Italy in 1861

Our "Territorial Formation" Series takes us to Italy in 1861, at the time when the unified Kingdom of Italy was declared.

While the Italian peninsula was first unified by Rome in the first century BCE, the fall of the Roman empire in 476 divided Italian lands for nearly 14 centuries. In 1861, at a time of great nationalist fervor in Europe, the King of Sardinia, head of the House of Savoy, convinced other Italian monarchs to join him in a unified nation and proclaimed himself King of Italy. Venice was still under Austrian rule and was reunited after a brief war in 1866. While the Pope refused to be subject to an Italian king, the Papal States formally joined in 1870, which marked the total unification of the Peninsula. The Popes, however, remained hostile to the new Kingdom, and the "Roman Question" was only settled in 1929 with the Latran Treaty, which gave birth to the Vatican, a 44 hectare papal enclave in Rome. Another enclave is the Republic of San Marino, a tiny land that has been independent for many centuries and refused to join Italy.

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