Italy

Italy: capital Rome, population 58.9M, area 301,336 km². The 25th most populous country, in Europe. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Italy extends through the Mediterranean from the Alps, carrying the remains of Roman roads, amphitheatres and concrete domes into densely layered towns. Medieval universities and Renaissance workshops made cities into laboratories for language, science and engineering. Public opera, commedia masks, espresso machinery and Murano furnaces show how performance and craft repeatedly moved from local workshops into wider circulation.

• Censor Appius Claudius Caecus began the Appian Way in 312 BCE; its first section linked Rome to Capua before the road eventually reached Brindisi.
• Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and pyroclastic deposits while Pliny the Younger preserved an eyewitness account in two letters.
• Teaching at the University of Bologna began around 1088; by the late twelfth century, its students had organised as an universitas scholarium, a guild of students.
• The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed on 17 March 1861; Rome entered the kingdom in 1870 and became its official capital the following year.

• Dante organised the Divine Comedy as 100 cantos in interlocking terza rima and wrote in Tuscan rather than Latin, helping shape standard literary Italian.
• Galileo reported four moons orbiting Jupiter in Sidereus Nuncius in March 1610, telescopic evidence that not every celestial body circled Earth.
• Maria Montessori graduated in medicine in Rome in 1896 and opened her first Casa dei Bambini in the San Lorenzo district in 1907.
• Artemisia Gentileschi entered Florence's Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in 1616, the institution's first woman member, while building an international career as a Baroque painter.

• The Colosseum was completed under Titus in 80 CE and could accommodate an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 spectators around its elliptical arena.
• Filippo Brunelleschi completed Florence Cathedral's octagonal dome in 1436, spanning about 45.5 metres without the full wooden centring normally used to support masonry during construction.
• Hadrian's Pantheon, completed around 126 CE, balances a 43-metre interior diameter with equal height; its unreinforced Roman-concrete dome remains the largest of its kind.
• Pisa's bell tower began leaning during construction after 1173; stabilisation from 1993 to 2001 reduced its tilt from about 5.5 to 3.97 degrees.

• Venice's Teatro San Cassiano opened in 1637 as the first public opera house, selling admission to audiences rather than reserving opera for courts and aristocratic salons.
• Commedia dell'arte troupes spread across Europe from the sixteenth century, combining fixed masks such as Pantalone and Arlecchino with scenarios, improvised dialogue and rehearsed lazzi.
• Venice ordered glass furnaces moved to Murano in 1291; by the fifteenth century its makers had developed cristallo, an unusually clear soda-lime glass.
• Turin inventor Angelo Moriondo patented the earliest known espresso machine in 1884, using steam and boiling water to brew coffee rapidly for multiple customers.

What is the capital of Italy?

The capital of Italy is Rome.

What is the population of Italy?

Italy has about 58.9M people — the 25th most populous country in the world.

How big is Italy?

Italy covers 301,336 km², making it the 72nd largest country by area.

Which region is Italy in?

Italy is in Southern Europe, Europe.