Area: 116,303
square miles Population: 56,778,000 Population density: 487/sq. mile Capital: Roma (2,775,000 inhabitants)
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.
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.
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