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Italy

Geography

Italy is located in southern Europe and comprises the long, boot-shaped Italian Peninsula, the land between the peninsula and the Alps. Italy borders with Switzerland (740 km or 460 mi), France (488 km or 303 mi), Austria (430 km or 270 mi) and Slovenia (232 km or 144 mi). San Marino (39 km or 24 mi) and Vatican city (0.44 km or 0.27 mi) are enclaves.

Including islands, Italy has a coastline of 7,600 kilometres on the Adriatic Sea, Ionian Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Ligurian Sea, Sea of Sardinia and Strait of Sicily.

Flag

The flag of Italy is a tricolour featuring three equally sized vertical pales of green, white, and red, with the green at the hoist side. Its current form has been in use since 19 June 1946 and was formally adopted on 1 January 1948.

Some have attributed particular values to the colors, and a common interpretation is that the green represents the country's plains and the hills; white, the snow-capped Alps; and red, blood spilt in the Wars of Italian Independence. A more religious interpretation is that the green represents hope, the white represents faith, and the red represents charity; this references the three theological virtues.

Religion

Roman Catholicism is by far the largest religion in the country. Although the Roman Catholic Church has been separated from the state, it still plays a role in the nation's political affairs partly due to Holy See's location in V atican City, within Rome itself. Some 98% of Italians are Roman Catholic of which one-third are active members. Most baptisms, weddings, and funeral services are held in church.

An agreement called a concordat governs the relationship between Italy and the Roman Catholic Church. For instance, the agreement exempts priests and other members of religious orders from military service and gives tax exemptions to Catholic organizations.

Even though the main Christian denomination in Italy is Roman Catholicism, there are some minorities of Protestant, Waldensian, Eastern Orthodox and other Christian churches. In the past two decades, Italy has received several waves of immigrants and as a result, some 825,000 Muslims (1.4%) live in Italy, although other estimates indicate that there are up to one million Muslims as well as, 75,000 Hindus, 50,000 Buddhists, and a historical community of 30,000 Jewish members.

language

The official language of Italy is Italian, a descendant of the Tuscan dialect and a direct descendant of Latin, but several regional languages are also spoken to varying degrees. Other non-indigenous languages are spoken by a substantial percentage of the population due to immigration.There are 31 endangered languages in Italy. The great Romantic English poet, Lord Byron, described Italian as a language that sounds "as if it should be writ on satin." Byron's description is not an isolated expression of poetic fancy but, in fact, a popular view of the Italian language across the world, often called the language of "love," "poetry," and "song."

Italian , like English, belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. Like French and Spanish, it is a Romance language, one of the modern languages that developed from Latin. It is spoken by about 60 million people in Italy,。

There are only a few communities in Italy in which Italian is not spoken as the first language, but many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardised Italian and other regional languages.

Economy

Italy has a diversified industrial economy with high gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and developed infrastructure. According to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and The World Factbook, in 2012 Italy was the ninth-largest economy in the world, the fifth-largest in Europe and the third-largest in the Eurozone in terms of nominal GDP, and the tenth-largest economy in the world and fifth-largest in Europe in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) GDP.

Energy and natural resources

Italy has few natural resources. There are no substantial deposits of iron, coal, or oil. Proven natural gas reserves, mainly in the