Let me point something out for aspiring writers on Italy who wish to dress up their language. Italian is a fairly colorful language, so there are several good metonyms for the country. Il bel paese (“the beautiful country”) has the finest pedigree, having been used by both Petrarch and Dante. If you want to point out the defining geographical feature, you can use lo stivale (“the boot”); this is rife with opportunities for word play such as Napoleon’s famous maxim that you must enter a boot from the top. If you want to be official you can say Italian Republic, an exact translation of the name of the county that has existed since the referendum held on June 2, 1946.
Now: in Italian you may come across la Penisola, the peninsula, from time to time. And that’s ok. Italians know only one peninsula and so there’s a context. But it doesn’t work as hip shorthand in American English. “What a great cup of coffee I had on the Peninsula!” is simply confusing; “I went up to Turin on a recent trip to the Peninsula” is just pretentious. There are several peninsulas in Europe; notably the nearby Iberian and Balkan ones, and Italy shares substantial history with both. If you really want to be a pedant, you could consider all of Europe a peninsula of the Eurasian subcontinent. To add to the confusion is the fact that “peninsular” in English often refers to Spain, not Italy; i.e., Peninsular Spanish or Peninsular War. There are other, better terms. Most importantly:
“Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”
And if you don’t know who said that I’ll leave it to you to google, but if you’re interested in good, clear prose style and you don’t know, then you’re in trouble.