The total annual rainfall is on average 827 mm (32.6 inches). [8] Snow is quite common between early December and early March in cities like Turin, Milan and Bologna, but sometimes it appears in late November or late March and even April. Until that time, it was considered part of Gaul, precisely that part of Gaul on the "hither side of the Alps" (from the perspective of the Romans), as opposed to Transalpine Gaul ("on the far side of the Alps"). As the area became partitioned in regional states the term Lombardy subsequentially shifted to indicate only the area of the Duchies of Milan, Mantua, Parma and Modena and later only to the area around Milan. On the foothills of the Alps there are a number of subalpine moraine-dammed lakes, the largest of which is Garda. is more intense in the Prealpine zone, up to 1,500 to 2,000 mm (59 to 79 inches) annually, but is abundant also in the plains and Alpine zones, with an average of 600 to 850 mm (24 to 33 inches) annually. In the congress of Vienna, the Kingdom of Sardinia was restored, and furthermore enlarged by annexing the Republic of Genoa to strengthen it as a barrier against France. In the 570s the Germanic Lombards, or Longobardi, entered Northern Italy from Friuli and founded a long-lasting reign (with its capital in Pavia) that gave the medieval name to the whole Northern Italy and the current name to the Lombardy region. Because of high industrialization and the lack of wind due to being closed between mountain ranges air pollution remains a severe problem in Northern Italy. In the Alpine foothills, characterised by an Oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb), numerous lakes exercise a mitigating influence, allowing the cultivation of typically Mediterranean crops (olives, citrus fruit). The term appeared sparingly until the early 1990s, when Lega Nord, a federalist and, at times, separatist political party in Italy, proposed Padania as a possible name for an independent state in Northern Italy. The end of Lombard rule came in 774, when the Frankish king Charlemagne conquered Pavia, deposed Desiderius, the last Lombard king, and annexed the Lombard Kingdom to his empire changing the name in Kingdom of Italy. After Italian unification the capital was moved from Turin to Rome and the administrative and institutional importance of Northern Italy was deeply reduced. Northern Italy is made of the basin of the River Po, which comprises the whole of the broad plain extending from the foot of the Apennines to that of the Alps, together with the valleys and slopes on both sides of it, the Venetian Plain and the Ligurian coast. Place Orders Online or on your Mobile Phone. [3] As of 2014, its population was 27,801,460. In late modern period the term Alta Italia ('High Italy') was widely used, for example by the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia during the second World War. Both the Alps and the Apennine can see up to 500–1,000 cm (200–390 inches) of snow in a year at 2,000 m (6,600 feet); on the highest peaks of the Alps, snow may fall even during mid summer, and glaciers are present. This process led to the creation of different Lombard Leagues formed by allied cities of Lombardy that defeated the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick I, at Legnano, and his grandson Frederick II, at Parma, and becoming virtually independent from the German emperors. With a 2008 nominal GDP estimated at €772,676 million, Northern Italy accounts for 54.8% of the Italian economy, despite having just 45.8% of the population.[3]. After centuries of struggle, in 194 BC the entire area of what is now Northern Italy became a Roman province with the name of Gallia Cisalpina ("Gaul on the inner side (with respect to Rome) of the Alps"). Venetian is also considered to be part of the Gallo-Italic group by most linguists, although others may consider it to be part of Italo-Dalmatian or to constitute a different language family. Rhaeto-Romance and Gallo-Italic languages are spoken in the region, as opposed to the Italo-Dalmatian languages spoken in the rest of Italy. Other Gallo-Romance languages spoken are Occitan, Arpitan spoken in the Occitan and Arpitan valleys in western Piedmont, and the Rhaeto-Romance group which includes Friulian and Ladin. In the hills and mountains, the climate is humid continental (Köppen Dfb). In the end, the Lombard language and culture assimilated with the Latin culture, leaving evidence in many names, the legal code and laws, and other things. [11][12], Learn how and when to remove this template message, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, "Galaverna a Passarera di Capergnanica e dintorni", "Regional Statistical Yearbook: average rainfall, yearly and ten-year average, Lombardy and its provinces", "Alpi, le regioni di sette Paesi per il cuore verde d'Europa", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Northern_Italy&oldid=980482178, Articles needing additional references from November 2017, All articles needing additional references, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox settlement with no coordinates, Articles containing Italian-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 26 September 2020, at 19:36. Conquered by the Roman Republic in the 220s BC, it was a Roman province from c. 81 BC until 42 BC, when it was merged into Roman Italy. Northern Italy is dominated by the Gallo-Italic family of languages, as opposed to the rest of the country where the Italo-Romance languages are spoken, and they include Emilian, Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese, and Romagnol. In addition, there is a high seasonal temperature variation between summer and winter. After the war Northern Italy became under direct or indirect control of Spain. In the 15th century Northern Italy became one of the centres of the Renaissance whose culture and works of art were highly regarded. The 11th century marked a significant boom in Northern Italy's economy, due to improved trading and agricultural innovations, culture flourished as well with many universities founded, among them the University of Bologna, the oldest university in Europe. During the Middle Ages, mainly between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, an illustrious vulgar was in use, by the name of "Lombard-Venetian koiné". Piedmont and the Kingdom of Sardinia, in particular, was the state that launched Italy's unification in 1859–1861. The Leagues failed to develop from an alliance to a lasting confederation and subsequently, among the various local city-states, a process of consolidation took place; most of them became lordships ruled by powerful families like the Della Scala of Verona or the Visconti of Milan, and conquered neighboring cities threatening to unify Northern Italy under a single state. [2] Non-administrative, it consists of eight administrative Regions in northern Italy: Aosta Valley, Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. Starting from the 1960s the term Padania was sometimes used as geographical synonym of Po Valley. The rest of Northern Italy was under Austrian rule, either direct like in the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom or indirect like in the Duchies of Parma and Modena. The increasing richness of the city-states made them able to defy the traditional feudal supreme power, represented by the German emperors and their local vassals. Their development was halted by the Roman expansion in the Po Valley from the 3rd century BC onwards. Between 1943 and 1945, during the Second World War, Northern Italy was part of the Fascist Italian Social Republic and the main theatre of the anti-fascist partisan activity. These same subdivisions are used to demarcate first-level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions ("NUTS 1 regions") within the European Union, and the Italian constituencies for the European Parliament. The enterprising class of the communes extended its trade and banking activities well into northern Europe and "Lombards", the term that designated the merchants or bankers coming from northern Italy, were present in all of Europe. In the 10th century Northern Italy was formally under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire but was in fact divided in a multiplicity of small, autonomous city-states, the medieval communes and maritime republic. The east coast, from Romagna to Trieste is occasionally affected by the cold bora winds in winter and spring. Between April 19 and 25, 1945 the cities of Northern Italy began an insurrection against Fascist and Nazist forces that led to the liberation of Northern Italy by Allied forces Winter in Northern Italy is normally long, relatively dry and rather cold. Other well known of these subalpine lakes are Lake Maggiore, whose most northerly section is part of Switzerland, Como, Orta, Lugano, Iseo, Idro. Order Ahead and Skip the Line at North Italia. After defeating the Austrians in 1859 and annexing Northern Italy the new state proceeded to launch a campaign to conquer Southern and Central Italy and Turin briefly became the capital of the almost whole of Italy. After the fall of the Roman Empire and the settlement of the Lombards the name Langobardia Maior was used, in the Early Middle Ages, to define the domains of the Lombard Kingdom in Northern Italy. A peculiarity of the regional climate is the thick fog that covers the plains between October and February, especially in the central Po Plain. Starting from the fifteenth century, the Lombard-Venetian koiné began to give ground with respect to the Tuscan, a phenomenon that Tagliavini describes as follows: "Florentine, thanks to (Dante) and other great Tuscans like Petrarch and Boccaccio, to the central position of Florence and to the historical conditions of the time, gradually spread throughout Italy, also resulting in the disappearance of the High-Italian κοινή, which in the thirteenth century had risen to a certain prestige". Northern Italy was called by different terms in different periods of history. The only polity that managed to thrive in this period was the Savoy's state which, thanks to military and diplomatic victories in 1720, managed to acquire the island of Sardinia, through which the then Dukes gained legitimacy as a proper Kingdom and increased Turin's importance as a European capital.