The headquarters of the Army General Staff are located in Rome opposite the Quirinal Palace, where the president of Italy resides.

In 1861, under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy was invited to take the throne and of the newly created kingdom.

In particular, the frequency of the offensives in which Italian soldiers participated between May 1915 and August 1917, one every three months, was higher than demanded by the armies on the Western Front.

Italian discipline was also harsher, with punishments for infractions of duty of a severity not known in the German, French, and British armies.

On paper, the Royal Army was one of the largest ground forces in World War II, and it was one of the pioneers in using paratroopers.

Due to their generally smaller size, many Italian divisions were reinforced by an Assault Group (Gruppo d'Assalto) of two battalions of Blackshirts (MVSN).

The Italian 10th Army initially advanced into Egypt but surrendered after being pushed back into central Libya and almost all destroyed by British forces a fifth its size during the three-month Operation Compass.

More crucially, Italy lacked suitable quantities of equipment of all kinds, and the Italian high command did not take the necessary steps to plan for possible battlefield setbacks or proper logistical support to its field armies.

Only about a third of its troops managed to escape the Soviet cauldron, including from the three Alpini Divisions Tridentina, Julia and Cuneense.

The sagging morale led to the overthrow of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy 15 days later.

In September 1943, Italy made an armistice with the Allies and split into the Italian Social Republic – effectively a puppet state of Germany – in the north and that of the Badoglio government in the south.

Allied Land Forces Southern Europe (LANDSOUTH), was activated on 10 July 1951 to defend northeastern Italy.

With the disappearance of the divisions the army renamed some of the divisional brigades and granted all of them a new coat of arms to reflect their new independence.

Additionally, the "Gorizia" and "Mantova" mechanized brigades fielded two Position Infantry battalions each, which were tasked with manning fortifications and bunkers along the Yugoslav-Italian border.

The "d'Arresto" Alpini and Infantry units were designated to hold specific fortified locations directly at the border to slow down an attacking enemy.

The end of the cold war in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 created a new geopolitical environment in Europe, which contributed to implementation of significative reductions in the strength of the armed forces of all the NATO countries, in order to obtain the so called "peace dividend".

In 1991, the Army began the post-Cold War draw-down of its forces with the disbandment of seven brigades and a large number of smaller units.

On January 1, 1998, the "2nd Defense Forces Command" (COMFOD2) was activated in Naples and tasked with defending South and Central Italy.

Minor units were moved South and to the islands to reduce the Army's footprint in the wealthier North of Italy.

In contrast, the 1st Granatieri di Sardegna Regiment was planned to become a public duties unit under the Capital Military Command in Rome.

As part of the reform, all army schools, training regiments and training centres were to be combined into the newly raised Army Formation, Specialisation and Doctrine Command (Comando per la Formazione, Specializzazione e Dottrina dell’Esercito or COMFORDOT) in Rome.

It has, moreover, supplied a remarkable contribution to the forces of police for the control of the territory of the province of Bolzano/Bozen (1967), in Sardinia ("Forza Paris" 1992), in Sicily ("Vespri Siciliani" 1992) and in Calabria (1994).

Currently, it protects sensitive objectives and places throughout the national territory ("Operazione Domino") since the September 11 attacks in the United States.

The army is also engaged in Missions abroad under the aegis of the UN, the NATO, and of Multinational forces, such as Beirut in Lebanon (1982), Namibia (1989), Albania (1991), Kurdistan (1991), Somalia (1992), Mozambique (1993), Bosnia (1995), East Timor and Kosovo (both in 1999), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2001), Darfur (2003), Afghanistan (2002), Iraq (2003) and Lebanon again (2006).

The Service Combat Uniform is most commonly used out of the four "families" and is distributed to all soldiers with the same mimetic pattern (paratroopers have a different model with strengthening on the shoulders).

Accessories completing the uniform include gloves, special footwear and a t-shirt with short or long sleeves, depending on the season.

Since the 1980s, Italian troops have participated with other Western countries in peacekeeping operations across the world, especially in Africa, Balkan Peninsula, and the Middle East.

Italy did take part in the 1990–91 Gulf War but solely through the deployment of eight Italian Air Force Panavia Tornado IDS bomber jets to Saudi Arabia; Italian Army troops were subsequently deployed to assist Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq following the conflict.

Italy leads the Regional Command West in Afghanistan, and its HQ is located in Herat at Camp Arena base.

Subsequently, Italian troops arrived in the late summer of 2003 and began patrolling Nasiriyah and the surrounding area.