Your comprehensive travel guide to Italy - All in one place!
Beautiful landscapes, amazing culinary delicacies, fashion, arts and history, culture and “La Dolce Vita”, the enchanting country Italy has it all! For ages it has been a destination everybody longs for, a wish of tourists and travelers all over the world, and a gem that poets and artists described and mentioned in their creations.
Italy is a boot-shaped peninsula that juts out of southern Europe into the Adriatic Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and other waters. Its location has played an important role in its history.
The sea surrounds Italy, and mountains crisscross the interior, dividing it into regions. The Alps cut across the top of the country and are streaked with long, thin glacial lakes. From the western end of the Alps, the Apennines mountains stretch south down the entire peninsula.
West of the Apennines are wooded hills that are home to many of Italy's historic cities, including Rome. In the south are hot, dry coastlands and fertile plains where olives, almonds, and figs are grown.
Italy has given rise to a number of architectural styles, including classical Roman, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical. Italy is home to some of the most famous structures in the world, including the Coliseum and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Florence, Venice and Rome are home to many museums, but art can be viewed in churches and public buildings. Most notable is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, painted by Michelangelo sometime between 1508 and 1512.
Opera has its roots in Italy and many famous operas including "Aida" and "La Traviata," both by Giuseppe Verdi, and "Pagliacci" by Ruggero Leoncavallo were written in Italian and are still performed in the native language.
Italy is home to a number of world-renowned fashion houses, including Armani, Gucci, Benetton, Versace and Prada.
About 96 percent of the population of Italy is Italian, though there are many other ethnicities that live in this country. North African Arab, Italo-Albanian, Albanian, German, Austrian and some other European groups fill out the remainder of the population. Bordering countries of France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia to the north have influenced Italian culture, as have the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Sicily and Sardinia.