Military
The total strength of the professional army (2005; abolition of compulsory military service) is 184,500 men, that of the reservists 42,100 men. The army (107,500 soldiers) is divided into a mountain fighter division, an air brigade, a command for electronic warfare and telecommunications as well as an artillery, engineer, air defense and logistics command and two mechanized divisions. The Air Force has around 43,000 and the Navy 34,000 soldiers. Italy is a founding member of NATO. Defense spending represents (2016) 1.2% of gross domestic product (GDP).
Italian-Albanian Church
Italo | Albanian Church, the community of Catholics of the Byzantine Rite in Italy. The Italo-Albanian Church goes back to the ecclesiastical structures of the Greek-influenced population, who have lived in southern Italy since antiquity, as well as to the Italo-Albanians who immigrated in the 15th century. – After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Emperor Leon III withdrew. 732/33 the southern Italian territories and Sicily under papal jurisdiction and subordinated them to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. As a result of the conquest of southern Italy by the Normans in the 11th century, it was reintegrated into the Latin patriarchate, the Byzantine Christians were subordinated to Latin bishops and subsequently a gradual Latinization.
According to itypejob, the Byzantine tradition in southern Italy was revived in the 15th century with the arrival of the Italo-Albanians, who came to the country as mercenaries with Skanderbeg and stayed there, followed by refugees before the Turkish conquest of Albania. Most of the southern Albanian Christians followed the Byzantine rite. These were subordinated to Latin bishops in 1564, but retained – with papal support – their ritual and connected with the older structures of the Greek communities that still existed to form the Italian-Albanian Church. In 1742, under Benedict XIV, the constitution “Etsi pastoralis” fundamentally recognized the Italian-Albanian rites and traditions. Benedict XV Finally, in 1919, Pius XI established the diocese of Lungro (Calabria) for the Italo-Albanians in southern Italy (2015: around 62,000) . 1937 the diocese of Piana degli Albanesi in Sicily. In the same year Pius XI. the monastery of the Basilian monks in Grottaferrata near Rome for the external »abbatia nullius« for the Italo-Albanians. They celebrate the Greco-Byzantine liturgy with some parts in Albanian and Italian.
Italian
Italians, Romanian people, the national people of Italy (about 54 million) with Italian as their mother tongue (Italian language), 9 million in the USA, 4.2 million in South America and 420,000 in Switzerland.
The original population in central Italy was established at the end of the Neolithic by the Indo-European Italians, in northern Italy by Ligurians and Celts towards the end of the 9th century BC. Overlaid by non-Indo-European Etruscans and a little later in southern Italy by Greek colonists; then the supremacy of Rome brought members of the various peoples to the peninsula. During the migration period, Germanic peoples, Goths and v. a. Lombards, who mainly influenced the character of Lombardy as a people; Arabs (Sicily) followed in the 9th century, and Normans (southern Italy, Sicily) in the 11th century.
The traditional folk culture of the Italians, coined by v. a. of farmers, fishermen and shepherds, is still alive. The trulli found in southern Italy and on the islands go back to the pastoral culture. Folk customs of all kinds have survived to this day.
Palermo
Palermo, capital of Sicily, is located on the north coast of the island, with (2019) 663 400 residents.
Important tourist destination. The city, founded by the Phoenicians, flourished particularly under the Norman rulers and the Hohenstaufen emperor Friedrich II. the cathedral (consecrated in 1185), remember.
Turin
Turin (Italian Torino), city in Italy, on the upper Po, with (2019) 875 700 residents.
Capital of the Piedmont region with important industry (FIAT automobile plant). Sights include several medieval and baroque churches, the cathedral (1492–98) and the former royal palace (1646–58). The Turin shroud, a linen cloth venerated as the shroud of Christ, has been kept in the cathedral since 1578.
