Italy

Do you know the land where the lemon-trees grow,

in darkened leaves the gold-oranges glow,

a soft wind blows from the pure blue sky,

the myrtle stands mute, and the bay-tree high?

Do you know it well?

Johann Wolfgang Goethe – Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

Take the art works of Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and Caravaggio, the operas of Verdi and Puccini, the cinema of Federico Fellini, add the architecture of Venice, Florence and Rome and you have just a fraction of Italy’s treasures from over the centuries.

Italy is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe.

For centuries divided by politics and geography until its eventual unification in 1861, Italy’s culture has been shaped by a multitude of regional customs and local centres of power and patronage. Italy had a central role in Western culture for centuries and is still recognised for its cultural traditions and artists. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a number of magnificent courts competed for attracting the best architects, artists and scholars, thus producing a great legacy of monuments, paintings, music and literature.

Italy has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other country in the world (54), and has rich collections of art, culture and literature from many periods. Furthermore, Italy has, overall, an estimated 100,000 monuments of any sort (museums, palaces, buildings, statues, churches, art galleries, villas, fountains, historic houses and archaeological remains), and according to some estimates the nation is home to half the world’s great art treasures.

Associazione Marchigiana Attivita’ Aeatrali