Southern Europe
Southern Europe is the southern region of the European continent. Most definitions of Southern Europe, also known as Mediterranean Europe, include the countries of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), the Italian peninsula, Southern France, Greece and Malta.Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Dr Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spence. Retrieved 10 October 2015. Other definitions sometimes include the Balkan countries of Southeast Europe, which are geographically technically in the southern part of Europe, but which have different historical, political, economic, and cultural backgrounds that commonly places them in the category of Eastern Europe.
280px|thumb|Geographic features of Southern European countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea
thumb|280px|European sub-regions according to EuroVoc (the thesaurus of the European Union). Southern Europe is marked yellow on this map.

Different methods can be used to define Southern Europe, including its political, economic, and cultural attributes. Southern Europe can also be defined by its natural features — its geography, climate, and flora.

Geography
Geographically, Southern Europe is the southern half of the landmass of Europe. This definition is relative, with no clear limits.

Countries geographically considered part of Southern Europe include:

Southwestern Europe
Countries whose borders lie within Southwestern Europe:
 
  (only southern France)
 
 
 
 

South-Central Europe
Countries whose borders lie within South-Central Europe:
  (sometimes excluding northern Italy)In strict geographic terms Central Europe include Germany, Switzerland, Northern Italy, Austria,Poland, the Czech Republic,Slovakia, Hungary...
 
 

Southeastern Europe
Countries whose borders lie within Southeastern Europe (Balkan peninsula) :
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  (only East Thrace)Article in BritannicaBBCLibrary of Congress. Cataloging Policy and Support Office, Library of Congress Subject Headings

Island countries
 
 

Major islands
 Sardinia and Sicily
 Corsica
 Crete
 Balearic islands

Climate

Southern Europe's most emblematic climate is that of the Mediterranean climate, which has become a typically known characteristic of the area. The Mediterranean climate covers much of Portugal, Spain, Southeast France, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, Greece, the Western and Southern coastal regions of Turkey as well as the Mediterranean islands. Those areas of Mediterranean climate present similar vegetations and landscapes throughout, including dry hills, small plains, pine forests and olive trees.

Cooler climates can be found in certain parts of Southern European countries, for example within the mountain ranges of Spain and Italy. Additionally, the north coast of Spain experiences a wetter Atlantic climate.

Flora

Southern Europe's flora is that of the Mediterranean Region, one of the phytochoria recognized by Armen Takhtajan. The Mediterranean and Submediterranean climate regions in Europe are found in much of Southern Europe, mainly in Southern Portugal, most of Spain, the southern coast of France, Italy, the Croatian coast, much of Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, and the Mediterranean islands.Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch; Lehrbuch der Geobotanik. Pflanze und Vegetation in Raum und Zeit. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, München 2004

Population

 Country Area(km²) Population(2010 est.) Population  density(per km²) Capital  28,748 2,821,977 111.1 Tirana  468 84,082 179.8 Andorra la Vella  51,129 4,613,414 90.2 Sarajevo   110,994  7,364,570  77 Sofia  56,594 4,489,409 81 Zagreb  (UK) 6.8 29,431 4,328 Gibraltar  131,990 11,295,002  85.3 Athens  301,338 60,418,711 200.5 Rome  10,908 1,859,203 170.4 Prishtina  25,713 2,114,550 82.2 Skopje  316 412,966 1,306.8 Valletta  13,812 672,181 50 Podgorica  92,090 11,317,192 114 Lisbon  61 31,716 501 City of San Marino  77,474 7,120,666  102.46 Belgrade  20,273 2,054,199 99.6 Ljubljana  504,030 46,030,109 93 Madrid  (East Thrace) 23,764 10,620,739 446.9 Ankara  0.44 826 1877 Vatican City Total 1,338,694 164,127,170 122.60 

 Largest urban areas 
RankUrban AreaStatePopulationUnited Nations: World Urbanization ProspectsDensity  (per km²) 1İstanbul (European part)8,963,4312,620 2Madrid6,171,0004,600 3Milan5,257,0002,800 4Barcelona4,693,0004,300 5Rome3,906,0003,400 6Naples3,706,0003,600 7Athens3,484,0005,000 8Lisbon2,666,0002,800 9Belgrade1,700,0003,300 10Valencia1,561,0005,700

History

Early history
thumbnail|Partition of the Roman Empire.
The period known as classical antiquity began with the rise of the city-states of Ancient Greece. Greek influence reached its zenith under the expansive empire of Alexander the Great, spreading throughout Asia.

The Roman Empire came to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin in a vast empire based on Roman law and Roman legions. It promoted trade, tolerance, and Greek culture. By 300 AD the Roman Empire was divided into the Western Roman Empire based in Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire based in Constantinople. The attacks of the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe led to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476, a date which traditionally marks the end of the classical period and the start of the Middle Ages.

During the Middle Ages, the Eastern Roman Empire survived, though modern historians refer to this state as the Byzantine Empire. In Western Europe, Germanic peoples moved into positions of power in the remnants of the former Western Roman Empire and established kingdoms and empires of their own.

The period known as the Crusades, a series of religiously motivated military expeditions originally intended to bring the Levant back into Christian rule, began. Several Crusader states were founded in the eastern Mediterranean. These were all short-lived. The Crusaders would have a profound impact on many parts of Europe. Their Sack of Constantinople in 1204 brought an abrupt end to the Byzantine Empire. Though it would later be re-established, it would never recover its former glory. The Crusaders would establish trade routes that would develop into the Silk Road and open the way for the merchant republics of Genoa and Venice to become major economic powers. The Reconquista, a related movement, worked to reconquer Iberia for Christendom.

The Late Middle Ages represented a period of upheaval in Europe. The epidemic known as the Black Death and an associated famine caused demographic catastrophe in Europe as the population plummeted. Dynastic struggles and wars of conquest kept many of the states of Europe at war for much of the period. In the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, a Turkish state originating in Anatolia, encroached steadily on former Byzantine lands, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Post-Middle Ages
Beginning roughly in the 14th century in Florence, and later spreading through Europe with the development of the printing press, a Renaissance of knowledge challenged traditional doctrines in science and theology, with the Arabic texts and thoughte.g. Averroes#Commentaries on Aristotle and Plato written in the 12th century, which was mentioned in Divine Comedy IV:144 around 1320 AD bringing about rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman knowledge.

The Reconquista of Portugal and Spain led to a series of oceanic explorations resulting in the Age of Discovery that established direct links with Africa, the Americas, and Asia, while religious wars continued to be fought in Europe, which ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. The Spanish crown maintained its hegemony in Europe and was the leading power on the continent until the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which ended a conflict between Spain and France that had begun during the Thirty Years' War. An unprecedented series of major wars and political revolutions took place around Europe and indeed the world in the period between 1610 and 1700. Observers at the time, and many historians since, have argued that wars caused the revolutions.Geoffrey Parker, "States Make War But Wars Also Break States,"Journal of Military History (2010) 74#1 pp 11–34 Galileo Galilei, invented the telescope and the thermometer which allowed him to observe and describe the solar system. Leonardo da Vinci painted the most famous work in the world.John Lichfield, The Moving of the Mona Lisa, The Independent, 2005-04-02 (accessed 2012-03-09) Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio.Sungook Hong, Wireless: From Marconi's Black-box to the Audion, MIT Press - 2001, page 1

European overseas expansion led to the rise of colonial empires, producing the Columbian Exchange. The combination of resource inflows from the New World and the Industrial Revolution of Great Britain, allowed a new economy based on manufacturing instead of subsistence agriculture.

The period between 1815 and 1871 saw a large number of revolutionary attempts and independence wars. Balkan nations began to regain independence from the Ottoman Empire. Italy unified into a nation state. The capture of Rome in 1870 ended the Papal temporal power. Rivalry in a scramble for empires spread in what is known as The Age of Empire.

20th century
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 was precipitated by the rise of nationalism in Southeastern Europe as the Great Powers took up sides. The Allies defeated the Central Powers in 1918. During the Paris Peace Conference the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, especially the Treaty of Versailles.

The Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, and along with Mussolini's Italy sought to gain control of the continent by the Second World War.
Following the Allied victory in the Second World War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain. The countries in Southeastern Europe were dominated by the Soviet Union and became communist states. The major non-communist Southern European countries joined a US-led military alliance (NATO) and formed the European Economic Community amongst themselves. The countries in the Soviet sphere of influence joined the military alliance known as the Warsaw Pact and the economic bloc called Comecon. Yugoslavia was neutral.

Italy became a major industrialized country again, due to its post-war economic miracle. The European Union (EU) involved the division of powers, with taxation, health and education handled by the nation states, while the EU had charge of market rules, competition, legal standards and environmentalism. The Soviet economic and political system collapsed, leading to the end of communism in the satellite countries in 1989, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991. As a consequence, Europe's integration deepened, the continent became depolarised, and the European Union expanded to subsequently include many of the formerly communist European countries – Romania and Bulgaria (2007) and Croatia (2013).

Languages

The following table shows the languages in Southern Europe that are spoken by at least five million people in the region:

LanguageSpeakersPrincipal Southern European  country / countries Italian  59,400,000    Spanish  46,000,000+   Serbo-Croatian  20,000,000+ Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin  Greek  13,432,490      Bulgarian-Macedonian  11 500 000    Turkish  10,934,365 European Turkey PopulationNorthern Cyprus     Portuguese  10,000,000    Catalan  10,000,000 Catalan News Agency - Number of Catalan speakers rising despite adverse contextInforme sobre la Situació de la Llengua Catalana | Xarxa CRUSCAT. Coneixements, usos i representacions del català    Albanian  7,600,000          

Romance languages
The most widely spoken family of languages in Southern Europe are the Romance languages, the heirs of Latin, which have spread from the Italian peninsula, and are emblematic of Southwestern Europe. (See the Latin Arch.)
By far the most common Romance languages in Southern Europe are Italian (spoken by over 50 million people in Italy, San Marino, and the Vatican) and Spanish, which is spoken by over 40 million people in Spain and Gibraltar. Other common Romance languages include Romanian (spoken in Romania and Moldova), Portuguese (spoken in Portugal), Catalan (spoken in eastern Spain), Galician (spoken in northwestern Spain) and Occitan, which is spoken in the Val d'Aran in Catalonia, in the Occitan Valleys in Italy and finally in southern France.

Other languages
The Hellenic languages or Greek language are widely spoken in Greece and in the Greek part of Cyprus. Additionally, other varieties of Greek are spoken in small communities in parts of other European counties.

Several South Slavic languages are spoken by millions of people in Southern Europe. Serbian is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia; Bulgarian is spoken in Bulgaria; Croatian is spoken in Croatia and Bosnia;  Bosnian is spoken in Bosnia; Slovene is spoken in Slovenia; and Macedonian is spoken in Macedonia.

English is used as a second language in parts of Southern Europe. As a primary language, however, English has only a small presence in Southern Europe, only in Gibraltar (alongside Spanish) and Malta (secondary to Maltese).

There are other language groupings in Southern Europe. Albanian is spoken in Albania, Kosovo, Macedoonia, and parts of Greece. Maltese is a Semitic language that is the official language of Malta, descended from Siculo-Arabic, but written in Latin script with heavy Latin and Italian influences. The Basque language is spoken in the Basque Country, a region in northern Spain and southwestern France.

Transport

The following table shows the busiest airports in Southern Europe in 2013.

RankCountryAirportCityPassengers (2012) Passengers (2013) Change2012-20131 Turkey İstanbul Atatürk Airport İstanbul44,998,508 51,320,87514.0%2 Spain Barajas Airport Madrid45,190,528http://www.aena.es/csee/Satellite?pagename=Estadisticas/Home 39,735,61812.1%3 Italy Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport Rome36,980,911http://www.assaeroporti.com/statistiche/36,166,3452.2%4 Spain Barcelona El Prat Airport Barcelona35,144,50335,216,8280.2%5 Spain Palma de Mallorca Airport Palma de Mallorca22,666,85822,768,0320.4%6 Italy Malpensa Airport Milan18,537,30117,955,0753.1%7 Portugal Lisbon Portela Airport Lisbon15,301,176Portugal Airport Statistics16,008,8484.6%8 Spain Málaga Airport Málaga12,581,94412,925,1862.7%9 Greece Athens International Airport Athens12,944,041http://www.aia.gr/company-and-business/the-company/facts-and-figures/12,536,0573.2%10 France Nice Côte d'Azur Airport Nice11,189,896http://corporate.nice.aeroport.fr/About-us/NEWS-MEDIA/Statistics/Monthly-Statistics-Reports211,554,1953.2%

Religion
thumb|right|250px|The religious distribution in 1054

The predominant religion in Southern Europe is Christianity. Christianity spread throughout Southern Europe during the Roman Empire, and Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the year 380 AD. 
Due to the historical break of the Christian Church into the western half based in Rome and the eastern half based in Constantinople, different branches of Christianity are prodominent in different parts of Europe.
Christians in the western half of Southern Europe — e.g., Portugal, Spain, Italy — are generally Roman Catholic. Christians in the eastern half of Southern Europe — e.g., Greece, Macedonia — are generally Greek Orthodox.

Additionally, there are countries in the eastern part of Southern Europe (e.g., Bosnia, Albania, Turkey), where Islam is widely practiced.

Other classifications

European Travel Commission classification
European Travel Commission divides the European region on the basis of Tourism Decision Metrics (TDM) model.
Countries which belong to the Southern/Mediterranean Europe are:European Tourism in 2014: Trends & Prospects (Q3/2014), page 15

See also

 Mediterranean Basin
 Southeast Europe
 Northern Europe
 Western Europe
 EU Med Group

Notes

References

 
Category:Regions of Europe