Northern Italy is a
cultural and geographical region, without any administrative purpose, used to indicate the northern part of the
Italian state, also informally referred as
Il Nord,
Settentrione or
Alta Italia. It consists of 8
regions in northern Italy:
Aosta Valley,
Piedmont,
Liguria,
Lombardy,
Emilia-Romagna,
Veneto,
Friuli-Venezia Giulia,
Trentino Alto-Adige. According to the 2011 census, its population was 27,213,372. For statistic purposes, the
Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT) uses the term
Northwest Italy and
Northeast Italy for identifying two of the five statistical regions in its reporting. These same subdivisions are used to demarcate first level
Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions ("NUTS 1 regions") within the
European Union, and the Italian constituencies for the
European Parliament.