Happy Birthday modern Italy you are 150 year old today. How very young 0_o.
It’s very easy to forget that Italy is pretty new. It is so rich in history and culture that the idea that Italy has only been a country since 1861 seems absurd.
Unlike England or France or Japan, for example, who have had relatively stable boarders for the past hundreds of years…wow I just realised that I may be alive to celebrate 1000 years in 1066, sorry let’s get back on track…and thus a long shared history and image of a collective nation, Italy was 151 years ago very separated. What we see as Italy now was in a way similar to the British Isles: many smaller countries joined together. Each country had it’s own culture, it’s own history, it’s own language, it’s own identity. But these countries were weak, especially against leading European powers such as France and Austria-Hungary. Sick of foreign rule the peninsula united itself into what we now know as Italy.
You’d think today would be a special day. I think I was more excited about it than the Italians, well at least the Neapolitans (I can’t really speak for the rest of Italy). I found profile pictures like this on Facebook:
Trans: I don’t celebrate 150 years of lies
This type of opposition to the unity of Italy is not a small minority. The Lega Nord tried to prevent today being a public holiday and many people here in Naples are of the opinion that there is no such thing as a united Italy, at least in terms of North and South.
Nevertheless I still expected some sort of unity in celebrating today. I went down into the city to see if there were any celebratory events going on. There was a marching band and the arm forces were out on parade but the turn out for that was very small in terms of how many people live in Naples (I saw more people in Heppenheim for Vettel’s homecoming and that town is tiny). It seems people were more concerned in shopping than acknowledging their country’s birthday.
I wonder how much more interested they would have been if it was the Birthday of Naples? Oh Italy you are a little peculiar.
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