Le regioni d'ItaliaThe 20 regions of Italy

One fact from each region

• Piemonte

  Torino · 4.3 M people · 25,387 km²

  Turin invented vermouth — and with it the Italian aperitivo hour. Its Mole Antonelliana was the tallest brick building in Europe when finished.

• Valle d'Aosta

  Aosta · 0.13 M people · 3,263 km²

  The smallest region is officially bilingual (Italian and French), and Gran Paradiso — 4,061 m — is the highest peak lying entirely in Italy.

• Lombardia

  Milano · 10.1 M people · 23,863 km²

  One Italian in six lives here, and Milan's Duomo took nearly six centuries to complete. Leonardo painted The Last Supper a few streets away.

• Trentino-Alto Adige

  Trento · 1.1 M people · 13,607 km²

  Roughly half the population speaks German as a first language, and Bolzano's museum keeps Ötzi the Iceman — a 5,000-year-old Alpine mummy.

• Veneto

  Venezia · 4.9 M people · 18,398 km²

  Venice stands on 118 small islands linked by around 400 bridges — its historic centre has no cars at all.

• Friuli-Venezia Giulia

  Trieste · 1.2 M people · 7,924 km²

  A crossroads of Latin, Germanic and Slavic Europe: Trieste was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's main port, and James Joyce wrote much of his work there.

• Liguria

  Genova · 1.5 M people · 5,416 km²

  A thin ribbon of coast squeezed between sea and mountains: Genoa was a medieval maritime republic and Columbus's hometown.

• Emilia-Romagna

  Bologna · 4.5 M people · 22,452 km²

  Bologna has the West's oldest university (1088), and the region gave Italy Parmigiano-Reggiano, Parma ham and balsamic vinegar.

• Toscana

  Firenze · 3.7 M people · 22,987 km²

  The Tuscan dialect Dante wrote in became what the world now speaks as Italian.

• Umbria

  Perugia · 0.9 M people · 8,456 km²

  Called the green heart of Italy — the only region with neither a coastline nor a foreign border.

• Marche

  Ancona · 1.5 M people · 9,401 km²

  The only Italian region with a plural name. Raphael's walled Renaissance hometown, Urbino, is here.

• Lazio

  Roma · 5.9 M people · 17,236 km²

  Rome is here — and so is Vatican City, the world's smallest state, entirely surrounded by it.

• Abruzzo

  L'Aquila · 1.3 M people · 10,831 km²

  Wild at heart: nearly a third of the region is protected national park, home to the Marsican brown bear and the wolf.

• Molise

  Campobasso · 0.3 M people · 4,461 km²

  Italy's youngest region, born in 1963 when it split from Abruzzo — and still its quietest corner.

• Campania

  Napoli · 5.6 M people · 13,670 km²

  Pizza was born in Naples — the Margherita was named after the queen in 1889. Pompeii lies frozen under the volcano nearby.

• Puglia

  Bari · 3.8 M people · 19,541 km²

  Italy's heel has the longest coastline of the mainland regions, millennia-old olive trees and the cone-roofed trulli of Alberobello.

• Basilicata

  Potenza · 0.55 M people · 10,073 km²

  Matera's sassi have been inhabited for some 9,000 years — among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth.

• Calabria

  Catanzaro · 1.8 M people · 15,222 km²

  Almost all the world's bergamot — the scent in Earl Grey tea — grows on this narrow strip of coast.

• Sicilia

  Palermo · 4.8 M people · 25,832 km²

  The largest island in the Mediterranean, crowned by Etna — Europe's tallest active volcano.

• Sardegna

  Cagliari · 1.6 M people · 24,100 km²

  Over 7,000 nuraghe — mysterious Bronze-Age stone towers found nowhere else — dot the island, one of the world's 'blue zones' for longevity.