"Italy is my Magnet," Lord Byron wrote, and just about every visitor leaves this life-embracing country with a similar attraction. Doing justice to its happy blandishments would take a few billion bytes, but another rapt poet, Robert Browning, summed it up nicely: "Open my heart and you will see / Graved inside of it, 'Italy.'"

• TOTAL AREA: 301,230 sq km

• LAND AREA: 294,020 sq km

• WATER AREA: 7,210 sq km

• POPULATION: 58,133,509

• RELIGIONS: approximately 90% Roman Catholic (about one-third regularly attend services); mature Protestant and Jewish communities and a growing Muslim immigrant community

• LANGUAGES: Italian (official), German (parts of Trentino-Alto Adige region are predominantly German speaking), French (small French-speaking minority in Valle d'Aosta region), Slovene (Slovene-speaking minority in the Trieste-Gorizia area)

• GOVERNMENT TYPE: Republic

• CAPITAL CITY: Rome

• OFFICIAL CURRENCY: euro (EUR)

• TIME ZONE: GMT/UTC +1 (+2 in summer)