History History

The ancient presence of humans in Italy is attested by archaeological discoveries, particularly in the Italian Alps, which are of interest to us here. We think in particular of Ötzi, in the South Tyrol, dating from the 4th millennium BC: an ice man discovered in 1991 in the Dolomites, near the Austrian border, from the Chalcolithic period. Naturally mummified (frozen and dehydrated), at an altitude of 3210 meters, his existence was revealed by the significant melting of the glacier in summer. It is currently on display at the Bolzano Archaeological Museum.

The serious business begins when hordes of invaders cross the Alpine passes. During the Iron Age, the Italic peoples were the Ligurians, the Rhetians, the Venetes and the Etruscans. The most significant invasion was by the Etruscans, around 800 BC. Absorbing the native customs, they gave birth to an original culture, which spread from Lazio to Umbria and Venice. In the 7th century B.C., they enjoyed great economic prosperity and exported bronze objects and ceramics to the Mediterranean. But they often clashed with the Greeks and Carthaginians. They influenced the Romans in the arts and divination. The Archaeological Museum of Turin exhibits Etruscan remains from the region.

While in the south the Etruscan cities lost their independence from Rome, in the north the Celtic incursions destroyed the cities of the Po plain. The Roman conquest of the region lasted a century. It was mainly the Carthaginians who gave them a hard time. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal crossed the Alps on an elephant. But he did not manage to take Rome and retreated. This was the beginning of the Roman hegemony. The archaeological museum of Pordenone exhibits vestiges of Romanization in the Friulian Dolomites.

The popes who succeeded one another at the head of the Holy See were to appear as the sole defenders of the interests of the Italians, who had been abandoned to their fate by the Byzantine emperor. At the end of the 6th century, the Lombards (or more precisely, the Langobards) invaded northern Italy and very quickly occupied the Po valley. They created duchies in the region, including those of Friuli, Ceneda, Treviso, Trento, Milan, Bergamo, San Giulio, Turin... Lombard ceramics are exhibited in the archaeological museum of Milan. Faced with the Lombard threat, Rome asked for help from the Franks, at the time of their incursion into Europe.

It was then that Charlemagne, king of the Franks, became the true master of the peninsula, annexing northern Italy to his empire, with the exception of Venice. The Lombard Duchy of Benevento remained independent and the Byzantine Empire continued to rule southern Italy, Calabria and Sicily. The north/south division of Italy dates from this period. With the decline of the Carolingian Empire, a long period of unrest began for Italy, marked by struggles between potentates for the title of King of Italy and the devastation caused by Saracen incursions. The papacy itself was not spared and fell into the hands of aristocratic families.

The king of Germania invaded the north of the peninsula and took over Italy and was crowned emperor (962). This was a time of relative stability in Italy. The domination of the Germanic emperors was established for three centuries, constantly coming up against the desire for independence of the noble Roman families and great feudal lords, such as the Lombard duke Pandolfo Tête-de-Fer. To counter their appetite for emancipation, the emperors had to support the growth of the cities, which had become flourishing during the 11th century thanks to trade and which were emancipating themselves from the feudal lords to whom they belonged (bishops, archbishops, capitani, etc.). This is the case of Venice, freed from all vassalage, which continues to trade with the Byzantine East, as well as Genoa and Pavia.

The struggle between the Germanic emperors and the papacy entered a new phase with the Hohenstaufen dynasty. The first, Frederick I Barbarossa, set out to re-establish imperial authority. He opposed the Church as well as the Lombard cities, which were now free of any power, and which inflicted a bitter defeat on the Emperor at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. In spite of this, the Lombard cities were once again forced to submit to the imperial yoke. The last Hohenstaufen, Conradin, was defeated in 1268, sounding the death knell for Germanic domination of Italy.

With the Germans gone, internal struggles continued in Lombardy, extremely ruinous for the old merchant families in power. Milan fell into the hands of the Viscontis, Verona into those of the Scaligeris... They established tyrannical regimes and restored order and prosperity. Most of them were also great patrons of the arts. In northern Italy, three great cities dominated the political and economic landscape: Milan (but in 1450, the Viscontis were driven out by the Sforzas), Venice, an oligarchic republic and maritime power (whose hegemony was challenged in 1453 by the capture of Constantinople by the Turks) and Florence, which, in terms of literature and the arts, was a cultural and spiritual centre of Europe.

Charles VIII, who was favourably received in Milan, where he helped overthrow the Sforzas, and then in Florence, where the Medici suffered the same fate, seized Naples in 1495. But he had to give up occupying it for good in the face of the threat of the combined Italian forces of Pope Alexander VI of Venice and Ludovico Sforza, once again Duke of Milan. During the reconquest of power by the Holy See, Lombardy was the scene of bloody battles in the early 16th century.

A Valois succeeded another Valois in the person of François I, who took up the Italian wars as soon as he became king. The famous battle of Marignano (1515), where the French won with the Venetians against the Milanese and the Swiss, was countered by the disaster of Pavia (1525), a battle against the Aragonese, but also against the imperial troops of Charles V, during which Francis I was taken prisoner. Freed a year later for ransom, and taking up arms again in the process, the King of France agreed to deal with Charles V by abandoning Italy to the Habsburg Empire under the Treaty of Cambrai, in 1529.

From that date onwards, it was total in the north of the peninsula, crushing the last vestiges of opposition from the Lombard and Tuscan cities and re-establishing the Medici at the head of Florence. In 1559, with the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, the kingdom of France definitively abandoned the Italian peninsula to the domination of the Habsburgs, which continued until 1792. Two political and economic entities managed to maintain a certain independence: Savoy, which established its capital in Turin in 1562, and Venice, whose possessions and economic and commercial power were damaged by the inexorable advance of the Turks, despite the victory of Lepanto (1571).

These centuries brought Italy further destruction during the great European wars between the Bourbon France and the Habsburg Spain. After the death of Charles II of Spain, the last representative of the Spanish dynasty, the north of the peninsula suffered from the wars of succession of the Habsburgs. The peace signed at the time of the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 gave the throne of Spain to Philippe V, grandson of Louis XIV, replacing the Spanish hegemony by that of the Austrians, but above all it strengthened the power of independent Savoy which obtained Sardinia in 1720. Between 1734 and 1738, then between 1741 and 1748, two wars of succession once again set the north of the country ablaze.

This treaty put an end to hostilities and fixed the political divisions of Italy: the Papal States still cut the peninsula in two, while Savoy strengthened its positions in Piedmont and Sardinia. This same Savoy which, during the 18th century, experienced the enlightened despotism of its princes (Victor-Amédée II, followed by Charles-Emmanuel III), imitated by the other rulers of the Italian principalities. However, despite these reforms, a gap grew between a North sensitive to European philosophical ideas and a South dominated by large landowners, advocates of immobility.

First taking Savoy, Napoleon's French revolutionary troops only penetrated Northern Italy in the spring of 1796. A year later, peace was signed at Campo Formio (which marked the end of Venice as a state): Northern Italy was organised into free republics, which were joined, after their conquest, by the republics of the former Papal States and the former kingdom of Naples. Despite the exactions of war, the Italians discovered freedom. An "Italian soul" seems to have been born. After the proclamation of the French Empire in 1804, the Italian republics were federated into the "Kingdom of Italy" in 1805 by Napoleon. Between 1805 and 1809, Veneto and Trentino were added. If the emperor never had the will to unify Italy, it was in fact realized: the Napoleonic code of laws governed the life of the citizens at the origin of the future Risorgimento of Garibaldi, the "father of the Nation". But the "unitary" experience came to an end with the awakening of the emperor's European enemies.

In October 1815, the entire peninsula was conquered by the troops of the Austrian Empire (inherited from the Habsburg dynasty). It was a return to despotic regimes. The Italian princes regained their duchies, Austria recovered Lombardy, the Papal States and Piedmont were restored. Repression fell on the people. A national consciousness develops, relayed by secret societies, the famous carbonari, made up of intellectuals, officers, magistrates... These actions were suppressed, as were the 1820 uprisings in Piedmont. The idea of national unity was gaining ground, but there were three opposing currents. The first advocated a confederation of Italian principalities led by the Pope; the second campaigned for a unitary Republic; the third also dreamed of a federation, but under the umbrella of the Kingdom of Piedmont. It was the latter movement that won in 1860.

Following the popular revolts, the King of Piedmont, Charles Albert, was forced to establish a constitutional regime in his kingdom. At the same time, Lombardy rose up against the Austrian occupiers, joined by the King of Piedmont, who declared "l'Italia farà da se" ("Italy will do itself"). Reinforcements were added by other Italian princes and even by the papacy. But, very quickly, the dissensions and then the defection of the Pope left Charles-Albert of Savoy alone to grapple with the Austrians, and, in August 1848, he signed an armistice. Having saved the essentials, Charles Albert resumed the fight in 1849 but, once again defeated, he abdicated in favour of his son Victor-Emmanuel II.

Left alone to face the absolutist Italian regimes supported by Austria, the kingdom of Piedmont saw the arrival, in 1852, of a man called Cavour at the head of its affairs, whose diplomatic skill would lead to the unity of Italy under the aegis of Victor-Emmanuel II. By the Treaty of Turin in 1860, Savoy and Nice were returned to the France of Napoleon III, who in exchange granted military aid to Piedmont against Austria. The war, marked by the battles of Magenta (4 June 1859) and Solferino (24 June), was victorious. Piedmont recovered Lombardy, but not Venetia, which remained in Austrian hands. The Piedmontese troops invaded the Papal States and then imposed the king's authority in Naples. Victor-Emmanuel II was proclaimed King of Piedmont in 1861 by, what is new, "the will of the nation", i.e. the entire Italian people. Florence became the capital of the young Italian state, Rome still being occupied by the Pope and the French forces charged with protecting him.

It was only in 1870, following the withdrawal of Napoleon III's troops - due to the Franco-Prussian war - that Rome was finally reunited with the nation and became its capital. The Risorgimento Museum in Milan summarizes the Italian unification, from Napoleon's Italian campaign to the Italian nation, thanks to the joint actions of Garibaldi, Victor-Emmanuel II, Cavour and Mazzini, considered as "the fathers of the fatherland". With the unity of the country finally achieved, Italy became aware of its economic backwardness on a European scale, of the differences in development between the industrial north of the Mezzogiorno and the almost exclusively rural south. The poor population of the south was forced to emigrate, mainly to the New World. It was also the time of the expansion of Italian colonialism. Politically, the parliamentary monarchy was fragile, due to the censal system in force. It was not until 1912 that universal suffrage was finally introduced.

Attached to the Austro-Hungarian Empire when the conflict began, the Italian Dolomites were painfully marked by the Great War, as their ridges formed the front line. Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary (May 1915), then on Germany (August 1916). Between 1915 and 1918, the Italians and Austrians clashed in fighting of incredible barbarity. The soldiers of both sides dug trenches, equipped the steep walls to move around, and carved out mountains and glaciers to create galleries, dormitories, arms and ammunition warehouses, hospitals, etc. The First World War Tour allows you to appreciate the vestiges in the Dolomites. By the treaty of Saint-Germain establishing peace between the Allies and Austria, Italy acquires Trentino and Trieste.

In 1919, Mussolini founded the Italian Fighting Fascists in Milan. Social unrest, violence, the obvious shortcomings of the parliamentary system, and governmental instability benefited Fascism and Mussolini, who on October 28, 1922, organized the famous march on Rome with his Black Shirts. On October 30, King Victor Emmanuel III called the Duce to power. Initially respecting the parliamentary system, Mussolini organized elections in 1924 that reinforced his supremacy. The fascist dictatorship then began, and his foreign policy became brutally radicalised after the conquest of Ethiopia, undertaken at the end of 1935.

When Hitler, in 1939, found himself isolated against England and France, Mussolini did not follow him. But in June 1940, when the Allies were defeated by the Germans, Italy entered the war and invaded France. But the army, ill-prepared, went from defeat to defeat and popular protest spread to the ranks of the Fascist party, the Grand Council. In July 1943, the Grand Council deposed and arrested Mussolini. A new government negotiated an armistice with the Allies. Warned of this, Germany sent its troops to occupy Rome and northern Italy. Once liberated, Mussolini, with the help of the Nazis, reconstituted a fascist state in the north: the Republic of Salo. Once again arrested in 1945, while the Allies were advancing and Hitler was on his own, Mussolini was summarily executed with his lover, their remains hung by their feet and offered to the public in a Milan square. Defeated Italy loses its colonial possessions, as well as those of the First World War, i.e. Fiume, Istria, the city of Zara and part of the Julian Veneto, which pass into the hands of the Yugoslavs.

When peace returned, the National Liberation Committee organised elections and a referendum that condemned the monarchy. Humbert II, on the throne since the abdication of his father Victor-Emmanuel III, chose to go into exile. The new constitution, ratified in 1948, gave great influence to the President of the Council, head of government and true holder of executive power. Political life was marked by the struggle for power between several major parties that had emerged from the Resistance, such as the Communist Party (PCI), the Socialist Party (PSI), the Republican Party (PRI), the Social Democrats and finally the Christian Democracy (DC). The latter was widely supported by the Italians and was present in the thirty-two governments that took over the reins of Italy between 1946 and 1974. But political life was characterised by constant crises.

In the Autunno Caldo ("hot autumn") of 1969, Italy was faced with strikes, demonstrations, riots and uncontrollable violent activism, particularly by the Red Brigades and right-wing groups. Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped in 1978 by the Red Brigades and killed after the government refused to negotiate. After many efforts, around 1985, with the help of the vitality of the Italian economy, terrorism was practically eradicated. But Italy was confronted with a series of scandals that revealed the extent of the corruption that was eating away at the country and the mafia's hold on its economic and political life. Operation Mani Pulite ("clean hands") in 1992 aimed to clean up political and public life.

Elected President of the Council in 1996 and 2001, billionaire media mogul Silvio Berlusconi faced growing hostility, which reached its peak in 2005 when 12 out of 16 regions were won by the centre-left Democratic Party. In 2006, the leader of this party, Romano Prodi, became the head of the Italian Council. In difficulty on the right, the Cavaliere created the People of Freedom party (PDL), came back strong and won the 2008 legislative elections with flying colours. However, the international crisis, corruption scandals, embezzlement and prostitution of minors (Rubygate) weakened him. The 2011 municipal elections, which saw the loss of Naples and above all Milan, the Cavaliere's historic stronghold, forced him to resign in November.

A new government of technocrats led by former European Commissioner Mario Monti was sworn in by Parliament, with the aim of fiscal restraint to save the economy. But the 2013 legislative elections confirmed the victory of the centre-left Democratic Party coalition (29.5%), followed by the centre-right (29.1%), far ahead of Mario Monti (10.5%). It seems difficult to secure a government majority. A political crisis began until Matteo Renzi, first secretary of the P.D., entered politics. In 2016, the Italians rejected by 60%, in a referendum, the constitutional reform carried by Renzi, who resigned. The head of government was then called Paolo Gentiloni, but the 2018 elections would reshuffle the cards.

In 2018 the legislative and parliamentary elections placed in power a coalition led by Matteo Salvini (37% of the votes), from the Northern League (far-right party), associated with Forza Italia, Berlusconi's former party. Their ideas: nationalism, conservatism, racism, euroscepticism. The second is the 5-Star Movement (M5S), led by Luigi di Maio, a populist "anti-system" party, also eurosceptic. The big loser was the centre-right coalition led by Renzi (22.9% of the vote). Through this vote, the migratory and economic crises, unemployment, and a disavowal of European policy emerged as the main concerns of Italians.

Guiseppe Conte's Northern League-M5S coalition government collapses when Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right, slams the door in a bid to force early elections. But the M5S unexpectedly forms a coalition with the center-left PD to form a new government, effectively putting the Northern League in opposition.

The Covid-19 epidemic started in northern Italy, mainly in Lombardy and Veneto, the two main European clusters, before spreading throughout the country and the rest of Europe, plunging the country into a long period of confinement.