Emilia-Romagna

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Emilia-Romagna

region, Italy

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Last Updated: May 8, 2025 • Article History

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Emilia-Romagna, regione, north-central Italy. It comprises the provincie of Bologna, Ferrara, Forlì, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Ravenna, Reggio nell’Emilia, and Rimini. The region extends from the Adriatic Sea (east) almost across the peninsula between the Po River (north) and the Ligurian and Tuscan Apennines (west and south). It is bounded by the regions of Veneto and Lombardy on the north, Piedmont and Liguria on the west, and Tuscany, Marche, and the Republic of San Marino on the south. Bologna is the chief city and regional capital.

The northern portion of Emilia-Romagna is a great plain extending from the Po River southeast to Ravenna and Rimini, where the Apennine Mountains come down to the Adriatic coast. The plain’s highest point is no more than 200 feet (60 metres) above sea level, and along the coast there are lagoons near the mouths of the Po. Immediately to the southwest of the ancient Roman road called the Via Aemilia, the mountains begin to rise, culminating in the central chain of the Apennines. Emilia-Romagna’s southern boundary follows the summits of this mountain chain. With the exception of the Po, the region’s main rivers descend from these mountains. The Trebbia, Taro, Secchia, and Panaro (affluents of the Po) and the Reno, Ronco, Montone, and Savio (flowing to the Adriatic) are the most important rivers.

The name Emilia comes from the Via Aemilia, a Roman road that traversed the region from Ariminium (Rimini) in the southeast to Placentia (Piacenza) in the northwest; a modern railway closely follows its route. In popular usage the name was transferred to the area (which formed the eighth Augustan region of Italy) as early as the 1st century ce, and it was frequently named as a district under imperial judges. After the 3rd century, Ravenna was, as a rule, not treated as part of Aemilia, the chief town of which was Placentia. In the 6th century, Ravenna became the seat of a Byzantine exarchate.

After the Lombards had for two centuries attempted to subdue the maritime pentapolis (Rimini, Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, and Senigallia), the Frankish king Pippin III took these five cities from the Lombard ruler Aistulf and in 755 gave them to the papacy, to which, under the name of Romagna, they continued to belong. The other chief cities of Emilia—Ferrara, Modena, Reggio nell’Emilia, Parma, and Piacenza—were independent. Whether belonging to the Romagna or not, each had a history of its own, and, notwithstanding the feuds of the Guelfs and Ghibellines (papal and imperial factions), they prospered considerably.

Papal supremacy in the Romagna remained little more than nominal until Cesare Borgia, the natural son of Pope Alexander VI, crushed most of the petty princes there, and the Romagna came under papal administration after the death of Alexander in 1503. The papacy also controlled Ferrara and Bologna after the 16th century, while the rest of the region was largely dominated by the Este duchy of Modena and the Farnese duchy of Parma and Piacenza. After a period of Napoleonic domination, the Congress of Vienna (1815) returned Romagna to the papacy and gave the duchy of Parma to Marie Louise, wife of the deposed Napoleon, and Modena to the archduke Francis of Austria, the heir of the last Este. After a period of continuous unrest and numerous attempts at revolt, Emilia passed to the Italian kingdom almost without resistance in 1860. The name of the region was changed to Emilia-Romagna in 1948.

With its broad lowland and adequate water supply (from both rainfall and irrigation), Emilia-Romagna is one of the leading agricultural regions of Italy. Wheat, corn (maize), fodder, and sugar beets are the principal crops; vegetables and fruits are also grown in the lowlands and grapes on the Apennine slopes. Livestock raising and dairy farming are extensive, and the region has a large food-processing and food-packing industry.

The manufacture of cars and trucks, farm machinery, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, ceramics, and clothing is important. Small hydroelectric stations on the rivers provide power, and these are connected with the Alpine plants so that interchange at different seasons is possible. The discovery of large deposits of natural gas (at Cortemaggiore north of Fidenza and near Ravenna) and of oil (at Busseto near Cortemaggiore) gives the region a vital role in the energy economy of Italy.

Bologna is a communications hub for commerce between northern and southern Italy, and the region is well served by secondary railway lines and highways. Area 8,542 square miles (22,123 square km). Pop. (2006 est.) 4,187,557.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.

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Italy

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Italy, country of south-central Europe, occupying a peninsula that juts deep into the Mediterranean Sea. Italy comprises some of the most varied and scenic landscapes on Earth and is often described as a country shaped like a boot. At its broad top stand the Alps, which are among the world’s most rugged mountains. Italy’s highest points are along Monte Rosa, which peaks in Switzerland, and along Mont Blanc, which peaks in France. The western Alps overlook a landscape of Alpine lakes and glacier-carved valleys that stretch down to the Po River and the Piedmont. Tuscany, to the south of the cisalpine region, is perhaps the country’s best-known region. From the central Alps, running down the length of the country, radiates the tall Apennine Range, which widens near Rome to cover nearly the entire width of the Italian peninsula. South of Rome the Apennines narrow and are flanked by two wide coastal plains, one facing the Tyrrhenian Sea and the other the Adriatic Sea. Much of the lower Apennine chain is near-wilderness, hosting a wide range of species rarely seen elsewhere in western Europe, such as wild boars, wolves, asps, and bears. The southern Apennines are also tectonically unstable, with several active volcanoes, including Vesuvius, which from time to time belches ash and steam into the air above Naples and its island-strewn bay. At the bottom of the country, in the Mediterranean Sea, lie the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.

Italy’s political geography has been conditioned by this rugged landscape. With few direct roads between them, and with passage from one point to another traditionally difficult, Italy’s towns and cities have a history of self-sufficiency, independence, and mutual mistrust. Visitors today remark on how unlike one town is from the next, on the marked differences in cuisine and dialect, and on the many subtle divergences that make Italy seem less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting.

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Head Of Government:: Prime Minister: Giorgia Meloni

Capital:: Rome

Population:: (2025 est.) 59,198,000

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Head Of State:: President: Sergio Mattarella

Across a span of more than 3,000 years, Italian history has been marked by episodes of temporary unification and long separation, of intercommunal strife and failed empires. At peace for more than half a century now, Italy’s inhabitants enjoy a high standard of living and a highly developed culture.

Though its archaeological record stretches back tens of thousands of years, Italian history begins with the Etruscans, an ancient civilization that rose between the Arno and Tiber rivers. The Etruscans were supplanted in the 3rd century bce by the Romans, who soon became the chief power in the Mediterranean world and whose empire stretched from India to Scotland by the 2nd century ce. That empire was rarely secure, not only because of the unwillingness of conquered peoples to stay conquered but also because of power struggles between competing Roman political factions, military leaders, families, ethnic groups, and religions. The Roman Empire fell in the 5th century ce after a succession of barbarian invasions through which Huns, Lombards, Ostrogoths, and Franks—mostly previous subjects of Rome—seized portions of Italy. Rule devolved to the level of the city-state, although the Normans succeeded in establishing a modest empire in southern Italy and Sicily in the 11th century. Many of those city-states flourished during the Renaissance era, a time marked by significant intellectual, artistic, and technological advances but also by savage warfare between states loyal to the pope and those loyal to the Holy Roman Empire.

Italian unification came in the 19th century, when a liberal revolution installed Victor Emmanuel II as king. In World War I, Italy fought on the side of the Allies, but, under the rule of the fascist leader Benito Mussolini, it waged war against the Allied powers in World War II. From the end of World War II to the early 1990s, Italy had a multiparty system dominated by two large parties: the Christian Democratic Party (Partito della Democrazia Cristiana; DC) and the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano; PCI). In the early 1990s the Italian party system underwent a radical transformation, and the political center collapsed, leaving a right-left polarization of the party spectrum that threw the north-south divide into sharper contrast and gave rise to such political leaders as media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.

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The whole country is relatively prosperous, certainly as compared with the early years of the 20th century, when the economy was predominantly agricultural. Much of that prosperity has to do with tourism, for in good years nearly as many visitors as citizens can be found in the country. Italy is part of the European Union and the Council of Europe, and, with its strategic geographic position on the southern flank of Europe, it has played a fairly important role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The capital is Rome, one of the oldest of the world’s great cities and a favorite of visitors, who go there to see its great monuments and works of art as well as to enjoy the city’s famed dolce vita, or "sweet life." Other major cities include the industrial and fashion center of Milan; Genoa, a handsome port on the Ligurian Gulf; the sprawling southern metropolis of Naples; and Venice, one of the world’s oldest tourist destinations. Surrounded by Rome is an independent state, Vatican City, which is the seat of the Roman Catholic Church and the spiritual home of Italy’s overwhelmingly Catholic population. Each of those cities, and countless smaller cities and towns, has retained its differences against the leveling effect of the mass media and standardized education. Thus, many Italians, particularly older ones, are inclined to think of themselves as belonging to families, then neighborhoods, then towns or cities, then regions, and then, last, as members of a nation.

The intellectual and moral faculties of humankind have found a welcome home in Italy, one of the world’s most important centers of religion, visual arts, literature, music, philosophy, culinary arts, and sciences. Michelangelo, the painter and sculptor, believed that his work was to free an already existing image; Giuseppe Verdi heard the voices of the ancients and of angels in music that came to him in his dreams; Dante forged a new language with his incomparable poems of heaven, hell, and the world between. Those and many other Italian artists, writers, designers, musicians, chefs, actors, and filmmakers have brought extraordinary gifts to the world.

This article treats the physical and human geography and history of Italy. For discussion of Classical history, see the articles ancient Italic people and ancient Rome.