Italy's capital and largest city is Rome; other major urban areas include Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice.

[22] A developed country with an advanced economy, Italy has the ninth-largest nominal GDP in the world, the second-largest manufacturing industry in Europe, and plays a significant role in regional[23] and—to a lesser extent—global[24] economic, military, cultural, and political affairs.

As a cultural superpower, Italy has long been a renowned global centre of art, music, literature, cuisine, fashion, science and technology, and the source of multiple inventions and discoveries.

The main historic peoples of possible non-Indo-European or pre-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, the Elymians and Sicani of Sicily, and the prehistoric Sardinians, who gave birth to the Nuragic civilisation.

The Italian Peninsula, named Italia, was consolidated into a unified entity during Roman expansion, the conquest of new territories often at the expense of the other Italic tribes, Etruscans, Celts, and Greeks.

In the wake of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Rome grew into a massive empire stretching from Britain to the borders of Persia, engulfing the whole Mediterranean basin, in which Greek, Roman, and other cultures merged into a powerful civilisation.

The widespread use of Romance languages derived from Latin, numerical system, modern Western alphabet and calendar, and the emergence of Christianity as a world religion, are among the many legacies of Roman dominance.

Italian explorers and navigators from the maritime republics, eager to find an alternative route to the Indies to bypass the Ottomans, offered their services to monarchs of Atlantic countries and played a key role in ushering the Age of Discovery and colonization of the Americas.

During the High Renaissance, popes such as Julius II (1503–1513) fought for control of Italy against foreign monarchs; Paul III (1534–1549) preferred to mediate between the European powers to secure peace.

Italy did not receive other territories promised by the Treaty of London, so this outcome was denounced as a "mutilated victory", by Benito Mussolini, which helped lead to the rise of Italian fascism.

Under the Treaty of Paris between Italy and the Allied Powers, areas next to the Adriatic Sea were annexed by Yugoslavia, resulting in the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus, which involved the emigration of around 300,000 Istrian and Dalmatian Italians.

Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, formed a national unity government supported by most main parties,[115] pledging to implement an economic stimulus to face the crisis caused by the pandemic.

The sovereign states of San Marino and Vatican City (the smallest country in the world and headquarters of the worldwide Catholic Church under the governance of the Holy See) are enclaves within Italy,[122] while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.

As the peninsula is in the centre of the Mediterranean, forming a corridor between Central Europe and North Africa, and having 8,000 km (5,000 mi) of coastline, Italy has received species from the Balkans, Eurasia, and the Middle East.

[159] Deforestation, illegal building, and poor land-management policies have led to significant erosion in Italy's mountainous regions, leading to ecological disasters such as the 1963 Vajont Dam flood, the 1998 Sarno,[160] and the 2009 Messina mudslides.

The centre-right coalition, which included Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy, Matteo Salvini's League, Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, and Maurizio Lupi's Us Moderates, won most seats in parliament.

Italy's population almost doubled during the 20th century, but the pattern of growth was uneven because of large-scale internal migration from the rural south to the industrial north, a consequence of the Italian economic miracle of the 1950–1960s.

Twelve "historical minority languages" are formally recognised: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan, and Sardinian.

The country is well known for its creative and innovative businesses,[246] a competitive agricultural sector[247] (with the world's largest wine production),[248] and for its influential and high-quality automobile, machinery, food, design, and fashion industries.

[265] Political efforts to revive growth with massive government spending produced a severe rise in public debt, that stood at over 132% of GDP in 2017,[266] the second highest in the EU, after Greece.

Artists such as Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Tintoretto, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian took painting to a higher level through the use of perspective.

The unperturbed faces and gestures of Piero della Francesca and the calm Virgins of Raphael were replaced by the troubled expressions of Pontormo and emotional intensity of El Greco.

Italy's most famous composers include the Renaissance Palestrina, Monteverdi, and Gesualdo; the Baroque Scarlatti, and Vivaldi; the classical Paganini, and Rossini; and the Romantic Verdi and Puccini.

Classical music has a strong hold in Italy, as evidenced by the fame of its opera houses, such as La Scala, and performers such as the pianist Maurizio Pollini and tenor Luciano Pavarotti.

Italy was represented in the progressive rock and pop movements of the 1970s, with bands such as PFM, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, Goblin, and Pooh.

Singers such as Domenico Modugno, Mina, Andrea Bocelli, Raffaella Carrà, Il Volo, Al Bano, Toto Cutugno, Nek, Umberto Tozzi, Giorgia, Grammy winner Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti, Tiziano Ferro, Måneskin, and others have received international acclaim.

[382] Calligrafismo was a sharp contrast to the Telefoni Bianchi-American style comedies and is rather artistic, highly formalistic, expressive in complexity, and deals mainly with contemporary literary material.

[385] Italian film directors include Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Duccio Tessari, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Roberto Rossellini, recognised among the greatest of all time.

[427] Desserts have a long tradition of merging local flavours, such as citrus fruits, pistachio, and almonds, with sweet cheeses such as mascarpone and ricotta or exotic tastes such as cocoa, vanilla, and cinnamon.

[435] The Epiphany is associated with the folklore figure of Befana, a broomstick-riding old woman who, on the night of 5 January, brings good children gifts, and bad ones charcoal or bags of ashes.