Italy

Italy

Italy ranks 6th in number of biographies on Pantheon, behind Germany, France, and Japan. Memorable people born in present day Italy include Leonardo da Vinci, Marco Polo, and Galileo Galilei. Memorable people who died in Italy include Marco Polo, Galileo Galilei, and Julius Caesar. Italy has been the birth place of many politicians, and soccer players and the death place of many politicians, and religious figures.

Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern and Western Europe. It consists of a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land border, as well as nearly 800 islands, notably Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares land borders with France to the west; Switzerland and Austria to the north; Slovenia to the east; and the two enclaves of Vatican City and San Marino. Italy shares a maritime boundary with Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Libya, Malta, Tunisia, Algeria and Spain. It is the tenth-largest country in Europe by area, covering 301,340 km2 (116,350 sq mi), and the third-most populous member state of the European Union, with nearly 59 million inhabitants. Italy's capital and largest city is Rome; other major cities include Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice. Read more on Wikipedia