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South Tyrol Italian: Sudtirolo, also known by its alternative Italian name Alto Adige, is an autonomous province in northern Italy.
It is one of the two autonomous provinces that make up the autonomous region of
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province has an area of 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 sq mi) and a total population of 511,750 inhabitants (31.12.2011).
Its capital is the city of Bolzano.
The Atlas Tyrolensis, showing the entire County of Tyrol, printed in Vienna. 1774
According to 2014 data based on the 2011 census, 62.3 percent of the population speaks German (Standard German in the written norm and an Austro-Bavarian dialect
in the spoken form); 23.4 percent of the population speaks Italian, mainly in and around the two largest cities (Bolzano and Merano); 4.1 percent speaks Ladin,
a Rhaeto-Romance language; 10.2% of the population (mainly recent immigrants) speaks another language as first language.
South Tyrol is granted a considerable level of self-government, consisting of a large range of exclusive legislative and executive powers and a fiscal regime that
allows the province to retain a large part of most levied taxes, while nevertheless
remaining a net contributor to the national budget. As of 2011, South Tyrol is among the wealthiest regions in Italy and the European Union.
In the wider context of the European Union, the province is one of the three members of the Euroregion of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, which corresponds almost
exactly to the historical region of Tyrol.