General information Italy:
Official name:  Republica Italiana, or the Republic of Italy
Area:301,230 km² (more than 7x the Netherlands)
Number of inhabitants: Almost 58 million (July 2003)
Population density: More than 192 people per square kilometer
Capital: Rome
Monetary unit: The Euro since 2002. (1 ? = $ 1.24; 1 Dollar = ? 0.7; Rate in Jan. 2009)
Fuel prices: Gas: ? 1,10 tot ? 1,25; Diesel: ? 0.89; LPG: ? 0.59 per liter
License plate of cars: I
Telephone country prefix: 39
Internet country code: .it
Time difference: GMT+1; the same as in Holland
Road network: The road network in the north is very good, most highways are toll roads. But the further you go south the worse the roads get and the same is true for the interior of the country.
Prices in general: Italy is not a cheap country. Hotels in Rome, and other cities and the more luxurious campsites are pretty expensive. For a cappucino we paid between ? 0,80 (Calabria) and ? 6,50 (Venice). A large beer costs between ? 1,80 and ? 10 (an exception at Veneti?), but on average 3 to 4 euro.
The best in Austria: We liked most of the landscape throughout Italy, except the busy and industrial areas in the north. We are impressed most by the ruins of Pompei, but the Cinque-Terre and the many mountaineous areas are also very beautiful
Geographical data:
In the northwest Italy borders to France (488 km), in the north to Switzerland (740 km) and Austria (430 km) and in the northeast to Slovenia (232 km). It also contains two other (very small) countries: Vatican City and San Marino. The distance between north to south is about 1200 kilometers. From east to west the distance is never more than 170 and never less than 54 kilometers (except in the north).
Population:
Italy has almost 57 million inhabitants. The areas around the big cities have the largest population density. About 18% of the population lives in one of the cities with 350,000 inhabitants or more.
Languages
Italian is the official language but in the provence Bolzano (southern Tirol) a lot of people speak German (about 200,000 people), in some of the valleys of Piemonte and Valle d'Aosta people speak French (about 100,000 people); in the valleys of the Dolomites and the region Friuli-Venezia Giulia some speak Raetoroman. In the provence of Basilicata, southern Italy, a part of the population even speaks Albanese.
Look at eurolang.net to learn more about the languages and dialects spoken in Italy.
History
Since earliest times the history of Italy has been influenced by cultural and political divisions resulting from the peninsula's disparate geography and by circumstances that made Italy the scene of many of Europe's most important struggles for power. Most people will have learned a bit about the Roman empire at school.
We have decided not to write a detailed historypage anymore, since we would have to cite other sources that are often on the internet already. Instead a few links with more information about Italian history:
Climate:
Italy has a predominantly Mediterranean climate; Alpine in far north; hot, dry in south. In summertime the average temperatures in the lowlands are 28°C in the south and 22°C in the north. The winter is very cold in the Alps, cold and foggy in the Po Plain and the central Apennines; mild and even warm on the Ligurian coast, the Neapolitan coast and in Sicilia.
Flora and fauna:
In Alpine regions, fauna includes marmots, ibex and chamois, sometimes even brown bears, lynx, ermines and blue hares. Mountainous regions are abundant in vultures, buzzards, falcons and kites. Reptile species that are common in Italy comprise numerous lizards and snakes, even poisonous vipers, some areas show populations of scorpions. In the past, most of Italy was covered by trees, however, intense deforestation during centuries gone-by led to a significant reduction in woodland.