The Lonely Planet Guide to Italy

Major Industries

tourism, engineering, textiles, chemicals, food processing, motor vehicles, clothing and footwear

Trading Partners

EU (especially Germany, France, UK, Spain, Netherlands), USA

Getting There and Away

For travel between Italy and other parts of Europe, including the UK, buses are the cheapest but most tiring type of transport, although discount rail tickets are competitive and budget flights can be good value - sometimes better value than buses.

Getting Around

Given the excellent network of relatively cheap bus and train services in Italy, both are a great, stress-free way of seeing the country - and of being part of the great Italian travelling public. Bus travel is the less expensive of the two, but as there are many different operators it is less straightforward than train travel. Your own wheels give you the most potential freedom and flexibility, although both fuel and autostrada (motorway) tolls are rather expensive. Domestic air travel can be costly and is probably worth it only if you are really short of time.

Pompeii

Victim of the world's most famous volcano disaster, 2.3 million visitors annually make Pompeii's magnificent ruins seem as crowded as the ancient streets must once have been. Ever since Pliny the Younger described the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the city has been the stuff of books, scholarly and frivolous, and a perfect subject for the big screen.

For more information visit: http://www.pompeiisites.org

Michelangelo's David

Every visitor to Florence wants to see Michelangelo's David, history's most famous sculpture, housed here in the world's first formal academy of art and architecture (built 1562). That said, it's difficult to appreciate Michelangelo's genius when people keep taking photographs and stewards keep yelling at them to stop.

For more information visit: http://www.uffizi.firenze.it

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Welcome to the world's greatest architectural cockup. Its creator, Bonanno Pisan, was in trouble three tiers in when the tower began to list badly to the south. Things got worse at the rate of about 1mm a year, but at least it gave Galileo a chance to throw rocks from the bell tower to test his theory of gravity. Today it's 4.1m (13.5ft) off the perpendicular.

For more information visit: http://www.opapisa.it/boxoffice

Basilica di San Francesco

The basilica was built on a hill known as Colle d'Inferno (Hell Hill). People were executed at the gallows here until the 13th century. St Francis asked his followers to bury him here in keeping with Jesus, who had died on the cross among criminals and outcasts. The area is now known as Paradise Hill.

For more information visit: http://www.sanfrancescoassisi.org

Colosseum

Vespasian began its construction in AD72 in the grounds of Nero's private Domus arena. It was inaugurated by his son Titus in AD80, and thereafter, inaugural games lasted for 100 days and nights, during which some 5000 animals were slaughtered.

With the fall of the Empire, the Colosseum was abandoned and became overgrown with exotic plants; seeds had inadvertently been transported with the wild beasts that appeared in the arena (including crocodiles, bears, tigers, elephants and hippos.) In the Middle Ages the Colosseum became a fortress, occupied by two of the city's warrior families.

Damaged several times by earthquake, it was later used as a quarry for travertine and marble for Palazzo Venezia and other buildings. Despite this, it has lost none of its stature and remains an evocative place to explore.

For more information visit: http://www.pierreci.it

Pre 20th Century History

While Italy's status as a single political entity is relatively recent (1861), its strategic Mediterranean position made it a target for colonisers and opportunists fairly early on in human history. The Etruscans were the first people to rule the peninsula, arriving somewhere between the 12th and 8th century BC. They were eventually subsumed within the mighty Roman Empire, leaving little cultural evidence, other than the odd tomb. The ancient Greeks, their contemporaries, set up a few colonies along the southern coast that became known as Magna Graecia and developed into independent city states. Thus the greater glory that was Rome was itself the offspring of Etruscan and Greek cultures.

The first Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC, and eventually bequeathed us the idea of a common European identity, a language that has spawned many of Europe's contemporary tongues and one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. The Republic's defeat of Carthage (near present-day Tunis) and Hellenic Macedonia during the three Punic Wars cleared the way for ultimate expansion into Spain, Britain, North Africa and present-day Iraq. Meanwhile, relative peace at home enabled the infrastructure of civilisation - roads, aqueducts, cities - to spread. A slave-driven lifestyle and economy triumphed over the concept of people power, and the reigns of the Republic were increasingly taken in hand by the military and, ultimately, the dictatorship.

The empire grew so large, it was eventually divided into eastern and western sectors. Already, however, the bloodthirsty theatrics of regicide and intrigue were planting the seeds of its eventual destruction. Christianity was embraced by Constantine in 313, and the empire's capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). The western arm of the empire was undone by plague, famine and tribal incursions from the north, and was officially declared null and void in 476 when Odovacar, a German warrior, dubbed himself ruler. The Eastern Roman Empire clung on, even prospering in fits and starts, until overrun by the Turks in 1453.

After the fall of Rome the peninsula entered the Dark Ages and suffered repeated barbarian invasions. Among the more effective of these hordes were the Lombards who successfully controlled large parts of the north before being defeated by the Franks. In 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor as symbolic Christian successor to ancient Rome. The south came to be dominated by Muslims until usurped by Normans in the early 11th century. This ethnic cocktail began to settle in the 12th century, just when the next big chapter in textbook history was taking shape. Powerfully combative and competitive city states arose in the north, supporting either the Pope, who represented spiritual power in Christendom but also had considerable political power within Italy(the Papal States), or the Holy Roman Emperor, a foreign leader who claimed secular sovereignty over all Christian Europe (including Italy). The rise of cities and a merchant class culminated in the Renaissance of the 15th century. Painters, architects, poets, philosophers and sculptors produced unsurpassed works of genius, despite the turmoil of intercity warfare and invasion by countries to the north. First Spain and then Austria controlled the peninsula during the ensuing centuries, followed briefly by Napoleon's imperial flourish.

The post-Napoleon shake-up led to the drive for unification of the 19th century, led by Garibaldi, Cavour and Mazzini. The Kingdom of Italy was declared in 1861, although Venice was not prised away from Austria until 1866 and papal claims remained an issue until 1870, when Rome officially joined the young nation. No label of unity, however, could hide the huge cultural and social differences that split the industrialised north from the poverty-stricken south.

Modern History

Economic crisis and fickle politics dogged the new nation in the ensuing decades, as Italy muddled through WWI and became riddled with industrial unrest in the early 1920s. In a memorably unwise employment decision, the king asked one Benito Mussolini to take the reins of government under the auspices of his Fascist Party. Il Duce soon became head of state, outlawed the opposition, controlled the press and trade unions and cut franchise by two-thirds. His relationship with Hitler soured after a series of military disasters during WWII and Italian capitulation in 1943, eventually culminating in a fatal dose of rough justice at the hands of partisans in April 1945.

The postwar years were coloured by extremism: the extreme violence of terrorists such as the Brigatte Rosse (Red Brigades), extreme centre-right politics, extreme economic boom and economic crisis, extreme corruption and bribery in extremely high places - and an extremely cynical and fatigued public.

Recent History

Italy's parliament has a reputation for scandal and resignation, and at times it has left Italy virtually ungoverned and utterly chaotic. The explosion of corruption cases in the Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) and Tangentopoli (Bribesville) cases in the 1990s threw the traditional political parties into chaos and eventually led to Italy's richest man, entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, becoming prime minister in alliance with the former Fascist party and northern Italian secessionists in 2001. Berlusconi, plagued by fraud and other charges, spent much of his term concocting laws to suit his private and business interests. His most lasting legacy was probably the nationwide ban on smoking in all enclosed public spaces in early 2005. With his coalition looking brittle and many Italians desperately disillusioned with his cavalier approach to politics, the ever disunited left wing snatched power in a neck-and-neck election in 2006. Romano Prodi was named the new prime minister.

Though Prodi was less fond of football than Berlusconi, the Italians took out the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. However, investigations back home into the national league revealed entrenched corruption in the sport. Five Serie A teams received sanctions for their role in match-rigging and bribery. One of these teams, AC Milan, put the furore behind them and went on to win the 2007 Champions League. Meanwhile, AC Milan's owner, one Silvio Berlusconi, began regaining political ground in regional and municipal elections across the country. When the Prodi coalition collapsed in May 2008, Berlusconi was returned to power for at the subsequent elections the third time.

Try this book for a simple introduction to the ancient history of the country.

An entertaining tale about renovating a tumbledown farmhouse in Tuscany.

This is a classic travelogue.

Although written in the 1960s, this remains a valuable guide to the south and its people.

This is a good introduction to Italian history.

A useful introduction to the art of the Italian Renaissance.

This is a sound place to start your reading on the Renaissance.

A look inside the house of Medici, the family that turned Florence into a world power during the Renaissance.

This engrossing, experimental study of the nature of reading and writing, involves the reader as a central character in what is ultimately a dizzying love story.

The genius of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), probably the greatest figure in Italian literature, confirmed the Italian vernacular (in its Florentine form) as a serious medium for poetic expression, particularly in The Divine Comedy - an allegorical masterpiece that takes his protagonist on a search for God through hell, purgatory and paradise.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75) is considered the first Italian novelist. The Decameron is a collection of 100 short stories ranging from the bawdy to the earnest that chronicle the exodus of 10 young Florentines from their plague-ridden city.

Virgil's epic poem links the founding of Rome with the fall of Troy.

Cicero (106-43 BC) stands out at a time when the Roman Republic collapsed into civil war and gave way to dictatorial government. Cicero's writing, infused with political commitment, explored new terrain in Latin prose.

A rich, sensual account of the demise of Sicilian nobility and the rise of Italian nationhood.

A murder mystery with a religious twist, this novel set in a Benedictine monastery is a fascinating investigation of theology, philosophy and history.

Carlo Levi's memoir is a touching account of life as a political exile in a poor, remote village in southern Italy.

If you're looking for a spot of Edwardian romance, try this classic.

With deceptive ease and flowing prose, McCarthy opens up all sorts of views on these two città d'arte (cities of art).