Portal:Italy

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Portale Italia

Italy is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. With 60.2 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the twenty-third most populous in the world. The land known as Italy today has been the cradle of European cultures and peoples, such as the Romans. Italy's capital, Rome, was for centuries the political centre of Western civilization, as the capital of the Roman Empire. Through much of its post-Roman history, Italy was fragmented into numerous kingdoms and city-states, but was unified in 1861. Italy was a founding member of the European Community (EC) in 1957, which became the European Union in 1993.

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Featured article

Early, tinted 20th-century photograph of the Palazzo Pitti, then still known as La Residenza Reale following the residency of King Emmanuel II between 1865–71, when Florence was the capital of Italy.

The Palazzo Pitti (sometimes called the Pitti Palace) is a vast mainly Renaissance palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker. It was bought by the Medici family in 1539 as the official residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

Early in the 19th century, the palazzo, by then a great treasure house, was used as a power base by Napoleon, and much later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. In the early 20th century, the palazzo together with its contents was given to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III; subsequently its doors were opened to the public as one of Florence's largest art galleries. Today, housing several minor additions in addition to those of the Medici family, it is fully open to the public.

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Featured picture

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Did you know

First Italian balloon flight medal

...that the first Italian public balloon flight (see medal) was organised by Count Andreani in Brugherio?

...the famous biblical period movies Pier Paolo Pasolini’s "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" (1964), Bruce Beresford’s "King David" (1985) and Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ" (2004) were filmed in Matera?

...that Italy's 1957 Eurovision entry, "Corde Della Mia Chitarra", was so long that it resulted in the introduction of length restrictions for competing songs?

...that Poliphilo, the main character in the Renaissance book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, was said to have felt "extreme delight," "incredible joy," and "frenetic pleasure and cupidinous frenzy" when he saw the buildings depicted in the book?

...that the Italian automaker Autobianchi was founded by the bicycle manufacturer Bianchi, tire giant Pirelli and Fiat?

...that within a tomb in the town of Bergamo, Italy there is a statue dedicated to the life of Enrico Rastelli, the world's greatest juggler?

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People

Camillo Benso, Conte di Cavour portrait by Francesco Hayez

Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour (or Camillo di Cavour; August 10, 1810 – June 6, 1861) was an Italian statesman and a leading figure in the movement toward Italian unification. He became the first Prime Minister of the new Kingdom of Italy.

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Olympics

The XX Olympic Winter Games were held in Turin, Italy from February 10 to 26 in 2006. This was the second time that Italy hosted the Olympic Winter Games, as it had hosted the VII Olympic Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo in 1956, and the third time overall that Italy hosted an Olympic Games, as it had also staged the Games of the XVII Olympiad in Rome in 1960.

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Literature

Invisible Cities (Italian: Le città invisibili) is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.

The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by the narrator, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of Polo's descriptions (1-3 pages each) of the 55 cities. Short dialogues between the two characters are interspersed every five to ten cities and are used to discuss various ideas presented by the cities on a wide range of topics including linguistics and human nature.

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Paintings

Portrait of Moise Kiesling
Amedeo Modigliani
(1915), Oil on canvas
Brera Gallery, Milan

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Cinema

1900 (also called Novecento) is a 1976 epic film starring Robert de Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Donald Sutherland, Alida Valli and Burt Lancaster, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Set in Bertolucci's ancestral region of Emilia, the film chronicles the lives of two men during the political turmoils that took place in Italy in the first half on the 20th century.

Alfredo Berlinghieri (de Niro) and Olmo Dalco (Depardieu) are born on the same day in 1900, but belong to opposite ends of the social spectrum. Alfredo is the son of a rich landowner, while Olmo is a misbegotten peasant son. As Alfredo is somewhat rebellious and despises the falseness of his family, in particular his father, he befriends Olmo, who is brought up as a socialist.

After World War I, their friendship continues, but slowly the rise of the fascists as embodied by the sadistic Attila (Donald Sutherland) separates them. Alfredo chooses the side of Fascism, while Olmo fights for the communists.

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