Italy is a sovereign state.
Italy ( Italia [ iˈtaːlja ] ) , officially the Italian Republic ( [ Repubblica italiana , links = no ] ) , is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe.The Italian peninsula is geographically located in Southern Europe , while North Italy can be placed partly or totally in Central Europe . A sovereign state is , in international law , a nonphysical juridical entity that is represented by one centralized government that has sovereignty over a geographic area . A unitary state is a state governed as a single power in which the central government is ultimately supreme and any administrative divisions ( sub-national units ) exercise only the powers that the central government chooses to delegate .