Get app
Eight friendly questions about the essentials of Italy, from famous sights to what ends up on your plate. Everyone can join in, from nine to ninety!
First stroll through Italy 0–3 · Knows the piazzas 4–6 · Practically Italian 7–8
Pick one
Rome only became the capital in 1871: the new Kingdom of Italy was first ruled from Turin and then from Florence. Milan is Italy's big city of business and fashion, but the government and parliament meet in Rome.
Photo: Diliff, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
Pick one
Italians call their flag il Tricolore: three equal upright stripes of green, white and red, with the green next to the pole. Every year on 7 January the country celebrates Tricolour Day, because on that date in 1797, in the city of Reggio Emilia, the green, white and red tricolour was first adopted as the flag of an Italian state.
Pick one
Italians call their country lo Stivale, 'the Boot'. The region of Calabria is the toe, Salento is the heel and the Gargano peninsula on the east coast even forms the spur. People often joke that the island of Sicily is the ball the boot is about to kick.
Photo: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Pick one
The tower began to lean while it was still being built, because the soft ground could not carry its weight, and finishing it took 199 years in total. Between 1993 and 2001 engineers carefully straightened it by about 45 centimetres, so it stays safely tilted for visitors today.
Photo: Arne Müseler, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de.
Pick one
Real Parmesan, Parmigiano Reggiano, comes from the area around Parma and Reggio Emilia in northern Italy and ripens for at least a year. One wheel weighs about 38 kilos. It is so valuable that some Italian banks even accept wheels of it as security for a loan.
Photo: Naturpuur, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Pick one
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world, both in size and in number of people: it covers about 44 hectares, roughly the size of 60 football pitches. San Marino is another tiny country surrounded by Italy, but it lies on a mountain far to the north, near the Adriatic coast.
Pick one
That is why the team is nicknamed gli Azzurri, 'the Blues'. Blue is not even on today's Italian flag: it is Savoy blue, the colour of the royal House of Savoy, the family that ruled when Italy became one country in 1861.
Pick one
Pinocchio first appeared in 1881 as a series in an Italian children's magazine. His writer, Carlo Collodi, sent in the first part calling it 'a bit of foolishness'. The wooden puppet was carved by a poor man named Geppetto, and his name may come from a rare Tuscan word for 'pine nut'.
Photo: Enrico Mazzanti (1852-1910), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Paste the code into your page. The player fits itself in, and every vote counts in Votur.
On WordPress, Ghost or Squarespace? Just paste the link of this page into your post.
This is how it looks
Also fun
