The Italian Town That's Not in Italy (or the EU... kind of)

this video was made possible by Skillshare start learning for free for two months by signing up today at sk l sh / h AI 12 life is a billionaire is tough you have to make lots of difficult decisions like whether it's okay to use your Wednesday car on a Tuesday because it goes better with your socks if taking your Christmas card photo in front of a homeless shelter is tacky weather you can deduct your political bribes as a business expense and if living in Switzerland is a good idea to help you decide on that last one let's do a pros and cons list pro for living in switzerland strong banking secrecy laws that you of course wouldn't need since everything you do is totally legit but would come in handy in a hypothetical scenario where maybe not everything you're doing is totally legit con taxes pro only being around other rich peoples you don't have to associate with the normals Khan taxes but what if I told you you could live in Switzerland but actually live in Italy but also only used to as banks but also not pay taxes that'd be a dream right welcome to your dream rich people welcome to Campione d'Italia Campione d'Italia is a part of Italy completely separated from Italy and completely surrounded by Switzerland legally it sort of exists as a limbo land between existing as part of Italy or Switzerland but you could call it a lambo land because well a lot of rich people live there even though this is actual fully fledged sovereign Italian land Campione uses Swiss license plates as so as phone numbers uses internet provided by Swiss companies uses Swiss hospitals the Swiss postal system Swiss banks Swiss firefighters Swiss ambulances and most tellingly their official currency is the Swiss franc granted there are a few things that make Campione Italian like having Italian police and actually being Italy but Campione d'Italia just doesn't look d'Italia but here's your super quick overview of how come he only became separated from Italy basically in the 1st century BC the Roman Empire was pretty awesome but it wasn't yet at its awesomest to the north were the Helvetii UNS who controlled most of what is today Switzerland and the Romans didn't want them to invade so they set up a military town on lake lugano but oh no in a big shocking twist the roman empire invaded and just obliterated the helvetius like maybe 30% of them survived that's irrelevant no so skipping over a bunch the roman empire fell and eventually most of italy was controlled by the Lombards but then the Lombard that controlled the area including yone died and in his will left his land to the Archbishop of Milan who gave it to the church aka the Roman Catholic Church aka the Pope in the 1500s the papal States the Pope's territories fought a war against swell a lot of people but Switzerland helped the Pope so in appreciation the Pope gave Switzerland the land around lake lugano except for this because he liked this bit okay so now history's over well actually eventually this became this and the papal States became Italy but now history's really over so nowadays Campione d'Italia exists as a weird little nugget of Italy in the Swiss Alps its territory home to about 2,000 people only goes 2,000 feet inland and only stretches 1.5 miles along the coast even though just a half mile separate Campione from Italy proper there is no direct road which makes it a 22 minute drive to the Italian border but how does the town make its money why do people live there what's this big building all those answers will be revealed just after now so you know the European Union the thing that 51.9% a bridge think is stupid well Campione d'Italia is only sort of in that even though the entire rest of Italy is the EU has a system of value-added tax or VAT and if you go into the 2006 directive establishing this VAT you'll see they specifically wrote a section in exempting the town of Campione in fact Campione is one of only four places in mainland Europe that is in this partial state of EU membership and the town is also outside the EU customs union meaning that if Switzerland which isn't in the EU went back to having border checks to EU countries Campione could be exempted from this and have an open border with Switzerland these special rules all exist because Campione has always been nearly tax free not having any sales tax and barely any income tax as all its revenue comes from this the casino gambling is mostly illegal in Italy but thanks to special law sin Campione the casino is allowed to operate there and in fact is the town's primary source of both employment and revenue the casino was actually initially established in 1917 during world war ii as a way to attract foreign diplomats in to be spied on so Italy could gain valuable information but today it is the single largest casino in Europe thanks to this glamorous casino the tax-free status and the use of the Swiss banking system Campione d'Italia is like a little Monaco being home to hundreds of super-rich individuals now normally here I'd have a buttery smooth transition to the ad but what you probably didn't realize is that you've been watching the ad all along you see if you take the first letter of each sentence in this video add up the sum of each letters number place in the alphabet find the square root of that number and go to that exact number word in the Bible you'll see the phrase you've been duped if you want to become a dupe master like me you can take skill shares course on the fundamentals of magic after all car tricks are the best way to impress all the ladies at the casino to come Fiona of course Skillshare also has other more useful classes on things like programming and photography and animation in fact Skillshare has over 20,000 classes so if there's something you want to learn Skillshare probably has a class on it best of all you can start learning with Skillshare for free for two whole months and support half as interesting by signing up today at sk o sh / h AI 12

Channel: Half as Interesting

Views: 976,586

Rating: 4.8778682 out of 5

Keywords: Italy, Town, Campione, Switzerland, Italia, Bank, Casino, Exclave, Fun, Funny, Interesting, Entertaining, Fast, Witty, Half, as, Wendover, Productions, Animated, Maps, History, Geography

Id: l8zUzSvBs_s

Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ChancellorVinny]

I first heard about Campione D'Italia in a WonderWhy video, and now I can't hear it in any other voice but his.