Apennine Mountains in the context of Peninsula

The Tiber (/ˈtaɪbər/ TY-bər; Italian: Tevere [ˈteːvere]; Latin: Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 km (252 mi) through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the River Aniene, to the Tyrrhenian Sea, between Ostia and Fiumicino. It drains a basin estimated at 17,375 km (6,709 sq mi). The river has achieved lasting fame as the main watercourse of the city of Rome, which was founded on its eastern banks.

The river rises at Mount Fumaiolo in Central Italy and flows in a generally southerly direction past Perugia and Rome to meet the sea at Ostia. The Tiber has advanced significantly at its mouth, by about 3 km (2 mi), since Roman times, leaving the ancient port of Ostia Antica 6 kilometres (4 miles) inland. However, it does not form a proportional delta, owing to a strong north-flowing sea current close to the shore, due to the steep shelving of the coast, and to slow tectonic subsidence.

The Sabines (US: /ˈseɪbaɪnz/, SAY-bynes, UK: /ˈsæbaɪnz/, SAB-eyens; Latin: Sabini ) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains (see Sabina) of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome.

The Sabines divided into two populations just after the founding of Rome, which is described by Roman legend. The division, however it came about, is not legendary. The population closer to Rome transplanted itself to the new city and united with the preexisting citizenry, beginning a new heritage that descended from the Sabines but was also Latinized. The second population remained a mountain tribal state, coming finally to war against Rome for its independence along with all the other Italic tribes. Afterwards, it became assimilated into the Roman Republic.

San Marino, officially the Republic of San Marino (RSM), is a landlocked country in Southern Europe, completely surrounded by Italy. Located on the northeastern slopes of the Apennine Mountains, it is the larger of two microstates within Italy, the other being Vatican City. San Marino is the fifth-smallest country in the world, with a land area of just over 61 km (23.5 mi) and a population of 34,042 as of 2025. Its capital, the City of San Marino, sits atop Monte Titano, while its largest settlement is Dogana, in the municipality of Serravalle.

San Marino claims to have been founded in AD 301 and to be the oldest extant sovereign state and the oldest constitutional republic. It is named after Saint Marinus, a stonemason from the Roman island of Rab (in present-day Croatia), who is supposed in mythic accounts to have established a monastic community on Monte Titano. The country has a rare constitutional structure: the Grand and General Council, a democratically elected legislature, selects two heads of state, the Captains Regent, every six months. They are chosen from opposing political parties, and serve concurrently with equal powers and preside over several institutions of state, including the Grand and General Council. Only the Federal Council of Switzerland also follows that structure, except with seven heads of state, and different responsibilities and functions.

The Tiber Valley (Italian: Valle del Tevere) is the largest geographical part of the Tiber basin [Wikidata] of the Tiber river included in the Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the Lazio regions; it is characterized by river terraces and floodplain areas that extend from the Apennine belt up to the delta of the Tiber river in the Lazio coast [it] of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Lucania was a historical region of Southern Italy, named after its native Lucani, an Oscan people. It extended from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Gulf of Taranto. It bordered with Samnium and Campania in the north, Apulia in the east, and Bruttium in the south-west, and was at the tip of the peninsula which is now called Calabria. It comprised almost all the modern region of Basilicata, the southern part of the Province of Salerno (the Cilento area), the western part of Province of Taranto and a northern portion of the Province of Cosenza.

The precise limits were the river Silarus in the north-west, which separated it from Campania, and the Gravina which flows into the Gulf of Taranto in the east. The lower tract of the river Laus, which flows from a ridge of the Apennine Mountains to the Tyrrhenian Sea in an east-west direction, marked part of the border with Bruttium.

Mount Fumaiolo (Italian: Monte Fumaiolo) is a mountain of the northern Apennines range of Italy located in the southernmost corner of the Emilia-Romagna region, c. 70 km from the town of Cesena. It's at the border between Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. With an elevation of 1,407 metres (4,616 ft), Mount Fumaiolo overlooks the villages of Balze di Verghereto, Bagno di Romagna and Verghereto, in Romagna, and thanks to its extensive fir and beech forests, it is a well-appreciated tourist area of natural interest. It is most famous for being the source of the Tiber, as well as the river Savio.

The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain (Italian: Pianura Padana, pronounced [pjaˈnuːra paˈdaːna], or Val Padana) is a major geographical feature of northern Italy. It extends approximately 650 km (400 mi) in an east-west direction, with an area of 46,000 km (18,000 square miles) including its Venetic extension not actually related to the Po basin; it runs from the Western Alps to the Adriatic Sea. The flatlands of Veneto and Friuli are often considered apart since they do not drain into the Po, but they effectively combine into an unbroken plain, making it the largest in Southern Europe. It has a population of 17 million, or a third of Italy's total population.

The plain is the surface of an in-filled system of ancient canyons (the "Apennine Foredeep") extending from the Apennines in the south to the Alps in the north, including the northern Adriatic. In addition to the Po and its affluents, the contemporary surface may be considered to include the Savio, Lamone and Reno to the south, and the Adige, Brenta, Piave and Tagliamento of the Venetian Plain to the north, among the many streams that empty into the north Adriatic from the west and north.

The Roman expansion in Italy covers a series of conflicts in which Rome grew from being a small Italian city-state to be the ruler of the Italian region. Roman tradition attributes to the Roman kings the first war against the Sabines and the first conquests around the Alban Hills and down to the coast of Latium. The birth of the Roman Republic after the overthrow of the Etruscan monarch of Rome in 509 BC began a series of major wars between the Romans and the Etruscans. In 390 BC, Gauls from the north of Italy sacked Rome. In the second half of the 4th century BC Rome clashed repeatedly with the Samnites, a powerful tribal coalition of the Apennine region.

By the end of these wars, Rome had become the most powerful state in central Italy and began to expand to the north and to the south. The last threat to Roman hegemony came during the Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC) when Tarentum enlisted the aid of the Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus to campaign in the North of Italy. Resistance in Etruria was finally crushed in 265–264 BC, the same year the First Punic War began and brought Roman forces outside of the peninsula for the first time. Starting from the First Punic War (264–241 BC) the territories subject to Roman rule also included Sicily (241 BC), Sardinia and Corsica (238 BC), islands transformed into provinces.

The Picentes or Piceni or Picentini were an ancient Italic people who lived from the 9th to the 3rd century BC in the area between the Foglia and Aterno rivers, bordered to the west by the Apennines and to the east by the Adriatic coast. Their territory, known as Picenum, therefore included all of today's Marche and the northern part of Abruzzo. Recently, a genome-wide archaeogenetic study of individuals from two Picene necropoleis found that all the individuals associated with this culture display genetic continuity with earlier populations.

The limits of Picenum depend on the era; during the early classical antiquity the region between the Apennines and the Adriatic Sea south of Ancona was Picenum (South Picenians), while between Ancona and Rimini to the north the population was multi-ethnic (North Picenians) because after 390 BC the Senoni Gauls had combined with or supplanted earlier populations. In the Roman Republic the coastal part of northern Picenum was called the ager Gallicus.

Potenza (/pəˈtɛnzə/, also US: /poʊˈtɛntsɑː/; Italian: [poˈtɛntsa] ; Neapolitan: Putenza, Potentino dialect: Putenz) is a comune in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata (former Lucania).

Capital of the Province of Potenza and the Basilicata region, the city is the highest regional capital and one of the highest provincial capitals in Italy, overlooking the valley of the Basento river in the Apennine Mountains of Lucania, east of Salerno. Its territory is bounded by the comuni of Anzi, Avigliano, Brindisi Montagna, Picerno, Pietragalla, Pignola, Ruoti, Tito and Vaglio Basilicata.

Liguria (/lɪˈɡjʊəriə/ lig-YOOR-ee-ə, Italian: [liˈɡuːrja]; Ligurian: Ligûria [liˈɡyːɾja]) is a region of north-western Italy; its capital is Genoa. Its territory is crossed by the Alps and the Apennines mountain range and is roughly coextensive with the former territory of the Republic of Genoa. Liguria is bordered by France (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) to the west, Piedmont to the north, and Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany to the east. It rests on the Ligurian Sea, and has a population of 1,509,908 as of 2025. The region is part of the Alps–Mediterranean Euroregion.

Montferrat (UK: /ˌmɒntfəˈræt/ MONT-fə-RAT, US: /-ˈrɑːt/ -⁠RAHT; Italian: Monferrato [moɱferˈraːto]; Piedmontese: Monfrà, locally [mʊŋˈfrɒ]; Latin: Mons Ferratus) is a historical region of Piedmont, in northern Italy. It comprises roughly (and its extent has varied over time) the modern provinces of Alessandria and Asti. Montferrat is one of the most important wine districts of Italy. It also has a strong literary tradition, including the 18th-century Asti-born poet and dramatist Vittorio Alfieri and the Alessandrian Umberto Eco.

The territory is cut in two by the river Tanaro. The northern part (the Basso Monferrato, "Low Montferrat"), which lies between that river and the Po, is an area of rolling hills and plains. The southern part (the Alto Monferrato, "High Montferrat") rises from the banks of the Tanaro into the mountains of the Apennines and the water divide between Piedmont and Liguria.

Latium Vetus or Latium Antiquum (English: Old Latium) is a region of the Italian Peninsula bounded to the north by the Tiber River, to the east by the central Apennine Mountains, to the west by the Mediterranean Sea and to the south by Monte Circeo. It was the territory of the Latins, an Italic tribe which included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome. Later it was also settled by various Italic tribes such as the Rutulians, Volscians, Aequi, and Hernici. The region was referred to as "old" to distinguish it from the expanded region, Latium, that included the region to the south of Old Latium, between Monte Circeo and the river Garigliano – the so-called Latium adiectum ("attached Latium"). It corresponded to the central part of the modern administrative region of Lazio, Italy, and it covered an area measuring of roughly 50 Roman miles. It was calculated by Mommsen that the region's area was about 1860 square kilometres.

The Italian Riviera or Ligurian Riviera (Italian: Riviera ligure [riˈvjɛːra ˈliːɡure]; Ligurian: Rivêa lìgure [ɾiˈveːa ˈliɡyɾe]) is the narrow coastal strip in Italy which lies between the Ligurian Sea and the mountain chain formed by the Maritime Alps and the Apennines. Longitudinally it extends from the border with France and the French Riviera (or Côte d'Azur) near Ventimiglia (a former customs post) eastwards to Capo Corvo (also known as Punta Bianca) which marks the eastern end of the Gulf of La Spezia and is close to the regional border between Liguria and Tuscany. The Italian Riviera thus includes nearly all of the coastline of Liguria. Historically the "Riviera" extended further to the west, through what is now French territory as far as Marseille.

The Italian Riviera crosses all four Ligurian provinces and their capitals Genoa, Savona, Imperia and La Spezia, with a total length of about 350 km (218 miles). It is customarily divided into a western section, the Ponente Riviera, and an eastern section, the Levante Riviera, the point of division being the apex of the Ligurian arc at Voltri. It has about 1.6 million inhabitants, and most of the population is concentrated within the coastal area. Its mild climate draws an active tourist trade in the numerous coastal resorts, which include Alassio, Bonassola, Bordighera, Camogli, Cinque Terre, Lerici, Levanto, Noli, Portofino, Porto Venere, Santa Margherita Ligure, Sanremo, San Fruttuoso, and Sestri Levante. It is also known for its historical association with international celebrity and artistic visitors; writers and poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway were inspired by the beauty and spirit of Liguria.

Monte Titano ("Mount Titan") is a mountain of the Apennines and the highest point in the country of San Marino. It stands 739 m (2,425 ft) above sea level Its peak is located within the municipal limits of the country's capital, San Marino, immediately east of the urbanized area.

It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008 under the combined title "San Marino Historic Centre and Mount Titano". Inscribed under reference no. 1245 criteria iii, the two together encompass an area of 55 ha with a buffer zone of 167 ha. It encompasses Mount Titano and the other structures such as the fortification towers, walls, gates and bastions, as well as a neo-classical basilica located on it and its slopes forming a small but unique urban conglomerate.