Piedmont region - Italy

Описание: Piedmont (Italian: Piemonte, pronounced [pjeˈmonte]; Piedmontese and Occitan: Piemont; French: Piémont) is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,399 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys. Franco-Provençal is also spoken by another minority in the alpine heights of the Province of Turin. The name Piedmont comes from medieval Latin Pedemontium or Pedemontis, i. e. "ad pedem montium", meaning "at the foot of the mountains" (attested in documents of the end of the 13th century)[1].
Geography
Landscape in Montferrat.

Piedmont is surrounded on three sides by the Alps, including Monviso (Mont Vis), where the Po rises, and Monte Rosa. It borders France, Switzerland and the Italian regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Aosta Valley and for a very small fragment with Emilia Romagna. The geography of Piedmont is 43.3% mountainous, along with extensive areas of hills (30.3%) and plains (26.4%). Piedmont is the second largest of Italy's 20 administrative regions, after Sicily. It is broadly contiguous with the upper part of the drainage basin of the river Po, which rises from the slopes of Monviso in the west of the region and is Italy's largest river. The Po collects all the waters provided within the semicircle of mountains (Alps and Apennines) which surround the region on three sides. From the highest peaks the land slopes down to hilly areas, (not always, though; sometimes there is a brusque transition from the mountains to the plains) and then to the upper, and then the lower the great Padan Plain. The boundary between the first and the second is characterised by risorgive, springs typical of the pianura padana which supply fresh water both to the rivers and to a dense network of irrigation canals. The countryside, then, is very varied: one passes from the rugged peaks of the massifs of Monte Rosa and of Gran Paradiso (national park), to the damp rice paddies of the Vercellese and Novarese; from the gentle hillsides of the Langhe and of Montferrat to the plains. The percentage of the territory which is a protected area is 7.6%. There are 56 different national or regional parks. One such park is the Gran Paradiso National Park (Grand Paradis).