- published: 09 Apr 2010
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Italy i/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km2 (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.
Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.
Northeast Italy (Italian: Italia nord-orientale or just Nordest) is one of the five official statistical regions of Italy used by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), a first level NUTS region and a European Parliament constituency. Northeast encompasses four of the country's 20 regions:
Italian is the main language of the area but it is often used only with strangers or in the main cities or for cultural reasons, because the most part of the inhabitants speaks their own national language; so we have Venetian language widely spoken in Veneto and on the coast to Trieste and Istria, as well as in the towns of Pordenone and Gorizia in Friuli, and in most part of Trentino, but recognised just by region Veneto; Friulano in the most part of Friuli, it is officially recognised by the Italian state; as for German, the first language of South Tyrol, where Italian is spoken just by less than a third of the inhabitants; as Ladin, spoken by a few thousands people in the Dolomites; then Slovene, spoken (and recognised by Italy) on the border of Italy and in Istria; where main language is Croat, but Italian is recognised as a minority language.