Southern Italy

The Mezzogiorno or Southern Italy is the area of Italy south of Rome. The word literally means "midday" or "noon" in Italian, and is applied in this manner because the Sun is directly above the southern horizon at this time of day (in the Northern Hemisphere).

More specifically, the regions (the name by which secondary political units are officially referred to in Italy, see NUTS) of Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Puglia and Sicily are always reckoned as being part of the Mezzogiorno, and sometimes Abruzzo and Sardinia are included as well since it, like the six above-named regions, was once part of the Kingdom of Naples. Anyway, the Eurostat and the Italian insitute for statistics ISTAT consider these 8 regions belonging to Mezzogiorno.

Poverty and criminality have been persistent problems in the agriculture and farming-dominated Mezzogiorno (per capita income in there is approximately one-half that of northern Italy), causing much emigration from the area to many other countries, most notably the United States (the vast majority of Italian-Americans trace their ancestry to this part of Italy), Canada and Australia. Many natives of the Mezzogiorno have also relocated to large northern Italian cities such as Genoa, Milan and Turin.