Italian Flag Colors: What Green, White and Red Mean

The Italian flag is three vertical bands of green, white and red. Officially the colors mean nothing, but most Italians will tell you green is hope, white is faith and red is charity, or else the plains, the Alpine snow and the blood of the wars of independence. Both readings came later: the colors were borrowed from the French Revolution.

American schoolkids learn exactly what the stars and stripes stand for. It took Jessica a long time to wonder whether the Italian flag had a story of its own, so, like a schoolkid again, she did her homework. It turns out the short answer to "what do the colors mean?" is a bit of a letdown, and the long answer is far more interesting.

The Italian Flag Today

The flag of Italy has three equal vertical bands of green, white and red, with green at the hoist (the side nearest the pole). Italians call it il Tricolore (tree-koh-LOHR-eh), "the tricolor", much as Americans say "the stars and stripes". Article 12 of the Italian Constitution defines it in one sentence: "The flag of the Republic is the Italian tricolour: green, white and red, in three vertical bands of equal size." The plain flag, with no emblem in the middle, was adopted in June 1946 when Italy became a republic, and the Constitution that fixed it in law took effect on 1 January 1948. The colors themselves go back to the 1790s.

The standard flag is in a 2:3 ratio. The military war flag is square.

It's easy to confuse with two others. Ireland's flag is green, white and orange. Mexico's uses the same three colors in the same order but in darker shades, with the national coat of arms (an eagle on a cactus) in the middle. If there's an eagle, it's Mexico.

What Do the Colors on the Italian Flag Mean?

Officially, nothing. No law assigns a meaning to the colors, and the ones you'll read about were attached after the fact. The most common:

• Hope, faith and charity. Green for hope, white for faith and red for charity (or love): the three theological virtues. It's the religious reading.
• The landscape. Green for the plains and hills, white for the snow on the Alps, red for the blood shed in the wars of independence. Historians say it has no basis, but the poet Giosuè Carducci used the same imagery in his speech for the flag's centenary in Reggio Emilia in 1897: "the snows of the Alps, the April of the valleys, the flames of the volcanoes".
• The Revolution's ideals. The earliest Italian tricolor cockades of the 1790s were read as standing for natural rights, meaning equality and freedom, with green in the place of the French blue.

The real reason for the colors is less poetic and more to do with the French Revolution. In 1789 supporters of the Revolution in Italy began wearing red, white and green cockades, copying the French blue, white and red but with green in place of blue. Green may have come from the early days of the Revolution in Paris, when the crowd briefly adopted green cockades as a symbol of hope. In Milan the three colors went onto the uniforms of the city's National Guard, and from there onto the first Italian tricolor flag.

A nice footnote: after the flag caught on, Italians took up the strawberry tree (corbezzolo) as a national symbol, because its green leaves, white flowers and red berries all appear on the plant at the same time.

History of the Italian Flag

The first green, white and red flag in what is now Italy flew in 1796, as the war flag of the Lombard Legion, a military unit raised in Milan under Napoleon. It took its colors from the uniforms of the Milan National Guard. The first state to adopt the tricolor was the Cispadane Republic, in the town hall of Reggio Emilia on 7 January 1797. That republic soon merged with another into the Cisalpine Republic, which settled on vertical green, white and red bands in 1798. Over the next half century the design was dropped and brought back many times, but the three colors stayed.

Looking at all the flags that have flown over Italy is a bit like looking at a quilt. There's the early tricolor of the late 1790s, the square-and-diamond designs of the Napoleonic era, and then the tricolor bands again after Napoleon fell, with the coat of arms of whoever was in charge in the middle. Italy wasn't unified until 1861 and didn't become a republic until 1946, so it's no surprise the flags look unstable. The country was.

Here are some of the flags that represented all or part of Italy between the 1800s and unification:

Flag of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, 1805

Flag of the Kingdom of Sardinia, 1848

Flag of the Constitutional Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1848-1849

Flag of the Provisional Government of Sicily, 1848-1849

Flag of the Provisional Government of Venice, 1848-1849

War Flag of the Roman Republic, 1849

Flag of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1860-1861

In 1848, the year of revolutions that began the push for unification, the tricolor was everywhere: in Milan's Five Days uprising against the Austrians, in Venice, in Sicily and in Rome. King Charles Albert of Sardinia added his family's coat of arms, the Savoy cross, to the tricolor and made it his war flag (that's the Sardinian flag above). Why Sardinia? The Kingdom of Sardinia wasn't really run from the island at all. The Savoy kings ruled it from Turin, on the mainland, and it was their kingdom that unified Italy. When the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861, its flag was the Sardinian one and its first capital was Turin. That version represented Italy until 1946.

After World War II, Italians voted in a referendum to abolish the monarchy, and in June 1946 the Savoy arms came off the flag. The plain tricolor was then written into the new Constitution, which took effect on 1 January 1948.

One more modern twist: the exact shades weren't pinned down until the 2000s. In 2002 an Italian member of the European Parliament noticed that the flag flying at the EU Council building in Brussels had a red so washed out it looked orange, and the government responded by setting official color specifications.

Rules for Flying the Flag

Italian law regulates how the flag is displayed, and insulting it is a crime. A few rules you'll see in practice:

• It must fly outside public buildings, schools and universities, prefectures, police headquarters, courthouses, main post offices and polling stations, usually alongside the EU flag.
• Next to other flags, the Italian flag takes the place of honor: it goes up first and comes down last, and in a line of three it takes the middle.
• A displayed flag must be in good condition and fully spread, and must never touch the ground or water. Nothing may be written or printed on it, and it can't be used as a tablecloth or a curtain.

Private citizens hang flags from balconies freely, and you'll see them everywhere during a big football tournament.

Flag Days and Where to See the Flag

• Tricolour Day (Festa del Tricolore), 7 January, marks the Cispadane Republic's adoption of the flag in 1797. It was created by a 1996 law for the flag's bicentenary. It's a day of celebration, not a public holiday. The main ceremony is in Reggio Emilia, and in Rome the guard of honor changes in full ceremonial form at the Quirinal Palace.
• Festa della Repubblica, 2 June, is a public holiday marking the 1946 referendum. Rome holds a military parade along Via dei Fori Imperiali, and the Frecce Tricolori, the Italian Air Force aerobatic team, trail green, white and red smoke over the city.
• Museo del Tricolore, Reggio Emilia. Founded in 2004 inside the town hall, next to the Sala del Tricolore where the flag was adopted, with documents and memorabilia from 1796 to the flag's centenary in 1897. Hours and details are on the Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia site.
• The Vittoriano, Rome. The Central Museum of the Risorgimento inside the Altare della Patria holds about 700 historic military flags, including the tricolor that covered the coffin of the Unknown Soldier on its journey to Rome in 1921.

For the flag's companion piece, read about the Italian national anthem, "Fratelli d'Italia", which became the official anthem by law only in December 2017.

Napoleonic Kingdom flag by Panairjdde; Kingdom of Sardinia flag, Constitutional Kingdom of the Two Sicilies flag, War Flag of the Roman Republic, and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies flag by Flanker; Provisional Government of Venice flag by Jolle