Italy (IPA: /iˈtalja/,[9] listenⓘ), officially the Italian Republic,[10] is a unitary parliamentary republic in Southern and Western Europe, whose territory largely coincides with the geographical region of the same name; a member state of the European Union, Italy has a population of approximately 59 million inhabitants,[11][12] making it the third largest state in the Union after Germany and France.

Delimited by the Alpine arc, Italy borders to the north, from west to east, with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia; the Italian peninsula juts out into the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by the Ligurian, Tyrrhenian, Ionian and Adriatic seas, and by numerous islands (the largest being Sicily and Sardinia), for a total of 302,068.26 km².[13] The States of Vatican City and San Marino are enclaves of the Republic, while Campione d'Italia is an exclave of the Italian Republic and an enclave of the Swiss Confederation.

A crossroads of numerous civilizations, ancient Italy was unified by Rome, becoming the administrative, economic, cultural, and political center of the Roman Republic and the subsequent Roman Empire. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, medieval Italy was subjected to invasions and domination by barbarian tribes, losing its political unity. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, with the spread of Humanism and the Renaissance, it once again became the cultural center of the Western world. The peninsula then experienced the Counter-Reformation, Baroque, and Neoclassicism.

After the Napoleonic period, Italians fought for unification and national independence during the Risorgimento, until, after the Second War of Independence and the Expedition of the Thousand, the Kingdom of Italy was born on March 17, 1861. It achieved victory in the First World War (1918), completing the process of national unification. After the twenty-year Fascist period (1922–1943), the Second World War, and the definitive War of Liberation, following an institutional referendum, the Italian state became a republic in 1946.

In 2023, Italy, the eighth largest economy in the world and third in the European Union, is a country with a high standard of living: the Human Development Index is very high, 0.915,[6] and life expectancy is 83.8 years.[14] It is a founding member of the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe, and the OECD; adheres to the UN and the Schengen Convention. Italy is a member of the G7 and the G20, participates in the NATO nuclear sharing project, is ranked twelfth in the world for military spending[15] and is both a regional power and a major global power.[16][17] It is the sixth largest exporter of goods worldwide,[18] the second most visited country in the world and boasts the largest number of sites declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO (61).[19]