Italy was located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia.

Italy has been the home of many European cultures, such as the Etruscans and the Romans, and later was the birthplace of the university and of the Renaissance, that began in Tuscany and spread all over Europe. Italy's capital, Rome, was for centuries the center of Western civilization; it also spawned the Baroque movement and is the seat of the Catholic Church. Italy possessed a colonial empire from the second half of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

[source: wikipedia]

And now it is gone...
