During the Early Palaeolithic Age, between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 years ago, the first human groups started to settle in today’s Italian territory: they came from Africa and they settled in southern Sicily and later on in some areas of the Italian peninsula. The most ancient finds have been classified as belonging to the Homo erectus species. From the following stage in evolution, which dates back to the Late Palaeolithic Age, Italy preserves precious sites, among which noteworthy are the Altamura caves, in the Bari province, where the complete skeleton of a Pre-Neanderthal man was found.
Equally documented are the Mesolithic and Neolithic prehistoric ages, during which Italy, as well as central and southern Europe, witnessed a strengthening of breeders’ and farmers’ settlements, as well as the production of the earliest ceramic artefacts.
From the three metal ages – copper, bronze and iron age – findings reached in time the Italian territory following the transfer of peoples and contacts with the East, aided by peoples who were familiar with sailing and moved in search of minerals. During this period, which can be placed between the 4th and 2nd millennium B.C., different residing cultures formed which left behind significant traces of their civilisation.
This culture had contacts with the Greek Mycenaean civilisation and the Sardinian one, known because of the nuraghi, fortified dwellings shaped as a reversed cone built in large stone blocks, the most imposing specimen of which can be admired at the Barumini site, in the Cagliari province.

The Italic peoples from the Bronze Age carried out major commercial activities: they traded foodstuffs, such as oil and wine; metals, such as lead, copper, silver and gold; obsidian, a volcanic stone which was used to make tools and weapons; and various kinds of crockery. As from the year 500 B.C., various tribes belonging to the great Goidelic people (also called Gauls by the Romans), coming from central Europe, started to settle in Northern Italy.
Around the year 1,000 B.C. a new civilization coming from the eastern Alps, which was familiar with the use of iron, settled in the Po Valley and in Central and Northern Italy. Among the many cultures from this age, the Etruscan one stands out. This people settled in Italy as from the second millennium B.C., even though no certain historical data exist as to their origins and provenance. Some researchers reckon they came from Asia Minor; others from central-northern Europe and others regard them as a people that had always been living on the Italian territory.
Whatever the case may be, the Etruscans were the most important and powerful Italic people during the first half of the first millennium B.C., that is approximately between the year 1,000 and 500 B.C. After having stably occupied Tuscany, part of the valley to the south of the Po river and northern Latium, they expanded their rule over the whole of Latium, including Rome, and over Campania as well.
They reached the maximum stage of their expansion in the 6th century B.C., at which time they were driven out of southern Latium; a little while later they also lost Campania, defeated by the Magna Grecian towns. This is when the decline of their civilisation started, leading to their being eventually conquered by the Romans. They could in any case boast about having conveyed to their conquerors great part of their culture, customs and traditions.

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Around the year 1,000 B.C. where a number of villages built on the top of the hills, both for defensive reasons and to keep at a distance from the marshy area below.
The nature of the land prevented the development of agriculture: therefore, the inhabitants of the ancient Latin villages where above all sheep-breeders. Today, many researchers believe that Rome was the capital of the great new Latin and Sabine league and for a certain period of time it was under the Etruscan rule; as a result of this period, the Etruscans are thought to have transferred to the Romans their culture and technical knowledge. In the most ancient Roman society, an aristocratic form of organisation prevailed: this was based on the supremacy of patricians, that is the chief who held the power over the community.
The Roman kings themselves were absolute monarchs, but were to consult the homeowners’ assembly which was called the senate. When the monarchy period ended and Rome became a republic, the assembly formed by the heads of the most ancient and noble families soon became an assembly of powerful and influential patricians, who were granted the most important functions. The Roman republic was founded in a period (the 5th century B.C.) displaying great unrest by all Italic peoples. Rome engaged in a number of conflicts which continued for over a century, after which it was able to extend its rule over central Italy.
Expansion towards the south proved more complex, as it was opposed by the Samnites and by the Magna Graecia towns. The range of military successes against the large Eastern States which still had power, such as Macedonia and Syria enabled Rome to attain, towards the middle of the 2nd century B.C., absolute power over the whole Mediterranean basin. The atmosphere of permanent war experienced by the republic for many years coincided with a period of very serious internal difficulties during which the military leaders grained increasing power.

Caius Julius Caesar, managed to become the most powerful man that the Roman republic had ever known. He ruled like a king without a crown, supported by the majority of the population. Caesar’s murder, accelerated the transformation of the government into a monarchic kind of regime, marked by the triumph of Augustus Octavianus – adopted by Caesar – who ended up as the sole ruler of Rome, what had by now become a great Mediterranean empire. The history of the Italian peninsula became in actual fact part of one of the greatest empires in history, extending from Britain to northern Africa, from Spain to the border of the Rhine and of the Danube, and from Egypt to Syria.
This led to the beginning of two centuries of prosperity and development, during which the Romans became convinced that wealth and peace would be never-ending, that the Empire’s boundaries would never be trespassed and that no one would ever dare threaten Rome’s huge power. Furthermore, the Roman roads, large military and economic connecting arteries capable of supporting such a large empire, made up a road system that was to be used and maintained for over one thousand years.
Last but not least come the huge construction works, including waterworks, theatres, squares, harbours, thermal baths and triumphal arches. Towards the middle of the 2nd century A.D. the Roman Empire reached its real height, under the rules of Adrianus and Antoninus Pius marked by internal and external peace. The threat on the Empire’s border was therefore becoming increasingly tangible, both to the extreme north of Europe, where the Goths, a Germanic population, was becoming increasingly aggressive, and to the East, where the Persian-Sassanides, had risen to power. The reformations introduced by Diocletian (284-305) and Constantine (306-337) altered the Roman State compared to the Augustan age: the Empire was divided into two parts, the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire. In the year 313 Constantine issued an edict which granted to all citizens the freedom to follow whatever faith they chose, and especially supported the Christians, whose religion was by now one of the most widespread throughout the Empire.
This allowed persecutions to end and from then on the Christians took an increasingly active part in the political life of the Roman world. Constantine decided to found a new capital in the East, Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople, and which was located on the border between Europe and Asia.Italy also experienced great changes: the emperors no longer resided in Rome, save for extremely short periods. Constantine’s edict had marked the triumph of Christianity.

Having risen to power in the year 527, the Byzantium emperor Justinian tried to recreate the old Roman Empire, in an attempt to re-conquer the lost western lands.
Three years later Italy suffered the Longobardic. Their invasion was one of the bloodiest of those which had by now been following one another for almost two centuries on the Italic territory.
In the year 603, they entered with Byzantium into a peace treaty, based on which Italy was divided into two parts. Now the unity of Italy which had lasted for many centuries, was broken. The Longobardic people, feared the power of the Catholic Church, which was the point of reference of all the Italic peoples and whose properties comprising both lands and assets, donated by the Catholic followers, were significant. The Longobardic people therefore sought an agreement with the Church. Thanks to him, many Longobardic people converted to Catholicism. The pope Gregory the Great now represented a political power capable of intervening in great international issues and of altering the balance among the States.

The division of the Roman Empire between West and East (476) and the subsequent division of Italy between the Longobardic kingdom and the Byzantium kingdom (603) had marked the end of the Mediterranean civilisation.
People started leaving towns and going back to the country. Large towns became depopulated because wars, poverty and diseases. In the country, the economy was almost exclusively based on large landed property, the so-called latifundium, a broad segment of cultivated lands, including one or more villages. They were peasant villages situated near the dwelling of the nobleman, who was also the owner of the surrounding lands, in which the inhabitants of the village itself worked. The nobleman granted part of his land to the peasants, who in turn would give him a fixed share of their crop and worked for a certain number of days in other properties of their lord which were not let to them. The lord would see to the defence of the village and to everything that was needed to manage the farm.
Also monasteries became religious sanctuaries and productive farms, centres in which culture was preserved at a time of crisis and general confusion. With the transition from the 1st to the 2nd millennium, various Italian towns, created independent local governments, in which power was held by those who played a major economic role: merchants, bankers, artisans and freelances. These new political centres were named communes.
In this way a freer and more open civil model was created compared to the feudal one. Equally significant was the expansion experienced by the Italian maritime towns, such as Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa and Venice, whose height coincided with the Crusades period, in the 12th and 13th centuries, when their merchant fleets started playing a leading role in trading with the Eastern world, supplying Europe with Asian products which were in great demand, such as spice, high quality fabrics and precious stones. Venice became one of the chief economic powers of the Mediterranean sea and the wealthiest state in the West.

During the 14th and 15th century in Western Europe trends leading to the centralisation and unification of political power started, which resulted in the birth of larger and stronger states than those that had existed in the past. In France, in Spain and in England large kingdoms formed which caused many small feudal centres to disappear, the power of the Church to be reduced and communal independence to decrease. In the meantime in the territories of the Germanic Empire emerged, and the Italian peninsula, was ruled by political institutions which were not up to date.
The Italic communes now were unable to compete with more modern systems and to stand the expansive pressure displayed by the European monarchies.
So, the commune system waned and was replaced by Signories and Principalities having a local or regional base. However, in Italy no State emerged that was in a position to unify the peninsula and hence transform its territory into a reality that may be equal to the neighbouring transalpine powers.
When in 1494 the French king Charles VIII descended on Italy, a long season of wars opened among the chief European monarchies competing against each other to gain control over the Italian peninsula, and the political and military weakness of the Italian States emerged in full until in the year 1559 a new organisation was established: in the South and in the dukedom of Milan the Spanish rule took over; in the Centre the Signories preserved their power.

Even though from a political point of view Italy had fallen in a deplorable situation, on the other hand, on an intellectual level, it was at the centre of an exceptional period known as the Renaissance.
This was a time of transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world, in which extraordinary works in painting, sculpture, architecture, as well as in science and in philosophy formed a news notion of life, in which man took over a central position which was completely new.
With the rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, the Renaissance led to a positive and optimistic idea of life which was reflected by the principles of art: the search for harmony, symmetry and technical perfection in an attempt to imitate cosmic perfection were the foundation of the most creative season of Italian Renaissance, which witnessed the work of artists such as Leonardo, Piero della Francesca, Bellini, Giorgione, Raffaello, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Donatello and Michelangelo. The Renaissance ideals, were warmly received in the refined courts of Signories and Principalities, where they moulded aristocratic consumptions and lifestyle.
These ideals quickly spread to great part of Europe, especially in Paris and other key French centres, as well as in the free towns of southern Germany, in wealthy Burgundy and in the stern English universities. Italy was therefore divided and dependent from a political point of view, but was a beacon of civilisation for Europe, and some of its men found themselves in the heart of worldwide revolutions. The points of strength of development moved towards the north and the west, on the Atlantic and North Sea, and Italian economy consequently dropped to a marginal position.

For Italy, as for the rest of Europe, the 16th century was a time of huge changes developing in the heart of religious beliefs: ethical crises and doctrine doubts resulted in an epoch-making rift in Christian unity, known as the Protestant reformation.
The increasingly spreading desire for spiritual development which many intellectuals, artists and clergymen felt very strongly in those days led to a division within the continent into different religions and Churches, all founded on Christianity but separate as far as teachings and rites were concerned. In Italy, as well as in Spain, Portugal, Austria and France, the Church of Rome succeeded in defending its positions from the challenges coming from Martin Luther, from Calvin and from other religious reformers.
The Church in Italy resorted to very strict control over cultural models. The 17th century was for the Italian States a time of uncertainty and crisis, marked not only by the painful events of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), but also by rebellious upheavals among the peasants, social and political unrests, fearful plague epidemics and a spreading sense of anxiety. It is no coincidence that one of the leaders of the radical upheaval known as the “scientific revolution”, was an Italian: Galileo Galilei, who was among the founders of modern science.
Not less than the scientific culture, the literary and artistic fields experienced in the 17th century a season of exceptional creativity. As part of figurative arts, clearly visible in Bernini’s Rome, the triumph of baroque art expressed the success of morally-based aesthetic ideals arising from the Counter-Reformation. At the beginning of the 18th century the Spanish hegemony over Italy, dating back to 1559, ended: Governments, supported by skilled collaborators, implemented a full range of reformations, which challenged the most archaic social issues.
This process was also aided by the spreading of the Enlightenment culture, promoting the success of lay values, for cultural freedom, civil growth and religious tolerance. These values were to be at the centre of the political clash which in 1789 affected France and which subsequently involved the Italian territory and the whole of Europe.

With the French Revolution a new world seemed to open, in which kings no longer ruled by divine right and citizens were able to choose what sort of government they reckoned to be the best.
Among the principles the French Revolution was inspired by, special enthusiasm was reserved to those which stated the rights of individual freedom.
In Italy, as in other European countries, the French Revolution events kindled great hopes: in the various Italian States groups sharing the Paris revolutionary ideas formed, and planned to eliminate absolutism to establish democratic States. In spring 1796, the Paris government started a war which was designed to broaden the French borders and defeat absolute monarchies in Europe.
The young general Napoleon Bonaparte was entrusted with the assignment to lead the army which entered Italy: many Italians looked up to Napoleon as a hero of freedom, who had come to drive the old absolute sovereigns out of the countries and bring the Revolution novelties. Napoleon continued his descent on the Po Valley. Having put the Austrian army to rout, he tuned Lombardy into a republic.
In 1797 he signed with Austria the Campoformio Treaty, whereby Veneto was ceded to Austria, whereas the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia were annexed to the Milan territories and to the Emilia and Romagna provinces. The new State was called Cisalpine Republic. During the same year the Liguria Republic formed, followed by the Roman Republic (1798), which was established in the territories of the Papal State, by the Naples Republic (1799) and by the republican governments of Piedmont and Tuscany (1798-1799). Steps were taken which involved a crucial change compared to the past: noblemen’s privileges were abolished, the religious orders were abolished and, in order to pay for the debts, the assets of the Church were put on sale. After a brief reactionary period, the return of Napoleon’s army in spring 1800 enabled the Cisalpine Republic to be restored: this was transformed in 1802 into the Italian Republic, headed by Napoleon himself, who in 1805 proclaimed it Kingdom and had himself crowned king of Italy. In the meantime, the other Italian regions, such as Piedmont and Liguria, were annexed to France.

The new Italian State, which was born in 1861, had become one of the chief European nations: based on its population, it was the fifth nation after Russia, the Austrian Empire, France and Great Britain. Nonetheless it could not regard itself as a great power, especially due to its economic and political weakness. Not only did Italy lack the most important raw materials required for industry, such as coal and iron, but it also lacked the capitals which were indispensable to finance industry and modernise agriculture.
Furthermore, the economic, social and cultural gaps it had inherited from the past represented an obstacle to the formation of a unified country. Alongside areas involved in rapid growth processes, were static and archaic situations, especially as far as the agricultural economy of Southern Italy was concerned. The social foundations on which the unified state was based were fragile and narrow. The first national governments started working on the administrative unification of the country, a task which proved difficult owing to the very differences existing among the various regions. In actual fact, the Piedmontese legal system was extended to the whole country with a few adjustments: in this way the unified State was given, upon its birth, a strongly centralised and monarchic nature.
A turning point was represented by the 1876 elections, which were won by the candidates belonging to the so-called “historical left-wing party”. The Left-Wing governments, led by Agostino Depretis, introduced compulsory schooling for the first two years of primary school and broadened political participation with the electoral reformation (1882), which increased from 600,000 to approximately 2,000,000 the number of Italians entitled to vote. The people granted voting rights had to be male citizens who had undertaken compulsory education and enjoyed a certain amount of wealth. During the late 19th century, Italy witnessed mass emigration, owing to excess rural labour: at this time millions of citizens moved to America and to other European States. In the meantime, economy also experienced industrial take-off, which brought Italy close to the most evolved counties in Europe. Industrialization was very quick, aided by the adoption of protectionist measures and by significant funding granted to newly established industries by the State and by some major banks.
Despite industrial development, the difficulty in achieving an overall balanced economy throughout the country, such as in the case of the North-South gap in development, remained unchanged, so much so that the migratory flow coming from the Southern regions continued to geinstead of improving.
The social impact of the industrial revolution in Italy did not differ from that experienced in other countries. Industry workers and farm labourers started organising themselves in order to stand for their rights, drawing inspiration from socialist ideals, and resorted to striking in order to implement their protest. Italy’s foreign policy became more aggressive and took an expansionist turn with the conquest of a few colonies in Africa (Eritrea, Somalia, Libya). The problem pertaining to the so-called “unredeemed lands” (Trentino, Friuli and the Trieste area) was still unresolved, as these were governed by Austria; within these areas a movement struggling for union with Italy was quite active.
It was with this purpose, which was regarded as the closing episode of the Risorgimento events, that Italy took part in the First World War, allied with France, Great Britain and Russia, against Austria and Germany.

The bloody 1914-1918 war left behind a trail of tensions which made the post-war period a difficult time for all the States, also for those which, like Italy, had wined out. The peace agreements ratified the broadening of the Italians borders to include Trentino, Alto Adige, Trieste, Friuli, Istria and part of the Dalmatian coast, but they made the economic situation worse, as this became chaotic and dramatic, triggering strikes, mass demonstrations and the occupations of factories.
The increased and broadened participation of citizens in social life was characterised by the birth of new mass political parties: besides the Socialist Party, founded in 1892, the Italian Communist Party was set up in the wake of Lenin’s revolutionary experience in Russia, as well as the Italian Peoples’ Party influenced by Catholicism, which marked the return of Catholics to political life. The dissatisfaction experienced above all among the agricultural and industrial middle classes, fuelled by the post-war economic difficulties, facilitated the right-wing parties which did not hesitate to resort to violent systems with a double purpose: on one side oppose socialists and communists so as to prevent the revolution; on the other side weaken the liberal State and set up a strong and antidemocratic government.
At this time a movement founded by Benito Mussolini, which was named fascism, emerged. Taking advantage of the governments’ weakness, of the king’s and of the army’s complicity and of the support of broad segments of agrarian and industrial capitalism, the fascists managed to take power in 1922. They defeated the newly established democracy and established an authoritarian government which, over the following years, took on a dictatorial nature.
This was the first experiment of reactionary dictatorship in Europe, which other regimes were to draw inspiration from, such as in Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, Portugal and Spain. When in 1933 Hitler took power in Germany, Mussolini’s fascist Italy was but one of the many dictatorships existing in Europe. Nazi Germany had the prestige, the economic power and the military strength to force its political line on this world.
And this is how Mussolini arranged for Italy to join the powerful German alley. By imitating its choices, including the most alarming ones, as proved by the Anti-Semitic legislation adopted in 1938, which deprived Italian Jews of their civil rights. Mussolini adopted an expansionistic and military attitude in his foreign policy which culminated with the conquest of Ethiopia.
The relations between fascist Italy and Hitler’s Germany became a military alliance, which Japan joined into as well, as a prelude to the Second World War, which started in 1939 owing to the Germans.

While fascism reaped the fruits of its policy, in Italy, through underground activity, and abroad, antifascist groups had formed. The chief meeting centre was Paris, the town in which the prior socialist, communist and liberal exponents lived in exile, as well as young antifascist intellectuals. In Paris, the Italian Communist Party had founded a foreign centre, which carried out political activity and coordinated risky propaganda activity in Italy directed by Palmiro Togliatti.
In 1927, also in Paris, an antifascist Concentration formed which was basically made up by exponents of the Italian socialist trends who aimed to expose to the international public opinion the illiberal nature of Mussolini’s regime. In dispute with the Marxist analyses and with the Concentration activities, which were deemed fence-sitting, in 1929 the Justice and Freedom Movement (movimento Giustizia e Libertà - GL) formed on the initiative of a group of refugees, among whom Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu and Ernesto Rossi, whom drew inspiration from the ethical principle of freedom, according to a rigorously democratic perspective.
The GL movement created its own publication, the Quaderni di GL (the GL Journals) which became a means of highly-intellectual analysis and received the contribution of (among others) the philosopher Guido de Ruggiero and the historian Franco Venturi. The group’s theoretical manifesto was contained in the book Socialismo liberale (Liberal Socialism) which Carlo Rosselli published in Paris in 1930: a third path was conceived, between capitalism and socialism, as a new perspective that may recover the liberal values and establish the democratic tradition that lacked in Italy. Towards the mid ‘30s, Italian antifascism succeeded in establishing new levels of cooperation: this shift was aided by a few international events. An important factor was the People’s Front Policy, adopted in 1935 by the Communist International, which led Italian communists to create alliances with socialist and democratic forces to face the advance of European fascist movements now strengthened by the success of the Nazis in Germany.
Furthermore, the participation of over three thousand Italian volunteers, most of whom political emigrants, in the Spanish civil war to support the republic created the basis for an operating cooperation which was tested in Spain also from a military point of view. Among those who fought in Spain where men who were to play a significant role in Italy’s Resistance and in the Italian republic, such as Nenni, Longo, Pacciardi, Pertini and Di Vittorio.

Mussolini decided to enter the war in 1940, hoping to act in minor areas of the conflict, but the army appeared totally unprepared to face a war in which large air-sea means were being used and having an intercontinental strategic size.
When, in early 1943, the English and Americans, allied with Russians had the better in the war, Italy surrendered: in July 1943, the Anglo-Americans landed in Sicily and started moving up along the Italian peninsula.
The alleys’ landing in Sicily caused fascism, which had already been criticised for the very bad performance displayed at war, to collapse: on July 25th, 1943, the king dismissed Mussolini and had him arrested immediately after. He appointed as head of government General Badoglio, who started secret negotiations with the English and the Americans to get Italy out of the war.
Upon the announcement of the change that had just taken place, an open and violent antifascist movement started, which led to the Resistance (la Resistenza) that is an armed struggle by the partisans against the German occupation and Mussolini’s fascist supporters. In response to all this, Hitler conveyed into Italy occupation troupes. At that point things came to a head, because the Italian army was left without clear orders.
Badoglio and the king escaped from Rome and took shelter in Brindisi, to benefit from the protection of the new alleys. Mussolini, who the Germans themselves helped to escape from jail, recreated a fascist government in Northern Italy. This was called Italian Social Republic (or Salò Republic, named after the town overlooking lake Garda in which the Government was established) and his men offered their services to the Nazis engaged in repressing the partisans. At the end of the Second World War democracy was restored, thanks to the military victory of the Alleys and to the efforts of the antifascist parties during the Resistance.
The Italians found themselves facing serious economic problems, as a result of having to rebuild factories, towns, roads and railways destroyed by the bombs. It was also necessary to restore peace among the people whom the civil war had divided into two factions. Very quickly a democratic system was restored through free elections: in 1946 a referendum was called to decide on the type of State (monarchy or republic) which was linked to the election of the representatives for the Constituent Assembly.
The universal suffrage election (for the first time in Italy women voted too) held on June 2nd, 1946, resulted in the victory of the republican system by 54% of votes. As regards the representatives for the Constituent Assembly, votes were concentrated on three major parties: the Christian Democrat Party, which had succeeded to don Sturzo‘s Popular Party, headed by Alcide De Gasperi; the Italian Proletarian Union Socialist Party (which subsequently became the Socialist Party), headed by Pietro Nenni; and the Italian Communist Party, which followed the Marxist trend, whose secretary was Palmiro Togliatti. These parties, together with other minor parties, cooperated in drawing up the Constitution, which came into effect on January 1st, 1948. This gave birth to a democratic State founded on a bicameral Parliament (the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, with equal legislating powers) elected by the citizens.

The 1948 political elections, which were to result in the election of the first Parliament of the Republic, witnessed a confrontation between the Christian Democrat Party on one side, a moderate party whom the lower middle class from Northern and Southern Italy also adhered to, and the People’s Front on the other, made up by the socialists and communists, who relied on the support of the working class and of the farm labourers and which had its special points of strength in certain regions of Central Italy.
The great victory of the Christian Democrat Party marked the beginning of a political season characterised by coalition governments (made up by the Christian Democrat Party plus other minor parties), called “centristi”, because they neither included left-wing representatives nor right-wing parties, represented by the Movimento sociale (the Social Movement) which had succeed to the Fascist Party.
In those years the economic recovery started, supported by the American aids and by the quick European integration, marked by Italy’s entry in the Common European Market (1958).
After 1960, significant changes took place, both as far as political trends and as far as economic development were concerned. From the moderate government formed by centre parties, there was a shift towards centre/left-wing governments, in which the Christian Democrat Party cooperated with the Socialist Party, with the support of minor parties (such as the republican and socio-democrat parties).
Less conservative than the previous ones, the centre/left-wing governments implemented some significant reformations, such as the middle-school reformation, which extended compulsory schooling to the age of 14, and the establishment of a single middle school, as well as the nationalization of electric power.

During the ‘50s and ‘60s, Italy changed from being a basically agricultural country to an industrial country, thanks to such an accelerated development that, in order to adequately described it, the term “economic miracle” was coined.
The industrial sectors experiencing greater growth in these years were the iron and steel industry, the engineering industry, the chemical and the energetic industries. The production of motorcars, of office equipment, of plastic materials and of electrical appliances became competitive in prices and quality versus to existing European competitors.
The per capita income almost tripled and the unemployment rate dropped to a really low rate, around 3% of population. The goals attained through the economic development experienced in those years enabled Italy to become one of the ten most industrialised countries worldwide. Such economic changes had an immediate impact on the customs of Italians, whose traditional values, typical of a chiefly peasant society, were replaced, especially in the new generations, by a mentality more open to consumptions and to the lifestyle of an industrialised world.
There was also an increase in certain historical weaknesses, the chief one being the North-South gap. The concentration of large factories in the Northern regions triggered a migratory flow from the agricultural South towards the industrialised North, which deprived the southern areas of human resources, without eliminating emigration towards foreign countries.
The attempts made by the State in those years to create industrial factories in the South failed to achieve an overall take-off of Southern development. Between 1967 and 1970 workers and students became the protagonists of trade union and ideological confrontations, which triggered an intensely conflictual social atmosphere. The Italian student protest followed in the wake of the pacifist movements and rebellions occurring in American universities (where the youth had eagerly protested against the Vietnam war), as well as in France and Germany. Starting from the exposure of school and university backwardness, the protest had extended to family, political parties and the State, which were accused of being authoritarian, repressive and bureaucratical. Young people asked for greater equality and freedom in all sectors.
In the meantime, in the factories of Northern Italy, the trade unions conducted negotiations aimed at obtaining wages in line with European average levels, improved working conditions and more efficient social services. Among the most significant results attained by the labour struggles, it is worthwhile mentioning the Statuto dei lavoratori (The Workers’ Statute - 1970), which decreed the fundamental rights of workers, forbidding unjustified dismissals and laying down the rules that were to regulate contractual relations between trade unions and employers.

The adoption of the Euro as the single European currency, which officially came into effect on January 1st, 2002, was the outcome of a long work that had taken over forty years and involved some of the current 25 European States, Italy included.
The first drive towards unified Europe was indeed of an economic nature: in 1957 EEC (the European Economic Community) was established, and its memorandum of association was signed by six states, among which Italy.
Therefore, our country, at least from a government point of view, was among the first to have faith in a unified continent, where all borders may fall, starting from those of a monetary and economic nature. In line with its own principles, towards the late ‘90s, Italy did its very best, with great efforts by all its citizens, to comply with the parameters set in the Maastricht treaty to enter the European Monetary Union and on May 3rd, 1988, together with other ten States, it officially appeared as part of the first group of participants in the Euro project.
The creation of the single currency is however part of a broader and significantly complex context, which has not only involved economy, history and politics, but also the culture of individual Member States. In fact, in 1957 a slow process had started which had led to the birth, in 1993, of EU (the European Union); the outcome is both original and commendable, in that it is an initiative that has not been undertaken by the imperialistic willingness of a single State, but is based on an integration project of an economical and political nature, to start with, but of a cultural nature too, among several parties, formally equal to each other. This progress towards unity, taking place by common consent, cooperation and mutual adjustment, has been the outcome of treaties, compromises, controversies and complex agreements, which today are still busily underway.