LOCATED in the Italian peninsula, Italy is bound to the north through the Alpine mountains of France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. It has a total land area of 301,318 square kilometers and that already includes the offshore islands Sicily and Sardinia both smacked in the Mediterranean Sea. It has a population of 59 million making it the 23rd populous nation in the world and making it the 54th dense nation. Basing on its gross domestic product, Italy is the eighth richest country in the world. Italy’s capital is Rome, probably the richest pre-historic civilization in the world. Rome is also host to the world’s smallest nation, the Vatican City. For these two reasons alone, Italy is an instant magnet to tourists around the world from Africa to the Scandinavian countries. Because Catholicism’s headquarters is in Rome, Catholics from all over the world land in Italy.

To get to Italy, tourists from other European countries do not need a visa. That is especially true if one travels by land because there are no border crossings anymore in a few areas that share land borders such as those bounding France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. That scheme is put in place because Italy is a signatory of the Schengen agreement. Under that agreement, signatory countries do not need to install border crossings anymore. Aside from Rome, that has two international airports on its own; other international airports are located in Milan that has another two, Bologna, Naples, Pisa, Venice and Turin. If you have your own car, you can always freely cross to the country thanks to the Schengen agreement. Then there are daily train trips coming from Paris, Nice, Lyon, Zagreb, Vienna, Geneva and other cities in Switzerland, Prague, Budapest, Ljubljana and Barcelona. Then there are ferries coming in from Greece, Montenegro and Croatia going all the way to Venice, which in itself has two world records. Venice is the only city in the world sitting on a lagoon and it is the only motor-free city in the world. No one can bring his or her vehicles there; all the vehicles are parked outside the city.

To capture in this article all the interesting sights of Italy is an understatement. This article can only cite a few. Among these are the Uffizi Museum in Florence, the Egyptian Museum in Turin (the world’s largest Egyptian museum outside Egypt), the Aquarium in Genoa that rivals in fame to the one located in Barcelona, the Science and Technology Museum in Milan, the Roman Civilization Museum in Rome, the National Cinema Museum in Turin and the Automobile Museum also located in Turin.

Italian is the language used in Italy and to learn it, one must enroll in an Italian language school. A typical Italian language school allows foreign students to be immersed with a host Italian family who will give maximum tutorials to the students. There obviously exists lots of Italian language schools since being a member of the European Union which mandates that all high school students in that continent learn a second language, Italy is host to lots of other Europeans who want to learn the romance of the Italian language.