that later spread in Europe. Early Modern Main articles: Italian Renaissance, Italian Wars, and Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)

formation of the Papal States in central Italy. Until the 13th century, Italian politics were dominated by the relations between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Papacy, with most of the Italian city-states siding for the former (Ghibellines) or for the latter (Guelphs) from momentary convenience.[41]
It was during this chaotic era that Italy saw the rise of a peculiar institution, the medieval commune. Given the power vacuum caused by extreme territorial fragmentation and the struggle between the Empire and the Holy See, local communities sought autonomous ways to restore law and order.[42] In 1176 a league of city-states, the Lombard League, defeated the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano, thus ensuring effective independence for most of northern and central Italian cities. In coastal and southern areas, the Maritime Republics, the most notable being Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi, heavily involved in the Crusades, grew to eventually dominate the Mediterranean and monopolize trade routes to the Orient.[43]
In the south, Sicily had become an Islamic emirate in the 9th century, thriving until the Italo-Normans conquered it in the late 11th century together with most of the Lombard and Byzantine principalities of southern Italy.[44] Through a complex series of events, southern Italy developed as a unified kingdom, first under the House of Hohenstaufen, then under the Capetian House of Anjou and, from the 15th century, the House of Aragon. In Sardinia, the former Byzantine provinces became independent states known as Giudicati, although some parts of the island were under Genoese or Pisan control until the Aragonese conquered it in the 15th century. The Black Death pandemic of 1348 left its mark on Italy by killing perhaps one third of the population.[45][46] However, the recovery from the plague led to a resurgence of cities, trade and economy which allowed the bloom of Humanism and Renaissance, that later spread in Europe.
Early Modern
Main articles: Italian Renaissance, Italian Wars, and Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)


Leonardo da Vinci, the quintessential Renaissance man (self portrait, ca. 1512).
In the 14th and 15th centuries, northern-central Italy was divided into a number of warring city-states, the rest of the peninsula being occupied by the larger Papal States and the Kingdom of Sicily, referred to here as Naples. The strongest among these city-states gradually absorbed the surrounding territories giving birth to the Signorie, regional states often led by merchant families which founded local dynasties. War between the city-states was endemic, and primarily fought by armies of mercenaries known as condottieri, bands of soldiers drawn from around Europe, especially Germany and Switzerland, led largely by Italian captains.[47] Decades of fighting eventually saw Florence, Milan and Venice emerged as the dominant players that agreed to the Peace of Lodi in 1454, which saw relative calm brought to the region for the first time in centuries. This peace would hold for the next forty years.
The Renaissance, a period of vigorous revival of the arts and culture, originated in Italy thanks to a number of factors, as the great wealth accumulated by merchant cities, the patronage of its dominant families like the Medici of Florence,[48][49] and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Conquest of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.[50][51][52] The Italian Renaissance peaked in the mid-16th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil of the Italian Wars. The ideas and ideals of the Renaissance soon spread into Northern Europe, France, England and much of Europe. In the meantime, the discovery of the Americas, the new routes to Asia discovered by the Portuguese and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, all factors which eroded the traditional Italian dominance in trade with the East, caused a long economic decline in the peninsula.
Following the Italian Wars (1494 to 1559),

oric peoples of non-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, the Elymians and Sicani in Sicily and the prehistoric Sardinians. Between the 17th and the 11th century

lentia). But by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region, but it was during the reign of Emperor Augustus (end of the first century BC) that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula until the Alps.[30]
History

Main article: History of Italy
Prehistory and antiquity
Main articles: Prehistoric Italy, Magna Graecia, Etruscan Civilization, Italia (Roman Empire), Ancient Rome, Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic, and Roman Empire


The Colosseum in Rome, built ca. 70 – 80 AD, is considered one of the greatest works of Roman architecture and engineering.
Excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Paleolithic period, some 200,000 years ago,[31] modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. The Ancient peoples of pre-Roman Italy – such as the Umbrians, the Latins (from which the Romans emerged), Volsci, Samnites, the Celts and the Ligures which inhabited northern Italy, and many others – were Indo-European peoples; the main historic peoples of non-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, the Elymians and Sicani in Sicily and the prehistoric Sardinians.
Between the 17th and the 11th century BC Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Italy[32][33][34][35][36][37][38] and in the 8th and 7th centuries BC Greek colonies were established all along the coast of Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula became known as Magna Graecia. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily.
Rome, a modest agricultural community conventionally founded in 753 BC, grew over the course of centuries into a massive empire, stretching from Britain to the borders of Persia, and engulfing the whole Mediterranean basin, in which Greek and Roman cultures merged into a unique civilization. The Roman Imperial legacy has deeply influenced Western civilization for the following millennia. Ancient Rome shaped most of the Modern World.[39] In a slow decline since the late 2nd century AD, the Empire broke into two parts in 395 AD. The Western Roman Empire, under the pressure of the Barbarian invasions, eventually dissolved in 476 AD, when the last western Emperor was deposed by the Germanic chief Odoacer, while the Eastern half of the Empire survived for another thousand years.
Middle Ages
Main article: Italy in the Middle Ages

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, for centuries symbol of the Kings of Italy.

Castel del Monte, built by German Emperor Frederick II.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy was seized by the Ostrogoths,[40] followed in the 6th century by a brief reconquest under Byzantine Emperor Justinian. The invasion of another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, late in the same century, reduced the Byzantine presence to a rump realm (the Exarchate of Ravenna). The Lombard kingdom was subsequently absorbed into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne in the late 8th century. The Franks also helped the

7.2 Visual art 7.3 Literature and theatre 7.4 Music 7.5 Cinema

y rapidly industrialized and acquired a colonial empire in Africa.[13] However, Southern and rural Italy remained largely e
3 Geography
3.1 Environment
3.2 Climate
4 Politics
4.1 Government
4.2 Law and criminal justice
4.3 Foreign relations
4.4 Military
4.5 Administrative divisions
5 Economy
5.1 Infrastructure
6 Demographics
6.1 Ethnic groups
6.2 Languages
6.3 Religion
6.4 Education
6.5 Healthcare
7 Culture
7.1 Architecture
7.2 Visual art
7.3 Literature and theatre
7.4 Music
7.5 Cinema
7.6 Science
7.7 Sport
7.8 Fashion and design
7.9 Cuisine
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 External links
Etymology

The assumptions on the etymology of the name "Italia" are very numerous and the corpus of the solutions proposed by historians and linguists is very wide.[24] According to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin: Italia,[25] was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" (cf. Lat vitulus "calf", Umb vitlo "calf").[26] The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus,[27] mentioned also by Aristotle[28] and Thucydides.[29]
The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria: province of Reggio, and part of the provinces of Catanzaro and Vibo Vaxcluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influentia