Southern Italy (Mezzogiorno)

The Mezzogiorno — the South, the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Its distinctness was forged by the Normans, who in the 11th century welded it into a single kingdom that then passed through Hohenstaufen, Angevin, Aragonese and Bourbon hands — eight centuries of centralised foreign monarchy and latifundia feudalism, the opposite of the northern free communes. Unification in 1861 annexed it to a Piedmontese state, deepening the gap, and mass emigration to the Americas followed; the unresolved 'Southern Question' of poverty, depopulation and organised crime persists. Yet it gave Italy much of its global image — pizza and Naples, Sicily and the Baroque, the operatic and the festive.

• Existed: 1130 CE – present
• Type: Entity