Here's your Map of Italy !

Ok, so you know that Italian peninsula (yes, Italy IS a peninsula) resembles a boot, right ?

...right ?

well, ok, in case you did'nt just give a quick look at the Map of Italy below here...

Good!

Surely, then, you know Italy and italian geography well enough... or so you think.

Well, let's have a quick look at it, so that you are able to grasp some basics related to italian geography.

Usually, our lovely boot and its territories are distinguished into three parts that take their denomination from their position across the elongated shape of the italian peninsula: North, Center, South.

Apart from any political or facitious exact composition of these main "parts", the simple fact is that these exist, not only as a way of looking at the map of Italy: they are actually deriving from a typical italian inclination for partitism and local divisions... tracing back to its illustrious past (yet again)!

Italian Map in 5 regions

An interesting classification of the Italian map derives from the Eurostat, which proposes a (useful) distinction of Italy into 5 different groups of regions:

• North-West (Aosta Valley, Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria)
• North-East (Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, Emilia-Romagna)
• Center (Tuscany, Marche, Lazio, Umbria)
• South (Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Basilicata, Apulia, Calabria)
• Insular (Sicily, Sardinia)

Come on now, it is much simpler than you think… just look at the map of Italy in 5 regions :) !

Although I personally always adopted the usual North-Center-South distinction (it is just easier to stay a bit more to the surface of things) I have to admit that this other categorization of the Italian territory, although mainly driven by statistical, rather than administrative or political factors, is well suited to give a better understanding of Italy itself.

The next time you will be planning your visit to the “Bel Paese”, you will not just say “I’m going to Italy…”, but rather (as an example) “I am going to visit the Castelli Romani area, taking a tour of Tusculum ruins and then visiting the Diana Temple in Nemi, where I will taste its renown fragoline con panna from the belvedere accompanied by a cup of cannellino dolce from Frascati and… wait a minute, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?..:”

If silence is the best answer you can give to this, well this is a good example of what I mean.

If you have never been to Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence, you have never been to Italy, of course.

But if you never explored what is between them and a bit further on the Map of Italy, then you never truly experienced Italy.

If you are happy with thinking that Italy is about red wine, spaghetti with meatballs (never really eaten them in Italy myself…) or pizza and don’t want to get further than that, I respect your choice.

In case you wanted to know better (…and eat and drink better as well…), then keep following me.

Not only you will be able to answer the question above, you will actually be the one asking that kind of questions!

Ok now, let’s go with order.

I am sure you have realized that we talk overall about 20 different regions that, together, compose the italian Nation.

These regions are an administrative classification of the territory and more than a few "special ones" exist.

If at any time you want to know more, click on the highlighted text and a new page will open.

Now, sit back, relax and enjoy the reading.

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