SGI: Geography and climate

Italy, famously, is shaped like a boot. This is suspiciously handy, considering the fame of Italy's shoe and bootmaking industry. (A conspiracy of cartographers?)* It is also famously "Mediterranean" — which, it could be argued, is as much information as anyone reasonably needs re: Italian geography and climate.

But what the hell.

It's got mountains, it's got lakes, it's got flat bits. It's got an awful lot of coastline, and a bunch of islands, whose names conjure up strong associations all their own. (Capri. Sicily. Corsica. See what I mean?) Its neighbours range from France, Austria and Switzerland to Greece and Slovenia; arguably, it shares most of its heritage and personality with the only one of those with which it shares no land border. (It's possible there's an interesting point in there somewhere, but frankly, I doubt it.)

The only thing you really need to understand is that the further south you go, the more Italian it gets. Sunnier. Slower. Crazier. Think about the big cities. In the north? Milan: smart, stylish, obsessed with fashion — a concept that is all about change for change's sake, and pretty quickly, please. In the south? Naples. Which is famous for pizza. And... no, just pizza. And being Italian. No doubt the Swiss have been exerting themselves over the centuries to civilise the northern Italians as much as possible, so that at least the trains run (mostly) on time; otherwise, how would they ever get to the sea?

Venice and Florence, of course, are both in the north. But Venice has one further geographical point going for it: it's a port city, with a long and proud history as a centre of international trade. So in addition to Italian crazy, more than a little bit of Byzantine crazy has rubbed off. It's a marvellous place.

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* No, you don't get a cookie, but you do get my respect and appreciation.