Southern Italy

Southern Italy (Sud Italia ˈsud iˈtaːlja or Italia meridionale iˈtaːlja meridjoˈnaːle; 'o Sudde; Italia dû Suddi), also known as Meridione (meriˈdjoːne) or Mezzogiorno (meddzoˈdʒorno; Miezojuorno; Menzujornu; Midday) is a macroregion of Italy consisting of its southern regions. The term Mezzogiorno today refers to regions that are associated with the people, lands or culture of the historical and cultural region that was once politically under the administration of the former Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily (officially denominated as one entity Regnum Siciliae citra Pharum and ultra Pharum, i.e. "Kingdom of Sicily on the other side of the Strait" and "across the Strait") and which later shared a common organization into Italy's largest pre-unitarian state, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The island of Sardinia, which had neither been part of said region nor of the aforementioned polity and had been under the rule of the Alpine House of Savoy that would eventually annex the Bourbon-led and Southern Italian Kingdom altogether, is nonetheless often subsumed into the Mezzogiorno. The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) employs the term "South Italy" (Italia meridionale or also just Sud) to identify one of the five statistical regions in its reportings without Sicily and Sardinia, which form a distinct statistical region denominated "Insular Italy" (Italia insulare or simply Isole). These same subdivisions are at the bottom of the Italian First level NUTS of the European Union and the Italian constituencies for the European Parliament. In a similar fashion to France's Midi ("midday" or "noon" in French), the Italian term Mezzogiorno refers to the intensity and the position of sunshine at midday in the South of the Italian peninsula. The term came into vogue after the annexation of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the mainland-based Savoyard Kingdom of Sardinia, and the subsequent Italian unification of 1861.

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