Monterey, California
Founded on June 3, 1770, Monterey was the capital of Alta California under both Spain and Mexico until 1850. Monterey hosted California's first theater, public building, public library, publicly funded school, printing press, newspaper. Monterey was the only port of entry for taxable goods in California. In 1846, the U. S. flag was raised over the Customs House, California became part of the United States after the Mexican–American War. The city is located in Monterey County in the U. S. state of California, on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on California's Central Coast. The city hall is at 26 feet above sea level, the city occupies a land area of 8.466 sq mi. The 2010 census recorded a population of 27,810; the city and surrounding area have attracted artists since the late 19th century and many celebrated painters and writers have lived there. Until the 1950s, there was an abundant fishery. Among Monterey's notable present-day attractions are the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Cannery Row, Fisherman's Wharf and the annual Monterey Jazz Festival.
Long before the arrival of Spanish explorers, the Rumsen Ohlone tribe, one of seven linguistically distinct Ohlone groups in California, inhabited the area now known as Monterey. They subsisted by hunting and gathering food on and around the biologically rich Monterey Peninsula. Researchers have found a number of shell middens in the area and, based on the archaeological evidence, concluded the Ohlone's primary marine food consisted at various times of mussels and abalone. A number of midden sites have been located along about 12 miles of rocky coast on the Monterey Peninsula from the current site of Fishermans' Wharf in Monterey to Carmel. In 1602, Spanish maritime explorer Sebastian Vizcaino recorded the name "Bahía de Monterrey", which has evolved into Monterey Bay. Vizcaino landed at the southern end of the bay and described a great port, suitable for use as an anchorage by southbound Manila galleons. Vizcaino noted and named the "Point of Pines". All other uses of the name Monterey derive from Vizcaino's name for the bay.
Variants of the city's name are recorded as Monte Montery. In 1769, the first European land exploration of Alta California, the Spanish Portolá expedition, traveled north from San Diego, seeking Vizcaino's "Port of Monterey" from 167 years earlier. For some reason, the explorers failed to recognize the place when they came to it on October 1, 1769; the party continued north as far as San Francisco Bay before turning back. On the return journey, they camped near one of Monterey's lagoons on November 27, still not convinced they had found the place Vizcaino had described. Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí noted in his diary, "We halted in sight of the Point of Pines and camped near a small lagoon which has rather muddy water, but abounds in pasture and firewood."Portolá returned by land to Monterey the next year, having concluded that he must have been at Vizcaino's Port of Monterey after all. The land party was met at Monterey by Junípero Serra. Portolá erected the Presidio of Monterey to defend the port and, on June 3, 1770, Serra founded the Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo inside the presidio enclosure.
Portolá returned to Mexico, replaced in Monterey by Captain Pedro Fages, third in command on the exploratory expeditions. Fages became the second governor of Alta California, serving from 1770 to 1774. San Diego is the only city in California older than Monterey. Serra's missionary aims soon came into conflict with Fages and the soldiers, he moved the mission to Carmel the following year to gain greater independence from Fages; the existing wood and adobe building became the chapel for the Presidio. Monterey became the capital of the "Province of Both Californias" in 1777, the chapel was renamed the Royal Presidio Chapel; the original church was replaced by the present sandstone structure. It was completed in 1794 by Indian labor. In 1840, the chapel was rededicated to the patronage of Saint Charles Borromeo; the cathedral is the oldest continuously operating parish and the oldest stone building in California. It is the oldest serving cathedral along with St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana.
It is the only existing presidio chapel in California and the only surviving building from the original Monterey Presidio. The city was the only port of entry for all taxable goods in California. All shipments into California by sea were required to go through the Custom House, the oldest governmental building in the state and California's Historic Landmark Number One. Built in three phases, the Spanish began construction of the Custom House in 1814, the Mexican government completed the center section in 1827, the United States government finished the lower end in 1846. On 24 November 1818 Argentine corsair Hippolyte Bouchard landed 7 km away from the Presidio of Monterey in a hidden creek; the fort resisted ineffectively, after an hour of combat the Argentine flag flew over it. The Argentines took the city for six days, during which time they stole the cattle and burned the fort, the artillery headquarters, the governor's residence and the Spanish houses; the town's residents were unharmed. Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, but the civil and religious institutions of Alta California remained much the same until the 1830s, when the secularization of the missions converted most of the mission pasture lands into private land grant ranchos.
Monterey was the site of the Battle of Monterey on July 1846, during the Mexican -- American War. It was on
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania, the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is equidistant from Bucharest and Belgrade. Located in the Someșul Mic River valley, the city is considered the unofficial capital to the historical province of Transylvania. From 1790 to 1848 and from 1861 to 1867, it was the official capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania; as of 2011, 324,576 inhabitants lived within the city limits, marking a slight increase from the figure recorded at the 2002 census. The Cluj-Napoca metropolitan area has a population of 411,379 people, while the population of the peri-urban area exceeds 420,000 residents; the new metropolitan government of Cluj-Napoca became operational in December 2008. According to a 2007 estimate provided by the County Population Register Service, the city hosts a visible population of students and other non-residents—an average of over 20,000 people each year during 2004–2007.
The city spreads out from St. Michael's Church in Unirii Square, built in the 14th century and named after the Archangel Michael, the patron saint of Cluj-Napoca; the boundaries of the municipality contain an area of 179.52 square kilometres. Cluj-Napoca experienced a decade of decline during the 1990s, its international reputation suffering from the policies of its mayor at the time, Gheorghe Funar. Today, the city is one of the most important academic, cultural and business centres in Romania. Among other institutions, it hosts the country's largest university, Babeș-Bolyai University, with its botanical garden. Cluj-Napoca held the titles of European Youth Capital in 2015 and European City of Sport in 2018. On the site of the city was a pre-Roman settlement named Napoca. After the AD 106 Roman conquest of the area, the place was known as Municipium Aelium Hadrianum Napoca. Possible etymologies for Napoca or Napuca include the names of some Dacian tribes such as the Naparis or Napaei, the Greek term napos, meaning "timbered valley" or the Indo-European root *snā-p-, "to flow, to swim, damp".
The first written mention of the city's current name – as a Royal Borough – was in 1213 under the Medieval Latin name Castrum Clus. Despite the fact that Clus as a county name was recorded in the 1173 document Thomas comes Clusiensis, it is believed that the county's designation derives from the name of the castrum, which might have existed prior to its first mention in 1213, not vice versa. With respect to the name of this camp, it is accepted as a derivation from the Latin term clausa – clusa, meaning "closed place", "strait", "ravine". Similar senses are attributed to the Slavic term kluč, meaning "a key" and the German Klause – Kluse; the Latin and Slavic names have been attributed to the valley that narrows or closes between hills just to the west of Cluj-Mănăștur. An alternative hypothesis relates the name of the city to its first magistrate, Miklus – Miklós / Kolos; the Hungarian form Kolozsvár, first recorded in 1246 as Kulusuar, underwent various phonetic changes over the years. Its Saxon name Clusenburg/Clusenbvrg appeared in 1348.
The Romanian name of the city used to be spelled alternately as Cluj or Cluș, the latter being the case in Mihai Eminescu's Poesis. In 1974, the communist authorities added "-Napoca" to the city's name as a nationalist gesture, emphasising its pre-Roman roots; the full name is used outside of official contexts. In Yiddish it is known as קלאזין or קלויזענבורג; the nickname "treasure city" was acquired in the late 16th century, refers to the wealth amassed by residents, including in the precious metals trade. The phrase is kincses város in Hungarian, given in Romanian as orașul comoară; the Roman Empire conquered Dacia in AD 101 and 106, during the rule of Trajan, the Roman settlement Napoca, established thereafter, is first recorded on a milestone discovered in 1758 in the vicinity of the city. Trajan's successor Hadrian granted Napoca the status of municipium as municipium Aelium Hadrianum Napocenses. In the 2nd century AD, the city gained the status of a colonia as Colonia Aurelia Napoca. Napoca became thus the seat of a procurator.
The colonia was evacuated in 274 by the Romans. There are no references to urban settlement on the site for the better part of a millennium thereafter. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, two groups of buildings existed on the current site of the city: the wooden fortress at Cluj-Mănăștur and the civilian settlement developed around the current Piața Muzeului in the city centre. Although the precise date of the conquest of Transylvania by the Hungarians is not known, the earliest Hungarian artifacts found in the region are dated to the first half of the 10th century. In any case, after that time, the city became part of the Kingdom of Hungary. King Stephen I made the city the seat of the castle county of Kolozs, King Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary founded the abbey of Cluj-Mănăștur, destroyed during the Tatar invasions in 12
Nightclub
A nightclub, music club or club, is an entertainment venue and bar that operates late into the night. A nightclub is distinguished from regular bars, pubs or taverns by the inclusion of a stage for live music, one or more dance floor areas and a DJ booth, where a DJ plays recorded music; the upmarket nature of nightclubs can be seen in the inclusion of VIP areas in some nightclubs, for celebrities and their guests. Nightclubs are much more than pubs or sports bars to use bouncers to screen prospective clubgoers for entry; some nightclub bouncers do not admit people with informal clothing or gang apparel as part of a dress code. The busiest nights for a nightclub are Saturday night. Most clubs or club nights cater to certain music genres, such as hip hop. Many clubs have recurring club nights on different days of the week. Most club nights focus on a particular sound for branding effects. From about 1900 to 1920, working class Americans would gather at honky tonks or juke joints to dance to music played on a piano or a jukebox.
Webster Hall is credited as the first modern nightclub, being built in 1886 and starting off as a "social hall" functioning as a home for dance and political activism events. During Prohibition in the United States, nightclubs went underground as illegal speakeasy bars, with Webster Hall staying open, with rumors circulating of Al Capone's involvement and police bribery. With the repeal of Prohibition in February 1933, nightclubs were revived, such as New York's 21 Club, Copacabana, El Morocco, the Stork Club; these nightclubs featured big bands. In Germany, the first discothèque on record that involved a disc jockey was Scotch-Club, which opened in 1959. In Occupied France and bebop music, the jitterbug dance were banned by the Nazis as "decadent American influences", so as an act of resistance, people met at hidden basements called discothèques where they danced to jazz and swing music, played on a single turntable when a jukebox was not available; these discothèques were patronized by anti-Vichy youth called zazous.
There were underground discothèques in Nazi Germany patronized by anti-Nazi youth called the swing kids. In Harlem, Connie's Inn and the Cotton Club were popular venues for white audiences. Before 1953 and some years thereafter, most bars and nightclubs used a jukebox or live bands. In Paris, at a club named Whisky à Gogo, founded in 1947, Régine in 1953 laid down a dance-floor, suspended coloured lights and replaced the jukebox with two turntables that she operated herself so there would be no breaks between the music; the Whisky à Gogo set into place the standard elements of the modern post World War II discothèque-style nightclub. At the end of the 1950s, several of the coffee bars in Soho introduced afternoon dancing and the most famous was Les Enfants Terribles at 93 Dean St; these original discothèques were nothing like the night clubs, as they were unlicensed and catered to a young public—mostly made up of French and Italians working illegally in catering, to learn English as well as au pair girls from most of western Europe.
While the discothèque swept Europe throughout the 1960s, it did not reach the United States until the 1970s, where the first rock and roll generation preferred rough and tumble bars and taverns to nightclubs until the disco era. In the early 1960s, Mark Birley opened a members-only discothèque nightclub, Annabel's, in Berkeley Square, London. In 1962, the Peppermint Lounge in New York City became popular and is the place where go-go dancing originated. Sybil Burton opened the "Arthur" discothèque in 1965 on East 54th Street in Manhattan on the site of the old El Morocco nightclub and it became the first and hottest disco in New York City through 1969; the first large-scale discothèque in Germany opened in 1967 as the club Blow Up in Munich, which because of its extravagance and excesses gained international reputation. Disco has its roots in the underground club scene. During the early 1970s in New York City, disco clubs were places where oppressed or marginalized groups such as homosexuals, Latinos, Italian-Americans, Jews could party without following male to female dance protocol or exclusive club policies.
Discoteques had a law. This shifted the idea of this post-heterosexist community, as women could be seen as a kind of gateway for men to advance their own experience without fear of being arrested under the male-to-male dancing law; the women sought these experiences to seek safety in a venue that embraced the independent woman — with an eye to one or more of the same or opposite sex or none. Although the culture that surrounded disco was progressive in dance couples, cross-genre music, a push to put the physical over the rational, the role of female bodies looked to be placed in the role of safety net, it brought together people from different backgrounds. These clubs acted as safe havens for homosexual partygoers to dance in peace and away from public scrutiny. By the late 1970s many major U. S. cities had thriving disco club scenes centered on discothèques and private loft parties where DJs would play disco hits through powerful PA systems for the dancers. The DJs played "... a smooth mix of long single records to keep people'dancing all night long'".
Some of the most prestigious clubs had elaborate lighting systems that throbbed to the beat of the music. The genre of disco has changed through the years, it is classified both as a nightclub. This club culture that originated in downtown New York, was attended by a variety of different ethnicities and economic backgrounds, it was an inex
Poland
Poland the Republic of Poland, is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With a population of 38.5 million people, Poland is the sixth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, Szczecin. Poland is bordered by the Baltic Sea, Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Lithuania to the north and Ukraine to the east and Czech Republic, to the south, Germany to the west; the establishment of the Polish state can be traced back to AD 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of the realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, in 1569 it cemented its longstanding political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin; this union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, with a uniquely liberal political system which adopted Europe's first written national constitution, the Constitution of 3 May 1791.
More than a century after the Partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland regained its independence in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Germany, followed by the Soviet Union invading Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. More than six million Polish citizens, including 90% of the country's Jews, perished in the war. In 1947, the Polish People's Republic was established as a satellite state under Soviet influence. In the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1989, most notably through the emergence of the Solidarity movement, Poland reestablished itself as a presidential democratic republic. Poland is regional power, it has the fifth largest economy by GDP in the European Union and one of the most dynamic economies in the world achieving a high rank on the Human Development Index. Additionally, the Polish Stock Exchange in Warsaw is the largest and most important in Central Europe. Poland is a developed country, which maintains a high-income economy along with high standards of living, life quality, safety and economic freedom.
Having a developed school educational system, the country provides free university education, state-funded social security, a universal health care system for all citizens. Poland has 15 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Poland is a member state of the European Union, the Schengen Area, the United Nations, NATO, the OECD, the Three Seas Initiative, the Visegrád Group; the origin of the name "Poland" derives from the West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta river basin of the historic Greater Poland region starting in the 6th century. The origin of the name "Polanie" itself derives from the early Slavic word "pole". In some languages, such as Hungarian, Lithuanian and Turkish, the exonym for Poland is Lechites, which derives from the name of a semi-legendary ruler of Polans, Lech I. Early Bronze Age in Poland begun around 2400 BC, while the Iron Age commenced in 750 BC. During this time, the Lusatian culture, spanning both the Bronze and Iron Ages, became prominent; the most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, around 700 BC.
Throughout the Antiquity period, many distinct ancient ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland in an era that dates from about 400 BC to 500 AD. These groups are identified as Celtic, Slavic and Germanic tribes. Recent archeological findings in the Kujawy region, confirmed the presence of the Roman Legions on the territory of Poland; these were most expeditionary missions sent out to protect the amber trade. The exact time and routes of the original migration and settlement of Slavic peoples lacks written records and can only be defined as fragmented; the Slavic tribes who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. Up until the creation of Mieszko's state and his subsequent conversion to Christianity in 966 AD, the main religion of Slavic tribes that inhabited the geographical area of present-day Poland was Slavic paganism. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the religious authority of the Roman Church.
However, the transition from paganism was not a smooth and instantaneous process for the rest of the population as evident from the pagan reaction of the 1030s. Poland began to form into a recognizable unitary and territorial entity around the middle of the 10th century under the Piast dynasty. Poland's first documented ruler, Mieszko I, accepted Christianity with the Baptism of Poland in 966, as the new official religion of his subjects; the bulk of the population converted in the course of the next few centuries. In 1000, Boleslaw the Brave, continuing the policy of his father Mieszko, held a Congress of Gniezno and created the metropolis of Gniezno and the dioceses of Kraków, Kołobrzeg, Wrocław. However, the pagan unrest led to the transfer of the capital to Kraków in 1038 by Casimir I the Restorer. In 1109, Prince Bolesław III Wrymouth defeated the King of Germany Henry V at the Battle of Hundsfeld, stopping the Ge
Romagnol dialect
Romagnol is a group of related dialects of the Emilian-Romagnol language spoken in the historical region of Romagna, today in the south-eastern part of Emilia-Romagna. The name itself is derived from the Lombard name for the region Romania, it is spoken outside the region in the neighboring province of Pesaro-Urbino and in the independent country of San Marino. It is classified as a threatened language, due to older generations having “neglected to pass on the dialect as a native tongue to the next generation”. While contemporaneous with modern Standard Italian, it is technically a member of the Gallo-Italic branch and more comparable to the “northern group” of Italian dialects; this includes the dialects Emilian, Ligurian and Piedmontese. It is sometimes considered a subdialect of a larger Emilian-Romagnol language, which encompasses a broad continuum of dialects spanning the region of Emilia-Romagna. West of Romagna, the Emilian language is spoken; the border with Emilian-speaking areas is the Sillaro river, which runs 25 km east from Bologna to the west of.
Emilian is spoken, to the east, in Imola, the language is Romagnol. In Emilia-Romagna, Emilian is spoken in all the rest of the region moving from the Sillaro river to the west, up to Piacenza; the Reno River is the dialect of Ferrara. Romagnol is spoken in some villages northwards of the Reno River, such as Argenta, Emilia–Romagna and Filo, where people of Romagnol origin live alongside people of Ferrarese origin. Ferrara goes into Emilian language territory. Outside Emilia-Romagna, Romagnol is spoken in the Republic of San Marino, in the Marecchia Valley, in the Conca Valley and in all of the Pesaro e Urbino province. Romagnol's first acknowledgement outside regional literature was in Dante Alighieri’s treatise De vulgari eloquentia, wherein Dante compares “the language of Romagna” to his native Tuscan dialect. In 1629, the author Adriano Banchieri wrote the treatise Discorso della lingua Bolognese, which countered Dante’s claim that the Tuscan dialect was better, arguing his belief that Bolognese was superior in “naturalness, softness and usefulness.”
Romagnol received more recognition. There is a large repertoire of folklore legends and fables in Romagnol, due to its role in local geopolitical history. Romagna’s geographic diversity was home to a variety of lifestyles and trade backgrounds, such as “the mountaineers of the Alps, the fisherman of the Adriatic, the farmers of the plains, the city folk,” which in turn, allowed for a large range of topics and themes present in the literature. Darker themes, such as poverty and pessimism, are known to be common subjects of Romagnol poetry and prose; the first appearance of a distinct Romagnol literary work is "Sonetto romagnolo" by Bernardino Catti, from Ravenna, printed 1502. It is written in a mixture of Romagnol; the first Romagnol poem dates back to the end of 16th century: E Pvlon matt. Cantlena aroica, a mock-heroic poem based on Orlando Furioso and written by an anonymous author from San Vittore di Cesena; the original poem comprised twelve cantos. The first Romagnol poet to win fame was the cleric Pietro Santoni.
He was the teacher of one of the most famous Italian poets of his time. In 1840 the first Romagnol-Italian Dictionary was published by Antonio Morri, printed in Faenza; the 20th century saw a flourishing of Romagnol literature. Theatrical plays and books of a high quality were produced; some of the best known Romagnol authors are: Raffaello Baldini, who won in 1988 the "Premio Viareggio" and in 1995 the "Premio Bagutta," known for long pessimistic poems and prose Tonino Guerra, wrote poems during his exile to WWII-era Germany, focusing on people of suffering and poverty Olindo Guerrini, with "Sonetti romagnoli" Aldo Spallicci, an antifascist exiled from Romagna. He wrote poems such as "Rumâgna" that were descriptive of Romagna Unlike Standard Italian, not all nouns end in a theme vowel. Masculine nouns lack theme vowels and feminine nouns terminate in "a." To form plurals, masculine nouns and adjectives undergo lexically-specified ablaut. In the case of feminine nouns and adjectives, "a" becomes "i" or deletes if after a consonant cluster or double consonant.
Though both languages derive their lexicon from Vulgar Latin, some words differ in gender. Italian and Romagnol share much of the same features. Both languages are SVO in simple sentences. Verbs are conjugated according to tense and person. Romagnol has 4 conjugations compared to Italian's 3: the 1st, êr. One marked difference in syntax between Romagnol and Italian is that pronouns are obligatory, some verbs in Romagnol use a reflexive construction where Italian uses an intransitive construction. Verbs that are impersonal in Romagnol use "avèr," in contrast with Italian which uses "essere." Though the subject is null, an expletive pronoun inserts itself in the specifier position, much like English's "it". Italian: è piovuto, It rained Romagnol: l'à piuvù, It rainedAdditionally, whereas Standard Italian and other Northern dialects omit the definite article before “singular names and names of relatives,” Romagnol
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Southampton, New York, United States
Jelenia Góra, Poland
Mahón, Spain
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Aalen, (Germany)
