Venice (/ˈvɛnɪs/VEH-niss; Italian: Venezia[veˈnɛttsja](listen); Venetian: Venesia or Venexia[veˈnɛsja]) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Venetoregion. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile). In 2020, 258,685 people resided in the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical city of Venice (centro storico). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.
The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC. The city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice for over a millennium, from 697 to 1797. It was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as an important center of commerce—especially silk, grain, and spice, and of art from the 13th century to the end of the 17th. The city-state of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center, emerging in the 9th century and reaching its greatest prominence in the 14th century. This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history. After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Republic was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, following a referendum held as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence. (Full article...)
...that Poliphilo, the main character in the Renaissance book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, was said to have felt "extreme delight," "incredible joy," and "frenetic pleasure and cupidinous frenzy" when he saw the buildings depicted in the book?
There is no set recipe for minestrone, since it can usually be made out of whatever vegetables are at one's disposal. It can be vegetarian, contain meat, or contain an animal bone-based stock (such as chicken stock). Food author Angelo Pellegrini claimed that the base of minestrone is bean broth, and that borlotti beans (also called Roman beans) "are the beans to use for genuine minestrone". (Full article...)
Image 7Italy has been a home for innovation in science in the centuries since Galileo formulated his theories of planetary movement. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 26Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti was murdered a few days after he openly denounced Fascist violence during the 1924 elections. (from History of Italy)
Image 30The Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence, which has the biggest brick dome in the world, and is considered a masterpiece of Italian architecture and world architecture. (from History of Italy)
Image 31Political map of Italy in the years around 1810 (from History of Italy)
Image 34The Sassi cave houses of Matera are believed to be among the first human settlements in Italy dating back to the Paleolithic. (from History of Italy)
Image 35Mussolini and Hitler in June 1940. (from History of Italy)
Image 46Asylum seekers arrive in Sicily, 2015. The Arab Spring and the Syrian War created factors that led to a migrant crisis that saw hundred of thousands of boat-dwellers seeking refuge in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. (from History of Italy)
Image 50The 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 55The Roman Forum, the commercial, cultural, and political centre of the city and the Republic which housed the various offices and meeting places of the government. (from History of Italy)
Image 56St. Peter's Basilica is the world's largest Christian church. It is the second church to stand above the crypt (tomb) believed to hold the body of Saint Peter, the first pope. (from Culture of Italy)
Image 57The 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)
Areas annexed to Italy in 1920 and remained Italian even after 1947
Areas annexed to Italy in 1920, passed to the Free Territory of Trieste in 1947 with the Paris treaties and definitively assigned to Italy in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo
Areas annexed to Italy in 1920, passed to the Free Territory of Trieste in 1947 with the Paris treaties and definitively assigned to Yugoslavia in 1975 with the Osimo treaty
Image 72Residents of Fiume cheering D'Annunzio and his Legionari, September 1919. At the time, Fiume had 22,488 (62% of the population) Italians in a total population of 35,839 inhabitants. (from History of Italy)
Image 80Map of Great Italy according to the 1940 fascist project in case Italy had won the Second World War (the orange line delimits metropolitan Italy, the green line the borders of the enlarged Italian Empire) (from History of Italy)
Image 101The 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 113Giuseppe Garibaldi, celebrated as one of the greatest generals of modern times and as the "Hero of the Two Worlds", who commanded and fought in many military campaigns that led to Italian unification. (from History of Italy)
Image 121Christopher Columbus leads an expedition to the New World, 1492. His voyages are celebrated as the discovery of the Americas from a European perspective, and they opened a new era in the history of humankind and sustained contact between the two worlds. (from History of Italy)
Image 123Attack of the far-right terrorist group NAR at the Bologna railway station on 2 August 1980, which caused the death of 85 people. (from History of Italy)