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Italy is…
Privileged travel destination of
poets and writers who have praised it in their verses as a
place of great fascination, Italy is a crossroads of many
cultures, various people, contrasts. It is a cosmopolitan
place for ancient vocation, universal and local at the same
time, in the language, in the art and in the culture. It is
the country with a hundred cities and thousands of bell towers.
It is a varied, different, singular landscape, connected more
with the geography than with the history. It is the country
of the imagination and science, the invention and the research.
It is the Belpaese (Beautiful Country), place where"one
knows how to live" pre-eminently, where the climate is
sweet, and art and culture are an integrating part of everyday
life, where beauty and taste are a national business. In short,
Italy is made up of a lot of Italies, and we invite you to
travel up and down the routes picking the originality from
an overall look, with patience and above all curiosity.
Useful references:
Here you find some web sites which have
maps:
Identity Card
Surface: 301.268 Kmq
Population: 57.200.000 inhabitants
Government: democratic parlamentary republic
Language
The official language is Italian. It is spoken
also in the Republic
of San Marino, in the Canton Ticino, in part of Grigioni,
Corsica, in Nizza, Monaco, in Istria and Dalmatia. Languages
as the Sardinian and the ladino of some Dolomites valleys
and of Friuli are considered languages themselves. In Valle
d'Aosta we find zones in which the franco-provençal
is spoken, in Val Pellice the provençal, in Alto Adige
the German, like in some areas of Veneto and of Friuli. In
Venezia Giulia there are minorities that speak the Slovene,
in Molise the Serb-Croatian, the Albanian in the South and
Sicily, the Greek in Calabria and Salento (Apulia), the Catalan
at Alghero (Sardinia). The Italian is a romance language,
namely it derives from the vulgar Latin brought by the Roman
in all the peninsula. For historical reasons, it is based
on a family of dialects, the Tuscany ones. The Italian population
speaks numerous dialects, today limited to the household conversation
and, in any case, informal.
The dialects are grouped in large families: the northerner,
the one of the so-called meridian dialects, that are spoken
in the centre of Italy and in Rome, the meridional one, the
one of the "southern extreme" dialects (Calabria,
Sicily, Apulia), and the one of the Sardinian dialects, which
keep the tone of the Latins vowels.
Religion
Most of the population is catholic.
There are important Jewish, orthodox protestants, Waldensian
and Muslims communities. The infuence of the Catholic Church
is very strong in the social, political, economic and cultural
life of the Country, but from some decades we point out a
greater laicization of the civil society. The catholic religion
is not the established religion any more and its teaching
is not more compulsory in the state schools just after the
Concordat signed by the Italian State and by the Vatican in
1984.
Churches
The visting hours of the churches are from 7.00 to 12.00 and
from 14.00 to 18.00. Most of the catholic churches are open
from 7.00 to 18.00. The religious celebrations hours vary
according to the day of the week and the city. For information,
consult the web sites concerning the Italian churches:
- Vatican:http://www.vatican.va/phome_it.htm (Holy
See)
Everything about the Vatican: religious celebrations, catechism,
prayers, Vaticans Museums, Vatican library, Vatican City,
the present time, news, ways of the spirit and internal
search engine.
- Catholic Church: http://www.chiesacattolica.it/
Official web site of the Italian catholic church: Bible,
word of the day, press review, thematic plans and internal
search engine.
- Waldensian Church: http://www.chiesavaldese.org/
Official web site of the Waldensian church: the beliefs,
the history, places of culture, mass media, culture and
education, events.
History
As a geographic entity, Italy dates
back to the Etruscan time, but discords and divisions have
hindered the unit for a long time. The Country was only united
under the Romans (III sec. a.c.), that subdued all the Italian
civilizations. Rome imposed its language, laws, calendar,
religion and placed the Pope at the head of the catholic church.
In the Middle Ages the papacy relied on the Franks in order
to defeat the Longobards and Carlo Magno turned into Emperor
of the Sacred Roman Empire (800d.c.). Five centuries of fights
between popes and emperors followed. Meanwhile the invaders
Normans, Angevins and Aragoneses conquered Sicily and the
South. In the North the independent city-states were created,
with the powerful Venice at the head thanks to its trade exchanges
with the East. An extraordinary fervour of studies and arts
made of Italy the greatest cultural centre of Europe, and
Florence the "crib" of the Renaissance. But the
small independent states did not have the force to contrast
the Spanish and the Austrians invaders. Only the reign of
Piedmont remained independent until 1796, when, during the
war between Austria and France, it surrendered to Napoleon.
The Renaissance fights and the wars of independence brought
to the unification of Italy under the Savoia's guide, that
used also the backing of the democratic groups led by Mazzini
and Garibaldi. The Reign of Italy was proclaimed on 17th March
1861 and the unification was completed in 1866 with the annexation
of Veneto and in 1870 with the conquest of Rome.
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