The Italian Republic or Italy (Italian: Repubblica Italiana or Italia) is a country in Southern Europe. It comprises a boot-shaped peninsula and two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia, and shares its northern alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. It is a founding member of what is now the European Union, and a member state of the United Nations, NATO and the G8 nations. San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves countries within Italian territory, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.
History of Italy
Italy has shaped the cultural and social development of the whole Mediterranean area, deeply influencing European culture as well. Important cultures and civilizations have existed there since prehistoric times. After Magna Graecia, the Etruscan civilization and especially the Roman Republic and Empire that dominated this part of the world for many centuries, Italy was central to the development of modern European civilization, European philosophy, science and art during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Modern Italy became a nation-state belatedly, following centuries of existance as a collection of smaller kingdoms and city-states; on March 17, 1861, when most of the states of the peninsula were united under king Victor Emmanuel II of the Savoy dynasty, which ruled over Piedmont. The architects of Italian unification were Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a general and national hero, and Giuseppe Mazzini, a political visionary and leader of the radical democratic faction in the movement for Italian unificatication (Risorgimento). With the annexation of Venetia (1866) and Rome (September 20, 1870), the Italian unification was complete.
After the victory during World War I, the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini that took over in 1922 with the March on Rome, led, in 1936-37, to the alliance with Nazi Germany and other Axis Powers and ultimately, in September 1943, Italy's defeat in World War II. On June 2, 1946, a referendum on the monarchy resulted in the establishment of the Italian republic, which led to the adoption of a new constitution on January 1, 1948.
Italy was a charter member of NATO (April 4, 1949) and the European Union (1952/58) and on December 14, 1955 Italy joined the United Nations. Italy had joined the growing political and economic unification of Western Europe as a signatory to the Treaty of Rome in 1956, and the adoption of Euro in 1999.
Italy has experienced a lot of controversy through out history. One of Italy's biggest controversies of today is the separatist organization, Northern League (Lega Nord). The goal of the Northern League is to have Padania (an area of Northern Italy) secede from Italy and become an independent country. This type of politics has been popularized in part by a separatist Northern Italian political party that views Southern Italians, particularly the Mezzogiorno region in Southern Italy, to be inferior to Northern Italians, and view Southern Italy as an economic burden on Northern Italy.