The Italian Risorgimento (the "Resurgence", the political and military movement that produced the unification of the Italian peninsula into a single state between 1815 and 1870, beginning with the Carbonari conspiracies of the post-Napoleonic reaction period and ending with the capture of Rome from the Papal States on September 20, 1870, when the Bersaglieri of the Italian army breached the Aurelian Wall at Porta Pia and ended the millennium-long temporal power of the papacy over central Italy) is the foundational national myth of the Italian state, the specific historical process that created the country, that Italians learn as the heroic origin narrative of their nation, and that the Vittoriano monument in Rome (the massive white marble altar of the fatherland, the "typewriter" or the "wedding cake" as Romans call it in the specific Roman habit of describing architectural excess with food metaphors) was built to celebrate in the most architecturally emphatic available terms.
The three principal figures of the Risorgimento and their completely different approaches to the same goal: Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872, the Genoese intellectual and republican revolutionary who provided the ideology, the specific democratic nationalist philosophy of "Young Italy" (La Giovine Italia) that argued for Italian unification as a moral imperative of the European national awakening, and who spent most of his life in exile working toward a goal he would never live to see completed). Count Camillo di Cavour (1810-1861, the Piedmontese aristocratic-liberal politician who provided the diplomacy, the specific foreign policy manipulation of the French alliance, the Austrian War of 1859, and the balance-of-power politics that maneuvered the European powers into permitting Italian unification under the Savoy monarchy). And Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882, the Nice-born military adventurer who provided the military action, the specific irregular warfare genius whose "Spedizione dei Mille" (Expedition of the Thousand) in 1860 conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in three months with 1,000 volunteer soldiers against a professional army of 100,000).
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The Risorgimento Key Events and Sites
The Key Events Timeline
1815: The Congress of Vienna restores the pre-Napoleonic Italian political divisions, eight separate states, Austrian domination of the north, Bourbon rule in the south, the Papal States in the center. 1821-1848: the Carbonari and Mazzini's Young Italy conspiracy period, failed uprisings in Naples (1820), Piedmont (1821), and the Papal States (1831). The "Springtime of Nations" revolutions of 1848 that produce the Milanese "Five Days" against Austrian rule and the Roman Republic of 1849 (Mazzini and Garibaldi's brief experiment in republican Rome, crushed by French troops sent by Louis Napoleon). 1859: the Second Italian War of Independence (Piedmont allied with France against Austria, the battles of Magenta and Solferino, the armistice of Villafranca, and the annexation of Lombardy to Piedmont). 1860: Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand (the May-September campaign that conquers Sicily and Naples and transfers both to Victor Emmanuel II). 1861: the Kingdom of Italy proclaimed (March 17, 1861, in Turin, with Victor Emmanuel II as first King of Italy, the Veneto still Austrian and Rome still papal). 1866: the Veneto joins Italy after the Third Italian War of Independence. 1870: Italian troops breach the Porta Pia and capture Rome (September 20, 1870, the specific date that Catholics observe as the day of the "Breccia di Porta Pia," the breach of Rome that ended papal temporal power and that Italian nationalists celebrate as the completion of unification).
The Best Risorgimento Sites
The Vittoriano Rome (the monument built 1885-1935 to celebrate the first king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, the "altar of the fatherland" with the equestrian statue and the tomb of the unknown soldier, the free museum of Italian Unification in the interior. Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, accessible through the monument interior, open daily). The Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano in Turin (the most complete Risorgimento museum in Italy, the former Palazzo Carignano where the first Italian parliament met in 1861). And Piazza Venezia in Rome (the specific Roman Risorgimento symbolic space, the Vittoriano, the Palazzo Venezia from whose balcony Mussolini spoke, and the specific Rome-as-capital architecture that the post-1870 Italian state imposed on the ancient city).
Q&A: Italian Unification
Why did it take until 1870 for Italy to be fully unified?
Three specific obstacles delayed full Italian unification after 1861: the Venetian question (the Veneto remained Austrian until 1866 because the 1859 French-Austrian armistice had not provided for its transfer, resolved by the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 in which Italy fought on Prussia's side and received the Veneto as its share of the victory). The Roman question (the Papal States remained independent because Napoleon III's French garrison in Rome protected the pope, resolved only when France withdrew its troops for the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, allowing the Italian army to capture Rome). The delay was fundamentally about the specific European diplomatic constraints that made full unification without upsetting the balance of powers impossible between 1861 and 1870.
Internal Links
- Storia Politica Italiana: Dalla Repubblica al Risorgimento
- L'Italia Unita e il Fascismo: Il Percorso
- Torino Risorgimentale: Il Museo e il Palazzo
- Vittoriano Roma: Museo Gratuito del Risorgimento
- Roma Storica: Il Vittoriano Senza Folla
- Fotografare il Vittoriano: La Terrazza di Roma
- Roma Capitale: L'Architettura Post-Unitaria
