{"id":656,"date":"2011-03-18T10:55:26","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T10:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/?p=656"},"modified":"2011-03-22T09:35:35","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T09:35:35","slug":"17-marzo-1861-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/17-marzo-1861-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"17 Marzo 1861 &#8211; 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">Yesterday, the 17th of March, we celebrated the  150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy with a national holiday. The  history of the unification of Italy is long and complicated, but in a nutshell: <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">The official birth of <strong>il Regno d&#8217;Italia <\/strong>(the Italian Kingdom) took place on the 17th of March 1861, and  <strong>Vittorio Emanuele II Re di Sardegna <\/strong>(King of Sardinia) was  chosen as <strong>Re d&#8217;Italia<\/strong> (King of Italy). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">Only two years beforehand, Italy was still divided  into seven different States: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: small\"><strong>Regno di Sardegna<\/strong>, which  included the north-west of Italy and the island of Sardinia, and was ruled by  the Savoia Royal family;<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: small\"><strong>Regno Lombardo-Veneto<\/strong>, which  included the north-east of Italy, and was part of the Austrian-Hungarian  Empire;<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: small\"><strong>Ducato di Parma<\/strong>, ruled by the  Spanish Borbone family;<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: small\"><strong>Ducato di Modena<\/strong>, under  Austrian control;<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: small\"><strong>Granducato di Toscana<\/strong>, under  Austrian control;<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: small\"><strong>Stato Pontificio<\/strong>, which  included part of the north and all of the center of Italy, and was ruled by the  Church;<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: small\"><strong>Regno delle Due\u00a0Sicilie<\/strong>, which  included Naples and all the south of Italy plus the island of Sicily, and was  under Spanish dominion.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">In 1860 <strong>il Ducato di Parma, il Ducato di  Modena<\/strong>, and <strong>il Granducato di Toscana<\/strong> voted to be  unified with <strong>il Regno di Sardegna<\/strong>, the only one of the seven  states that had been truly independent for centuries, ruled by its indigenous  royal family, the Savoia. In the same year the Piedmontese troops, with the help  of Garibaldi&#8217;s <strong>Spedizione dei Mille <\/strong>(expedition of the  Thousand), conquered <strong>il Regno delle Due Sicilie<\/strong> and part of  <strong>lo Stato Pontificio<\/strong>, officially uniting them with <strong>il  Regno di Sardegna<\/strong> following <strong>un plebiscito <\/strong>(a popular  vote). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">However the new <strong>Regno d&#8217;Italia<\/strong>,  created on the 17th of March 1861, did not yet cover the whole of the Italian  peninsula. In fact the north-east was still under Austrian rule (Veneto was  conquered in 1866, while Trentino and Friuli became Italian after the First  World War), and Rome and part of the center were still under <strong>lo Stato  Pontificio<\/strong>. Nevertheless this was the first time since the Roman Empire  that most of the Italian peninsula had been united as a single entity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">Despite never having had political unity, the  Italian peninsula had shared a strong cultural identity for many centuries. As  far back as <strong>il Cinquecento<\/strong> (the Fifteen Hundreds) scholars were  discussing the possibility of <strong>una lingua italiana<\/strong>, that is, a  common language for the whole of the peninsula. However, at the time of the  unification of Italy in 1861 neither king <strong>Vittorio Emanuele II<\/strong> nor the Prime Minister, <strong>Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour<\/strong>, spoke  Italian, their mother tongue being Piedmontese, an Italian dialect heavily  influenced by French.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">In 1865, to reinforce the transition from  <strong>il Regno di Sardegna<\/strong> to <strong>il Regno d&#8217;Italia <\/strong>Firenze took over the title of capital city from Torino. This was due  to two main factors: 1. its geographical location in the center of Italy, and 2.  its long standing cultural supremacy. However, the national aspiration to  incorporate Roma as part of Italy had never died, and after a failed attempt in  1867 by Garibaldi, Roma was finally conquered on the 20th of September 1870 by  <strong>i Bersaglieri<\/strong> (a specialized corps of the Piedmontese army),  who succeeded in breaching the city walls, by means of the so called  <strong>Breccia di Porta Pia <\/strong>(the Breach of Pia Gate). Roma was  proclaimed capital city of Italy on the 1st of July 1871.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">But is Italy really a unified country? I&#8217;ll  discuss that in a upcoming blog.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the 17th of March, we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy with a national holiday. The history of the unification of Italy is long and complicated, but in a nutshell: The official birth of il Regno d&#8217;Italia (the Italian Kingdom) took place on the 17th of March 1861, and Vittorio Emanuele&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/17-marzo-1861-2011\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16867,16865,16862,16863,16864,16866,16861],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-breccia-di-porta-pia","tag-granducato-di-toscana","tag-regno-ditalia","tag-regno-di-sardegna","tag-regno-di-sicilia","tag-stato-pontificio","tag-unification-of-italy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}