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Italy

Overview

Italy, a European country with a long Mediterranean coastline, has left a powerful mark on Western culture and cuisine. Its capital, Rome, is home to the Vatican as well as landmark art and ancient ruins. Other major cities include Florence, with Renaissance masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s “David” and Brunelleschi’s Duomo; Venice, the city of canals; and Milan, Italy’s fashion capital.

Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has historically been home to myriad peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout what is now modern-day Italy, the most predominant being the Indo-European Italic peoples who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era, Phoenicians and Carthaginians founded colonies mostly in insular Italy,[22] Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia of Southern Italy, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively. An Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which eventually became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People. The Roman Republic initially conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the Italian peninsula, eventually expanding and conquering parts of EuropeNorth Africa and Asia. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became a leading cultural, political and religious centre, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy’s lawtechnologyeconomyart, and literature developed.[23][24]

During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Migration Period, but by the 11th century numerous rival city-states and maritime republics, mainly in the northern and central regions of Italy, became prosperous through trade, commerce, and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.[25] 

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Trip Ideas

Lake

The Italian Lakes

About The Italian Lakes The most famous lakes in Italy are in the north of the country at the edge of the mountains which climb into the Alps. Lake Garda, Lake Como and Lake Maggiore are very large and long, ...

Italian-lakes
Historical city

Rome

About Rome Both for its history as the capital of much of ancient Europe and for its present day role as one of Europe’s most vibrant cities, for most tourists traveling to Italy, Rome heads the list of places ...

Rome