{"population":58850717,"blurb":{"text":"Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern and Western Europe. It consists of a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land border, as well as nearly 800 islands, notably Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares land borders with France to the west; Switzerland and Austria to the north; Slovenia to the east; and the two enclaves of Vatican City and San Marino. It is the tenth-largest country in Europe by area, covering 301,340 km2 (116,350 sq mi), and the third-most populous member state of the European Union, with nearly 59 million inhabitants. Italy's capital and largest city is Rome; other major cities include Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Bari, and Venice.","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy"},"vexillology":{"text":"The national flag of Italy, often referred to as the Tricolour, is a flag featuring three equally sized vertical pales of green, white and red, with the green at the hoist side, as defined by Article 12 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic. The Italian law regulates its use and display, protecting its defence and providing for the crime of insulting it; it also prescribes its teaching in Italian schools together with other national symbols of Italy.","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Italy"},"flagDesign":{"text":"As the similarity suggests, the Italian tricolour derives from the flag of France, which was born during the French Revolution from the union of white – the colour of the monarchy – with red and blue – the colours of Paris, and which became the symbol of social and political renewal perpetrated by the original Jacobinism.\n\nGreen, the first Italian tricolour cockades, symbolised natural rights, namely social equality and freedom. After various events it came to 7 January 1797, the date of the adoption of the tricolour flag by the Cispadane Republic, the first Italian sovereign state to make use of it. During the Napoleonic period, the three colours acquired a more idealistic meaning for the population: the green represents hope, the white represents faith and the red represents love.\n\nOther less probable conjectures that explain the adoption of the green hypothesise a tribute that Napoleon wanted to give to Corsica, where he was born, or to a possible reference to the verdant Italian landscape. For the adoption of greenery there is also the so-called \"Masonic hypothesis\": even for Freemasonry, green was the colour of nature, a symbol of human rights, which are naturally inherent in…","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Italy"},"photos":["https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/01_partigiani_a_milano1.jpg/500px-01_partigiani_a_milano1.jpg","https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/A8-A26_Besnate.jpg/500px-A8-A26_Besnate.jpg","https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Archiginnasio_ora_blu_Bologna.jpg/500px-Archiginnasio_ora_blu_Bologna.jpg","https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Cavour_%28550%29.jpg/500px-Cavour_%28550%29.jpg"]}