The history of Italy is one of the most important in Europe and around the world

The history of Italy is one of the most important in Europe and around the world. Inheriting many ancient cultures such as the Etruscans and Latins, and recipient of the Greek and Carthaginian colonization, was born the Roman Empire, bequeather of much of Western culture and one of the largest in history. After the fall of the Empire, Italy suffered a series of Germanic invasions interspersed with Byzantine and honest attempts to reconstruct the unity of the Roman Empire.

During the Middle Ages Italy would become a mosaic of city-states fought each other to achieve hegemony over the rest, frequent interventions by neighboring powers and the Church. In the XV and XVI became the cultural center of Europe, giving rise to the Renaissance and was one of the areas in which it was decided to European supremacy of the Spanish Empire.

After the decline of the Hispanic monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would control the region. Transformed into a battleground during the French Revolutionary Wars and the First Empire Napoleonic would fight for their independence. Between 1856 and 1870 he held the Unification of Italy after a series of wars that involved face the Austrian Empire and the Papal States. Italy subsequently carry out imperialist policies that led to her participation in the First World War on the side of the Entente's invasion of Abyssinia and participate in the Second World War as an ally of Hitler.

Today Italy is a prestigious country, democratic, belonging to such important organizations as the European Union or the G-8, and a major economic powers of the earth.

The name of Italy has been in use since ancient times to designate the people of the heart of what we today call the Italian peninsula, referring to the Italic peoples, speakers of calls as well. Its origin is uncertain: Pallotino argues that derives from a settlement in Calabria, which was used by the Greeks as the general term for the inhabitants of the peninsula

The term was settled when the Roman Republic to unify the peninsula by conquering the rest of contemporary tribes. The name of Italy was also used on coins minted by the coalition of nations that rose up against Rome in the first century BC with its capital in Corfinium including Samnites, Umbrian, and Sabine. Finally, the Roman emperor Augustus included Italy under the name of the peninsula, which was completed adding Gaul in 42 a. C., as a core unit of the empire.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy and Italian words came to refer to the set of states that inhabited the ancient territory of Roman Italy and shared a cultural affinity, with particular emphasis on the same set of dialects of Latin that would origin to the Italian language. Centuries later, the romantic nationalism cultural unity based on this search of a political unity that would lead to the modern Italian state.

Some areas that under those same standards could be called Italians entered the state, as is the case of Malta, San Marino or regions bordering with Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland and France. By convention, this article will focus on the territory of modern Italy, but including the history of these areas when treating periods in which they shared the same evolution.

The Roman Kingdom (Latin: Regnum Romanum) was the first political form of government of the city-state of Rome, from the legendary time of its founding on April 21 a. 753 C., until the end of the monarchy in 510 BC C., when the last king, Tarquin the Proud, was expelled, establishing the Roman Republic.

The origins of the monarchy are imprecise, although it seems clear that it was the first form of city government, a fact that seems to confirm the archeology and linguistics. Mythologically, is rooted in the legend of Romulus and Remus. Anyway, after Romulus and the Sabine Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius came to power, which expanded the port of call on the coastal road salt was Rome at the expense of their neighbors, becoming the most influential Roman city of Latium.

After the reign of Anco Marcio, came to power a dynasty of Etruscan origin, the Tarquins under which Rome expanded further its power in the region. However, the excesses of Tarquinius Superbus was the origin of internal disputes, which joined the coalition of Etruscan and Latin threatened by the city, resulting in the expulsion of the king through the intervention of Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. Rome lost much of its power, to which was added the humiliation of a foray by the Celts led by Breno that swept several cities in Italy.