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South Tyrol

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South Tyrol

South Tyrol (German: Südtirol [ˈzyːtːiˌʁoːl] , locally [ˈsyːtiˌroːl]; Italian: Alto Adige [ˈalto ˈaːdidʒe]; Ladin: Südtirol), officially the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol, is an autonomous province in northern Italy. Together with Trentino, South Tyrol forms the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province is Italy's northernmost and the second-largest, with an area of 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 sq mi), and has a population of about 534,000 as of 2021. Its capital and largest city is Bolzano.

South Tyrol has 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. As of 2023, it is Italy's wealthiest province and among the wealthiest in the European Union. As of 2024, South Tyrol was also the region with the lowest number of persons at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU, with 6.6% of the population compared to the EU mean of 21.4%.

In the wider context of the European Union, the province is one of the three members of Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino Euroregion, which corresponds almost exactly to the historical region of Tyrol. The other members are the Austrian federal state Tyrol to the north and east and the Italian autonomous province of Trento to the south.

According to the 2024 census, 57.6% of the population used German as its first language; 22.6% of the population spoke Italian, mainly in and around the two largest cities (Bolzano and Merano); 3.7% spoke Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance language; and 16.1% of the population (mainly recent immigrants) spoke another language in addition to Italian and German. Of 116 South Tyrolean municipalities, 102 have a German-speaking, eight a Ladin-speaking, and six an Italian-speaking majority. The Italianization of South Tyrol and the settlement of Italians from the rest of Italy after 1918 significantly modified local demographics.

South Tyrol (occasionally South Tirol) is the term most commonly used in English for the province, 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) is becoming increasingly common.

Alto Adige (literally translated in English: "Upper Adige"), one of the Italian names for the province, is also used in English. The term had been the name of political subdivisions along the Adige River in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, 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.

The official name of the province today in German is Autonome Provinz Bozen — Südtirol. German speakers usually refer to it not as a Provinz, but as a Land (like the Länder of Germany and Austria). Provincial institutions are referred to using the prefix Landes-, such as Landesregierung (state government) and Landeshauptmann (governor). The official name in Italian is Provincia autonoma di Bolzano — Alto Adige, in Ladin Provinzia autonoma Bulsan — Südtirol.

South Tyrol as an administrative entity originated during the First World War. The Allies promised the area to Italy in the Treaty of London of 1915 as an incentive to enter the war on their side. Until 1918, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian princely County of Tyrol, but this almost completely German-speaking territory was occupied by Italy at the end of the war in November 1918 and was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1919. The province as it exists today was created in 1926 after an administrative reorganization of the Kingdom of Italy, and was incorporated together with the province of Trento into the newly created region of Venezia Tridentina ("Trentine Venetia").

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