South Tyrol 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. Its official trilingual denomination is Autonome Provinz Bozen - Südtirol in German, Provincia autonoma di Bolzano - Alto Adige in Italian and Provinzia autonoma de Bulsan - Südtirol in Ladin, reflecting the three main language groups to which its population belongs. The province is the northernmost of Italy, the second largest, with an area of 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 sq mi) and has a total population of 527,005 inhabitants as of 2017. Its capital and largest city is Bolzano (German: Bozen; Ladin: Balsan or Bulsan).
According to 2014 data based on the 2011 census, 62.3 % of the population speaks German (Standard German in the written form and an Austro-Bavarian dialect in the spoken form); 23.4 % of the population speaks Italian, mainly in and around the two largest cities ( Bolzano and Merano); 4.1 % speaks Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance language ; 10.2% of the population (mainly recent immigrants) speaks another language as first language.
The province 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 it to retain a large part of most levied taxes, while nevertheless remaining a net contributor to the national budget. As of 2011, the province of Bozen is among the wealthiest 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. The other members are Tyrol state in Austria, to the north and east, and the Italian Autonomous province of Trento to the South.
