INCREDIBLE ITALY

Italy (Italian: Italia), officially the Italian Republic; (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italian peninsula, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.

Italy has been the home of many influential European cultures, such as the Etruscans and the Romans and much later the Italian Renaissance, as well as a host to 3,000 years of migrationsinvasions from Germanic, Celtic, Greek, Lombard, Saracen, and Norman peoples. Italy's capital Rome has historically been an important centre of Western Civilization, and the Roman Catholic Church. and

Today, Italy is a democratic republic, and a developed country with the 7th-highest GDP and the 17th-highest Human Development Index rating in the world. It is a member of the G8 and a founding member of what is now the European Union (having signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957), of the Council of Europe and of the Western European Union and of the Central European Initiative. Starting from January 1, 2007, Italy is a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is considered by some a great power.