Lombardy

Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country. Major tourist destinations in the region include the historic, cultural and artistic cities of Milan (which is Italy's second top tourist destination), Brescia, Mantua, Pavia, Cremona and Bergamo, and the lakes Garda, Como, Maggiore and Iseo.

The official language, as in the rest of Italy, is Italian. The traditional local languages are the various dialects of Lombard (Western Lombard and Eastern Lombard), as well as some dialects of Emilian, spoken in some parts of the provinces of Mantua, Pavia and Cremona. These are not widely spoken due to intense immigration from other parts of Italy whose local dialects were not intelligible with Italian.

Lombardy is bordered by Switzerland and by the Italian regions of Emilia-Romagna, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Veneto, and Piedmont. Three distinct natural zones can be fairly easily distinguished in the Lombardy region: mountains, hills and plains - the latter being divided in Alta and Bassa.

The most important mountainous area is an Alpine zone including the Lepontine and Rhaetian Alps, the Bergamo Alps, the Ortles and Adamello massifs; it is followed by an Alpine foothills zone Prealpi, which include the main peaks are the Grigna Group, Resegone and Presolana. The great Lombard lakes, all of glacial origin, lie in this zone. From west to east these are Lake Maggiore, Lake Lugano, Lake Como, Lake Iseo, Lake Idro, then Lake Garda, the largest in Italy. South of the Alps lie the hills characterized by a succession of low heights of morainic origin, formed during the last Ice Age and small barely fertile plateaux, with typical heaths and conifer woods. A minor mountainous are lies south of the Po, in the Appennines range.

The plains of Lombardy, formed from alluvial deposits, can be divided into the Alta - an upper, permeable ground zone in the north and a lower zone characterized - the Bassa - by the so-called line of fontanili. Anomalous compared with the three distinctions already made is the small region of the Oltrepò Pavese, formed by the Apennine foothills beyond the Po River. A large number of rivers, all direct or indirect tributaries of the Po, cross the plains of Lombardy. Major rivers, flowing west to east, are the Ticino, the outlet of Lake Maggiore, the Lambro, the Adda, outlet of Lake Como, the Mincio, outlet of Lake Garda, and the Oglio, the Lake Iseo outflow. There is a wide network of canals for irrigation purposes.

The numerous species of endemic flora, typical mainly of the Lake Como area, include some kinds of saxifrage, the Lombard garlic, groundsels bellflower and the cottony bellflowers. Lombardy counts many protected areas: the most important are the Stelvio National Park, with typically alpine wildlife: red deer, roe-deer, ibex, chamois, foxes, ermine and also golden eagles; and the Ticino Valley Natural Park, instituted in 1974 on the Lombard side of the Ticino River to protect and conserve one of the last major examples of fluvial forest in Northern Italy.