Italy ˈɪtəli (
Italia iˈtaːlja), officially the
Italian Republic (
Repubblica italiana), is a
unitary parliamentary republic in
Southern 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 301338 km
2 and is influenced by a
temperate seasonal climate. With 60.8 million inhabitants, it is the
fifth most populous country in Europe, and the
23rd most populous in the world.
Rome, the capital of Italy, has for centuries been 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. Through much of its post-Roman history, Italy was fragmented into numerous city and regional states (such as the
Kingdom of Sardinia, the
Republic of Venice and the
Church State), but was
unified in 1861. In the late 19th century, through
World War I, and to
World War II, Italy possessed
a colonial empire.
Modern Italy is a democratic republic. It has been ranked as the world's 25th most-developed country and its
Quality-of-life Index was ranked in the world's top ten in 2005. Italy enjoys a
very high standard of living partially because of a high
GDP per capita and has a
high public education level. Italy is also one of the world's most
globalised nations. It is a founding member of what is now the
European Union and part of the
Eurozone. Italy is also a member of the
G7,
G8,
G20 and
NATO, adheres to the
UN. It has the world's
third-largest gold reserves,
ninth-largest nominal GDP,
tenth highest GDP (PPP) and the
sixth highest government budget in the world. It is also a member state of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the
World Trade Organization, the
Council of Europe and the
United Nations.
Italy currently maintains the world's
eleventh-largest nominal defence budget and is a participant in the
NATO nuclear sharing policy. With Italy's political, military, social and economic influence in Europe, it is considered a main
middle power and referred to as a
regional power.
The assumptions on the etymology of the name "Italia" are very numerous and the corpus of the solutions proposed by historians and linguists is very wide. According to one of the more common explanations, the term
Italia, from
Italia, was borrowed through
Greek from the
Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" (
cf. Lat vitulus "calf",
Umb vitlo "calf"). The bull was a symbol of the southern Italian tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the
Social War. Greek historian
Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after
Italus, mentioned also by
Aristotle and
Thucydides.
The name
Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now
Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern
Calabria: province of
Reggio, and part of the provinces of
Catanzaro and
Vibo Valentia). But by his time
Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of
Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region, but it was during the reign of
Emperor Augustus (end of the first century BC) that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula until the Alps.