Have you ever wondered why Italy is divided into regions? Of course, our regioni are not that different from “counties,” but it’s interesting to see why and how they were created. Italy was first divided into administrative areas at the time of the first Roman Emperor, the glorious Augustus, who split the peninsula in eleven regions, each indicated by a number rather than a name: some of them looked a lot like our modern regions, others… well, not so much.
Take Northern Italy, for example, more precisely the area above and around the Po River: today, we count eight regions, Piemonte, Valle d’Aosta, Liguria, Lombardia, Veneto, Trentino Alto-Adige, Friuli Venezia-Giulia and Emilia Romagna. Back then, though, there were only two: the IX (9th) on the West, going from Valle d’Aosta to the Adda River, and the X (10th), from the Adda River to the Adriatic Sea.
