In Italy, the official language is Italian. Italian is one of the Romance languages, which come from Latin. French is also a Romance language--and the one that I speak, so while I could not understand people speaking Italian, I recognized a few words on signs and storefronts.
While the official language in Italy is Italian, a lot of people here speak English. Since Italian is not very commonly spoken across the globe, Italians learn French and English early on in their schools. This fact made it was really easy for me to figure out how to get around the country.
Fun fact: Do you remember what Switzerland's four official languages are? French, German, Romansch, and...Italian! Outside of the Italy, only Switzerland and a region within each of the neighboring countries of Croatia and Slovenia count Italian as an official language.
Italy is part of the European Union (E.U.), which is a union of 28 countries in Europe that helps each nation collaborate on its own and regionally-important economic and political goals. 19 of these members use the same type of money (or currency) to make things like traveling and economic trading easier between them. This currency is called the euro (€) and is what the country of Italy uses for its currency!
One euro is equal to 1.14 U.S. dollars.
