General information: Italy became a nation-state relatively late, in 1861, when the city-states of the peninsula, as well as Sardinia and Sicily, were united by King VICTOR EMMANUEL. The fascist dictatorship of Benito MUSSOLINI, which came to power after World War I, led Italy to a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany and defeat in World […]

South of Pavia are the Oltrepo Pavese hills, famous for their vineyards. The best Lombard wines are produced here. The famous thermal spa is also located here. Salice Terme , based on local hydrogen sulfide and salt sources. Lake Como is located 40 km north of Milan at the foot of the Alps. It stretched from […]

Beach Holiday Italy is surrounded on three sides by seas (Ligurian, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian, Ionian and Adriatic). The country has good conditions for a beach holiday, most of the beaches have been awarded the blue flag (a sign of a clean coastal zone). A number of beaches are free, as they belong to the municipality. The […]

Rome Rome, the capital of Italy, is situated on seven hills on either side of the Tiber. On every street corner you will find remnants from over 2000 years of history. The Colosseum and the Roman Forum are the most famous buildings from classical antiquity, basilicas are reminiscent of the beginnings of Christianity and the […]

Passport and visa regulations Nationalities Passport required visa required Return ticket required Turkey Yes 1 Yes Other EU countries no no no Switzerland no no no Austria no no no Germany no no no ID cards/identity cards i.a. Citizens of the following countries listed in the table above can enter the country with a valid […]

In Sicily these discontent against Spain continue to spread even after the repression. For a couple of years, rumors, conspiracies, various attempts, soon discovered and repressed than attempted. And now no more plebs: but other elements, those who had followed the plebs in ’48 and had really been defeated, that is craftsmanship, bourgeoisie, even people of baronry […]

Even in Naples and in his kingdom, if the rioters of the province followed the Neapolitan people and obeyed them, the barons obeyed the orders of the viceroy and sent and led armed people to block the city, followed by many local nobles who silenced the their anti-baronial resentments, and from gangs of marauders recruited […]

The struggle, at first and in the intentions of the people, was more against the taxes than against Spain; more against the viceroy than against the distant king. But the distinction was difficult to maintain for long. The nobles had once been chastised by Spain, but not anymore. Or if he had punished the big and dangerous barons, he […]

In northern Italy there is still part of a larger conflict between the House of Austria against the Protestants and the Bourbons, a war between the Spaniards and the French, with some participation of Italian elements. It is absent or almost Savoy, after the death of Vittorio Amedeo I and the failures of Prince Tommaso, and […]

After the Russian resistance and American intervention showed the likelihood of German defeat, an underground political ferment swept through Italy. The Communist Party, which had always maintained a certain clandestine organization, was joined by the reconstruction initiatives of the other parties dissolved by fascism, particularly the socialist and the popular (with the name of Christian […]

Important successes in the fight against left-wing terrorism were achieved in the following months, especially after the liberation, on January 28, 1982, of the American general JL Dozier, deputy commander of the allied land forces of Southern Europe, kidnapped by the BR in Verona on December 17, 1981. The spread of confessions following this episode […]

During the negotiations for the formation of the new ministry, led by the president of the DC A. Forlani, a long and hard labor conflict at FIAT ended unexpectedly, born from the announcement of drastic cuts in labor. The union reacted with the blockade of the factories and the PCI, with a speech delivered by […]

The 1979 elections marked, after the abandonment of the national solidarity policy, the substantial resumption of center-left alliances revolving around the DC-PSI axis, but with the decisive novelty represented by the new bargaining power that Craxi managed to obtain for his party regardless of the stunted electoral successes. The PCI, which had steadily passed to […]

Prehistory Prehistoric art in Italy begins during the Upper Paleolithic. Out of stratigraphy some female figurines were found, with almost always very pronounced sexual characteristics, of the type of the so-called Aurignacian Venus, but which in reality are not at all attributable to this culture: they are the Venus of the Balzi Rossi, of Chiozza, of Savignano sul […]

This classicism was partly promoted by Frederick II, under whom ancient styles still steeped in medieval tradition acquire new energy. We owe him great 13th-century architecture, especially of a civil character (Castel del Monte, Porta di Capua, the loca solaciorum in Lucera, Gravina etc.), a rare fusion of classical culture, Arab experiences and gothic spirit. Beyond the […]

Architecture. Participants in the new cultural attitude that had been maturing in Florence since the end of the fourteenth century, F. Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio are the interpreters of the new conception of art and space; measure and proportion are the basis of the architectural structure, of the sculptural and pictorial composition. Another protagonist of 15th […]

Architecture. Starting especially from the second half of the fifteenth century, Rome with the papal court frequented by humanists, artists, architects became the new center in the development of architecture, which it found in the works and drawings (projects, notebooks, etc.) of the Sangallo, the most significant testimonies of Bramante and Raphael. Bramante, first active in […]

Against the backdrop of the political and cultural events that mark Europe, Italian art and architecture are full of ferment, even if they lose their position of domination and leadership. Italy still remains a reference point in the great decoration (Italian artists are active from England to Eastern Europe) and destination of the grand tour ; however, […]

The realization, or the elaboration still in the project phase, of important urban and monumental enterprises marks the opening of the century: the arrangement of G. Valadier in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, the projects of the Bonaparte forum by GA Antolini and of L. Canonica, the one for the Piazza del Duomo by G. […]

Responding to the variety of ideological assumptions of the public to which they are addressed and of the various functions to which they are intended, seventeenth-century art and architecture show a differentiated range of expressions. Alongside a persistent classicist attitude, the concept of imagination imposes itself, laying the foundations for an illusionistic and spectacular language […]

The Turin exhibition of 1902, with the pavilions designed by R. D’Aronco, contrasting with the continuation of monumental eclecticism (emblematic examples, in Rome, the Vittoriano by G. Sacconi and the Palazzo di Giustizia by G. Calderini) is one of the most significant expressions of the innovative ferments of the last decade of the 19th century. […]

Humanism in the vernacular In the second half of the 15th century, also as a result of the Council of Ferrara-Florence, which recalls in Italy many Greek scholars (including Giorgio Gemisto Pletone and Cardinal Bessarione), and the fall of Byzantium into the hands of the Turks, Greek studies have their flowering in Italy. However, they […]

In the twentieth century an increasingly important role is played by critics, who will come to condition the work of writers and the orientations of the public to a previously unthinkable extent, and in some moments will establish itself as the most representative literary genre. Initially all literary critics move somewhat on the example of […]

In the aftermath of the liberation, the Politecnico, a magazine founded and directed by Vittorini, affirms itself as the organ and emblem of a new pedagogical project, with the aim of affirming the central role of culture and intellectuals in the process of national renewal, which is conceived as a work of acculturation of the masses […]