Italy
Edited by:
Massimo Martini
Access
Italy is connected to continental Europe via the Alpine arc, which can be travelled on four main axes. To the north-west, the Mont Blanc Tunnel connects Courmayeur with Chamonix on the in the Aosta Valley; the Frejus Tunnel connects Bardonecchia with Modane in France on the in Turin. To the north, the Brenner Pass on the motorway is the main gateway from Austria and Germany, open all year round. To the north-east, the Tarvisio pass on the motorway connects Italy with Austria and Slovenia; the Fernetti border on the allows access from Trieste to the Balkan peninsula. Italy has no motorway vignettes: tolls are charged on almost the entire motorway network operated by private concessionaires. The State Railways (Trenitalia and Italo) operate a high-speed network linking the main cities: High Speed covers the Turin-Milan-Bologna-Florence-Rome-Naples corridor with times that are competitive with flying. International connections by train include services to Paris (via Turin or Venice), Zurich (via Milan), Vienna and Munich (via Brenner), Ljubljana and Zagreb (via Trieste). The airport network is extensive: the main international hubs are Rome Fiumicino (FCO), Milan Malpensa (MXP), Milan Linate (LIN), Venice Marco Polo (VCE), Naples Capodichino (NAP) and Catania Fontanarossa (CTA). Important airports for the Alpine and Apennine areas are Turin Caselle (TRN), Bergamo Orio al Serio (BGY), Verona Villafranca (VRN), Bolzano (BZO) and Trieste (TRS). Inland public transport includes regional railway networks (region by region), suburban bus networks and, for large centres, metros and trams. The seasonal Alpine passes - Petit St. Bernard, Col de l'Agnello, Col de l'Iseran, Stilfserjoch - are closed in winter and can be travelled in summer on toll-free state or provincial roads. In winter, access roads to ski resorts may require winter tyres or chains.
Introduction
Italy is a parliamentary republic in southern Europe, a founding member of the European Union (1957) and NATO (1949), and the world's sixth largest economy by nominal GDP. Its territory covers 301,340 km² - from the Po Valley to the Apennine limestones, from the Sicilian volcanoes to the glaciers of Mont Blanc - with a morphology that is among the most varied in Europe: about 35% mountainous, 42% hilly, 23% flat. It borders France to the north-west, Switzerland and Austria to the north, and Slovenia to the north-east; it is otherwise surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, with three inland seas - Tyrrhenian, Adriatic and Ionian - and includes two large islands, Sicily and Sardinia, and numerous smaller ones. The capital is Rome. The highest peak is Mont Blanc (4,807 m), shared with France, to the Italian side of which belongs the eastern glacial peak, with Monte Rosa (4,634 m, Dufourspitze shared with Switzerland) and Gran Paradiso (4,061 m) - the only four-thousand-metre peak entirely on Italian territory - as the national mountaineering benchmarks. The population as of 31 December 2025 is 58,942,828 residents (ISTAT), with a structural demographic downward trend that has been ongoing for years. The official language is Italian; historical linguistic minorities are recognised (German in South Tyrol, French in Valle d'Aosta, Ladin, Friulian, Slovenian, Occitan, Sardinian, Greek, Albanian, Croatian).
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Description
The Italian territory is divided into three large geographical systems. The Alps - from Liguria to Friuli - make up the northern arc with peaks exceeding 4,000 m in the western and central sections: from the Maritime and Cottian Alps, through the Pennine Alps (Monte Rosa), Graie Alps (Gran Paradiso, Monte Bianco), Lepontine Alps, Rhaetian Alps (Bernina, Ortles-Cevedale, Adamello), Carnic Alps and Julian Alps. The Apennines cover the peninsula for almost 1,400 km from north to south: the highest peaks are the Gran Sasso (2,912 m) in the centre-south and the Maiella (2,793 m), which dominate a mountain system of calcareous nature with plateaus, valleys, gorges and karst areas. The major islands have their own orography: Etna (3,357 m) is the highest active volcano in Europe; Gennargentu (1,834 m) is the Sardinian mountain system; the Nebrodi and Madonie complete the Sicilian structure. The Po Valley - about 46,000 km², the largest alluvial plain in Western Europe - is drained by the Po (652 km, the longest Italian river) and its right (Sesia, Ticino, Adda, Oglio, Mincio) and left (Dora Baltea, Tanaro, Trebbia, Taro) tributaries. The large subalpine lakes - Maggiore, di Como, di Garda - are of glacial origin and open on the southern side of the Alps. Italy is the country with the longest coastline in continental Mediterranean Europe: about 8,000 km of coastline, including cliffs (Amalfi, Cinque Terre, Ionian Calabria), sandy beaches (Adriatic, Ionian coasts) and lagoon environments (Venetian Lagoon).
The history of the Italian peninsula is among the most stratified and influential in the western world. Pre-Roman civilisations - Etruscans, Greeks of Magna Graecia, Samnites, Celts of the Po Valley - preceded Republican Rome (509-27 BC), which progressively unified the peninsula. The Roman Empire (27 B.C.-476 A.D.) extended its influence throughout the Mediterranean, leaving behind the Latin language, law, hydraulic and road engineering, and the spread of Christianity. The Middle Ages saw the fragmentation of the peninsula into communes, seignories, regional states and foreign dominions: the communes of central and northern Italy (Florence, Venice, Genoa, Milan) achieved extraordinary economic and cultural prosperity. The Renaissance (14th-16th centuries) - with Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio for literature; Giotto, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael for the figurative arts; Galileo for science - revolutionised European culture. The Risorgimento (1815-1861) led to national unification: the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed on 17 March 1861. The two World Wars, Mussolini's Fascism (1922-1945), the Partisan Resistance and the birth of the Republic (2 June 1946) marked the 20th century. Italy was among the founding countries of the ECSC (1951) and the EEC (1957), forerunners of the European Union.
The Italian economy is the third largest in the European Union by nominal GDP and among the top ten in the world. The production fabric is characterised by a system of highly specialised small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), often organised into industrial districts (fashion in Prato and the north-east, precision mechanics in Emilia-Romagna, ceramics in Sassuolo, leather in the Marche, eyewear in the Belluno area). Sectors of international excellence include automotive (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Fiat), fashion and luxury (Gucci, Prada, Armani, Versace, Zegna), food and agri-food (Italian cuisine has been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2010; Italian PDOs and PGIs are the most numerous in the world), design (Milan is the world capital of industrial design), pharmaceuticals, machinery and plants. Tourism contributes around 13% of GDP: with 230 sites and 58 UNESCO World Heritage properties (the first country in the world for number of sites), Italy is among the world's top destinations for international arrivals.
The system of protected natural areas includes 24 national parks managed by ISPRA and the respective directorates. The main Alpine parks are the Gran Paradiso National Park (1922, the oldest in Italy), the Stelvio National Park (the largest, 1,307 km²), the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park, the Val Grande National Park and the Majella National Park. Among the Apennine parks are the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, the Monti Sibillini National Park, the Abruzzo Lazio and Molise National Park (historical refuge area for the Marsican bear Ursus arctos marsicanus and the Apennine wolf Canis lupus italicus). The Italian fauna of mountaineering and outdoor interest includes ibex (Capra ibex) - reintroduced to the Alps from Gran Paradiso, where it was saved from'19th-century extinction -, Alpine chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra), Apennine chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica ornata), wolf (Canis lupus), brown bear (Ursus arctos) lynx (Lynx lynx) - expanding in the eastern Alps -, golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) and bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) - reintroduced to the Alps in 1986.
Italian hiking has one of the most extensive trail networks in Europe. The Club Alpino Italiano (CAI, founded in 1863 in Turin) manages more than 150,000 km of marked trails, thousands of mountain huts and bivouacs and publishes official maps. The Alte Vie - Alta Via 1 and 2 in the Dolomites, Alta Via della Valle d'Aosta 1 and 2, Alta Via della Valle di Susa, Alta Via Ligure and many regional ones - are some of the most prestigious multi-day trekking routes in the Alps. Long-distance hiking trails of national importance include the Via Francigena (1,000 km from Aosta to Rome), the Cammino di Santiago (Italian variant), the Sentiero Italia CAI - the longest hiking trail in the world (7,200 km from Aspromonte to the Alps), which can be walked in about 400 days - and the regional Apennine trails. The Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009, are the scene of some of the most iconic hikes: the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, the Passo Rolle, the Pale di San Martino, the Catinaccio, the Odle. In the Alta Via the ferrate are a characteristic element of Dolomite mountaineering, with a tradition dating back to the military constructions of the First World War.
Italy's mountaineering history is among the richest in the world, with roots in the Enlightenment and naturalistic exploration of the 18th century. The first ascent of Mont Blanc (1786, Paccard and Balmat) was stimulated by the Genevan naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, but Italian mountaineering has a primary reference figure in the Aosta Valley with the Courmayeur guides. The 19th century saw the first ascents of the great Alpine peaks: Cervino (1865, Edward Whymper with guides from Valais and Zermatt), Monte Rosa (1855), Gran Paradiso (1860, first British ascents). The 20th century marked the golden age of Italian mountaineering with figures such as Emilio Comici - father of modern climbing and theorist of the direct route - who opened the first grade VI routes in the Dolomites in the 1930s; Walter Bonatti, who achieved some of the most extraordinary mountaineering feats of the century (Bonatti spur to the Dru solo, 1955; winter on the Matterhorn, 1965); Riccardo Cassin (Walker to the Grandes Jorasses, 1938); Reinhold Messner, from South Tyrol, who made the first solo ascent of Everest (1980) and the first ascent of all fourteen eight-thousanders (1986). The Dolomites - discovered as a mountaineering theatre in the 19th century, with John Ball, Paul Grohmann and the local guides - are still the gym of world climbing, with crags such as Arco, Finale Ligure, Sportiva, Finale, Orpierre and the Val di Mello wall.
Italian trail running has in the Tor des GĂ©ants and the Lavaredo Ultra Trail its most emblematic appointments. The Tor des GĂ©ants (Courmayeur, September) is Europe's longest and toughest ultra trail race: 330 km with 24,000 m D+ looping through the Valle d'Aosta, traversing 25 passes above 2,000 m and crossing the Gran Paradiso and Mont Avic, with a limit of 150 hours. The Lavaredo Ultra Trail by UTMB (Cortina d'Ampezzo, June) - the only Italian stage of the UTMB World Series circuit - takes place at the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the Dolomites with routes from 10 to 120 km. Other notable events include the Grigne Sky Marathon, the Monte Rosa SkyMarathon (80 km, 5,000 m D+, starting in Alagna and finishing in Zermatt, in the international alpine area), the Chiavenna-Lugano, the Cortina Trail and the Limone Extreme. The Italian trail running scene is one of the richest in Europe, with a deep-rooted tradition in Alpine mountain races (the SkyRunning World Series has Italian roots, founded by Marino Giacometti) and local events that animate the Alpine arc and the Apennines every summer weekend.
Information
General Data
Capital: Rome
Area: 301.340 km²
Minimum elevation: -3.44m (reclaimed plain of Jolanda di Savoia, Ferrara)
Maximum elevation: 4,807m - Monte Bianco
Inhabitants: 58,942.828 (as of 31.12.2025, ISTAT)
Official name: Italian Republic
Name of inhabitants: Italians
Regions: 20
Bordering countries: Austria - France - San Marino - Slovenia - Switzerland - Vatican City
Institutional website: https://www.governo.en