Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Emilia-Romagna is one of the 20 Regions of Italy. The capital is Bologna. It has an area of 20,124 sq.km and about 4.2 million inhabitants. It is the second richest region of Italy, and its cuisine one of the most characteristic.

Emilia-Romagna is an administrative region of Northern Italy comprising the two historic regions of Emilia and Romagna. It forms a rough triangle, bounded on the East by the Adriatic Sea, on the North by the Po river and on the South by the Apennine range; these two linear features, with the Via Aemilia, and the A1 highway and the railway that run close and parallel to it, give an unusually regular structure to the whole region except for the easternmost part.

The name Emilia-Romagna has roots in the Ancient Rome legacy in these lands. Emilia refers to via Æmilia, an important Roman way connecting Rome to the northern part of Italy. Romagna is a corruption of Romània; when Ravenna was the capital of the Italian portion of the Byzantine Empire, the Lombards extended the official name of the Empire to the lands around Ravenna. Emilia-Romagna was part of the Etruscan world and in following was passed on to the Romans, who built it the Aemilian Way, for which the region was named. The coastal area of Emilia, which was ruled under the Byzantines from 540 to 751, became known as the separate region of Romagna. In the Middle Ages, the history of both Emilia and Romagna was the history of its individual cities. In the 16th century, most of these were included into the Papal States, but the territory of Parma and Piacenza and Modena remained independent until Emilia- Romagna was included into the Italian kingdom in 1859-1861.