Thursday 7 April 2016

By Peter Smart


Italy is in south central Europe. It consists of a peninsula shaped like a highâ€"heeled boot and several islands, encompassing 116,300 square miles (301,200 square kilometers). The most important of the islands are Sicily in the south and Sardinia in the northwest. The Mediterranean Sea is to the south and the Alps to the north. A chain of mountains, the Apennines, juts down the center of the peninsula.

The current Italian flag consists of three equal vertical bands of color - green, white, and red - with the green being the one on the hoist side. This kind of flag is known as a "tricolor" design, the same kind of design the French flag and Irish flag have. In Italian, the flag is known as Tricolore because of this, in much the same way that the American flag is commonly known as the "stars and stripes."

Between 1890 and 1914 over 11 million Italian citizens emigrated to escape unbearable poverty. Many came to the US, and a majority came from Italy’s South - a clear signs of the internal differences that half a century after Unification continued to divide Italy. Yet this did not prevent the new Italy from following the models and aspirations of Great Power politics, developing its military strength, establishing colonies and ambitions for empire.

There are poetic meanings assigned to the colors of Italy's flag, but they were only associated with the flag after the fact - the flag wasn't given its colors with those meanings in mind. You'll read that the colors represent hope (green), faith (white), and charity (red); or that the green is for the hills, the white is for the mountains, and the red for the bloody wars for independence. Rather than poetry, however, it's the historical merging of governments that we have to thank for the meanings of the three colors of the Italy flag.

Though the Italian Republic, constituted in 1802, adopted a new flag, the tricolor survived as the official flag of the Kingdom of Sardinia and later in 1861 as the flag of the Kingdom of Italy, helping unify the nation. On these flags, however, the Savoy crown and shield were placed at the center of the tricolor. At the end of World War II, the Italian Republic officially adopted the plain tricolor flag on June 19, 1946. Since November 1947, the Naval Jack has been added to the civil and the naval ensigns to differentiate it from Mexico's flag.

When hung vertically, the flag is to be rotated 90 degrees. The green is said to represent hope and joy, the white symbolizes peace and honesty, and the red stands for strength and valor. Another interpretation of the Italian flag's colors is that the red shows the violent struggle to become a unified and independent nation, the green symbolizes the landscapes of Italy while the white represents the snow-capped Alps. The Flag Company Inc specialized in flag designs offered a special edition of decals and flags to memorize the history of Italian Flag for the future.




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