.IT is the ccTLD (country code top level domain) for Italy.
It was implemented 1987 and was originally managed by the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Italian National Research Council).
Today the TLD is managed by NIC-IT (Registro.it).
Starting 2012 .IT allowed registration of IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) supporting Italian, French, and German accents and characters.
Within five minutes, 1,737 new IDNs were registered; in thirty, 2,620; in four hours, eight thousand.