Italy (geographical region)


The Italian geographic region, Italian physical region or Italian region is a geographical region of Southern Europe delimited to the north by the mountain chains of the Alps. This subregion is composed of a peninsular and continental part and an insular part. Located between the Balkan Peninsula and the Iberian Peninsula, it protrudes into the centre of the Mediterranean Sea and overlooks the Adriatic Sea, the Ionian Sea, the Ligurian Sea, the Sardinian Channel, the Sea of Corsica, the Sea of Sardinia, the Strait of Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The Italian geographic region, in its traditional and most widely accepted extent, has an area of approximately, which is greater than the area of the entire Italian Republic. The region also includes territories that are sovereign parts of Croatia, France, Slovenia, and Switzerland, as well as the four small sovereign states of the Principality of Monaco, the Republic of Malta, the Republic of San Marino, and the Vatican City State.

Name of Italy

The meaning of the term Italy has been the subject of reconstructions not only by linguists but also by historians, traditionally attentive to the question; however, one is not always faced with etymologies in the strict sense but rather with hypotheses that are based on considerations external to the specifically linguistic reconstruction of the name, and which over time have formed a rich corpus of solutions among which there are numerous ones that refer to traditions or in any case highly problematic.
Since ancient times it has been hypothesized that the name derives from the word Italói, a term with which the Greeks designated the Vituli, a population that lived in the extreme tip of the peninsula, the region south of today's Catanzaro, who worshipped the simulacrum of a calf. The name would therefore mean "inhabitants of the land of calves".
What is usually considered certain is that the name initially indicated only that extreme part of Calabria which lies to the south of the gulfs of Saint Euphemia and Squillace; subsequently the name "Italy" was extended as far as Cilento and Lucania, between the river Lao and Metaponto.
File:RomanItaly.svg|thumb|Evolution of the geographical extension of the territory which, de jure, constituted Italy during the Roman era. De facto, all the lands south of the Alps were called Italy from the battle of Clastidium in 222 BC.
Gradually the name "Italy" was used to indicate an ever larger territory, extending progressively and unstoppably towards the north: in the 4th century BC it extended as far as Paestum and Taranto; around 300 BC it expanded to include the whole of Campania. At the beginning of the 3rd century BC almost the entire peninsula was defined as "Italy", from Tuscany to the Marche, unified under Roman domination. De facto, all the lands south of the Alps were called "Italy" from the late 3rd century BC. De jure, the northern border of Italia was moved west from the Esino to the Rubicon and east to include Liguria, apparently by Sulla. Under Augustus it was brought to correspond off exactly with its current meaning: the northern border was made to coincide with the Alps, the western border with the Var river and the eastern border with the Raša river, in Istria. Finally, with Diocletian, the name "Italy" was extended to Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, that is, to the entire Italian geographical region.

Geography

Physical geography

In common language, the Italian region generally refers to the Italian Peninsula. Similarly, the inhabitants of the islands use the term continent to designate the mainland that goes from the Alps to Reggio Calabria. Geographically, Italy running in north-west to south-east direction can be divided into the calcareous Alps, the alluvial plain, the Northern, Central and Southern Apennines and Sicily.

Geographical limits

The natural limits of the Italian region, marked by the Alpine drainage divide and the sea, are relatively clear, except at the western and eastern extremities of the Alps.
On the eastern borders, the chain of the Julian Alps and the Kvarner Gulf are traditionally indicated, to which Dante Alighieri also refers. However, other proposed limits include a border along the Isonzo, which would exclude the upper Isonzo valley, Trieste and Istria entirely. Other borders were listed by the historian, and exile from Cherso, Luigi Tomaz in "The border of Italy in Istria and Dalmatia", among which, in the Augustan regional structure of Roman Italy, the administrative limes along the Arsa River, marked the end of Venetia et Histria.
Therefore, to the east, despite the more depressed character of the orography and the scarcity of surface hydrography found in the region south of the Nauporto pass near Postumia, the continuity of the mountain bulwark is ensured by the reliefs placed between Mount Pomario and Mount Nevoso, its terminal pillar, where it reaches the Kvarner Gulf and the Bay of Buccari, immediately south-east of Fiume. To the east, therefore, the extreme limit of Italy is generally identified in Buccari. To the south-east of the Nauporto pass and to the north-west of Mount Pomario, the traceability of the natural border is rather difficult as in this area the hydrographic watershed does not coincide with the orographic chain, which is characterized by rather small peaks.
As for the islands of Cherso and Lussino, their belonging to the Italian geographical region may vary according to the sources and interpretations. In particular, they are included in the Italian geographical region as these islands are the natural continuation of Istria, being closer to the Istrian coasts than to the Dalmatian ones.
On the contrary, to the west, the boundary is unchallenged and easily definable between the canton of Valais, Savoy, Aosta Valley and Piedmont, near the coast can be represented by that buttress of the Maritime Alps which, detaching itself from the Po-French drainage divide in correspondence with Monte Clapier, follows the Authion Massif, which culminates in Mont Bégo, and divides the Roia basin to the east from the Varo and Paglione basins to the west. The salient created by the side valley of the Bevera including the Mentone basin is orographically separated from everything, thus grafting the border at Capo d'Aglio where the entire Principality of Monaco is included. Due to the characteristic of being orographically separated from everything, the Menton basin can be excluded. In the latter case, the geographical limit would rejoin the current international state border at the height of Mount Buletta, corresponding with it up to the sea.
This solution makes it possible to bring the border of the Italian geographic region closer to the ethno-linguistic one between Ligurian, Intemelio and Occitan languages of the Niçard dialect. Another hypothesis would have it that the border, after touching the top of Mont Pelat, includes the entire basin of the Varo river with its tributaries, placing Nice within the Italian region, or that, albeit smaller, than from Monte Clapier divides the Roia and Paglione basins on one side from that of the Varo on the other, reaching the coast not far from the latter's mouth, south-west of Nice, thus leaving Nice still in the geographic region of Italy. However, there is an opposite thesis, supported by Charles de Gaulle at the end of World War II, which, assigning the nature of a transalpine pass to Colle di Tenda, excludes the entire Roia Valley with Ventimiglia from the Italian physical region.

Continental and peninsular part

In a narrow sense, the continental part, delimited to the north by the Alpine watershed, to about 40% of the Italian region and is located in the north of an imaginary line that goes from the mouth of the Magra river to that of the Rubicone river. Most of them are made up of the water catchment areas of the Po, Adige, Brenta, Piave, Tagliamento and Isonzo rivers. From the continental part, however, some Alpine valleys are excluded which, although they are part of the Italian State, such as the Val di Lei tributary of the North Sea through the Rhine river, the Val di Livigno, the Sella di Dobbiaco and the Tarvisio basin to the north-east of the Camporosso saddle, tributaries of the Black Sea through rivers affluent of the Danube.
The Italian Peninsula, or the Italic Peninsula or the Apennine Peninsula, is a peninsula on the European continent crossed by the Apennine chain and delimited by four seas: the Ligurian Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea. Together with the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkan Peninsula, they are the three peninsulas that make up Southern Europe.
The peninsula in a narrow sense begins from the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines, starting from an imaginary line that goes from the mouth of the Magra river to that of the Rubicone river, and extends to the extreme southern offshoot of Capo Spartivento in Calabria. The peninsula has an extension of about in a north-west / south-east direction. The closest large islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, are not parts of it. The peninsula corresponds to about 45% of the Italian geographical region.

Insular part

The island part extends over an area of about , of which for Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. Outside these large islands, numerous smaller islands, often grouped in archipelagos, are found along the Italian coast, mostly in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The list below shows the largest islands belonging to the Italian geographical region:
NameAreaSeaCountry
SicilyMediterranean, Tyrrhenian, Ionian
SardiniaMediterranean, Tyrrhenian
CorsicaMediterranean, Tyrrhenian
Cres Adriatic
MaltaMediterranean
ElbaTyrrhenian
Sant'AntiocoMediterranean
PantelleriaMediterranean
Lošinj Adriatic
GozoMediterranean
San PietroMediterranean