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Le città del sud sono molto belle.

Le città del sud sono molto belle.
The cities of the south are very beautiful.
From Lesson 48:Articulated prepositions with di and da (del, dal)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Le città del sud sono molto belle.

Why do we use del instead of di il?
del is an articulated preposition, which is what happens when you combine di (of) with the definite article il (the). Because sud is a masculine noun starting with a consonant, it takes the article il. When di and il meet, they merge into del (of the).
How can you tell that città means 'cities' plural, since it doesn't end in an 'i' or 'e'?
In Italian, nouns that end with an accented vowel (like città, università, or caffè) do not change their spelling in the plural. You have to look at the surrounding words to know if it is singular or plural. Here, the plural article Le, the plural verb sono (are), and the plural adjective belle all show us that città is plural in this sentence.
Why is the adjective belle instead of bella or belli?
Adjectives always have to match the gender and number of the noun they describe. città is a feminine noun, and in this sentence it is plural. So, the base adjective bello (beautiful) changes its ending to -e to become the feminine plural belle.
Since belle is plural and feminine, why doesn't molto change to molte?
When molto is used to mean 'very', it acts as an adverb describing an adjective (in this case, belle). Adverbs never change their endings! molto would only change its ending if it were used as an adjective meaning 'many', such as in molte città (many cities).

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