page_title: Flag of Italy
section_title: Risorgimento and Italian unification
hierarchical_section_title: Flag of Italy / History / Risorgimento and Italian unification
caption_attribution_description: Proclamazione delle Repubblica Romana, 1849, litografia, ridotto
context_page_description: The flag of Italy, often referred to in Italian as il Tricolore; is a tricolour featuring three equally sized vertical pales of green, white and red, with the green at the hoist side. Its current form has been in use since 18 June 1946 and was formally adopted on 1 January 1948.
  The Tricolour Day, Flag Day dedicated to the Italian flag, is established by law n. 671 of 31 December 1996, which is held every year on 7 January. This celebration commemorates the first official adoption of the tricolour as a national flag by the Cispadane Republic, a Napoleonic sister republic of Revolutionary France, which took place in Reggio Emilia on 7 January 1797. The Italian national colours appeared for the first time in Genoa on a tricolour cockade on 21 August 1789, anticipating by seven years the first green, white and red Italian military war flag, which was adopted by the Lombard Legion on 11 October 1796.
  The Cispadane Republic supplanted the Duchy of Milan after Napoleon's victorious army crossed Italy in 1796.
context_section_description: Between 1820 and 1861, a sequence of events led to the independence and unification of Italy (except for Venetia, Rome, Trento and Trieste, known as Italia irredenta, which were united with the rest of Italy in 1866, 1870, and 1918 respectively); this period of Italian history is known as the Risorgimento, or resurgence. During this period, the tricolore became the symbol which united all the efforts of the Italian people towards freedom and independence. The tricolour waved for the first time in the history of the Risorgimento in the Cittadella of Alessandria during the revolutions of 1820 to then reappear during revolutions of 1830.
  The Italian tricolour, defaced with the Savoyan coat of arms, was first adopted as a war flag by the Kingdom of Sardinia–Piedmont army in 1848. In his Proclamation to the Lombard–Venetian people, Charles Albert said "... in order to show more clearly with exterior signs the commitment to Italian unification, We want that Our troops ... have the Savoy shield placed on the Italian tricolour flag." As the arms, blazoned gules a cross argent, mixed with the white of the flag, it was fimbriated azure, blue being the dynastic colour, although this does not conform to the heraldic rule of tincture. The rectangular civil and state variants were adopted in 1851.
  In the same year, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany became constitutional and dropped the Austrian flag, with Austria–Lorraine great coat of arms, in favour of the defaced Italian tricolour with simplified arms. It is worthy of note, however, that the arms bear the red-white-red flag of Austria, the opponent of Italian unification. In 1859, the Granducato officially ceased to exist, being joined to the Duchies of Modena and Parma to form the United Provinces of Central Italy, which used the undefaced tricolour until it was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia the following year.
  The flag of the Constitutional Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a white field charged with the coats of arms of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Two Sicilies, and Granada, was modified by Ferdinand II through the addition of a red and green border. This flag lasted from 3 April 1848 until 19 May 1849. The Provisional Government of Sicily, which lasted from 12 January 1848 to 15 May 1849, adopted the Italian tricolour, defaced with the trinacria, or triskelion.
  In the same year, the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia revolted against the Austrian Empire in the Five Days of Milan, forming the Provisional Government of Lombardy on 22 March 1848 and Provisional Government of Venice, the so-called "Republic of San Marco", a day later. The flags that they adopted, marked the link to Italian independence and unification efforts; the former, the Italian tricolour undefaced, and the latter, charged with the winged lion of St. Mark, from the flag of the Most Serene Republic, on a white canton. These lasted until 6 and 24 August 1849 respectively.
  In 1849, the new Roman Republic adopted an Italian tricolour, sent from Venice, bearing the legend DIO E POPOLO in red capital letters. This lasted for four months, while the Papal States of the Church was in abeyance.
  This spread throughout the Italian peninsula was the demonstration that the tricolour flag had by now assumed a consolidated symbolism valid throughout the national territory. The great enthusiasm of the population towards the tricolour is precisely from these years: in addition to the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia and the troops of volunteers who participated in the second war of independence, the green, white and red flag spread widely available in newly conquered or annexed regions by plebiscite, appearing on house windows, in shop windows and in public places such as hotels, taverns, taverns, etc.
  In 1860, the flag of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was again modified to the defaced Italian tricolour with the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies coat of arms. Adopted on 21 June 1860, this lasted until 17 March 1861, when the Two Sicilies was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy, after its defeat in the Expedition of the Thousand led by Giuseppe Gar
caption: The proclamation of the Roman Republic in Piazza del Popolo in Rome among a profusion of tricolour flags
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