The national colours of Italy are green, white, and red, collectively known in Italian as (; ). 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; on 11 October 1796, they were used for the first time in Milan on a military banner, while on 7 January 1797, in Reggio Emilia, they appeared for the first time on a flag.
During sporting events, it is instead common to use Savoy azure, a shade of blue that was adopted for the first time in 1910 on the uniforms of the Italy national football team and which owes its name to the fact that it is the colour of House of Savoy, the ruling dynasty in Italy from 1861 to 1946. It became a national colour with the unification of Italy (1861), and its use continued even after Italy became a republic (1946).
The national auto racing colour of Italy is instead rosso corsa ("racing red"), while in other disciplines such as cycling and winter sports, white is often used.
History The hypotheses rejected by historians
Despite attempts to link the modern combination of green, white and red to medieval times, there are no sources that prove this. The three colours were present in some historical events, such as;
The flagpole of the Carroccio during the battle of Legnano The banners of the Tuscan Guelphs, whose coat of arms was a red eagle on a white field above a green snake, a charge that was granted by Pope Clement IV,The red eagle on a white field above a green snake was also the emblem of Pope Clement IV. On the sign of the Sienese contrada of the Goose On the tricolour uniforms of the servants of the Duchess of Milan Valentina Visconti In Renaissance times the Italian national colours were imagined on the carpets that welcomed Renée of France, who then married Ercole I d'Este, upon her arrival in Ferrara On the tricolour uniforms of Borso d'Este's army On the green flag, white and red that began to enshrine from the Cathedral of Milan on the occasion of the entry into the Milanese capital of Francis I of France after his victory in the battle of Marignano.
Other scholars have suggested the prefiguration of the Italian tricolour in pictorial works; in fact the clothes of some characters painted on the walls of Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, which date back to the Middle Ages, are green, white and red.
The reason for the historical inconsistency of the hypothetical presence of the tricolour in historical events and artistic works prior to the modern era lies in the fact that at the time the Italian national awareness, which appeared centuries later, had not yet occurred.
The three colours of the Italian flag are cited, in literature, in some verses of canto XXX of the Purgatorio in the Divine Comedy, and this has fuelled theories that would link the birth of the tricolour to Dante Alighieri. They too are considered groundless by scholars, as Dante in these verses did not think of a politically united Italy, but of the theological virtues, or rather of charity, hope and faith, with the last two being metaphorically symbolized in the Italian flag.
Origins of the Italian tricolour
The tricolore was symbolically important preceding and throughout the Risorgimento leading to Italian unification.
The first documented trace of the use of Italian national colours is dated 21 August 1789: in the historical archives of the Republic of Genoa it is reported that eyewitnesses had seen some demonstrators pinned on their clothes hanging a red, white and green cockade on their clothes. The Italian gazettes of the time had in fact created confusion about the facts of French Revolution, especially on the replacement of green with blue, reporting the news that the French tricolour was green, white and red.
The green, in the primitive French cockade, was immediately abandoned in favour of blue and red, or the ancient colours of Paris, because it was also the colour of the king's brother, Count of Artois, who became monarch after the First Restoration with the name of Charles X of France. The French tricolour cockade was then completed on 17 July 1789 with the addition of white, the colour of the House of Bourbon, in deference to King Louis XVI of France, who still ruled despite the violent revolts that raged in the country; the French monarchy was in fact abolished on 10 August 1792.
When the correct information on the chromatic composition of the French tricolour arrived in Italy, the Italian Jacobins decided to keep green instead of blue, because it represented nature and therefore metaphorically, also natural rights, or social equality and freedom.
In September 1794, Luigi Zamboni and Giambattista de Rolandis created a cockade by uniting the white and red of the flag of Bologna with green, a symbol of liberty and hope that the populace of Italy join the revolution begun in Bologna to oust the foreign occupying forces. This tricolore was considered a symbol of redemption that from its creation was "consecrated to immortality of the triumph of faith, virtue, and sacrifice" of those who created it.
Napoleon Bonaparte, in a letter from Milan to an executive director on 11 October 1796, stated that the Legione Lombarda had chosen these colours as the national colours. In a solemn ceremony at the Piazza del Duomo on 16 November 1796, a military flag was presented to the Legione Lombarda, which would become a unit in the Cisalpine Republic (1797–1802) military, and was the first tricolore military standard to fly at the head of an Italian military unit. The first official Italian flag of an Italian sovereign state was created for the Cispadane Republic (1796–1797) in Reggio Emilia on 7 January 1797 based on a proposal by government deputy Giuseppe Compagnoni.
The formation of the Cisalpine Republic was decreed by Napoleon on 29 June 1797, and consisted of most of the Cispadane Republic and Transpadane Republic (1796–1797), which included between them Milan, Mantua, the portion of Parma north of the Po river, Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna, and later the Venetian Republic. Its flag was proclaimed to be the tricolore, representing the "red and white of Bologna and the green of liberty".
Young Italy, a political movement founded in 1831 by Giuseppe Mazzini calling for a national revolution to unify all Italian-speaking provinces, used a "theatrical" uniform based on the national colours. These colours had been in use in the Cispadane Republic, Transpadane Republic, Cisalpine Republic, Italian Republic (1802–1805), and the Kingdom of Italy (1805–1814), precursors to the modern state. During the formation of the Roman Empire of 1814, the foundational constitutional basis specified that the three national colours would be preserved.
Politics
The colours have been used for political purposes.
During his visit to London on 11 April 1864, Giuseppe Garibaldi was greeted by a throng of people at the train station, many of whom carried Italian flags. English men dressed in red shirts commonly worn by Garibaldi's followers during his Mille expedition to southern Italy, and women dressed in the national colours of Italy. Italian flags could be seen throughout the city. In 1848, Garibaldi's legion dressed in red shirts with green and white facing.
In 1868, two years after the Austrians departed Venice following the Third Italian War of Independence, the remains of statesman Daniele Manin were brought to his native city and honoured with a public funeral. He had been acclaimed president of the Venetian Republic of San Marco by residents of Venice after a revolt in 1848. The gondola carrying his coffin was decorated with bow "surmounted by the lion of Saint Mark, resplendent with gold", bore "the Venetian standard veiled with black crape", and had "two silver colossal statues waving the national colours of Italy". The statues represented the unification of Italy and Venice. The funeral procession was described as "magnificent". His remains are interred at the Basilica of Santa Croce, the first person buried there in over 300 years.
An apocryphal story about the history of pizza holds that on 11 June 1889, Neapolitan pizzamaker Raffaele Esposito created a pizza to honour Margherita of Savoy, who was visiting the city. It was garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil to represent the national colours of Italy, and was named "Pizza Margherita".
Definition
The need to precisely define the colours was born from an event that happened at the Justus Lipsius building, seat of the Council of the European Union, of the European Council and of their Secretariat, when an Italian MEP, in 2002, noticed that the colours of the Italian flag were unrecognizable with red, for example, which had a shade that turned towards orange: for this reason the government, following the report of this MEP, decided to specifically define the colours of the Italian national flag.
In 2003, the government of Italy specified the colours using Pantone. The new specification was demonstrated on sample flags displayed at Palazzo Montecitorio; they had a darker tint than the traditional colours, described as having a deeper green, a red with "ruby hues", and ivory or cream instead of white. Government officials stated that the sample flags did not conform to the "specified chromatic specification".
The values were revised after discussion, and in 2006 were decreed by law in Article 31 of Disposizioni generali in materia di cerimoniale e di precedenza tra le cariche pubbliche ("General provisions relating to ceremonial materials and precedence for public office", published 28 July 2006 in Gazzetta Ufficiale) for polyester fabric bunting to use the following Pantone Textile Colour System values:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:left" |- ! colspan=2|Description || Number || RGB || CMYK || HSV || Hex |- |style="background:#008C45"| || Fern Green || 17-6153 TC || (0, 140, 69) || (100%, 0%, 51%, 45%) || (150°, 100%, 55%) || #008C45 |- |style="background:#F4F5F0"| || Bright White || 11-0601 TC || (244, 245, 240) || (0%, 0%, 2%, 4%) || (72°, 2%, 96%) || #F4F5F0 |- |style="background:#CD212A"| || Flame Scarlet || 18-1662 TC || (205, 33, 42) || (0%, 84%, 80%, 20%) || (357°, 84%, 80%) || #CD212A
Use Institutions
The national colours are specified in the Constitution of Italy to be used on the Flag of Italy, a vertical tricolour flag of green, white, and red. It is also used on the cockade, another of the national symbols of Italy. Its use of the national colours was the antecedent for its use in the flag.
The Presidential Standard of Italy is the flag used by the President of the Italian Republic, the nation's head of state. It is based on the square flag of the Napoleonic Italian Republic, on a field of blue charged with the coat of arms of Italy in gold.
On 31 December 1996, legislation was passed (legge no. 671) instituting 7 January as national flag day, known as Festa del Tricolore, and was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana three days later. Its purpose was to celebrate the bicentennial of the establishment of the Italian flag on 7 January 1797. The most important of these celebrations is that at the Sala del Tricolore ("Room of the tricolour") in the commune palace of Reggio Emilia, and a solemn changing of the guard at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, followed by a parade of the Corazzieri and a brass band fanfare by the Carabinieri Cavalry Regiment.
The Frecce Tricolori, the aerobatics demonstration team of the Italian Aeronautica Militare based at Rivolto Air Force Base, are so named for the green, white, and red smoke trails emitted during performances, representing the national colours.
Sport
In football, the winners of Serie A are the Italian football champions, which entitles the winning team to adorn the jersey of each of its players with the scudetto, an escutcheon (heater shield) of the Italian flag, the subsequent season.