In antiquity, Italy was home to numerous peoples; the city of Rome, founded as a Kingdom, became a Republic that conquered the Mediterranean world and ruled it for centuries as an Empire. With the spread of Christianity, Rome became the seat of the Catholic Church and the Papacy. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy experienced the fall of the Western Roman Empire and inward migration from Germanic tribes. By the 11th century, Italian city-states and maritime republics expanded, bringing renewed prosperity through commerce and laying the groundwork for modern capitalism. The Italian Renaissance flourished during the 15th and 16th centuries and spread to the rest of Europe. Italian explorers discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, leading the European Age of Discovery. However, centuries of rivalry and infighting between city-states left the peninsula divided. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Italian economic importance waned significantly. (Full article...)
Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the final line of Dante'sParadiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, exerted a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western artists. (Full article...)
...that Umarell[uma'rɛːlː], is an Italianslang term for sidewalk superintendent, popular in Bologna and increasingly used in other part of the country?
The term comes from the Italiancaffellatte or caffè latte, from caffè e latte, literally 'coffee and milk'; in English orthography, either or both words sometimes have an accent on the final e (a hyperforeignism in the case of *latté). In northern Europe and Scandinavia, the term café au lait has traditionally been used for the combination of espresso and milk. In France, cafè latte is from the original name of the beverage (caffè latte); a combination of espresso and steamed milk equivalent to a "latte" is in French called un crème (un grand crème using cream instead of milk) and in German Milchkaffee. (Full article...)
The following are images from various Italy-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1The espresso comes from the Italian esprimere, which means "to express," and refers to the process by which hot water is forced under pressure through ground coffee. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 11The Colosseum, originally known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, is an elliptical amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, the largest ever built in the Roman Empire. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 31The Roman Empire provided an inspiration for the medieval European. Although the Holy Roman Empire rarely acquired a serious geopolitical reality, it possessed great symbolic significance. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 64The cover of the Corriere dei Piccoli on 11 July 1911 carries a cartoon strip in the Italian style without speech bubbles. (from Culture of Italy)
