Culture of Italy

Italy has been the centre of the Roman civilization, the Catholic Church, and of the Renaissance, as well as the starting point of movements with a great international impact such as the Baroque, Neoclassicism, and Futurism and significantly contributed to historical phenomenons such as the Age of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution.

[43] Notable Italian film directors from this period include Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Duccio Tessari, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Roberto Rossellini; some of these are recognised among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.

More than 3,000 productions have been made on its lot, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it, from some cinema classics to recent rewarded features (such as Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, The English Patient, The Passion of the Christ, and Gangs of New York).

Some of the series that followed Tex Willer were Zagor (1961), Mister No (1975), and more recently, Martin Mystère (1982) and Dylan Dog (1986).The subject matter was always an adventure, whether western, horror, mystery or science fiction.

At the court of Emperor Frederick II, who ruled the Sicilian kingdom during the first half of the 13th century, lyrics modelled on Provençal forms and themes were written in a refined version of the local vernacular.

[101] University cities such as Padua, Bologna and Naples remained centres of scholarship and the intellect, with several philosophers such as Giambattista Vico (widely regarded as being the founder of modern Italian philosophy)[102] and Antonio Genovesi.

During the late 19th and 20th centuries, there were also several other movements which gained some form of popularity in Italy, such as Ontologism (whose main philosopher was Vincenzo Gioberti),[103] Christian democracy, communism, socialism, futurism, fascism, and anarchism.

Travelling troupes of players would set up an outdoor stage and provide amusement in the form of juggling, acrobatics and, more typically, humorous plays based on a repertoire of established characters with a rough storyline, called canovaccio.

The founding members of the Novecento ('20th century') movement were the critic Margherita Sarfatti and seven artists: Anselmo Bucci, Leonardo Dudreville, Achille Funi, Gian Emilio Malerba, Piero Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi, and Mario Sironi.

Italy's centre includes the celebrated culinary regions of Tuscany, famous for its olive oil and bean dishes, and Emilia-Romagna, home of foods such as prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano Reggiano, and ragù alla bolognese.

The expression refers to an apocryphal story, dating from at least the 16th century, in which it is said that Christopher Columbus, having been told that finding a new trade route was inevitable and no great accomplishment, challenges his critics to make an egg stand on its tip.

By the 1760s and 1770s, the Italian authors who were members of academies and contributors to philosophical and literary journals began to disseminate their ideas close to the realm of power in Milan and Turin, Parma and Modena, Florence and Naples.

Writing before the outbreak of the First World War, the historian Alexander Carlyle noted that "we can without difficulty recognize" not only "the survival of the tradition of the ancient empire", but also a "form of the perpetual aspiration to make real the dream of the universal commonwealth of humanity".

[216] Themes and styles from Il pastor fido were adapted endlessly by German artists, including Opitz, who wrote several poems based on Guarini's text, and Schütz himself, whose settings of a handful of passages appeared in his 1611 book of Italian madrigals.

During the 18th century, Italy was in the spotlight of the European grand tour, a period in which learned and wealthy foreign, usually British or German, aristocrats visited the country due to its artistic, cultural and archaeological richness.

The history of the Christian Church during the medieval period would not be complete without mention of such men of Italian birth as Benedict of Nursia, Pope Gregory I, Francis of Assisi, and the philosopher-theologians Anselm of Canterbury, Joachim of Fiore, and Thomas Aquinas.

Among the many great artists of the 15th century—the golden age of Florence and Venice—were the architects Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Leon Battista Alberti; the sculptors Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Desiderio da Settignano, and Andrea del Verrocchio; and the painters Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Paolo Uccello, Masaccio, Frà Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca, Giovanni Bellini, Andrea Mantegna, Antonello da Messina, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Luca Signorelli, Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Vittore Carpaccio.

[224] Literary achievements—such as the poetry of Petrarch, Torquato Tasso, and Ludovico Ariosto, and the prose of Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Baldassare Castiglione—exerted a huge and lasting influence on the subsequent development of Western culture.

Notable intellectual and political leaders of more recent times include the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1907, Ernesto Teodoro Moneta; the sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto; the political theorist Gaetano Mosca; the educator Maria Montessori; the philosopher, critic, and historian Benedetto Croce, with his idealistic antagonist Giovanni Gentile; Benito Mussolini, the founder of Fascism and dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943; Carlo Sforza, Alcide De Gasperi, and Giulio Andreotti, famous latter-day statesmen; and the Communist leaders Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti, and Enrico Berlinguer.

Italian scientists and mathematicians of note include Galileo Galilei, Fibonacci, Guglielmo Marconi, Antonio Meucci, Italian-American Enrico Fermi, Gerolamo Cardano, Bonaventura Cavalieri, Evangelista Torricelli, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Marcello Malpighi, Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia, Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Amedeo Avogadro, Stanislao Cannizzaro, Giuseppe Peano, Angelo Secchi, Camillo Golgi, Ettore Majorana, Emilio Segrè, Tullio Levi-Civita, Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, Daniel Bovet, Giulio Natta, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian-American Riccardo Giacconi, and Giorgio Parisi.

There are two main national television organisations responsible for most viewing: state-owned RAI, funded by a yearly mandatory licence fee and Mediaset, a commercial network founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

[258] Other official symbols, as reported by the Presidency of the Italian Republic,[256] are: The teaching in the schools of the "Il Canto degli Italiani", an account of the Risorgimento events, and on the adoption of the flag of Italy are prescribed by law n. 222 of 23 November 2012.

By virtue of that, the prime minister has exclusive power to: co-ordinate intelligence policies, determining the financial resources and strengthening national cyber security; apply and protect State secrets; authorise agents to carry out operations, in Italy or abroad, in violation of the law.

[309] This solemn rite is carried out only on three other occasions, during the celebrations of the Anniversary of the Unification of Italy (17 March), of the Festa della Repubblica (2 June), and of the National Unity and Armed Forces Day (4 November).

[332] It is noteworthy to pinpoint that owing to the Italian Renaissance, church art in Italy is extraordinary, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Fra Carnevale, Tintoretto, Titian, Raphael, Giotto, and others.

[228] He, Emilio G. Segrè (1905–1989), who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton), Bruno Rossi (1905–1993), a pioneer in Cosmic Rays and X-ray astronomy), and a number of Italian physicists were forced to leave Italy in the 1930s by Fascist laws against Jews.

[341][342][343] In biology, Francesco Redi has been the first to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies, and he described 180 parasites in details; Marcello Malpighi founded microscopic anatomy; Lazzaro Spallanzani conducted research in bodily functions, animal reproduction, and cellular theory; Camillo Golgi, whose many achievements include the discovery of the Golgi complex, paved the way to the acceptance of the Neuron doctrine; Rita Levi-Montalcini discovered the nerve growth factor (awarded 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine).

[365] Italian skiers achieved good results in Winter Olympic Games, Alpine Ski World Cup, and tennis has a significant following in Italy, ranking as the fourth most practised sport in the country.

[387] In addition, the Epiphany in Italy is associated with the folkloristic figure of the Befana, a broomstick-riding old woman who, in the night between 5 and 6 January, bringing good children gifts and sweets, and bad ones charcoal or bags of ashes.

[416] Famous women of the period include politicians Nilde Iotti, Tina Anselmi, and Emma Bonino; actresses Anna Magnani, Sofia Loren, and Gina Lollobrigida; soprano Renata Tebaldi; ballet dancer Carla Fracci; costume designer Milena Canonero; sportswomen Sara Simeoni, Deborah Compagnoni, Valentina Vezzali, Francesca Schiavone, Flavia Pennetta, and Federica Pellegrini; writers Natalia Ginzburg, Elsa Morante, Dacia Maraini, Maria Bellonci, Cristina Campo, Anna Maria Ortese, Antonia Pozzi, Alda Merini, and Oriana Fallaci; architect Gae Aulenti; scientist and 1986 Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini; astrophysicist Margherita Hack; astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti; pharmacologist Elena Cattaneo; and CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti.