Situated in Mediterranean Europe,
Italy has land frontiers with France in the north-west,
Switzerland and Austria in the north and Slovenia in the
north-east. The peninsula is surrounded by the Ligurian
Sea, the Sardinian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west,
the Sicilian Sea and the Ionian Sea in the south and the
Adriatic Sea in the east. Italian is the language of the
majority of the population but there are minorities speaking
German, French, Slovene and Ladino.
Geographical Profile
There is a great deal of variety in the landscape in Italy,
although it is characterized predominantly by two mountain
chains: the Alps and the Apennines. The former extends
over 600 miles from east to west. It consists of great
massifs in the western sector, with peaks rising to over
14,000 feet, including Monte Bianco (Mont Blanc), Monte
Rosa and Cervino (the Matterhorn). The the chain is lower
in the eastern sector, although the mountains, the Dolomites,
are still of extraordinary beauty.
At the foot of the Alpine arc stretches the vast Po
Valley plain, cut down the middle by the course of the
river Po, the longest in Italy (390 miles), which has
its source in the Pian de Re (Monviso) and flows into
the Adriatic through a magnificent delta. The Alpine
foothills are characterized by large lakes: Lake Maggiore
and the lakes of Como, Iseo and Garda. The Apennines
form the backbone of the peninsula, stretching in a
wide arc concave to the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Corno Grande
(Gran Sasso d'Italia) is the highest peak. A large part
of central Italy is characterized by a green hilly landscape,
through which the rivers Arno and Tevere (Tiber) run.
The southern section of the chain pushes out to the
east forming the Gargano promontory and, sloping down
further south, the Salentine peninsula. It then proceeds
to the west with the Calabrian and Peloritano massif
stretching across the Strait of Messina into Sicilia.
The principal islands are Sicilia, rising up to the
great volcanic cone of Etna (10,860 feet) and Sardegna.
The main archipelagos are the Tremiti Islands in the
Adriatic Sea, the Tuscan Archipelago, the Pontine Islands,
the Aeolian Islands and the Egadi Islands in the Tyrrhenian
Sea off the coast of Sicilia.
Area: 116,303 square miles
Population: 56,778,000
Population density: 487/sq. mile
Capital: Roma (2,775,000 inhabitants)
Other important cities:
| Milano (1,369,000) |
Firenze (403,000) |
Messina (231,000) |
| Napoli (1,067,000) |
Bari (342,000) |
Trieste (231,000) |
| Torino (963,000) |
Catania (333,000) |
Padova (215,000) |
| Palermo (699,000) |
Venezia (309,000) |
Cagliari (204,000) |
| Genova (679,000) |
Verona (256,000) |
Brescia (195,000) |
| Bologna (404,000) |
Taranto (232,000) |
Perugia (153,000) |
|
