The Italian Job Dvd
Magdalen Dano
Italy,[a] officially the Italian Republic,[b] is a country in Southern[12] and Western[13][c] Europe. It is located on a peninsula that extends into the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land border, as well as islands, notably Sicily and Sardinia.[15] Italy shares its borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and two enclaves: Vatican City and San Marino. It is the tenth-largest country in Europe, covering an area of 301,340 km2 (116,350 sq mi),[3] and third-most populous member state of the European Union, with a population of nearly 60 million.[16] Its capital and largest city is Rome; other major urban areas include Milan, Naples, Turin, Florence, and Venice.
In antiquity, Italy was home to numerous peoples; the Latin city of Rome, founded as a Kingdom, became a Republic that conquered the Mediterranean world and ruled it for centuries as an Empire.[17] With the spread of Christianity, Rome became the seat of the Catholic Church and the Papacy. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy experienced the fall of the Western Roman Empire and inward migration from Germanic tribes. By the 11th century, Italian city-states and maritime republics expanded, bringing renewed prosperity through commerce and laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.[18][19] The Italian Renaissance flourished during the 15th and 16th centuries and spread to the rest of Europe. Italian explorers discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, leading the European Age of Discovery. However, centuries of rivalry and infighting between city-states left the peninsula divided.[20] During the 17th and 18th centuries, Italian economic importance waned significantly.[21]
A developed country, Italy has the ninth-largest nominal GDP in the world, the second-largest manufacturing industry in Europe,[26] and plays a significant role in regional[27] and global[28] economic, military, cultural, and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union, and is part of numerous international institutions, including NATO, the G7 and G20, the Latin Union and the Union for the Mediterranean. As a cultural superpower, Italy has long been a renowned centre of art, music, literature, cuisine, fashion, science and technology, and the source of multiple inventions and discoveries.[29] It has the world's highest number of World Heritage Sites (59), and is the fifth-most visited country.
Hypotheses for the etymology of Italia are numerous.[30] One theory suggests it originated from an Ancient Greek term for the land of the Itali, a tribe that resided in the region now known as Calabria. Originally thought to be named Vituli, some scholars suggest their totemic animal to be the calf (Lat vitulus, Umbrian vitlo, Oscan Vteli).[31] Several ancient authors said it was named after a local ruler Italus.[32]
The ancient Greek term for Italy initially referred only to the south of the Bruttium peninsula and parts of Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia. The larger concept of Oenotria and "Italy" became synonymous, and the name applied to most of Lucania as well. Before the Roman Republic's expansion, the name was used by Greeks for the land between the strait of Messina and the line connecting the gulfs of Salerno and Taranto, corresponding to Calabria. The Greeks came to apply "Italia" to a larger region.[33] In addition to the "Greek Italy" in the south, historians have suggested the existence of an "Etruscan Italy", which consisted of areas of central Italy.[34]
The borders of Roman Italy, Italia, are better established. Cato's Origines describes Italy as the entire peninsula south of the Alps.[35] In 264 BC, Roman Italy extended from the Arno and Rubicon rivers of the centre-north to the entire south. The northern area, Cisalpine Gaul, considered geographically part of Italy, was occupied by Rome in the 220s BC,[36] but remained politically separated. It was legally merged into the administrative unit of Italy in 42 BC.[37] Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and Malta were added to Italy by Diocletian in 292 AD,[38] which made late-ancient Italy coterminous with the modern Italian geographical region.[39]
The Latin Italicus was used to describe "a man of Italy" as opposed to a provincial, or one from the Roman province.[40] The adjective italianus, from which Italian was derived, is from medieval Latin and was used alternatively with Italicus during the early modern period.[41] After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy was created. After the Lombard invasions, Italia was retained as the name for their kingdom, and its successor kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire.[42]
Lower Paleolithic artefacts, dating back 850,000 years, have been recovered from Monte Poggiolo.[43] Excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence in the Middle Palaeolithic period 200,000 years ago,[44] while modern humans appeared about 40,000 years ago at Riparo Mochi.[45]
The ancient peoples of pre-Roman Italy were Indo-European, specifically the Italic peoples. 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. Other ancient populations include the Rhaetian people and Camunni; known for their rock drawings in Valcamonica.[46] A natural mummy, tzi, dated 3400-3100 BC, was discovered in the Similaun glacier in 1991.[47]
The first colonisers were the Phoenicians, who established emporiums on the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia. Some became small urban centers and developed parallel to Greek colonies.[48] Between the 17th and 11th centuries BC, Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Italy.[49] During the 8th and 7th centuries, Greek colonies were established at Pithecusae, eventually extending along the south of the Italian Peninsula and the coast of Sicily, an area later known as Magna Graecia.[50] Ionians, Doric colonists, Syracusans and the Achaeans founded various cities. Greek colonisation placed the Italic peoples in contact with democratic forms of government and high artistic and cultural expressions.[51]
Ancient Rome, a settlement on the river Tiber in central Italy, founded in 753 BC, was ruled for 244 years by a monarchical system. In 509 BC, the Romans, favouring a government of the Senate and the People (SPQR), expelled the monarchy and established an oligarchic republic.
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. A permanent association, with most of the local tribes and cities, was formed, and Rome began the conquest of Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. 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 long reign of the first emperor, Augustus, began an age of peace and prosperity. Roman Italy remained the metropole of the empire, homeland of the Romans and territory of the capital.[53]
The Roman Empire was among the largest in history, wielding great economical, cultural, political, and military power. At its greatest extent, it had an area of 5 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles).[61] The Roman legacy has deeply influenced Western civilisation shaping the modern world. 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.[62]
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy fell under the Odoacer's kingdom, and was seized by the Ostrogoths.[63] Invasions resulted in a chaotic succession of kingdoms and the supposed "Dark Ages". The invasion of another Germanic tribe in the 6th century, the Lombards, reduced Byzantine presence and ended political unity of the peninsula for the next 1,300 years. The north formed the Lombard kingdom, central-south was also controlled by the Lombards, and other parts remained Byzantine.[64]
The Lombard kingdom was absorbed into Francia by Charlemagne in the late 8th century and became the Kingdom of Italy.[65] The Franks helped form the Papal States. Until the 13th century, politics was dominated by relations between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Papacy, with city-states siding with the former (Ghibellines) or with the latter (Guelphs) for momentary advantage.[66] The Germanic emperor and Roman pontiff became the universal powers of medieval Europe. However, conflict over the Investiture Controversy and between Guelphs and Ghibellines ended the imperial-feudal system in the north, where cities gained independence.[67] In 1176, the Lombard League of city-states, defeated Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, ensuring their independence.
Venice and Genoa were Europe's gateways to the East, and producers of fine glass, while Florence was a centre of silk, wool, banking, and jewellery. The wealth generated meant large public and private artistic projects could be commissioned. The republics participated in the Crusades, providing support, transport, but mostly taking political and trading opportunities.[69] Italy first felt the economic changes which led to the commercial revolution: Venice was able to sack Byzantine's capital and finance Marco Polo's voyages to Asia; the first universities were formed in Italian cities, and scholars such as Aquinas obtained international fame; capitalism and banking families emerged in Florence, where Dante and Giotto were active around 1300.[18] In the south, Sicily had become an Arab 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.[72] The region was subsequently divided between the Kingdom of Sicily and Kingdom of Naples.[d][73] The Black Death of 1348 killed perhaps a third of Italy's population.[74]
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