page_title: National colours of Italy
section_title: Azure
hierarchical_section_title: National colours of Italy / Other Italian national colours / Azure
caption_attribution_description: English: Italy national football team starting XI at Euro 2012 final against Spain. Backrow, left to right: Giorgio Chiellini, Leonardo Bonucci, Mario Balotelli, Andrea Barzagli, Daniele de Rossi and Gianluigi Buffon; Frontrow, left to right: Antonio Cassano, Claudio Marchisio, Andrea Pirlo, Riccardo Montolivo and Ignazio Abate.
context_page_description: The national colours of Italy are green, white, and red, collectively known in Italian as il tricolore. The three Italian national colours appeared for the first time in Genoa on 21 August 1789 on the cockade of Italy shortly after the outbreak of the French Revolution. Green, white and red are also national colours of Bulgaria, Hungary, Iran, Lebanon and Mexico.
  In sport in Italy, savoy azure has been used or adopted as the colour for many national teams, the first being the men's football team in 1910. The national auto racing colour of Italy is instead rosso corsa, while in other disciplines such as cycling and winter sports, white is often used.
context_section_description: With the unification of Italy, and with the consequent extension of the Albertine Statute to the whole Italian peninsula, to the green, to the white and to the red, a fourth national colour was added, the Savoy blue, a distinctive chromatic tonality of the Italian ruling family, the House of Savoy; in particular, in the institutional sphere, it was included in the flag of the Kingdom of Italy on the contour of the royal coat of arms to prevent the cross and the field of the shield from being confused with the white and with the red of the banner.
  The origin of the colour is dated 20 June 1366, when Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, about to leave for a crusade called by Pope Urban V which was intended to help the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos, cousin of the maternal part of the Savoy Count, decided to place on the flagship of the fleet, a galley of Republic of Venice, a blue flag that fluttered next to the red-crusading silver banner of the Savoys.
  The colour therefore has a Marian implication, bearing in mind that there is also the possibility that the use of a blue banner by the Savoys started earlier.
  The Savoy blue has been preserved in some institutional contexts even after the birth of the Italian Republic: in fact this is the edge of the Presidential Standard of Italy (blue, in heraldry, means "law" and "command") and is the dominant colour of the institutional flags of some important public offices (President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, Minister and Undersecretaries of Defense, high military ranks Navy and Air Force). The Savoy blue border on Presidential Standard of Italy symbolize the four Italian armed forces, namely the Italian Air Force, the Carabinieri, the Italian Army and the Italian Navy, of which the President is the commander.
  The blue shade of the Savoy blue colour, already in use on military cockades, on the ties of the flags and on the bands of the Savoy officers, still continues to appear as one of Italy's reference and recognition colours, so much so that it has become the shade used on the Italian national sports shirts, on the blue scarf supplied to the officers of the Italian armed forces, on the distinctive band of the presidents of the Italian provinces and on the aircraft used by the Frecce Tricolori, also traditions that have never stopped even on the occasion of the birth of the Italian Republic.
  After having played its first two international matches in white in 1910, the men's football team announced its new uniform on 31 December 1910, an azure shirt with an escutcheon of the Italian colours, and white shorts. The blue shirt was first worn on 6 January 1911 in a match against Hungary in Milan. Even this case, the blue has been maintained despite the abolition of the Italian monarchy.
  In sport, many men's national teams are known as the azzurri and women's teams as the azzurre (meaning "azure"). These include the men's basketball, men's football, men's ice hockey, men's rugby league, men's rugby union, and men's volleyball teams, and the women's basketball, women's football, women's ice hockey, and women's volleyball teams.
caption: The Italian national football team
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