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The history of the Vittoriano, an Italian national monument complex located in Rome's Piazza Venezia on the northern slope of the Capitoline Hill, began in 1878 when it was decided to erect in the capital a permanent monument named after Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, the first king of Italy in the modern era, who brought the process of Italian unification to fruition, so much so that he is referred to by historiography as the “Father of the Fatherland.”
In 1880, a first international competition was announced for the construction of the monument, won by Frenchman Henri-Paul Nénot, but this was not followed by an implementation phase of the project. This first attempt was followed in 1882 by a second competition, won by Giuseppe Sacconi, who later became the architect who designed the Vittoriano. The foundation stone of the monument was solemnly laid by King Umberto I of Savoy in 1885. To erect it it was necessary to proceed, between 1885 and 1888, with numerous expropriations and demolitions of pre-existing buildings in the area adjacent to the Capitol, carried out thanks to a precise program established by the government led by Agostino Depretis.
The monumental complex was inaugurated by King Victor Emmanuel III of Savoy on June 4, 1911, on the occasion of the events connected with the National Exhibition, during the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy. In 1921 part of the monument, the Altar of the Fatherland, originally an altar of the goddess Roma, was chosen to house the remains of the Unknown Soldier, whose body was buried on November 4 in a ceremony attended by a huge crowd. The last completion works took place in 1935, with the construction of the Central Museum of the Risorgimento, which was inaugurated and opened to the public decades later, in 1970.
With the advent of fascism (1922) the Vittoriano became one of the stages of the regime led by Benito Mussolini. With the fall of Fascism (July 25, 1943) and the end of World War II (September 2, 1945), from which resulted the referendum of June 2, 1946, after which the Italian Republic was proclaimed, the Vittoriano, emptied of the military content that was associated with it by Fascism, returned to its previous function, becoming again - through the evocation of the figure of Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy and the realization of the Altar of the Fatherland - a secular temple metaphorically dedicated to free and united Italy and celebrating - by virtue of the burial of the Unknown Soldier - the sacrifice for the fatherland and for the ideals connected to it.[1][2][3] In the 1960s a slow disinterest of Italians in the Vittoriano began: the latter was in fact no longer seen as one of the symbols of national identity, but as a cumbersome monument representing an Italy outdated by history.
It was the President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, at the beginning of the 21st century, who began a work of valorization and revitalization of Italy's patriotic symbols, including the Vittoriano. Thanks to Ciampi, the Vittoriano once again became the most important place where the most symbolically rich national events are organized. Ciampi's initiative was continued by his successors.