Northern & Southern Italy: 2 Sides of a Coin

Every being in this world has always been territorial and ‘every being’ encompasses humans as well. We have had boundaries, borders, fences from ever, demarking the territories we hold. The most modern context of boundaries can be seen in the political boundaries every country of the world has today.

Apart from distinguishing countries, these political borders do not limit themselves to segregate nations only, but they run deeper, separating geographic regions within the country. The interesting thing about these borders is that they are not marked by the political organizations but are demarcated by subtle factors like culture, food, language, traditions etc.

Seeing Italy you might not realize that this boot-shaped country could have 2 distinct cultures (Northern and Southern Italy) and also 3 significantly different geographic regions; Northern, Central and Southern.

Northern Italy constitutes of regions- Liguria, Piemonte, Aosta Valley, Lombardy, Alto Adige, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Emilia-Romagna.

Central Italy is divided into 4 regions, namely- Lazio, Marche, Tuscany and Umbria.

Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria and 2 islands- Sardinia and Sicily constitute the Southern Italy.

Although these regions are the administrative divisions of Italy and are further divided into provinces, putting them together they demarcate Italy into 2 culturally different regions- Northern and Southern Italy.

Since the unification of Italy, industrialization picked up very fast in Northern parts of the country, while on the other hand the southern part was lagged behind. The industrialization and the economic development lead to an obvious differentiating factor and northerners earned a reputation of business-oriented while the southerners are more friendly.

When people are different, the food also differs. The foods of both the regions are distinct; Southern being Mediterranean and North with more continental effect. Northern Italian cuisines use beef in the cuisine as cattle farming is a major activity in the region. Cattle farming also facilitate the use of butter in the regional dishes, The southerners use olive oil instead. The northern cuisine is also dominated by rice, example Risotto and is more influenced by French, Austrian and Swiss cuisines as the region has a close proximity to these countries. The southern cuisine, on the other hand, has the Arabic and Greek effect on them.

The dialects, cultures, food, clothes change with every region and that is the beauty of the diversity of a country- different still unified.