Italy Geography

Italy is famously boot-shaped: a narrow peninsula running roughly 1,200 kilometers north-south, with the Alps forming a natural wall along its northern border and the Apennine Mountains running down its spine like a backbone, dividing the east and west coasts for almost the entire length of the country.

The north is dominated by the Po Valley, Italy's largest lowland and its agricultural and industrial heartland, bounded by the Alps to the north and the Apennines to the south, and drained by the Po River, the country's longest. Major lakes -- Como, Garda, Maggiore -- sit at the foot of the Alps in this same region.

Two large islands, Sicily and Sardinia, plus dozens of smaller ones, round out the country's territory. Sicily sits close enough to Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, to make the island's volcanic geology part of daily life, while the mainland's own Vesuvius looms over Naples with the same reminder.