Insular Italy - Geography

Geography

Insular Italy occupies one-sixth of the national territory in surface area. Territorially, both Sicily and Sardinia include several minor islands and archipelagoes administratively dependent on the mother islands.

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean (25,708 km²) and one of the largest of Europe, while Sardinia is less extensive (24,090 km²). The lowlands are generally limited in the geographic region and generally appear as narrow coastal belts. The only exceptions are the Campidano and Nurra in Sardinia and the Plain of Catania in Sicily that extend 1200 km² and 430 km² respectively. The rest of the area is prevalently hilly, with hills occupying 70% of the territory. Sicily is home to Mount Etna, Italy's highest non-Alpine peak and Europe's largest active volcano. Sardinia is home to the Gennargentu mountain range.

Read more about this topic:  Insular Italy

Famous quotes containing the word geography:

    Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)