Happy 150 Birthday Italy!

Italy 150 years. Photo by Antonia Scott.

Italy could very much be the oldest newest country in the world. Today it celebrates 150 years since its federation. Only 150 years since its regions united to become Italia - that's younger than Australia.


 Well almost all of its regions as apparently Rome didn't join Italy until nine years later but as they say Rome wasn't built in a day, and it seems, neither was Italy. 

This part explains why every city, town and village in Italy that I've visited has a Corso Garibaldi - the man who unified Italy 150 years ago, and Via XX Settembre - the date, nine years later when Rome joined Italy and Italy separated its government from the Catholic church.

To celebrate we are all, including the fashionably late Romans, enjoying a public holiday. We're just fresh out of carnivale, which seemed to stretch on for about a month where adults and children popped up in fancy dress when you least expected (I bumped into witches in Zara one day, got served apperitivo by Huey, Dewey, and Louie another day and found my local baker dressed as a court jester a different day again). But today the streets of Milan are flapping with red, white and green flags as the Italians celebrate being Italian.

Meanwhile, internationistas like myself part celebrate being half Italian, part celebrate living in Italy and part watch and follow the pure blood Italians as they demonstrate what it means to be an Italian today.

From what I've seen so far today being an Italian means: catwalks, public readings of literature, football, pizza, nutella, nonnas, girls with flowing long brown hair, flags, bicycles, soldiers in uniform and changing your facebook profile photo to the Italian flag.

Despite BBC news reports today saying that Italy is anything but unified, referring to Italians' strong identification with their regions over their nation, I've received a mixture of responses from friends, some who say they are first Italians and then of their regions, while others reminded me that Italy was once the land of 100 provinces suggesting that some are still Milanese, Parmigiano or Roman etc first and yet to become full grown Italians.



What state this puts some like me in: born in Scotland, living in Milan, having grown up in Australia with an Italian mother who was born in Genova to a father from Sicily and a mother from Udine, is... well... less teen and more terrible twos.



Still crawling around, yet to get my balance, yet to become a true blue internationista.