Italy Hotel

Hotels in Italy are often required for tourists who want to stay on vacation in the country. Some may want access to luxury hotels or cheap hotels. Some may want to stay at hotels with good reputation and good access to parking facilities and scenery. Some may want to stay at a hotel with a high status. Some may want a hotel with a new or old design.

Hotels in Italy are often needed for tourists who require short term accommodation.

Italy is located in southern Europe and comprises the long, boot-shaped Italian Peninsula, the land between the peninsula and the Alps, and a number of islands including Sicily and Sardinia. Its total area is 301 230 km², of which 294 020 km² is land and 7 210 km² is water.

Including islands, Italy has a coastline of 7 600 km on the Adriatic, Ionian, Tyrrhenian and Ligurian regions of the central Mediterranean Sea. Italy claims territorial waters to 12 nautical miles and the continental shelf to a depth of 200 m or any exploitation.

Land borders with neighbouring countries total 1 932.2 km, split predominantly between Switzerland (740 km), France (488 km), Austria (430 km) and Slovenia (232 km). San Marino (39 km) and the Vatican City (3.2 km), both entirely surrounded by Italy, account for the remainder.

Italy is a mountainous country, with the Alps as the northern boundary and the Apennine Mountains forming the backbone of the peninsula, but in between the two lies a large plain in the valley of the Po, the largest river in Italy, which flows 652 km (405 miles) eastward from the Cottian Alps to the Adriatic.

The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula (Italian: Penisola italiana or Penisola appenninica) is one of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe (the other two being the Iberian Peninsula and Balkan Peninsula), spanning 1,000 km from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula is well-known for its boot shape, in fact it is known as Lo Stivale (Italian for "The boot".) Three smaller peninsulas contribute to giving the Italian Peninsula its characteristic shape, namely Calabria, Salento and Gargano.

Nearly all of the peninsula is part of the state of Italy, hence the name, apart from San Marino and the Vatican City. Additionally, Sicily and Malta are considered as islands off the peninsula and in this sense geographically grouped along with it.

The peninsula is bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west, the Ionian Sea on the south, and the Adriatic Sea on the east. The interior part of the Apennine Peninsula consists of the Apennine Mountains, from which it takes its name, the northern part is largely plains and the coasts are lined with cliffs.

The Plain of Catania (Sicilian: La Chiana di Catania, Italian: La Piana di Catania) is the most extensive and most important plain in Sicily.

Plains of Italy Campidano, Plain of Catania, Po Valley, Tavoliere delle Puglie

Italy did not exist as a state until the country's unification in 1861. Due to this comparatively late unification, and the historical autonomy of the regions that comprise the Italian Peninsula, many traditions and customs that are now recognized as distinctly Italian can be identified by their regions of origin. Despite the political and social isolation of these regions, Italy's contributions to the cultural and historical heritage of Europe remain immense.

Italian painting is traditionally characterized by a warmth of colour and light, as exemplified in the works of Caravaggio and Titian, and a preoccupation with religious figures and motifs. Italian painting enjoyed preeminence in Europe for hundreds of years, from the Romanesque and Gothic periods, and through the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the latter two of which saw fruition in Italy. Notable artists whom fall within these periods include Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Bernini, Titian and Raphael. Thereafter, Italy was to experience a continual subjection to foreign powers which caused a shift of focus to political matters, leading to its decline as the artistic authority in Europe. Not until 20th century Futurism, primarily through the works of Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla, would Italy prove to recapture any of its former prestige as a seminal place of artistic evolution. Futurism was succeeded by the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who exerted a strong influence on the Surrealists and generations of artists to follow.