Buon Compleanno, Italia!!!

Today, Italy is celebrating its 150th Birthday. Indeed, the Unification of Italy was declared on 17th march 1861 . Giuseppe Garibaldi and his men were the leading actors of this great event and Vittorio Emanuele II di Savoia was the first king of the new Kingdom of Italy.

Here's a link to Wikipedia, if you are curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unification.

Here is the speech of our President Giorgio Napolitano: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9wtGrynzCs . (I'm sorry, it's in Italian)

Turin was the first capital of Italy and that's the reason why lots of celebrations are taking place there.

Despite the rain, yesterday evening I was in Turin like loads of other people and it was great! Here are some pictures I took there:

Palazzo Madama in Piazza Castello

The Royal Palace in Piazza Castello

The Murazzi and the Po river (high level of the water!)

Piazza San Carlo

The Mole Antonelliana with the Italian colours!

Chiesa della Gran Madre

Monte dei Cappuccini

Fireworks from the Vittorio Emanuele bridge

Unfortunately, Italian people are a bit odd. Abroad, it may look like we have a strong sense of unity and homeland. We are those who were forced to emigrate in the past, but never forgetting their roots and traditions. Anyway, this is not what I feel here. Lots of people don't feel proud to be Italian, or even worse, somebody would prefer not to be a part of Italy, spurning our symbols, flag and anthem. That's really sad, but hopefully this is just a small minority of the population.

We should be proud of our history and thankful to those who lost their lives fighting to give us freedom and unity; and this conscience should be the basis to cooperate and work together to solve the too many problems that we have right now.

Buon Compleanno Italia!