Europe : Italy

Situated in Mediterranean Europe, Italy has land frontiers with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia. There is a great deal of variety in the landscape in Italy, although it is defined predominantly by two mountain chains: the Alps and the Apennines. The former extends from east to west with peaks rising to over 14,000 feet. Most of the country's lowlands lie in the valley of its major river, the Po, which flows through a magnificent delta into the Adriatic. Three tectonic plates converge in southern Italy and Sicily, creating intense geologic activity; southern Italy's four active volcanoes include Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna.

Italy has been inhabited since Paleolithic times. The advanced Etruscan civilization arose in the ninth century BC and was overthrown by the Romans in the fourth and third centuries BC. Barbarian invasions destroyed the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, Italian lands were controlled by France, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Austria. When Napoleonic rule ended in 1815, Italy was again a grouping of independent states. The Risorgimento successfully united most of Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia by 1861, and the unification of peninsular Italy was completed by 1870.

The long Roman domination has left an indelible mark in Italy with its roads, aqueducts, temples, monuments, towns and cities, bridges, theatres and so on—all relics and memories of a past that is remote and yet also very present, a past that can be seen in every part of the country.

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