Italy =)

ITALY

Hello, my country is Italy and of course I’m Italian. Here we speak Italian, it’s a Romance language similar to French or Spanish.

Italy is a southern European country situated in the Italian peninsula, where there are two smaller independent states: the Vatican City and the Republic of San Marino. Sicily and Sardinia are part of Italy too.

It shares its borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas. About 60 million people live in Italy and its area is about 300.000 square kilometres.

(Florence)

After long time of conflicts, wars and different political systems now we have a Republic with a two-chamber parliament: the Senate or upper house and the Chamber of Deputies or lower house. Our president is Berlusconi, a very controversial politician. Italy is a founding-member of European Union, so our currency is the Euro.

Italy’s capital city is Rome, but there are many other important cities like Bologna, Verona, Florence, Milan, Turin, Genoa, Bari, Naples or Palermo.

Italy was the centre of the Roman Empire, which left a huge archaeological, cultural and literary heritage, the Italian peninsula saw the birth of the Humanism and Renaissance and during the Second World War we participated by Hitler side because we lived in a dictatorship with Mussoinli.

(Genoa)

(Venice)

There are many important Italians artists, writers, musicians, scientists or philosophers, for example Dante, Galileo, da Vinci, Caravaggio, Raphael, Paganini, Verdi, Puccini, Botticelli, Donatello, Rossini, Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Pavarotti, Bocelli, Fellini…

Our typical dishes are varied. However, people just know pizza and pasta. We have foods like risotto (with rice) and lots of types of cheeses.

I really like living in Italy, it's a beautiful country. I must discover each corner and smell :)