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Italy, officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Italia, or Repubblica Italiana),
is a Southern European country. It comprises the Po River valley, the Italian
Peninsula and two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia.
It is shaped like a boot and for this reason Italians commonly call it
"lo stivale" ("the boot").
The Italian Republic shares its northern alpine boundary with France, Switzerland,
Austria and Slovenia. The country also shares a sea border with Croatia, Slovenia
and France. The independent countries of San Marino and the Vatican City are
enclaves within Italian territory. It belongs to the Republic also the commune of
Campione d'Italia, an enclave in the territory of the italian Switzerland. The
Republic includes only the 93% of italian physical region, delimited conventionanlly
by the alpine watershed; besides the above-mentioned enclaves, the following
territories do not belong to the country: the Principality of Monaco, Nice with Briga
and Tenda, some strips of the Alps near the French border (Monginevro, Moncenisio
and Piccolo San Bernardo), the italian Switzerland (Canton Ticino and some valleys
of Grigioni), the peninsula of Istria and a piece of Venezia Giulia, the island of
Corsica and the archipelago of Malta.
taly was home to many well-known and influential European civilisations, including the
Etruscans, Greeks and the Romans. For more than 3,000 years Italy experienced
migrations and invasions from Germanic, Celtic, Frankish, Lombard, Byzantine Greek,
Saracen, Norman, and Angevin peoples, and was divided into many independent
states until 1861 when Italy became a nation-state.
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