Situated in Mediterranean Europe, Italy is a peninsula, with land frontiers with France in the north-west, Switzerland and Austria in the north and Slovenia in the north-east.
There is a great deal of variety in the landscape in Italy, although it is characterized predominantly by two mountain chains: the Alps and the Apennines. The former extends over 600 miles from east to west. It consists of great massifs in the western sector, with peaks rising to over 14,000 feet, including Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn.
The Alpine foothills are characterized by large lakes: Lake Maggiore and the lakes of Como, Iseo and Garda. The Apennines form the backbone of the peninsula, stretching in a wide arc concave to the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Corno Grande (Gran Sasso d'Italia) is the highest peak.
A large part of central Italy is characterized by a green hilly landscape, through which the rivers Arno and Tiber run. The southern section of the chain pushes out to the east forming the Gargano promontory and, sloping down further south, the Salentine peninsula. It then proceeds to the west with the Calabrian and Peloritano massif stretching across the Strait of Messina into Sicilia.
The principal islands are Sicily, rising up to the great volcanic cone of Etna (10,860 feet) and Sardinia. Italy is famous for its three legendary active volcanoes namely, Stromboli in the Aeolian Islands and Etna on Sicily.
The main archipelagos are the Tremiti Islands in the Adriatic Sea, the Tuscan Archipelago, the Pontine Islands, the Aeolian Islands and the Egadi Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Sicilia.
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