by far football. Basketball and volleyball are the next most popular/played, with Italy having a rich tradition in both. Italy won the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and is currently the second most successful football team in the world, after Brazil, having won four FIFA World Cups. Italy has also got strong traditions in cycling, tennis, athletics, fencing, winter sports and rugby. 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 15 drivers' championships and 16 constructors' championships.

Fashion and design

Italian fashion has a long tradition, and is regarded as one of the most important in the world, along with French fashion, American fashion, British fashion and Japanese fashion. Milan, Florence and Rome are Italy's main fashion capitals, however Naples, Turin, Venice, Bologna, Genoa and Vicenza are other major centres. According to the 2009 Global Language Monitor, Milan was nominated the true fashion capital of the world, even surpassing other international cities, such as New York, Paris, London and Tokyo, and Rome came 4th. Major Italian fashion labels, such as Gucci, Prada, Versace, Valentino, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni, Fendi, Moschino, Max Mara and Ferragamo, to name a few, are regarded as amongst the finest fashion houses in the world. Also, the fashion magazine Vogue Italia, is considered the most important and prestigious fashion magazine in the world.

Italy is also prominent in the field of design, notably interior design, architectural design, industrial design and urban design. Italy 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. Examples of classic pieces of Italian white goods and pieces of furniture include Zanussi's washing machines and fridges, the "New Tone" sofas by Atrium, and the post-modern bookcase by Ettore Sottsass, inspired by Bob Dylan's song ''Memphis Blues''. Today, Milan and Turin are the nation's leaders in architectural design and industrial design. The city of Milan hosts the FieraMilano, Europe's biggest design fair. 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

Cuisine

Modern Italian cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political changes, with its roots reaching back to the 4th century BC. Significant change occurred with the discovery of the New World, when vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, and maize became available. However, these central ingredients of modern Italian cuisine were not introduced in scale before the 18th century.

Ingredients and dishes vary by region. However, many dishes that were once regional have proliferated in different variations across the country. Cheese and wine are major parts of the cuisine, playing different roles both regionally and nationally with their many variations and ''Denominazione di origine controllata'' (regulated appellation) laws. Coffee, and more specifically espresso, has become highly important to the cultural cuisine of Italy. Some famous dishes and items include pasta, pizza, ''lasagna'', ''focaccia'', and ''gelato''.

See also

List of English exonyms for Italian toponyms

Notes

References

;Bibliography

External links

; Country profiles

by the BBC News

by the Economist

by the U.S. Department of State

;General

Italia Tourism official website

Italy at ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''

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President of the Republic of Italy

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}}

Category:Alpine countries Category:Countries of the Mediterranean Sea Category:European countries Category:G8 nations Category:G20 nations Category:Italian-speaking countries Category:Liberal democracies Category:Member states of NATO Category:Member states of the Council of Europe Category:Member states of the European Union Category:Member states of the Union for the Mediterranean Category:Republics Category:States and territories established in 1861 Category:Member states of the United Nations

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Coordinates	47°05′40″N16°28′45″N
Name	Donatas Motiejūnas
Team	Houston Rockets
Position	Power Forward/Center
Number	20
League	National Basketball Association
Height ft	7
Height in	0
Weight lb	224
Nationality	n
Birth date	September 20, 1990
Birth place	Kaunas, Lithuania
Career start	2007
Draft year	2011
Draft round	1
Draft pick	20
Draft team	Minnesota Timberwolves
years1	2007–2008
team1	Kaunas „Žalgiris“
years2	2008–2009
team2	Kaunas „Aisčiai“
years3	2009–2011
team3	Treviso „Benetton“
years4	–present
team4	Houston „Rockets“
Awards	Euroleague Youth Championship MVP (2007) FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship MVP (2008) LKL All-Star (2009) Eurocup Rising Star (2011) }}

Donatas Motiejūnas (born September 20, 1990) is a Lithuanian professional basketball player. He plays the power forward and center positions. He is nicknamed "D-Mo" by Houston Rockets fans.

Motiejūnas was selected twentieth overall in the 2011 NBA Draft.

Motiejūnas began his career playing with the youth team Arvydas Sabonis School of Kaunas. He made his professional debut with the Žalgiris Kaunas in a Baltic League game against the ASK Riga. He scored 15 points in 22 minutes.

Career in Europe

Motiejūnas began his career playing with the youth team Arvydas Sabonis School of Kaunas. He made his professional debut with the Žalgiris Kaunas in a Baltic League game against the ASK Riga. He scored 15 points in 22 minutes.

Motiejūnas helped Žalgiris Kaunas win a Baltic Championship, a Lithuanian Championship and a Lithuanian Cup. He averaged 5.6 points in 10.1 minutes per game in the Baltic League.

He signed with the Aisčiai-Atletas in 2008. With Aisčiai-Atletas, he averaged 19.9 points and 7.0 rebounds in 29.3 minutes per game and he scored a season-high 29 points in a Lithuanian League game against Nevėžis on March 22, 2009.

He moved to the Italian League club Benetton Treviso in August 2009. There, he got off to a great start, scoring 18 and 21 points in two friendly matches against other European clubs. In 2011, Motiejūnas won the Eurocup Rising Star award after helping his team Treviso reach the Eurocup 2010-11 Final Four, averaging 10.9 points, 5.6 rebounds, 0.9 steals, and 4.4 fouls drawn per game.

NBA

He was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the 20th overall pick, but was traded in a package with Jonny Flynn to the Houston Rockets for Brad Miller and Nikola Mirotic (the 23rd overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft). Donatas Motiejūnas will wear Houston Rockets jersey with number 20. Because of his hard to say name and last name, Donatas Motiejūnas was called D-Mo by Kevin McHale at the first Houston Rockets press conference.

Personal life

Motiejūnas has a large tattoo on his chest of an eagle clutching a basketball that he describes as, "I really like the attitudes of eagles. They never give up. When they grab a fish or something else, they never let it go. It doesn't matter. In a book, they write they find a skeleton of [an] eagle and there is no fish. It means that the fish beat him and killed him, but he didn't let go."

Lithuanian national team

}} Motiejūnas was a part of the Lithuanian Under-16, Under-18, and Under-20 junior national teams. With Lithuania's junior national teams, he played at the: 2006 FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship, both the 2007 and 2008 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championships, the 2009 FIBA Under-19 World Championship, and the 2009 FIBA Europe Under-20 Championship.

He led Lithuania's junior national team to the silver medal at the 2008 Under-18 Championship. Despite losing to Greece's junior national team in the gold medal game, he was named the MVP of the tournament, after averaging 18.2 points, 10.2 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game. At the 2009 Under-20 Championship, he averaged 11.2 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.

He is a candidate to be on the Lithuanian roster at EuroBasket 2011, held in Lithuania from 31 August to 18 September.

References

External links

NBA.com Profile

Euroleague.net Profile

Draftexpress.com Profile

Italian League Profile

NBADraft.net Profile

Basketnews.lt Profile Krepsinis.net Profile Benetton Profile

Category:1990 births Category:Living people Category:Centers (basketball) Category:Lithuanian basketball players Category:Minnesota Timberwolves draft picks Category:People from Kaunas Category:Power forwards (basketball)

de:Donatas Motiejūnas es:Donatas Motiejūnas fr:Donatas Motiejūnas gl:Donatas Motiejūnas it:Donatas Motiejūnas lt:Donatas Motiejūnas fi:Donatas Motiejūnas zh:多纳塔斯·莫泰尤纳斯

Coordinates	47°05′40″N16°28′45″N
name	Paolo Nutini
background	solo_singer
birth name	Paolo Giovanni Nutini
birth date	January 09, 1987
origin	Paisley, Scotland
instrument	Vocals, guitar
voice type	Baritone
genre	Pop rock, Blue eyed soul, folk, blues, Easy Listening,
occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician
years active	2005–present
label	Atlantic
website	}}

Paolo Giovanni Nutini (born 9 January 1987) is a Scottish singer, songwriter and musician from Paisley. His father is of Italian descent, from Barga, Tuscany, although both his parents are Scottish, his family having been in Scotland for three generations.

Paolo Nutini's debut album, ''These Streets'', was released by Atlantic Records in the United Kingdom in July 2006 and included the singles "Last Request", "Jenny Don't Be Hasty", "Rewind" and "New Shoes". "Last Request", the most successful, reached number five on the UK Singles Chart. The album peaked at number three on the UK Album Chart and was certified 4× platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). It has been in the album charts for a record-breaking 196 weeks.

In May 2009 Nutini released his second album, ''Sunny Side Up'', which debuted at number one in the UK and has produced four singles; "Candy", "Coming Up Easy", "Pencil Full of Lead" and "10/10". It has so far been certified 4x platinum by the BPI. On 19 February 2010, it scooped "Best International Album" at the 2010 Meteor Awards.

Musical career

Early life and breakthrough

Paolo Nutini was expecting to follow his father into the family fish and chip shop business. He was first encouraged to sing by his music-loving grandfather, Jackie, and a teacher at his school, St Andrews Academy, who recognised his talent. He left school to work as a roadie and to sell t-shirts for Speedway. He spent three years learning the music business and performing live. He later worked as a studio hand at Glasgow's Park Lane Studio.

His big chance came when he attended a concert staged by 102.5 Clyde 1 for David Sneddon's return to his home town of Paisley at the beginning of 2003. Sneddon was delayed, and as the winner of an impromptu pop quiz, Nutini was given the chance to perform a couple of songs on stage during the wait. The favourable reaction of the crowd impressed another member of the audience, Brendan Moon, who offered to become his manager. Brendan and his business partner Mike Bawden continue to manage Paolo. Only 17, Nutini moved to London and performed regularly at The Bedford pub in Balham. Other radio and live appearances followed, including two live acoustic spots on Radio London, The Hard Rock Cafe, and support slots for The Rolling Stones, Amy Winehouse and KT Tunstall.

When Nutini was young he was a member of PACE Youth Theatre

''These Streets'' (2006–2009)

Throughout 2006 Nutini played a number of sold-out concerts in the UK and performed at a wide variety of venues worldwide, including King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, a TV appearance on Later with Jools Holland, Carnegie Hall in New York, The Montreux Jazz Festival, The Wireless Festival, Oxegen and T in the Park. He supported the Rolling Stones in Vienna and was invited to appear with them again at the Don Valley Stadium in August 2006. He was also booked to appear at the V Festival and The Austin City Limits Music Festival, Texas later in 2006, with a European tour in the autumn. In May 2006, he also played at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in Dundee.

On Hogmanay 2006, Nutini appeared on BBC Scotland's Hogmanay Live celebrations, after the official celebrations in Princes Street Gardens were cancelled at short notice due to abysmal weather. He performed several songs in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle for the TV audience with little or no rehearsal.

On Wednesday 11 April 2007, Nutini performed in a concert that was streamed live via MSN Music.

Nutini performed at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2007 on the famous Pyramid Stage on the second day of the event. Nutini also performed at the UK leg of Live Earth at Wembley Stadium on 7 July 2007, with his set including a cover of "What A Wonderful World", a classic pop tune by Bob Thiele, George David Weiss, and George Douglas. He performed the following day at T in the Park, in Scotland. He performed at the Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert on 10 December 2007, an event that drew enormous international attention as it was the first full live concert performance by Led Zeppelin in 27 years.

Scottish independent TV company Volt MediaFix made a one-off documentary of Nutini's US tour. The programme, for the BBC, was scheduled for broadcast on BBC2, on Thursday 7 June throughout Scotland and on Sky channel 990 throughout the rest of the UK.

Nutini's songs have infiltrated American TV shows as well. "Last Request" featured at the end of the ''Scrubs'' episode "My Words of Wisdom" from Season 6, the first-ever episode of "Gavin and Stacey," and the ''One Tree Hill'' Season-4 episode "The Birth and Death of the Day." "Million Faces" could be heard at the end of the ''Grey's Anatomy'' episode "Testing 1–2–3" from Season 3 and is on the Volume 3 Soundtrack. "Rewind" was played at the end of ''CSI: Miami'' Season-5 episode "Broken Home." "Jenny, Don't Be Hasty" was also featured on another member of the ''CSI'' franchise when it played on ''CSI: NY'''s Season-3-finale, "Snow Day". "New Shoes" featured in ''The Jane Austen Book Club'' and in a TV ad for Puma AG during summer 2008. On 24 July 2007, Nutini was awarded The Golden St. Christopher medal by the city of Barga in Italy, the highest honour the city can give, to celebrate his extraordinary contributions to Barga and its people. On 17 September, Nutini performed on ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' performing "Last Request". In September 2007, Nutini recorded a short radio show with imeem.com where he listed his top 10 favourite tracks and the reasons behind his choices. In October 2007, Nutini performed for the annual Voodoo Fest held in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2008, Nutini's music was featured in a movie adaptation of Irvine Welsh's best-selling novel ''Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance''. On New Year's Eve 2008–09, Nutini performed at the Hogmanay street parties in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, becoming the first act to play both locations on the same day for the event. In The View's 2009 album ''Which Bitch?'', he is featured singing on the song "Covers."

''Sunny Side Up'' (2009–present)

On 1 June 2009, Nutini released his second studio album ''Sunny Side Up'', which debuted at number one. The first single from the album "Candy" was released on 25 May. In July, he appeared on ''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross'', performing "Coming Up Easy". This was released as the second single to the album on 10 August and it debuted at number 62 in the UK Singles Chart on 16 August 2009. On 10 September 2009, Nutini performed "Coming Up Easy" on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. The third single from the album was "Pencil Full of Lead".

The album received a mixed critical reception. Allmusic's Thom Jurek noted the move away from the sound of the debut album: "Nutini has taken huge chunks of America's (and Scotland's) pop and folk pasts and reshaped them in his own image," going on to describe it as "wise beyond this songwriter's years". Andy Gill of ''The Independent'' commented on Nutini's progress since his debut, saying the album "sees the singer making giant strides in several directions", and going on to say "don't be surprised if, come December, this is one of the year's biggest-selling albums." Neil McCormick of ''The Daily Telegraph'' was also positive, stating "his joyous second album organically blends soul, country, folk and the brash, horny energy of ragtime swing."

Some reviewers were less impressed. It was described by ''The Guardian'''s Caroline Sullivan as "not bad", with opening track "10/10" described as "jaunty enough to make you retch". Graeme Thompson of ''The Observer'' saw the album as an attempt by Nutini at "rebranding himself as a mongrel hybrid of John Martyn, Otis Redding and Bob Marley".

The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart with sales of over 60,000 copies, fighting off strong competition from ''Love & War'', the debut album of fellow male solo artist Daniel Merriweather. The album performed similarly well on the Irish Albums Chart, debuting at number two behind Eminem's new album before rising to the top of the charts the week after.

The album has been one of the best UK album sales of the year. On the UK Albums Chart on the Week of Monday 19 Oct, the album move from number 31 to number 5, making the album sell more than The Saturdays second album. On 3 January 2010 ''Sunny Side Up'' topped the UK Album Charts for a second time, making the album the first Number one album in the United Kingdom of 2010 and the decade.

On 19 February 2010, Colin Farrell presented Nutini with "Best International Album" for ''Sunny Side Up'' at the 2010 Meteor Awards.

Paolo Nutini embarked on a world tour with his ''Sunny Side Up'' album. The band consisted of, in addition to Paolo: Donny Little-Guitars, Vocals Seamus Simon-Drums Michael McDaid-Bass, Keyboard Dave Nelson-Guitars, Keyboard, Vocals, Percussion Gavin Fitzjohn-Trumpet, Saxophone Ben Edwards - trumpet & flugelhorn, and Tom Pinder - trombone & sousaphone. The brass section are collectively known as the "Horns of Thunder" (a name formed by Paolo himself)

Recording history

Nutini made his first demo which saw him signed to Atlantic Records in May 2005, shortly after his 18th birthday. He released his first single "These Streets" as a free download in May 2006, this was then followed by his next single "Last Request" which was released on 4 July 2006 and charted at number 5 in the official UK charts. In the video for "Last Request", Nutini plays the part of a robber – though this is not revealed until the end. Nutini's third single, "Jenny Don't Be Hasty", was released on 25 September 2006 and got to number 20 on the UK Singles Chart. "Rewind" was Nutini's fourth single. It was released on 4 December 2006, and reached number 27 in the UK.

His debut album ''These Streets'', produced by Ken Nelson (who has also worked with Coldplay and Gomez), was released on 17 July 2006 and immediately entered the UK album charts at number three. Many of the songs on the album, including "Last Request" and "Rewind", were inspired by a turbulent relationship with his girlfriend Teri Brogan, and "Jenny Don't Be Hasty" is a true story about encounters with an older woman. ''These Streets'', as Paolo himself puts it on his official website, he states, "The album is a little glimpse of some of the experiences I have been through in the last three years". In late 2007 he covered Labi Siffre's "It Must Be Love" for BBC Radio 1's Radio 1 Established 1967 album.

His self-produced second album ''Sunny Side Up'' was released on 1 June 2009.

As of February 2011, Paolo Nutini was in the studio working on new material.

Discography

Albums

''These Streets'' (2006)

''Sunny Side Up'' (2009)

External links

Official Paolo Nutini website

"Singer Paulo Nutini headlined the Hogmanay bash..." ''eveningtimes.co.uk'', 1–1–09.

References

Category:1987 births Category:Scottish guitarists Category:Scottish male singers Category:Scottish people of Italian descent Category:Scottish rock singers Category:Living people Category:People from Paisley Category:Scottish Roman Catholics Category:Blue-eyed soul singers Category:Italian British musicians Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:People educated at St Andrews Academy

bg:Паоло Нутини cs:Paolo Nutini da:Paolo Nutini de:Paolo Nutini et:Paolo Nutini es:Paolo Nutini fr:Paolo Nutini hr:Paolo Nutini it:Paolo Nutini hu:Paolo Nutini nl:Paolo Nutini ja:パオロ・ヌティーニ no:Paolo Nutini pl:Paolo Nutini pt:Paolo Nutini ru:Нутини, Паоло fi:Paolo Nutini sv:Paolo Nutini th:เปาโล นูตินี tr:Paolo Nutini

Coordinates	47°05′40″N16°28′45″N
Name	Jordan Rudess
Landscape	Yes
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Jordan Charles Rudes
Alias	The Keyboard Wizard
Born	November 04, 1956
origin	Great Neck, New York, USA
Instrument	Keyboards, lap steel guitar, electric guitar, vocals, continuum, keytar, Bassoon Tablet PC
Genre	Progressive rock, progressive metal, instrumental rock, jazz fusion, New Age, electronic music
Occupation	Musician, songwriter
Years active	1981–present
Associated acts	Dream Theater, Dixie Dregs, Liquid Tension Experiment, John Petrucci, Rod Morgenstein, David Bowie, Vinnie Moore, Tom Coster, Kip Winger, Nóirín Ní Riain, Rhonda Larson, Paul Winter, Scott McGill, Steven Wilson, Prefab Sprout, Jupiter, Neal Morse, Daniel J, Neil Zaza, Annie Haslam, John-Luke Addison, Behold... The Arctopus, Liquid Trio Experiment, Mr. Fastfinger, Ricky Garcia, Frost*
Website	http://www.jordanrudess.com }}

Jordan Rudess (born Jordan Charles Rudes on November 4, 1956) is an American keyboardist best known as a member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater and the progressive rock supergroup Liquid Tension Experiment.

Biography

Rudess was born in 1956 into a Jewish family. He was recognized by his 2nd grade teacher for his piano playing and was immediately given professional tuition. At nine, he entered the Juilliard School of Music Pre-College Division for classical piano training, but by his late teens he had grown increasingly interested in synthesizers and progressive rock music. Against the counsel of his parents and tutors, he turned away from classical piano and tried his hand as a solo progressive rock keyboardist.

After performing in various projects during the 1980s, he gained international attention in 1994 when he was voted "Best New Talent" in the ''Keyboard Magazine'' readers' poll after the release of his ''Listen'' solo album. Two of the bands who took notice of Rudess were The Dixie Dregs and Dream Theater, both of whom invited him to join. Rudess chose the Dregs, primarily as being a part time member of the band would have less of an impact on his young family, a choice he was not given with Dream Theater.

During his time with the Dregs, Rudess formed a "power duo" with drummer Rod Morgenstein. The genesis of this pairing occurred when a power outage caused all of the Dregs' instruments to fail except Rudess', so he and Morgenstein improvised with each other until power was restored and the concert could continue. The chemistry between the two was so strong during this jam that they decided to perform together on a regular basis (under the name ''Rudess/Morgenstein Project'' or later ''RMP'') and have since released a studio and a live record.

Rudess encountered Dream Theater once again when he and Morgenstein secured the support slot on one of Dream Theater's North American tours.

In 1997, when Mike Portnoy was asked to form a supergroup by Magna Carta Records, Rudess was chosen to fill the keyboardist spot in the band, which also consisted of Tony Levin and Portnoy's Dream Theater colleague John Petrucci. During the recording of Liquid Tension Experiment's two albums, it became evident to Portnoy and Petrucci that Rudess was what Dream Theater needed. They asked Rudess to join the band, and when he accepted they released their then-keyboardist Derek Sherinian to make way for him.

Rudess has been the full-time keyboardist in Dream Theater since the recording of 1999's ''Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory''. He has recorded six other studio albums with the group: 2002's ''Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence'', 2003's ''Train of Thought'', 2005's ''Octavarium'', 2007's ''Systematic Chaos'', 2009's ''Black Clouds & Silver Linings'' and 2011's ''A Dramatic Turn of Events''. In addition, he has appeared on the live albums ''Live Scenes From New York'', ''Live at Budokan'', ''Score'' and ''Chaos in Motion''.

In addition to working with Dream Theater he occasionally records and performs in other contexts, such as a 2001 one-off duo performance with Petrucci (released as the CD ''An Evening With John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess''), as well as backing up Blackfield on their first short US tour in 2005 and playing a solo opening slot for them on their second in 2007.

In 2010, Rudess composed "Explorations for Keyboard and Orchestra," his first classical composition. It was premiered in Venezuela on November 19, 2010 by the Chacao Youth Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Eren Başbuğ. Rudess played all of the keyboard and synthesizer parts.

On July 28, 2011, in a poll conducted by MusicRadar, Rudess was voted the best keyboardist of all time.

Rudess says his influences as a keyboardist are Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman and Patrick Moraz. His favorite musical artists and groups include Gentle Giant, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, Jimi Hendrix, Autechre, and Aphex Twin.

Use of technology

While many keyboard players in progressive rock tend towards bringing numerous keyboards on stage, creating large racks of keyboards, Rudess took full advantage of the possibilities offered by the Kurzweil K2600xs during his live usage of the keyboard from the 1990s to 2004. Often sampling sounds from other keyboards he owned, Rudess creates a series of "setups", each of which maps different sounds to different layers and key ranges of the keyboard controller; these setups are then arranged in the order they will be required for a gig, and cycled through one at a time with a footswitch (a control pedal placed on the floor underneath his keyboard). He often maps sounds to exact notes on the keyboard to avoid playing chords on sounds that are meant to be monophonic and to create realistic percussion sounds under the pitched sounds he is playing.

While Rudess' physical method of changing live setups will more than likely remain the same, his choice of hardware to implement this changed as of 2005. Citing a need for better tour support and more current technologies (his Kurzweil K2600XS's maximum sample memory of 128 MB had become insufficient for his touring needs), Rudess switched keyboard endorsements from Kurzweil to Korg's new flagship Korg Oasys workstation (which can support up to 2 GB of sample memory), which he first used on Dream Theater's 2005-2006 20th Anniversary tour, along with a Muse Receptor hardware VST and a Haken Continuum X/Y/Z-plane MIDI Instrument triggering a Roland V-Synth XT and a Synthesizers.com Modular. Rudess is the first well known keyboardist to bring a Haken Continuum on to a live stage. Rudess still uses the Kurzweil for studio recordings and some of his most well known sounds, such as "the pig", one of his signature sounds which is often played in unison with the guitar or bass guitar, were sounds from the K2600xs.

Since 2001, Rudess uses custom made rotating keyboardstands on stage for both Dream Theater and his solo career, which are built by Patrick Slaats from the Netherlands. On Dream Theater's 2007-2008 "Chaos in Motion" world tour, Rudess expanded his live setup with the addition of a Korg RADIAS, a Manikin Memotron, and a Zen Riffer keytar. Rudess stopped using his Synthesizers.com modular after the European leg of the tour due to its size and weight. Rudess still owns the synthesizer and keeps it inactive in his home studio. During the Progressive Nation 2008 tour, he introduced on the stage a Kaoss Pad 3 for the closing medley.

For the 2009-2010 tour, in support of Black Clouds & Silver Linings, Jordan introduced the Apple iPod Touch on stage, running an application called Bebot Robot Synth. He plays it during A Rite of Passage - both studio album and live versions of the song - and frequently uses it for improvised solos, like in Hollow Years' intro and during a new instrumental section on Solitary Shell.

On September 24, 2010, Rudess released the song "Krump," which was an electronica "single" released on iTunes. It featured the use of the new Roland Gaia, Roland's more recent keyboard.

Equipment

Studio equipment

Korg Kronos (88 keys)

Korg OASYS (88 keys)

Korg Triton Extreme (88 keys)

Korg RADIAS

Haken Audio Continuum Fingerboard_{Rudess uses the upgraded half size model, which comes with inbuilt sounds as well as being used as a MIDI controller keyboard}

Eigenharp Alpha

Muse Research Receptor

Kurzweil K2600X/S (88 keys)

Kurzweil K2000VP

Kurzweil K2600R

Kurzweil PC2R

Kurzweil K2661

Roland Fantom-X8

Roland Fantom G8

Manikin Memotron

Minimoog Voyager

Roland V-Synth XT

Roland V-Synth GT

Roland VP-550

Roland SH-01 GAIA

Roland SH-201

Synthesizers.com Modular synthesizer

Dave Smith Instruments Evolver Keyboard

A custom built lap steel guitar

Harpejji by Marcodi Musical Products, LLC

Clavia Nord Wave

Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 08

Novation Supernova

Moog Little Phatty

Moogfooger Freq Box

Stylophone 350S

Yamaha Tenori-On

Apple Inc. iPod Touch

Apple Inc. iPad

PRS 6 string guitar

A bass guitar (manufacturer unknown)

A Music Man John Petrucci 6 string guitar (this particular guitar being the original prototype of Petrucci's signature model)

Steinway & Sons model D Grand Piano

Virtual instruments

MOTU MachFive

MOTU MX4 Soft Synth

Korg Legacy Collection

Spectrasonics Omnisphere

Spectrasonics Atmosphere

Spectrasonics Trilogy

Spectrasonics Stylus

Native Instruments Komplete 2

Native Instruments Absynth

Native Instruments B4 Organ

Native Instruments Guitar Rig

Native Instruments FM7

Native Instruments Pro 53

Synthogy Ivory

Bebot Robot Synth for iPhone

Korg iElectribe for iPad

Looptastic for iPad

Magic Piano for iPad

JR Hexatone Pro for iPhone/iPod Touch

ThumbJam for iPhone/iPod Touch

Sampletoy for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad

MorphWiz for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad

SampleWiz for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad

Live Rig

Korg KRONOS (88 keys) _{''Dream Theater''}

Manikin Memotron _{''Dream Theater''}

Korg Triton Extreme (88 keys) _{''solo project''}

Korg KARMA _{''solo project''}

Steinway grand piano _{''solo project''}

Roland Fantom-G8 _{''Liquid Tension Experiment and occasionally for Dream Theater's studio work''}

Freehand Systems Music Pad Pro _{Often known to fans as the "scratch pad", as he uses it to write down musical ideas. The sheet music for the entire live set is displayed on the pad for Rudess to refer to as he plays.}

3x Roland V-Synth XT

Custom made rotating keyboardstands, by Patrick Slaats

Lap steel guitar

Haken Continuum Fingerboard _{controls one Roland V-Synth XT and also controlled his modular synth.}

Zen Riffer ZR2 keytar, which controls a Roland V-Synth XT like his continuum.

Apple Inc. iPod Touch

Apple Inc. iPad

Mackie 1604VLZ Pro Mixer

APS Power backup

Glyph and Iomega Hard drives

Korg Kaoss Pad 3

Muse Research Receptor

Synthesizers.com Custom Modular Synth _{''currently retired, was used to play "On the run" and was also controlled by his continuum''}

Discography

Rudess has participated in 59 albums.

Solo albums

''Arrival'' (Cassette) (1988)

''Listen'' (CD) (1993)

''Secrets of the Muse'' (CD) (1997)

''Resonance'' (CD) (1999)

''Unplugged'' (CD) (2000)

''Feeding the Wheel'' (CD) (2001)

''4NYC'' (CD) (2002)

''Christmas Sky'' (CD) (2002)

''Rhythm of Time'' (CD) (2004)

''Prime Cuts'' (CD) (2006, compilation)

''The Road Home'' (CD) (2007, covers album)

''Notes On a Dream'' (CD) (2009)

Dream Theater

''Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory'' (CD) (1999)

''Metropolis 2000: Scenes from New York'' (VHS/DVD) (2001)

''Live Scenes from New York'' (3CD) (2001)

''Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence'' (2CD) (2002)

''Train of Thought'' (CD) (2003)

''Live at Budokan'' (2DVD/3CD) (2004)

''Octavarium'' (CD) (2005)

''Score'' (2DVD/3CD) (2006)

''Systematic Chaos'' (CD) (2007)

''Chaos in Motion'' (2DVD/3CD) (2008)

''Black Clouds & Silver Linings'' (2009)

''A Dramatic Turn Of Events'' (2011)

Project albums

''Rudess/Morgenstein Project'' (CD) (1997)

''An Evening with John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess'' (CD) (2000)

Rudess/Morgenstein Project - ''The Official Bootleg'' (CD) (2001)

Liquid Tension Experiment

''Liquid Tension Experiment'' (CD) (1998)

''Liquid Tension Experiment 2'' (CD) (1999)

''Spontaneous Combustion'' (CD) (2007, as Liquid Trio Experiment)

''When the Keyboard Breaks: Live in Chicago'' (CD) (2009, as Liquid Trio Experiment 2)

''Liquid Tension Experiment Live 2008 - Limited Edition Boxset'' (6CD/2DVD/1 Blu-ray) (2009)

Guest appearances

Vinnie Moore - ''Time Odyssey'' (1988)

Tom Coster - ''Did Jah Miss Me?'' (1989)

Annie Haslam - ''Blessing in Disguise'' (1994)

Nóirín Ní Riain - ''Celtic Soul'' (1996)

Kip Winger - ''This Conversation Seems Like A Dream'' (1997)

Rhonda Larson - ''Free as a Bird'' (1999)

Jupiter - ''Jupiter Project'' (1999)

Paul Winter and The Earth Band - ''Journey With The Sun'' (2000)

Scott McGill - ''Addition by Subtraction'' (2001)

Prefab Sprout - ''The Gunman And Other Stories'' (2001)

David Bowie - ''Heathen'' (2002)

Jupiter - ''Echo and Art'' (2003)

Neal Morse - ''?'' (2005)

Daniel J - ''Losing Time'' (2005)

Neil Zaza - ''When Gravity Fails'' (2006)

John-Luke Addison - ''Multiple Valences''

Behold... the Arctopus - ''Skullgrid'' (2007)

K3 - ''Under A Spell'' (2007)

Ricky Garcia - ''Let Sleeping Dogs Lie'' (2008)

Steven Wilson - ''Insurgentes'' (2008–2009)

Mr. Fastfinger - ''The Way of the Exploding Guitar'' (2009)

Michel Lazaro - ''Vision'' (2010)

Project RnL - ''Another One'' (2011)

Project RnL - ''The Avenger'' (2011)

Other

Speedway Boulevard - ''Speedway Boulevard'' (CD) (1981)

Various Artists - ''Romscape'' (1995)

Steinway to Heaven - Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude (Op. 10, No. 12)" (1996)

References

External links

Jordan's website

Dream Theater's website

Accent Magazine (Jordan's Online Magazine)

Jordan's Online Conservatory

Jordan Rudess performing on continuum live

Jordan Rudess Liquid T Lead emulation tutorial on Progsounds.com

Jordan Rudess emulated patches for various synths on Progsounds.com

Wiki about Jordan and his equipment (French & English)

Biography, pics, reviews and bonuses

Jordan Rudess Youtube page

Category:1956 births Category:American session musicians Category:American electronic musicians Category:American Jews Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Dream Theater members Category:Dixie Dregs members Category:American heavy metal keyboardists Category:Juilliard School alumni Category:Living people Category:American multi-instrumentalists Category:Keytarists

bg:Джордан Рудес de:Jordan Rudess es:Jordan Rudess fa:جردن رودس fr:Jordan Rudess ko:조던 루디스 hr:Jordan Rudess id:Jordan Rudess it:Jordan Rudess he:ג'ורדן רודס lt:Jordan Rudess hu:Jordan Rudess mk:Џордан Рудес nl:Jordan Rudess ja:ジョーダン・ルーデス no:Jordan Rudess pl:Jordan Rudess pt:Jordan Rudess ru:Рудесс, Джордан sq:Jordan Rudess fi:Jordan Rudess sv:Jordan Rudess tr:Jordan Rudess