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Roads, motorways, railways

Italy is a peninsula delimited by the Mediterranean sea and bordering, along the Alpine arc, with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. It includes, within the political boundaries of the State, the Republic of San Marino and the City of the Vatican.

Morphology

Owing to the geological phases, the Italian territory is mountainous, varied, fragmented. It is covered by two mountainous chains, the Alps and the Apennines which gives it a high degree of mountainousness : 35,2% is occupied by mountains, 41,6% by hills and only 23,2% by level areas..

The Alps are extended in the shape of an arc in the sense of the longitude for about 1300 Kms.; in the transversal sense the breadth of the chain is very varied.

The highest peaks are the White Mountain (4810 ms.), the Cervino (4478 ms.) and the Rosa (4634 ms.). The limit of the perennial snows, above which snow is accumulated, is between 2800 and 3300 metres.

The band of high ground that is stretched to the south of the principal chain is constituted by the Prealpis.

The pass of Cadibona, constitutes the link between the Alpine system and the Apennine one, that it is stretched around for 1300 Kms in the peninsula and as far as Sicily. The Apennines are less high than the Alps and they have less sour forms: the highest peak, the Gran Sasso (2912 ms.) is in central Italy.

Mountain chains in Sardinia have a more ancient origin: a base of hard granite, that has been modelled by the erosion; there are not true isolated mountainous, but isolated and scattered massifs..

Being Italy a geologically young earth, it is subject to seismic and volcanic phenomena. It is ' the only European country to have active volcanos: the Etna (Sicily), the Vesuvius (near Naples), Stromboli and Volcano (Eolie islands). There is also a series of secondary volcanism as solfataras,thermal, springs, fumaroles.

The lowlands, though covering only 23,2% of the Italian territory represent the most important part, because almost half the whole population live there.As a matter of fact only the Po valley is of notable extension (75000 Kmqs.),itself constituting around 70% of the Italian lowlands;it is crossed by the river Po, from which it takes its name, and by lots of its tributaries.

It is of alluvial origin: only about 10000 years it got its present dimensions, while previously in that space there was an arm of sea, whose waters came to lick up the Piedmont hills.

Italy has about 8000 Kms. of coasts, adding those of the peninsula and of the islands. Now these result high and steep, with small beaches (in the Ligure Sea, in the Ionian, in the southern part of the Tyrrhenian), now low and sandy (in some zones of the Tyrrhenian Sea and in almost all the Adriatic). A particular type of coast is the lagoon: the most known is the Venetian one..

Of the varied islands that are in the Mediterranean Sea the two biggest ones,, Sicily and Sardinia, and many small archipelagos, especially in the Tyrrhenian sea, belong to Italy..

IDROGRAPHY

Italy is rich in watercourses, especially in the northern part, where the rivers are fed by the glaciers of the Alps. The longest is the Po (652 Kms.), that has a rather deep hydrographic basin(75000 Kmqs.); it picks up the waters of five Italian regions (Piedmont, Val of Aosta, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia Romagna) and gives origin to the Po valley.

The Apennine rivers and the island ones are very different. Being fed only by the rains, they have a smaller and irregular regime. On the Tyrrhenian side, however, where the Appennine is farther from the sea, we find some important rivers like the Arno, that bathes Florence and the Tevere, that bathes Rome.

The most important lake zone of Italy is in the north: they are Alpine or Prealpine lakes: among the last ones we count the biggest Italian lakes: Garda lake, Maggiore lake, Como lake. In the peninsula we have lakes of different origin: volcanic (like the Bolsena lake), alluvial (like the Trasimeno) or coastal (like Lesina and Varano in Puglia).

CLIMATE

Italy is in the area of the moderate climates; yet it has a notable variety of climates because of varied factors: particularly, the extension in latitude, the morphological variety and the marked maritime climate.

In the north we find a continental climate, with quite strong starts of temperature between summer and winter and a discreet raininess. In the central and southern regions the maritime climate generally prevails, with less marked differences between lowest and highest temperatures during the year and a raininess that decreases going towards south and towards the islands. Further climate variations are caused by factors as the altitude or the distance from the sea, that mitigates the temperatures sensitively; but the influence changes from place to place: to equal latitude the temperature on the coasts of the Tyrrhenian sea is higher than that on the deep Adriatic sea. coasts

AMINISTRATIVE DECENTRALIZATION

Since the central administration needs intermediary corporate bodies to make laws and to administer the country, power has been decentralized, to leave autonomy to smaller administrative corporate bodies, that know the problems of a specific area very closely: the Regions, the Provinces and the Communes.

The Regions are 20, of which 15 to ordinary statute and 5 to special statute: this means they are recognized a wider autonomy following the particular features concerning the population and the geographical position above all. All the five have the common characteristic to be peripheral regions; in fact two, Sicily and Sardinia, are big islands and the other three (Val of Aosta, Trentino Alto Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia) are border regions in which the language, the culture and the habits other than the Italian culture and language are protected and the bilingualism is practised (for instance, in the province of Bolzano the German language is equalized to theItalian one in the civil life). The regions are "autonomous corporate bodies", that can issue laws on subjects as urbanism, economic and industrial planning, tourism, health, extraurban transport, agriculture and forests, craftsmanship, hunting…. The Italian provinces are 103 and they take their name from the most important city, that is the chief town. Among these, 11 have assumed their role recently: Verbania and Biella in Piedmont (1992), Lodi and Lecco in Lombardy (1992), Pordenone in Friuli (1968), Rimini in Romagna (1992),Prato in Tuscany (1992), Isernia in Molise (1970), Crotone and Vibo Valentia in Calabria (1992) and Oristano in Sardinia (1974). The Provinces have limited tasks, that concern traffic regulations, the welfare,the secondary education… The provinces of Trento and Bolzano have very vast powers instead in the region Trentino Alto Adige.

The Communes (more than 8000) are the basic territorial corporate bodies held by the Mayor and the Town Hall committee They take care of local administrative life, the public services, the regulating plans of urbanism… Special tasks are performed by the mountain Communities , that include territories of more mountain areas and deal with environmental problems (agriculture, breeding, tourism, defence of the ground).

FLORA AND FAUNA

From the phytogeographical point of view Italy is in the middle between Mediterranean vegetation and centre-European vegetation This situation, together with factors as the altitude, the latitude and the work of man, sometimes destructive, sometimes substitutive with the introduction of exotic species, has determined a really rich and varied situation.. Only in a few areas the flora has kept its spontaneous installations (Alps, natural reserves, national parks). Generally the floristic Italy is divided in four regions: Mediterranean or coast road, Appenine, Po and alpine. The first one, including also islands , shows a variety that goes from the woods of leccio to the pines, cypresses, laurel, oaks, heather, thyme, rosemary, broom and lavender. The Apennine region that is confused with the Mediterranean one on its basal plan, is characterised progressively by olive-groves, oaks, chestnut woods, finally in the highest section by beechwoods and coniferous. woods.

In the Alpine region we find the same species up to the 2000 meters, over which the trees are made thinner and thinner and only bushes of rododendro and juniper can be found. In the Po region the spontaneous vegetation has surrendered nearly totally to the cultivation.

Because of its varied altimetry the Italian territory shelters a big number of animals, some of which are threatened by the presence, often destroying, of man, others are saved thanks to the institution of national parks and reserves: for esteinbocks, chamoises and royal eagles in the park of the "Gran Paradiso"; deers, chamoises and roebucks in the Stelvio; brown bear in the Abruzzi, mouflons in the Gennargentu.

On the mountains and lowlands wild bears can be found together with hares, wolves, foxes, dormouses, badgers, besides varied kinds of birds and repents. In Italy is also rich the fish patrimony of both sweet water and salt water, from the aboriginal examples of the lake Garda carp to those introduced from other European countries or from northern America as the trout and the perch. The sea fauna is the typical Mediterranean one, characterised by low productivity, wealth of species and strong modesty of biomass. Along the Italian coasts the situation has got worse either for the excessive exploitation, either for the pollution, so much that the mass fishing is possible only for a few species. We mustn’t forget. the presence of the dolphin, , of some turtles and of the seal nun in Sardinia.