Click each of the 20 Italian regions on the map.
Italy's twenty regions are far more than lines on a map — they are the building blocks of Italian identity. Long before unification in 1861, the peninsula was a patchwork of city-states, kingdoms and papal territories, and those old allegiances still echo in regional pride, cuisine and dialect. A Piedmontese will insist their agnolotti are nothing like Emilian tortellini; a Sicilian will remind you that their island had its own parliament centuries before Rome did.
Five regions — Sicily, Sardinia, Trentino-South Tyrol, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Aosta Valley — hold special autonomous status, reflecting linguistic minorities (German, French, Slovenian) and island geography. The north-south divide remains one of the defining tensions of Italian life: Lombardy, anchored by Milan, generates a quarter of the country's GDP, while Calabria and Molise in the south remain among Europe's poorest areas. In between, Tuscany offers Renaissance art and rolling hills, Lazio revolves around Rome and the Vatican, and Campania is home to Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast.
Placing all twenty on the map is a satisfying challenge — and a crash course in the extraordinary diversity of one of Europe's most fascinating countries.
