History
Over the years, Italy has significantly contributed to the cultural and social development of the entire Mediterranean area, and has also deeply influenced European culture. Important cultures and civilisations have existed there since prehistoric times.
After Magna Graecia, the Etruscan civilisation, and then the Roman Republic and Empire that dominated this part of the world for many centuries, came an Italy whose people would make immeasurable contributions to the development of European philosophy, science, and art during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Dominated by city-states for much of the medieval and Renaissance period, the Italian peninsula was eventually unified amidst much struggle in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Origin of the Name
The name 'Italia' appears to be a Greek form of Latin Vitelia, related to the Latin (vitulus) and Greek word for bull calf; however, the nature of this relationship is somewhat obscure. Legend also has it that the country acquired its name from Italus (Italos), a king of the Sicels or Oenotrians, who were among the earliest inhabitants of Italy.
The name originally applied to a small part of southern Italy. According to Antiochus of Syracuse, it was originally just the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria), but by his time Oenotria and Italy were synonymous, and covered most of Lucania as well. It was only under Augustus that this denomination was applied to the whole peninsula.
Bronze Age (1500-1100 BC)
Terramare was a Bronze Age archaeological culture of Italy and Dalmatia, which took its name from the "black earth" (terremare) residue of settlement mounds. The terramare people were hunters, but also had domesticated animals; they were fairly skilful metallurgists, casting bronze in moulds of stone and clay, and they were also agriculturists, cultivating beans, the vine, wheat and flax. It is thought the Terremare culture may be an early manifestation of Italic-speaking Indo-Europeans.
Iron Age (1100-500 BC)
The Villanovan culture was the earliest Iron Age culture of central and northern Italy, abruptly following the Bronze Age Terramare culture. It brought iron-working to the Italian peninsula; Villanovans practiced cremation and buried the ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape.
Generally speaking, Villanovan settlements were centred in the Po River valley and Etruria round Bologna, later an important Etruscan centre, and areas in Emilia Romagna (at Verruchio and Fermi), in Tuscany and Lazio. Further5 south, in Campania, a region where inhumation was the general practice, Villanovan cremation burials have been identified at Capua, at the "princely tombs" of Pontecagnano near Salerno (finds conserved in the Museum of Agro Picentino) and at Sala Consilina.
The Oenotrians (the tribe of Oenotrus) were an ancient Italic people who settled a territory of remarkably large dimensions, including the region of Apulia, Basilicata and the northern part of the region of Calabria in southern Italy.
The Oenotrians arrived there at the beginning of the Iron Age (11th century BC) from Illyria through the Otranto Channel together with other people of the same ethnic group. According to Antoninus Liberalis, their arrival triggered the migration of the Elymians to Sicily. The settlement of the Greeks with the first stable colonies, such as Metaponto, founded on a native one (Metabon), pushed the Oenotrians inland. From these positions a "wear and tear war" was started off with the Greek colonies, which they plundered more than once. From the 5th century BC onwards, they disappeared under the pressure of the Sabellian people.
Etruscan Civilisation
The Etruscan civilisation is the name given today to the culture and way of life of people of ancient Italy whom ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci. The ancient Greeks' word for them was Tyrrhenoi, or Tyrrsenoi. The Etruscans themselves used the term Rasenna, which was syncopated to Rasna or Raśna.
As distinguished by its own language, the civilisation endured from an unknown prehistoric time prior to the foundation of Rome until its complete assimilation to Italic Rome in the Roman Republic; numerous artefacts of Etruscan culture survived the Roman conquest. At its maximum extent during the foundation period of Rome and the Roman kingdom, it flourished in three confederacies: of Etruria, of the Po valley and Latium and of Campania. Rome was sited in Etruscan territory. There is considerable evidence that early Rome was dominated by Etruscans until the Romans sacked Veii in 396 BC.
Culture that is identifiably and certainly Etruscan developed in Italy after about 800 BC, approximately over the range of the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture. The latter gave way in the seventh century BC to a culture that was influenced by Greek traders and Greek neighbours in Magna Graecia, the Hellenic civilisation of southern Italy.
The Etruscans are generally believed to have spoken a non-Indo-European language. They were a monogamous society that emphasised pairing. The historical Etruscans had achieved a state system of society, with remnants of the chiefdom and tribal forms. In this they were ahead of the surrounding Italics, who still had chiefs and tribes.
Magna Graecia
In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, driven by unsettled conditions at home, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea and Massilia (what is now Marseille, France). They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy Magna Graecia (Latin, "Greater Greece"), since it was so thickly inhabited by Greeks.
With this colonisation, the Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites, its traditions of the independent polis, but it soon developed an original Hellenic civilisation, later interacting with the native Italic and Latin civilisations. The most important cultural transplant was the Chalcidean/Cumaean variety of the Greek alphabet, which was firstly adopted by the Etruscans and subsequently evolved into the Latin alphabet, which went on to become the most widely used alphabet in the world.
During the Early Middle Ages, following the Gothic War that was disastrous for the region, new waves of Byzantine Christian Greeks came to Magna Graecia from Greece and Asia Minor, as southern Italy remained loosely governed by the Eastern Roman Empire until the advent first of the Lombards, then of the Normans.
Although most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became entirely Italianized (as Paestum had already been in the 4th century BC) and no longer spoke Greek, remarkably a small Griko-speaking minority still exists today in Calabria. Griko is the name of a language combining ancient Doric, Byzantine Greek and Italian elements, spoken by people in the Magna Graecia region. There is rich oral tradition and Griko folklore, limited now to only a few thousand people, most of them having become absorbed into the surrounding Italian element. Records of Magna Graecia being predominantly Greek-speaking, date as late as the 11th century AD (the end of Byzantine domination in Southern Italy).
The Romans (753 BC - 476 AD)
According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus and Remus, and was then governed by seven Kings of Rome. In the following centuries, Rome started expanding its territory, defeating its neighbours (Veium, the other Latins, the Sannites) one after the other.
Italia, under the Roman Republic and later Empire, was the Italian peninsula from Rubicon to Calabria. During the Republic, Italia was not a province, but rather the territory of the city of Rome, thus having a special status: for example, military commanders were not allowed to bring their armies within Italia, and Julius Caesar passing the Rubicon with his legions marked the start of the civil war.
The Italian economy flourished: agriculture, handicraft and industry had a sensible growth, allowing the export of goods to the other provinces. The Italian population grew as well: Three census were ordered by Augustus, to record the presence of male citizens in Italia. They were:
- 4,063,000 in 28 BC
- 4,233,000 in 8 BC
- 4,937,000 in AD 14
Including the women and the children, the total population of Italia at the beginning of the 1st century was around 10 million.
After the death of emperor Theodosius I (395), Italia became part of the Western Roman Empire. Then came the years of the barbarian invasions, and the capital was moved from Mediolanum to Ravenna. In 476, with the death of Romulus Augustus and the return of the imperial ensigns to Constantinople, the Western Roman Empire ends; for few years Italia stayed united under Odoacer rule, but later it was divided between several kingdoms, and did not reunite under a single ruler until thirteen centuries later.
The Middle Ages (6th to 14th Century)
In 476, the last Roman Emperor was overthrown by the Germanic General Odoacer who ruled Italy until 493, largely maintaining Roman customs and culture. Odoacer's rule came to an end when the Ostrogoths under the leadership of Theodoric conquered Italy. This led to the Gothic War during which the armies of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian won a phyrric victory over the Goths in Italy. The Gothic War destroyed much of the town life that had survived the barbarian invasions, with towns in the Dark Ages smaller and considerably more primitive than they had been in Roman times.
The withdrawal of Byzantine armies allowed another Germanic people, the Lombards, to invade Italy. Cividale del Friuli was the first main centre to fall, while the Byzantine resistance concentrated in the coast areas. The Lombards soon overran most of the peninsula, establishing a kingdom in northern Italy and three principalities in the South.
After the Lombard invasion, the popes (for example, St. Gregory) were nominally subject to the eastern emperor, but often received little help from Constantinople, and had to fill the lack of stately power, providing essential services (such as food for the needy) and protecting Rome from Lombard incursions; in this way, the popes started building an independent state. In 751 the Lombards seized Ravenna and the Exarchate of Ravenna was abolished. This ended the Byzantine presence in central Italy, although some coastal cities and some areas in south Italy remained under Byzantine control until the eleventh century. Facing a new Lombard offensive, the papacy appealed to the Franks for aid. In 756, Frankish forces defeated the Lombards and gave the Papacy legal authority over much of central Italy, thus creating the Papal States.
The age of Charlemagne was therefore one of stability for Italy, though it was generally dominated by non-Italian interests. The 11th century signed the end of the darkest period in the Middle Ages. Trade slowly increased, especially on the seas where the four Italian cities of Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa and Venice became major powers. The papacy regained its authority, and started a long struggle with the empire, about both ecclesiastical and secular matter. The first episode was the Investiture controversy. In the 12th century those Italian cities which lay in the Holy Roman Empire launched a successful effort to win autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire; this made north Italy a land of quasi-independent or independent city-states until the 19th century.
In 1155, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos attempted to invade southern Italy. The Emperor sent his generals Michael Palaiologos and John Doukas with Byzantine troops and large quantities of gold to invade Apulia. However, the invasion soon stalled. By 1158 the Byzantine army had left Italy, with only a few permanent gains.
Renaissance (15th to 16th Century)
By the late Middle Ages, central and southern Italy, once the heartland of the Roman Empire, was far poorer than the north. Rome was a city largely in ruins, and the Papal States were a loosely administered region with little law and order. Partly because of this, the Papacy had relocated to Avignon in France.
The Italian Renaissance began in Tuscany, centred in the city of Florence and Siena. It then spread south, having an especially significant impact on Rome, which was largely rebuilt by the Renaissance popes. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the late 15th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into turmoil. The Medici became the Florence's leading family, a position they would hold for the next three centuries. Florence remained a republic until 1537, traditionally marking the end of the High Renaissance in Florence, but the instruments of republican government were firmly under the control of the Medici and their allies, save during the intervals after 1494 and 1527.
The Tuscan culture soon became the model for all the states of Northern Italy, and the Tuscan variety of Italian came to predominate throughout the region, especially in literature. In 1447, Francesco Sforza came to power in Milan and rapidly transformed that still medieval city into a major centre of art and learning. Venice, one of the wealthiest cities due to its control of the Mediterranean Sea, also became a centre for Renaissance culture, especially architecture. In 1378, the Papacy returned to Rome, but that once imperial city remained poor and largely in ruins through the first years of the Renaissance. As a cultural movement, the Italian Renaissance affected only a small part of the population. Northern Italy was the most urbanized region of Europe, but three quarters of the people were still rural peasants.
A series of foreign invasions of Italy known as the Italian Wars that would continue for several decades began with the 1494 invasion by France. This wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. Most damaging was the May 6, 1527, Spanish and German troops sacking Rome that all but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art and architecture.
The Italian Wars (1495-1796)
At the beginning of the 16th century, the states of the Italian peninsula began to suffer the effects of an economic crisis due to the move of the main trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Since Italy was not unified politically, most of the small and weak Italian states were defeated by foreign powers (mainly Spain); some of them (e.g. Milan and Naples) were annexed, others (e.g. Venice and Florence) were reduced to a lesser role. The papacy lost much of its importance both because of military defeats and the Protestant Reformation, which deeply weakened the Catholic Church.
In order to prevent the further expansion of Protestantism, the church endorsed the wars of the emperor Charles V (who was also king of Spain) and his successors, and started the so-called Counter-Reformation, with which it established strict control over intellectual life in Catholic countries. Soon, French and Spanish rivalries would present themselves in the Italian peninsula.
The Italian Wars led to Spanish hegemony over Italy. Spanish control was replaced with Austrian rule in the early eighteenth century, although Spanish control over Naples and Sicily was restored in 1731.
Spanish and Austrian hegemony was not always based on direct rule; while many states, such as Venice, did not come under the direct control of the empires, all of Italy relied on them for protection against external aggression. Furthermore those areas under direct Spanish and (later) Austrian control were theoretically independent principalities bound to the Spanish and Austrian empires through personal unions alone.
Italy experienced a period of relative peace in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, the Italian economy stagnated due to the decline of the Mediterranean trade routes; in the early 17th century the economy experienced a depression. The peninsula was not influenced by the Reformation, but Italy did make some contributions to the Enlightenment; it produced some examples of enlightened absolutism and some intellectuals such as Galileo and Genovesi. Enlightened despots ruled in the conservative Papal states, and some reformists movements existed in conservative Venice.
French Rule (1796-1861)
At the end of the 18th century, Italy was almost in the same political conditions as in the 16th century; the main differences were that Austria had replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power (and that too was not true with regards to Naples and Sicily), and that the dukes of Savoy (a mountainous region between Italy and France) had become kings of Sardinia by increasing their Italian possessions, which now included Sardinia and the north-western region of Piedmont. This situation was shaken in 1796, when French armies led by Napoleon invaded Italy; even if the states they created (e.g., Cisalpine Republic) were just satellites of France, they sparked a nationalist movement. The Cisalpine Republic was converted into the Italian Republic in 1802, under the presidency of Napoleon; a Kingdom of Italy was later set up. A second satellite state, the Ligurian Republic (successor to the old Republic of Genoa), was pressured into merging with France in 1805.
The Congress of Vienna (1814) restored a situation close to that of 1795, dividing Italy between Austria (in the north-east and Lombardy), the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (in the south and in Sicily), and Tuscany, the Papal States and other minor states in the centre. However, some of the old republics such as Venice and Genoa were not recreated (Venice went to Austria, and Genoa went to the Kingdom of Sardinia).
Italian Unification (1861-1870)
Modern Italy became a nation-state during the Risorgimento on March 17, 1861 when most of the states of the Italian Peninsula and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were united under King Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy, a realm that included Piedmont.
The architect of Italian unification was Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel and Giuseppe Garibaldi, a general and national hero.
Rome itself remained for a decade under the Papacy, and became part of the Kingdom of Italy only in 1870, the final date of Italian unification. Napoleon III's defeat brought an end to the French military protection for Pope Pius IX and on September 20, Italian troops breached Rome's walls at Porta Pia and entered the city. The Italian occupation forced Pius IX to his palace where he declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican until the Lateran Pacts of 1929.
The Holy See (State of the Vatican City) is now an independent enclave surrounded by Rome.
Italian Colonisation (1870-1914)
In the late 19th and early 20th century, Italy attempted to join the Great Powers in acquiring colonies, though it found this difficult due to resistance and unprofitable due to heavy military costs and the lesser economic value of spheres of influence remaining when Italy began to colonise.
Italian colonial ventures began with the acquisition of the ports of Asseb in 1869 and Massawa in 1885 in what is now Eritrea. These areas were claimed by Ethiopia at the time, and when Ethiopia went into turmoil at the death of Emperor Yohannes IV, Italy moved into the northern Ethiopian highlands. However, further expansion was checked by a revival of Ethiopian power under Emperor Menelik II which led to the defeat of Italian forces at the battle of Adua. However, Italy was still able to secure the northern highlands in the Treaty of Wuchale, ending its conflict with Ethiopia until 1935.
Around the same time Italy began to colonise Somalia. It avoided the other powers carving out domains in that area but gradually gained the southern Somali coast beginning with the Sultanate of Hobyo and the Sultanate of Majeerteen in 1888 and continuing with gradual acquisitions until 1925 when Chisimayu Region belonging to the British protectorate of Zanzibar was given to Italy.
In 1911-1912, Italy invaded Libya resulting in a brief war with the Ottoman Empire. However, Italian control of the area was weak, leading to twenty years of conflict with the Senussi religious order which was the main political and religious authority in the Libyan hinterlands.
World War I (1914-1918)
At the beginning of World War I, Italy remained neutral. The Italian government claimed that the Triple Alliance (a military alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) was only for defensive purposes, and did not apply to a war that was started by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, both the central empires (the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and later the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria) and the Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia) continued efforts to attract Italy on their side. In April of 1915, the Italian government agreed to sign the London Pact and to declare war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire in exchange for several territories. The London Pact awarded Trento, Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia to Italy.
The Fascist Regime (1922-1943)
Under the post-war settlement, Italy received most of the territories promised in the 1915 London Pact, except for Dalmatia, which was mostly given to the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Many Italian workers joined lengthy strikes to demand more rights and better working conditions. Some, inspired by the Russian Revolution, began taking over their factories, mills, farms and workplaces. The liberal establishment, fearing a socialist revolution, started to endorse the small National Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini, whose violent reaction to the strikes (by means of the "Blackshirts" party militia) was often compared to the relatively moderate reactions of the government. After several years of struggle, in October 1922 the fascists attempted a coup (the "Marcia su Roma" or March on Rome); the fascist forces were largely inferior, but the king ordered the army not to intervene, formed an alliance with Mussolini, and convinced the liberal party to endorse a fascist-led government. Over the next few years, Mussolini (who became known as "Il Duce", the leader) eliminated all political parties (including the liberals) and curtailed personal liberties under the pretext of preventing revolution. The only permitted party was the National Fascist Party. A secret police (OVRA) and a system of quasi-legal repression (Tribunale Speciale) ensured the total control of the regime upon Italians who, in their majority, either resigned or welcomed the dictatorship, many considering it a last resort to stop the spread of communism.
While relatively benign in comparison with Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, several thousands people were incarcerated or exiled for their opposition and several dozens were killed by fascist thugs or died in prison. Mussolini tried to spread his authoritarian ideology to other European countries and dictators such as Salazar in Portugal, Francisco Franco in Spain and Adolf Hitler in Germany were heavily influenced by the Italian examples. Conservative but democratic leaders in the United Kingdom and United States were at the beginning favourable to Mussolini. Mussolini tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to spread fascism amongst the millions of Italians living abroad.
In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Pacts with the Roman Catholic Church (with which Italy had been in conflict since the annexation of Rome in 1870), leading to the formation of the tiny independent state of Vatican City. He was initially on friendly terms with France and Britain, but the situation changed in 1935-36, when Italy invaded Ethiopia despite their opposition (Second Italo-Abyssinian War), and also because of the ideological affinities with the Nazi party led by Hitler. Italy was a main part of the Axis Powers in World War II with allies being Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.
Italian Occupation of Albania (1939)
As Germany annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia, Italy saw itself becoming a second-rate member of the Axis. The imminent birth of an Albanian royal child meanwhile threatened to give King Zog a lasting dynasty. After Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia (March 15, 1939) without notifying Mussolini in advance, the Italian dictator decided to proceed with his own annexation of Albania. Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III criticised the plan to take Albania as an unnecessary risk.
Rome, however, delivered an ultimatum to Albania on March 25, 1939, demanding that it accede to Italy's occupation. King Zog of Albania refused to accept money in exchange for countenancing a full Italian takeover and colonisation of Albania, and on April 7, 1939, Mussolini's troops invaded the country. Despite some stubborn resistance, especially at Durres, the Italians quickly defeated the Albanians.
Unwilling to become an Italian puppet, Zog, his wife, Queen Geraldine Apponyi, and their infant son Leka fled to Greece and eventually to London. On April 12, 1939, the Albanian parliament voted to unite the country with Italy. Victor Emmanuel III took the Albanian crown, and the Italians set up a fascist government under Shefqet Verlaci and soon absorbed Albania's military and diplomatic service into Italy's.
Italy strengthened its ties with Germany on May 22, 1939 when both nations signed the Pact of Steel. This document solidified the alliance between the two regimes.
World War II (1940-1945)
At the beginning of World War II, Italy remained neutral (with the consent of Hitler), but it declared war on France and Britain on June 10, 1940, when the French defeat was apparent. Mussolini believed that Britain would beg for peace, and wanted "some casualties in order to get a seat at the peace table", but that proved a huge miscalculation. With the exception of the navy, the Italian armed forces were a major disappointment for Mussolini and Hitler, and German help was constantly needed in Greece and North Africa.
After the German army defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, a jealous Mussolini decided to use Albania as a springboard to invade Greece. The Italians launched their attack on October 28, 1940, and at a meeting of the two fascist dictators in Florence, Mussolini stunned Hitler with his announcement of the Italian invasion. Mussolini counted on a quick victory, but the Greek army halted the Italian one in its tracks and soon advanced into Albania. The Greeks took Korce and Gjirokaster and threatened to drive the Italians from the port city of Vlore.
Albanian fear of renewed Greek designs on their country prevented effective co-operation with the Greek forces, and Mussolini's forces soon established a stable front in central Albania. Fearful that the Balkans might become the Achilles heel of her domination of Europe, on April 6, 1941, Germany intervened (together with Bulgaria and Hungary) to crush both Greece and Yugoslavia, and a month later the Axis added Kosovo to Italian-ruled Albania. Thus Albanian nationalists ironically witnessed the realization of their dreams of uniting most of the Albanian-populated lands during the Axis occupation of their country.
After the invasion of the Soviet Union failed (1941-42), and the United States entered the war (December 1941), the situation for the Axis started to deteriorate. In May 1943 the Anglo-Americans completely defeated the Italians and the Germans in North Africa, and in July they landed in Sicily. King Victor Emmanuel III reacted by arresting Mussolini and appointing the army chief of staff, Marshal Badoglio, as Prime Minister.
The new government officially continued the war against the Allies, but started secret negotiations with them. Hitler did not trust Badoglio, and moved a large German force into Italy, on the pretext of fighting the Allied invasion. On September 8, 1943 the Badoglio government announced an armistice with the Allies, but did not declare war on Germany, leaving the army without instructions. Badoglio and the royal family fled to the Allied-controlled regions. In the ensuing confusion, most of the Italian army scattered (with some notable exceptions around Rome and in places such as the Greek island of Cefalonia), and the Germans quickly occupied all of central and northern Italy (the south was already controlled by the Allies). The Germans also liberated Mussolini, who then formed the fascist Italian Social Republic, in the German-controlled areas.
While the Allied troops slowly pushed the German resistance to the north (Rome was finally liberated in June 1944, Milan in April 1945) the monarchic government finally declared war on Germany, and an anti-fascist popular resistance movement grew, harassing German forces before the Anglo-American forces drove them out in April 1945.After the war, on June 2, 1946, a referendum on the monarchy resulted in the establishment of the Italian Republic, which led to the adoption of a new constitution on January 1, 1948.
The First Republic (1947-1992)
A new constitution was written for the new republic, taking effect on January 1, 1948. Under the 1947 peace treaty, minor adjustments were made to Italy's frontier with France, the eastern border area was transferred to Yugoslavia, and the area around the city of Trieste was designated a free territory.
In the 1950s, Italy became a member of the NATO alliance and an ally of the United States, which helped to revive the Italian economy through the Marshall Plan. In the same years, Italy also became a member of the European Economical Community (EEC), which later transformed into the European Union (EU).
During the First Republic, the Christian Democracy (Italy's ruling centre-right party) slowly but steadily lost support, as society modernised and the traditional values at its ideological core became less appealing to the population. The Christian Democracy's main support areas (sometimes known as "vote tanks") were the rural areas in southern and central Italy, whereas the industrial North had more left-leaning support because of the larger working class. An interesting exception were the "red regions" (Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria) where the Italian Communist Party (and the Democrats of the Left after them) has historically had a wide support.
The shrinking support for the Christian Democracy eventually caused the single main event in the First Republic, the entry of the Socialist party in the government in the sixties, after the reducing edge of the Christian Democracy (DC) had forced them to accept this alliance; attempts to incorporate the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) in the Tambroni government led to riots, and were short-lived. This period came to be known as the "Years of Lead" because of a wave of bombings and shootings, attributed to far-right, far-left and secret services actions. Christian democrat politician Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, a terrorist paramilitary group, on March 16, 1978, the day the historic compromise with the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was supposed to be enacted, insuring the PCI's return to government for the first time since May 1947. Aldo Moro's corpse was then discovered on May 9, in via Caetani in Rome, in a site equidistant between the DC and the PCI headquarters.
In the 1980s, for the first time, two governments were led by a republican and a socialist (Bettino Craxi) rather than by a member of DC (which nonetheless remained the main force behind the government). With the end of the 'lead years', the PCI gradually increased their votes under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer. The Socialist party (PSI), led by Bettino Craxi, became more and more critical of the communists and of the Soviet Union; Craxi himself pushed in favour of US president Ronald Reagan's positioning of Pershing missiles in Italy.
The Second Republic (1992-present)
From 1992 to 1997, Italy faced significant challenges as voters (disenchanted with past political paralysis, massive government debt, extensive corruption, and organised crime's considerable influence ) demanded political, economic, and ethical reforms. The scandals involved all major parties, but especially those in the government coalition: between 1992 and 1994 the DC underwent a severe crisis and was dissolved, splitting up into several pieces, including the Italian People's Party and the Christian Democratic Centre. The PSI (and the other governing minor parties) completely dissolved.
The 1994 elections also swept media magnate Silvio Berlusconi (leader of "Pole of Freedoms" coalition) into office as Prime Minister. Berlusconi, however, was forced to step down in December 1994 when the Lega Nord withdrew support. The Berlusconi government was succeeded by a technical government headed by Prime Minister Lamberto Dini, which left office in early 1996, when national elections led to the victory of a centre-left coalition under the leadership of Romano Prodi. In 2001 the centre-right took the government and Berlusconi was able to remain in power for a complete five year mandate. The last elections in 2006 returned Prodi in the government with a slim majority.