The Splendour of Italy [antikvár]

Italy is a peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea, divided from northern Europe by the Alpine mountain rangé, while in the south it extends to-wards Africa. Its temperate climate and geo-graphical position made it a land of conquest and many peoples settled here leaving traces of their passage. Italy can be divided into three Iarge basins: the North from the AIps to the Apennines, where architecture, sculpture and painting refer to the migrations coming from northern Europe and the Balkans; the Centre, where the Etruscans gave rise to the Italian civil-isation; the South strewn with ruins of colonies of Greek and Mediterranean origin that were es-tablished there.The journey of the "Splendour of Italy" begins in Venice, rising from its foundations in the silt of the lagoon, where it fostered an incomparable civilisation. It continues in Florence, the cradle of Humanism adopted by the Western world; and in Romé, the city that has existed for two thousand years and that has enlightened the world with its Empire and the Papacy; in Naples, the capital of the South, and Pompeii, where the flow of lava from Vesuvius in 79 A.D brought life to a sudden end, catching its inhabitants in their last moments; in Sicily, the island of fire, temples and indescribable scenery, rich with remnants of ancient civilisations. And it ends with the numer-ous other islands, with vestiges of cultures that remain unknown even today.