FACTBOX: Key facts about Italy

(Reuters) - Italian voted in a parliamentary election on Sunday. Here are some key facts about the country.

AREA: 301,278 sq km (116,323 sq miles). Italy has borders in the north with Switzerland and Austria, with France to the west and with Slovenia to the east.

POPULATION: 58.2 million (2007)

LANGUAGE: Italian

ETHNICITY: Italian but includes small clusters of German-, French-, and Slovene-Italians in the north and Albanian-Italians and Greek-Italians in the south.

RELIGION: Ninety percent Roman Catholic and the other 10 percent includes Protestant and Jewish communities as well as a growing Muslim immigrant community.

CAPITAL: Rome.

ECONOMY: Italy's caretaker government last month cut its economic growth forecast for 2008 and raised its target for the budget deficit, underscoring the tough inheritance for whoever wins the election.

It said the euro zone's third largest economy would grow just 0.6 percent in 2008, down from the 1.5 percent it had forecast last autumn. The International Monetary Fund expects just 0.3 percent growth this year for Italy.

Growth in 2007 came in below expected at 1.5 percent, little more than half the euro zone average of 2.7 percent and maintaining a trend which has seen Italy grow less than its partners for at least a decade.

RECENT HISTORY: Despite its long history Italy only emerged as an independent political entity in 1861.

Fascist leader Benito Mussolini assumed dictatorial powers shortly after becoming prime minister in October 1922 and led Italy into World War Two as an ally of Nazi Germany.

After the Allied Victory in 1945, King Victor Emmanuel abdicated, Italy voted for a republic and its overseas empire was dissolved.

In the late 1970s terrorism began to pose a serious threat to Italy's political stability. In 1978, a former prime minister, Aldo Moro, was killed by the Red Brigades, a militant left-wing group.

The "Bribesville" graft probe in the early 1990s exposed widespread corruption in Italian politics and spurred the downfall of a political dynasty that had ruled the country since World War Two.

In 2006, the closest election in post-war history gave Romano Prodi such a narrow Senate majority that the defection of one tiny party forced him to resign in January 2008.