The Festa della Repubblica Italiana is the national Italian celebrate which marks the birth of the Italian Republic. Indeed, June 2 and 3 in 1946, after the fall of Fascism and the end of Second World War, a referendum was held in order to ask Italians to vote on the new institutional system, either keeping it as a monarchy or to become a republic. The majority of Italians picked the republic, sending the monarchs of the House of Savoy to exile.
Only three years after, May 27, 1949, lawmakers signed a bill with the Article 260 marking June 2 as “data di fondazione della Repubblic”a (date of the Italian Republic) and it became a national holiday.
Before the Republic was founded, Italians used to have a national holiday on the first Sunday in June, called the Feast of the Albertine Statute. In June, 1948, Rome hosted a military parade in honor of the Republic along the Imperial Fora. One year later, with Italy’s entry into NATO, ten parades took place simultaneously across the country. It was in 1950 that the parade was included for the first time as part of official celebrations.
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