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Italy

Updated: Sep 30, 2022

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Country Name Italy or The Italian Republic.


Location

Italy is located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea.

Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia,

San Marino, and Vatican City. It is also bordered to the north by the Alps.

San Marino and Vatican City are two independent states inside the Italian

territory.


Capital

Rome.

Reason for Naming the country

The name "Italy" comes from the Greek word "italus", which means "land of calves", as the bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War.

The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy, (modern Calabria).

The Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region, but it was during the reign of Emperor Augustus (end of the 1st century BC) that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula until the Alps.


Flag

The current flag of Italy was updated on June 18, 1946. It was officially adopted on 1 January 1948. The Italian flag consists of three equal-sized vertical stripes of green, white, and red.

The flag is a vertical tricolor flag that is known in Italian as il Tricolore.

It features three stripes of equal sizes, with the green located on the left “hoist” side, white in the middle, and red on the right. The design is very similar to the tricolor flag of France.

Italy’s national flag has meaning in its design – particularly the three colors chosen for the flag, Red, and white were the colors of Milan, while green was the color of the Mi