Southern Italy (Mezzogiorno)

The Italian south, which was a centralised kingdom while the north was city-republics, and has been paying for the difference ever since. Greeks colonised the coast so thoroughly that the Romans called it Magna Graecia, and Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Hohenstaufen, Angevins, Aragonese, Spaniards and Bourbons ruled in succession - so the region absorbed more cultures than any comparable part of Europe and was governed by outsiders for most of a millennium. Norman Sicily under Roger II was among the most sophisticated states of the twelfth century. But the structure that mattered was feudal: land held in large estates by absentee barons, no independent merchant class, and a peasantry with no stake, while northern cities were developing banking and self-government. Unification in 1860 brought northern tariffs and taxes, conscription and the dismantling of southern industry, followed by a brigand war and mass emigration - some four million people left between 1880 and 1920, most for the Americas. Organised crime consolidated in the space the state did not fill. The southern question has been a permanent item of Italian politics since 1861. Pompeii, Matera, Amalfi and Agrigento are World Heritage sites. The region covers everything south of Rome plus Sicily and Sardinia, with around twenty million people. Naples is its largest city. Etna and Vesuvius are both active. Its cuisine - pizza, pasta with tomato, mozzarella - is what most of the world means by Italian food. Emigration continues northward and abroad, and several southern provinces have lost population every decade since 1951. Sicily and Sardinia both have special autonomous status. Greek is still spoken in a few Calabrian villages.

• Existed: 1130 CE – present
• Type: Entity