[16] The green, white and red tricolour thus acquired a strong patriotic value, becoming one of the symbols of national awareness, a change that gradually led it to enter the collective imagination of the Italians.

[47] The Austrians' objective was in fact, quoting the textual words of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria:[48] [The tricolour was banned to] make people forget that they are Italian.Between 1820 and 1861, a sequence of events led to the independence and unification of Italy (except for Veneto and the province of Mantua, Lazio, Trentino-Alto Adige and Julian March, known as Italia irredenta, which were united with the rest of Italy in 1866 after the Third Italian War of Independence, in 1870 after the capture of Rome, and in 1918 after World War I respectively); this period of Italian history is known as the Risorgimento.

[52] On 5 February 1831, during the Forlì uprisings, the patriot Teresa Cattani wrapped herself in the tricolour flag during the assault on the building that was the seat of the Legation of Romagna, challenging the shots of the papal soldiers.

[61] Italian tricolours waved, challenging the authorities, who had decreed the ban, also on the occasion of the commemoration of the revolt of the Genoese quarter of Portoria against the Habsburg occupiers during the War of the Austrian Succession.

During this event, which took place on 10 December 1847 in Genoa at the square of the santuario della Nostra Signora di Loreto of the Genoese district of Oregina, Il Canto degli Italiani by Goffredo Mameli and Michele Novaro played for the first time in history; it would become the Italian national anthem from 1946.

[62] Starting from this period the strawberry tree plant began to be considered a national symbol of Italy due to the green leaves, white flowers and red berries, which recall the colours of the Italian flag.

[64][65] On 20 March, during furious fighting, with the Austrians barricaded in the Castello Sforzesco and within the defensive systems of the city walls, the patriots Luigi Torelli and Scipione Bagaggia managed to climb on the roof of the Milan Cathedral and hoist the Italian flag on the highest spire of the church, the one on which the Madonnina stands.

[67] The abandonment of the city by the Austrian troops of field marshal Josef Radetzky, on 22 March, determined the immediate establishment of the provisional government of Milan chaired by the podestà Gabrio Casati, who issued a proclamation that read:[69] Let's get it over with once with any foreign domination in Italy.

[Note 5]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.

A makeshift tricolour consisting of redshirts, green displays and a white sheet was hoisted on the flagpole of the ship that brought Giuseppe Garibaldi back to Italy from South America shortly after the outbreak of the First Italian War of Independence.

[81] A chronicler of the time described the final moments of the subsequent capitulation of the Republic of San Marco by the Austrian troops, which took place on 22 August 1849:[82] The tricolour flags waved above every work, in every danger, and because the enemy balls not only tore up the silk, but broke the stick, it was immediately found who at great risk was going to replace another.

[82] The tricolour also flew over the barricades of the Ten Days of Brescia, a revolt of the citizens of the Lombard city against the Austrian Empire,[88] and in many other centres such as Varese, Gallarate, Como, Melegnano, Cremona, Monza, Udine, Trento, Verona, Rovigo, Vicenza, Belluno and Padua.

[112] After the Unification of Italy, the use of the tricolour became increasingly widespread among the population[125] as the flag and its colours began to appear on the labels of commercial products, school notebooks, the first cars and cigar packages.

The centennial celebration in Reggio Emilia, where the tricolour was created on 7 January 100 years earlier,[135] Giosuè Carducci, who later became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1906,[136] defined the flag as "blessed" and kissed it at the end of the speech.

[153] Victor Emmanuel III then made an official proclamation shortly before leaving for the Italian war front, which read, in its final part:[154][155] Soldiers of land and sea!

[156] The colours green, white and red were widely used as a stimulus to the general mobilization and moral sustenance of the civilian population, which was climbing a path that would have led to a very difficult situation, characterized by many deprivations.

[166][167] In 1926, an Italian flag was first brought to the North Pole by the Norge airship during the expedition led by Umberto Nobile and Roald Amundsen;[168] the tricolours then greeted Italo Balbo in his oceanic seaplane crossings.

[174] Tricolour flags were also the official banners of the Italian Partisan Republics and of the National Liberation Committee, as well as their antagonists, the Republicans[176] in an attempt to recall the period of the unification of Italy and its cultural background.

The Italian Social Republic, for example, used it on a poster depicting Goffredo Mameli, the author of the lyrics of Il Canto degli Italiani, the national anthem of Italy from 1946, with an unsheathed sword and a tricolour behind him while he launches towards an assault.

[178] Remembering these events, Francesco Cossiga, at the time president of the Senate of the Republic, in a speech delivered on 28 June 1984, said:[178] With the tricolour of Italy the homeland was resurrected and republican democracy was established, which today peacefully unites all Italians.

The flag was hoisted at the top of K2 during the Italian expedition in 1954 that led Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli to be the first people to reach the summit of this mountain—the second highest in the world after Mount Everest, and was brought in 2011 to the International Space Station by astronaut Roberto Vittori on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy.

[Note 13]In 2003, a state ensign was created specifically for non-military vessels engaged in non-commercial government service whereby the Italian tricolour is defaced with the national coat of arms.

[218] Opportunity suggested the most natural solution was the Italian tricolour defaced with the coat of arms; however, under conditions of poor visibility, this could easily be mistaken for the standard of the president of Mexico, which is also that country's national flag.

[227][228] The flag of Italy must also be displayed outside all schools of all levels, outside university complexes, outside the buildings that host the voting operations, outside the prefectures, police headquarters, palaces of justice and outside the central post offices.

[245] This solemn rite is carried out only on three other occasions, during the anniversary of the unification of Italy (17 March), the Festa della Repubblica (2 June) and the National Unity and Armed Forces Day (4 November).

It is located within the town hall of the Emilian city, adjacent to the Sala del Tricolore where documents and memorabilia attributable to the period between the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte in Reggio (1796) and 1897, the year of the first centenary of the Italian flag are kept.

[273] Famous paintings dating back to the unification of Italy whose subject revolves around the tricolour are Pasquale Sottocorno assaulting the Military Engineering Palace during the Five Days of Milan (1860) by Pietro Bouvier,[64] Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia on the balcony of the Greppi Palace (1848) by Carlo Bossoli,[274] Little patriots (1862) by Gioacchino Toma,[275] Garibaldi lands in Marsala (late 19th century),[276] The departure of the volunteers (1877–1878),[277] The departure of the Garibaldine (1860),[58] The departure of the conscripts in 1866 (1878)[278] The return of the wounded soldier (1854),[90] all by Gerolamo Induno, The first Italian flag brought to Florence (1859) by Francesco Saverio Altamura,[279] The wounded soldier (1865–1870) by Angelo Trezzini,[280] Episode of the Five Days in Piazza Sant'Alessandro by Carlo Stragliati (late 19th century),[278] Fighting at Litta Palace (half 19th century) by Baldassare Verazzi,[75] The brothers are in the field!

[290][291] Other pieces from the unification of Italy celebrating the tricolour are Giuseppe Bertoldi's Liberation of Milan,[287] O Ardent young people by an anonymous author[287] and Luigi Mercantini's War Hymn of 1848–49.

[Note 18]We too have our flagno longer like one day so yellow, so black;on the white linen of our bannerwaving a green laurel wreath:of our tyrants in cowardly bloodthe area of the third colour is tinted.

Do not ramp of eagles and lions, do not surmount predatory beasts, in the holy banner; but the colours of our spring and our country, from Mont Cenis to Etna; the snows of the Alps, the April of the valleys, the flames of the volcanoes.