Italy 🇮🇹

Italy is a country in Southern Europe, one of the 10 entries this site files under that subregion. The long form of the name is Italian Republic. Rome is the capital.

By land area it covers 301,336 km², which ranks it 74th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Oman and just ahead of Ecuador. That makes it a fraction smaller than Poland.

Around 59.0 million people live there, placing it 25th of 250 by population — between South Africa above it and Kenya below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 2nd of 10 in size and 1st in population.

Spread across 301,336 km², that works out at about 196 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 90 per square kilometre.

Someone from Italy is an Italian.

The one official language is Italian. It shares that with San Marino, Switzerland and Vatican City.

Inside Europe it places 5th of 53 by population, and it accounts for 45% of everyone living in Southern Europe.

Within Southern Europe, Italy is the most populous of the 10 entries this site lists, and 2nd by area. Spain is next in line by population.

Every entry in Southern Europe has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, Spain is the place to carry on.

• 🇪🇸 Spain
• 🇮🇹 Italy

The coordinates the dataset gives are 42.8° N, 12.8° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 4,768 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 6 neighbours: Austria, France, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland and Vatican City. The largest of them by area is France, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 88.9 million people.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Italy ranks 74th of 250 by area and 25th by population. That works out at 0.20% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.72% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Italy in the size ordering are Oman at 309,500 km² and Ecuador at 276,841 km², against Italy's 301,336 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Italy averages 196 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 74th of the 248 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Italy does not have the Euro to itself. It is one of 38 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is EUR, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in EUR travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. Italian is listed for 4 entries here, Italy among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

The currency is the Euro (€, EUR). That is a shared currency: 37 other entries use it, including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and Croatia.

Its internet country code is .it. The international dialling code is +39. Standard country codes: it and ITA.

Rome is the city to remember for this country.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 193 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.