Everyone knows Italy by the boot. The boot alone is the peninsula. The state is the peninsula plus Sicily plus Sardinia, and that changes what counts as the centre.
Rome sits in the middle of the peninsula, not in the middle of the country. Sicily has more inhabitants than many Italian regions on the boot. Sardinia is one of the largest regions by area. Think Italy only from the Po to the toe and you leave out two worlds of their own.
Italy at a glance
Capital
Rome
Area
301,336 km²
Population
58.9 million
Official language(s)
Italian
Currency
Euro
Continent
Europe
Distinctive fact
The boot plus two large islands
The peninsula is long, the islands are not a footnote
Italy runs more than 1,000 kilometres from the Alps to Sicily. The north holds the industry and the passes into France, Switzerland and Austria. The south holds a different climate, a different economic history, a different distance from the offices in Rome.
Sicily and Sardinia are autonomous and still not special zones to tick off. Ferries and flights are daily life, not holidays. In Campione d'Italia an Italian town even sits inside Switzerland and long paid in francs. The boot does not explain that either.
Rome sits in the middle of the peninsula. The country has more than one centre.
— TerraTally · Countries desk
A state younger than its cities
The Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1861, the republic in 1946. Rome, Naples, Venice and Florence were centres long before this state existed. Unification was a political decision about cities that did not see themselves as suburbs of a capital.
58.9 million people live in this state on 301,336 square kilometres. Six land neighbours share the Alpine border, including two microstates: San Marino and Vatican City. The map looks simple. The administration is not.
A language that never replaced the dialects
Italian is the official language, spread mainly through school and television. Beside it people still speak Neapolitan, Sicilian, Venetian, Sardinian. In the Aosta Valley French is co-official, in South Tyrol German. The state chose a language. The places kept theirs.
The smaller islands count too: Elba, the Aegadian Islands, Pantelleria on the way to Africa. They are not holiday add-ons. They sit on sea routes older than the Italian state, and they hold the boot in a sea that has neighbours, not only beaches.
Italy is easy to remember as a boot and incomplete without the islands. The state sits on a long peninsula and on two islands that are not an extra.