GEOGRAPHY - With an area of 117,487 square miles, Italy offers an abundance of topographical diversity. The Alps form the border with France, Switzerland, and Austria in the north, while the Apennines run down the center of the peninsula, all the way to the tip. Beaches, cliffs, and numerous bays and coves adorn the coasts. Winters are mild and summers are hot, save in the mountains, and are tempered by the Mediterranean.

POPULATION - 57.6 million people live in Italy, whose capital is Rome. Of those people, ninety-five percent are Catholic, with the rest identifying themselves as Protestants or Jews. Italians tend to have Mediterranean complexions, with dark hair and olive skin and are descendant from the Etruscan and Latin cultures that are the forebears of the Romans. Traces of the ancient Greeks and Moors complement the Roman character of the Italian people.

LANGUAGE - Most Italians speak some dialect of Italian, which is descendant from the ancient Latin spoken by the Romans. The Romance languages - Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian - can all trace their lineage back to Latin, and the etymology of many of these languages' words are predicated upon words spoken by Caesar and Virgil 2,000 years ago. A smattering of German, French, and Slovene is spoken in the north of Italy.

July 2003

Italy is a country rich with culture. Roman ruins vie with Baroque sculpture and Renaissance architecture for historical primacy, while the Alps in the north compete for tourists with the turquoise blue waters of the Adriatic and Ionian seas. First settled during the first millennia BC, the Italian peninsula has experienced an envious past. Italians can lay claim to once running one of the world's largest empires and also triggering the Renaissance, a revival of classical artistry and thinking which led Europe out of the Dark Ages.

The country's politics are fractious and unpredictable. It can be argued that true political intrigue was born on the Ides of March, when Caesar was murdered on the Senate floor. In parallel, modern Italy has experienced over fifty governing coalitions since the end of World War II, with the average government lasting eleven months. The lack of government longevity has made Italians cynical about political institutions. The recent corruption scandals of the 1990s, during which hundreds of politicians, businessmen, and even Church officials were found to be on the Mafia's payroll, destroyed any remaining collective trust in governing traditions, even bringing down the country's longstanding, dominant Christian Democratic party.

Faith in religion has also been tainted in Italy. While the Catholic Church was once the preeminent institution in Italy, today it has about as much sway as the legacy of Benito Mussolini. Just as the average Italian's suspicions of government officials and politicians has led to his disinterest in politics, so have the self-serving actions of a Church which functioned as a political arbiter for 1500 years left many Italians embracing secularism. While over ninety-five percent of the country identifies with Catholicism, less than twenty-five percent indicate that they practice their religion in any major way. There may even be as many churches built during the Renaissance as there are practicing Catholics remaining in Italy, an ironic twist for a country that was once the most influential center of the Catholic world.

The legacy of the past has certainly left stark delineations amongst Italians. The North, including cities like Milan, Turin, and Genoa which arose from the legacy of Italy's Renaissance city-states, are powerful industrial and financial centers rivaling any first world commercial hub. On the other hand, the southern part of the country, encompassing regions like Naples, Calabria, and Sicily, suffers from a more impoverished legacy. While the northern city-states were enjoying quasi-independence and flourishing commerce, the southern parts of Italy fell under the yoke of foreign rulers, who instituted a harsh feudal society. Norman invaders in the 11th century and later Spanish overlords maintained a strict system of serfdom, causing Italy to appear more like two states - a wealthy northern state and a poorer southern state - within one political entity rather than a unified whole.