The 110 Provinces and 20 Regions of Italy

[DonRocks]

Following in the spirit of our "The 101 Departments and 18 Regions of France" Thread, I'm beginning one for their southeastern neighbor, Italy. There are almost identical numbers of Provinces/Regions in Italy as there are Departments/Regions in France (note the almost-identical usage of the word "Region" for the two countries).

Furthermore, each Province in Italy is broken down into Comunes, and there are - hold your breath - 8,100 comunes in Italy. Knowing all 8,100 Comunes in Italy would be like memorizing all the Counties or Cities in the U.S. (there are 3,143 U.S. Counties and around 19,354 U.S. Cities), and is of little value for the average person, even for the average student of local geography.

Practically speaking, the smallest levels of political division citizens (not tourists, but citizens of both nations) need to know are the 101 "Departments" in France, and the 110 "Provinces" in Italy (both of which are like learning the 50 "States" in the U.S., only even more precise, since the U.S. is a *much* larger country (France is the size of Texas), and has only about half the states that France/Italy do Departments/Provinces.

My criteria for finding a good Region map were twofold: 1) Have the names in Italian (e.g., "Valle d'Aosta" instead of "Aosta Valley"), and 2) Show their capitals:

As you can probably guess, it's difficult to cram in 110 Provinces into such a small area, so this is about the best I could find: