HISTORY
The Etruscans
By 500 B.C., a number of peoples of different ethnicity and origin shared Italy. Small Greek colonies dotted the southern coast and the island of Sicily. The Gaels roamed the mountainous north.
The Etruscans, who came from western Turkey, settled in central Italy, establishing a number of city-states.
The Roman Empire
According to a legend, Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus in 735 B.C.
Over the next several centuries, Rome expanded its territories into what became known as the Roman Empire.
Italy flourished under the Roman Empire, which ended in 476 A.D. with the death of the Emperor Augustus.
The InvasionsThe Middle Ages
In 493, the OstroGoths, a Germanic tribe, conquered the Italian peninsula.
The Lombards, another Germanic tribe, established a kingdom in northern Italy and in the South in 568. In 756, when the Franks defeated the Lombards, they granted the Popes authority and Papal States were created.
The northern states of Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany were ruled by the Germanic Holy Roman Empire by 962.
By the end of the 11th century, the worst of the invasions was over and trade began to flourish once again. Four Italian citiesGenoa, Pisa, Amalfi and Venice- became major commercial and political powers.
In the 12th century northern Italy became a group of independent kingdoms, republics and city-states.
The Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance was a cultural movement which began in Tuscany in the 14th century.
The patronage of the arts afforded by the Medici family was a contributing factor.
The main artists were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sandro Botticelli, Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca.
The movement also spread to Milan, Venice, and further north into Europe, influencing art, literature, philosophy, politics, science and religion.
The dominance of Tuscan culture led to the Tuscan dialect becoming the official Italian language.
The Unification
The Risorgimento was a complex process which unified the different states of the Italian peninsula into the modern nation of Italy. The movement began in 1815.
Two prominent figures in the unification movement were Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Italy was officially unified in 1861.Rome and Latium were annexed in 1870 and the Trieste region was annexed after World War I.
In 1861 the states of the peninsula and the two Sicilies were united under King Vittorio Emmanuel II of the Savoy dynasty, ruler of Piedmont and King of Sardinia.
The architect of the Italian unification was Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel II.
Mussolini
In 1922 Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy. He turned Italy into a Fascist State, where he was a dictator.
Victor Emmanuel III abdicated and his son, the new king Umberto II, was pressured by the threat of another civil war to call a Constitutional Referendum to decide whether Italy should remain a Monarchy or become a Republic .
On 2 June 1946, the Republican side won 54% of the vote and Italy officially became a Republic.