South Tyrol
South Tyrol (German: Südtirol; Italian: Alto Adige; Ladin: Südtirol) is an autonomous province in northern Italy, one of the two that make up the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.[4] The province is the northernmost of Italy, the second largest, with an area of 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 sq mi) and has a total population of 531,178 inhabitants as of 2019. Its capital and largest city is Bolzano (German: Bozen; Ladin: Balsan or Bulsan).
According to the 2011 census, 62.3% of the population speaks German as first language (Standard German in the written form and an Austro-Bavarian dialect in the spoken form); 23.4% of the population speaks Italian, mainly in and around the two largest cities (Bolzano (Italian speaking majority) and Meran (German speaking majority)); 4.1% speaks Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance language; 10.2% of the population (mainly recent immigrants) speaks another language natively. Of 116 South Tyrolean municipalities, 103 have a German speaking, eight a Ladin speaking, and five an Italian speaking majority.[5]The relatively large number of Italian speakers stems from large scale immigration of Italians from southern Italy to Bolzano and its surroundings after 1918.[6][7]
The province is granted a considerable level of self-government, consisting of a large range of exclusive legislative and executive powers and a fiscal regime that allows it to retain 90% of revenue, while remaining a net contributor to the national budget.[8] As of 2016, South Tyrol is the wealthiest province in Italy and among the wealthiest in the European Union.
In the wider context of the European Union, the province is one of the three members of the Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino Euroregion, which corresponds almost exactly to the historical region of Tyrol.[9] The other members are Tyrol state in Austria, to the north and east, and the Italian Autonomous province of Trento to the south.
South Tyrol (occasionally South Tirol) is the term most commonly used in English for the province,[10] and its usage reflects that it was created from a portion of the southern part of the historic County of Tyrol, a former state of the Holy Roman Empire and crown land of the Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs. German and Ladin speakers usually refer to the area as Südtirol; the Italian equivalent Sudtirolo (sometimes parsed Sud Tirolo[11]) is becoming increasingly common.[12]
Alto Adige (literally translated in English: "Upper Adige"), one of the Italian names for the province, is also used in English.[13] The term had been the name of political subdivisions along the Adige River in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte,[14][15] who created the Department of Alto Adige, part of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It was reused as the Italian name of the current province after its post-World War I creation, and was a symbol of the subsequent forced Italianization of South Tyrol.[16]
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