Giornata dell’Unità Nazionale is a national day of celebration in Italy but not a public holiday.
Italy holds a national day of celebration to commemorate the birth of the country as a modern nation state, on Tuesday 17 March.
The full title of the national day is the Giornata dell’Unità Nazionale, della Costituzione, dell’Inno e della Bandiera.
On this day every year, Italy celebrates key items of the country’s identity, history and traditions, including national unification, the constitution, the national anthem and the Italian tricolour flag.
The date marks the 165th anniversary of the proclamation in Turin of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861 when Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia and Piedmont, became King of Italy.
The complete unification of Italy was a gradual process however and occurred over subsequent decades.
In 1866 the Veneto and the province of Mantua were annexed after the Third Italian War of Independence, then in 1870 Lazio after the capture of Rome, and finally in 1918 Trentino-Alto Adige and Julian March after world war one.
Established in 1911 on the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy, the national day is not a public holiday, although the country did celebrate the event with a day off in 2011 to mark the 150th anniversary.
Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella will mark the day on Monday by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Altare della Patria monument in Rome’s central Piazza Venezia.
The Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni will also attend the wreath-laying ceremony which will include a flypast by the Frecce Tricolori jets in a reduced formation, according to the government website.
The ceremony, scheduled at 09.45, will result in road closures and traffic diversions in the area from 07.00.
At the request of the government, the traditional cannon salute fired from the Janiculum Hill at noon will be replaced with a three-round salvo, fired simultaneously by three artillery pieces, producing green, white and red smoke.
The bands of the Armed Forces and Police will perform in Piazza Colonna throughout the day, while the changing of the guard ceremony at the Quirinale Palace in Rome will take place at 16.00.
The main façade of Palazzo Chigi will be illuminated with the colours of the Italian flag, from 12.01 to 11.59 on 17 March, with interruptions during daylight hours.
