[1][2] Giulio Alessio was born in Padua, an ancient city which was and is home to one of the oldest still extant universities in the world, a short distance inland to the west of Venice.

[2] During 1877/78 he accepted an assignment at the university, teaching students on behalf of the professor-politician Angelo Messedaglia whose own career, by this time, was increasingly split between Padua and Rome.

[1][2] In 1880, Giulio Alessio accepted the newly inaugurated teaching chair in Finance and Financial Law, still at the University of Padua, also by this time working as a lawyer.

[6] Alessio's involvement in politics dates at least as far back as to 1880: that was the year in which he teamed up with some friends to form the "Circolo d'Italia", a progressivist pro-democratic grouping which subsequently expanded and was renamed as the "Società Cairoli".

The fragmented election results necessitated a broadly based government coalition which included the conservative Italian People's Party.

[6][11] Despite holding the office for only ten weeks, he was able to press ahead with the reforms set in motion by his predecessors, taking an uncompromisingly robust attitude towards hostile agitation from postal staff.

[2][12] Amid widespread social unrest and dissatisfaction over the Treaty of Versailles, the Nitti government fell in June 1920, to be replaced by a new coalition led by the ebullient Giovanni Giolitti, who returned to power with the advantage that he had never favoured Italian military participation in the war.

He presided over a series of tariff reforms which had the overall effect of increasing customs duties on imports, while he simultaneously took steps to cut back on restrictive controls over internal commerce that had been imposed during the war.

At the end of October, on the night before the March on Rome, he joined with fellow ministers Giovanni Amendola and Paolino Taddei to call for the proclamation of a "state of siege", which would have opened the way for the army to be mobilized against the Fascist paramilitaries and other marchers moving towards the capital.

[2][13] Giulio Alessio was Jewish (and a Free Mason), which has led to suggestions that for reasons of race he was necessarily opposed to the Fascist government which took power at the end of 1922.

[15] In November 1924, along with Giovanni Amendola, Ivanoe Bonomi, Piero Calamandrei, Guido De Ruggiero and Carlo Sforza (and many others) he put his signature to the founding manifesto of the National Union of Liberal and Democratic Forces, created with the intention of providing more effective opposition than hitherto to Fascism.

[2][18] Parliamentary opposition effectively came to an end in June 1924 after non-Fascist members of the Chamber of Deputies reacted to the murder of Giacomo Matteotti by withdrawing from the assembly.

[2][21] In April 1928 the king survived a terrorist assassionation attempt at the inauguration ceremony for "Fiera Milano" trade fair at Milan.