My private Italy: June 2nd, 1946, the day Italy chose its future
There is a black and white image that, more than any other, captures the soul of an unrepeatable moment. It is the face of a young woman who emerges from a copy of the Corriere della Sera. Her eyes laugh, her hair is moved by the wind of novelty and the title he holds in her hands reads, in large letters: “The Italian Republic is born”.
That photo is not just a historical find; it is the sigh of relief of an entire country emerging from a tunnel that lasted 20 years. Today, when we celebrate June 2nd, we often think of spectacular parades on the Imperial Fora, of the Frecce Tricolori that plough through the blue of Rome or, more simply, of a day of vacation that smells of early summer. But to really understand why this date is our nation’s “birthday”, we must take a step back in time, to an Italy where ruins were everywhere, even in the hearts of Italians.
A country on its knees: the legacy of war
To understand June 2nd, we must first look at June 1st. Italy in the spring of 1946 was a deeply wounded country. The Second World War had been over for just a year, but the scars were everywhere: bridges destroyed, railways interrupted, entire cities reduced to piles of bricks by Allied bombing. The economy was collapsing, hunger was a daily companion for many families, and the black market flourished amid despair.
(This picture shows Florence, il Ponte di Santa Brigida: in retiring from Florence, the Germans had blown up all the bridges over the Arno River, except Ponte Vecchio…..but this is another story). But the deepest wound was moral. Twenty years of fascist rule had stifled political debate, erased fundamental freedoms and dragged Italy into a disastrous conflict. Many Italians felt betrayed.
The main target of this bitterness was the Monarchy. King Victor Emmanuel III faced intense public accusation for his historical failures. Italians condemned him for not stopping Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, for signing the discriminatory racial laws of 1938, and for fleeing Rome for the South after the armistice of September 8th, 1943. He had left both the Italian army and the civilian population without clear orders, to face of the brutal German occupation, and the country simply had “dissolved”. Not that Italians were blameless: most had supported Mussolini throughout his 20 years in power, until July 25th, 1943, when the regime fell due to an internal conspiracy backed by the King. As Churchill famously said, ‘The day before, there were 45 million fascists; the day after, there were 45 million antifascists. Yet, the population of Italy is not 90 million”.
The roots of freedom: the Resistance and April 25
The path leading to the polling stations of 1946 was paved not only by political speeches but by the sacrifice of those who chose to rebel, making the birth of the Italian Republic inseparable from the liberation of April 25th, 1945. Following the armistice of September 8th, 1943, Italy transformed into a brutal battlefield, with Allied forces advancing from the south while Nazi occupation forces, supported by the fascist puppet state of the “Republic of Salò”, with Mussolini still leading it, controlled the northern and central regions. In this dangerous power vacuum, the Italian Resistance was born, as thousands of partisan men and women retreated to the mountains or organized urban guerrilla warfare in the cities.
This war of liberation carried immense symbolic weight because it allowed the Italian population to reclaim its national dignity through active struggle. The partisan ranks brought together an unprecedented socio-political diversity, including workers, intellectuals, Catholics, Communists, monarchists, and members of the Action Party. This pluralism served as the first true training ground for modern democracy, allowing these fighters to actively imagine the future of Italy while simultaneously carrying out sabotage missions against occupying forces.
When the northern cities rose up and achieved final liberation on April 25th, the collective energy of the Resistance became the primary driving force for political transformation. Having learned to organize, fight, and govern independently during the darkest months of the war, the Italian people no longer felt represented by the old institutions. To a nation that had finally learned to walk on its own, the Monarchy appeared as an obsolete vestige of the past, completely inadequate for the democratic future ahead.
Women’s first time: the lipstick revolution
June 2nd, 1946, stands as a sacred milestone for civil rights, marking the first time in history that Italian women exercised their right to vote in a national political election. This institutional referendum mobilised millions of female citizens to the polling stations. This historic turning point formally recognized the vital, courageous role women had played with silent strength throughout World War II and the Resistance, serving actively as partisan staffettes, covert messengers, nurses, resilient mothers, and front-line combatants.
The profound emotion of that historic day is vividly preserved in the personal diaries and memoirs of the era. Women arrived at the polling stations wearing their finest Sunday dresses and polished shoes, bringing a sense of almost religious solemnity to the democratic process. Amid the long queues, a curious and fascinating recommendation spread quietly among the voters: to show up without wearing any lipstick. This precaution was strictly technical yet crucial, as closing the official ballot envelope required moistening the gummed flap with one’s tongue, creating a real risk that traces of makeup could inadvertently stain the paper, render the ballot identifiable, and lead to its immediate cancellation.
Through this massive mobilisation, the Italian electorate effectively doubled in size in a single day. By participating en masse, women did not merely cast their ballots; they granted the nascent Italian Republic a profound foundation of democratic legitimacy that no traditional monarchy could ever claim.
The choice: Republic or Monarchy?
On June 2 and 3, 1946, nearly 90% of eligible Italian citizens participated in the institutional referendum. This extraordinary voter turnout reflected a profound desire for democratic representation after two decades of enforced political silence. The ballot papers featured two distinct symbols: the royal crown of the House of Savoy representing the Monarchy, and a woman’s head framed by an oak and laurel wreath representing the Republic. The political tension remained exceptionally high as the voting patterns revealed a deep geographical and cultural divide across the nation. The northern and central regions, which had been directly affected by the partisan Resistance, voted overwhelmingly for the Republic, while the southern regions, less affected by the civil conflict and more attached to traditional institutions, remained largely loyal to Monarchy.
Following days of intensive vote counting and widespread fears of a potential coup d’état, the final verdict was officially proclaimed on June 18th, 1946. The results confirmed over 12.7 million votes for the Republic against 10.7 million votes for the Monarchy, establishing a clear but competitive margin that signaled the definitive end of the royal era. King Umberto II, nicknamed the “King of May” for his brief one-month reign in a desperate bid to preserve the crown, left the country for permanent exile in Portugal. With his departure, Italy ceased to be a kingdom and became a democratic republic.
The Constituent Assembly: stitching the wounds together
While choosing the form of the state, on June 2nd the Italians also chose the people who would have to write the new rules of the game: the Constituent Assembly.
A total of 556 deputies were elected to sit together in the halls of Palazzo Montecitorio, creating an unprecedented gathering of diverse political figures. This historic body included veteran anti-fascist leaders returning from political exile or imprisonment, such as Pietro Nenni and Palmiro Togliatti, alongside rising stars of the Christian Democracy party, including Aldo Moro and Giulio Andreotti. Crucially, the assembly featured twenty-one Constituent Mothers, who brought the voices and perspectives of Italian women into the highest legislative text of the state for the very first time.
These men and women did what today seems almost impossible: they put aside profound ideological differences to find common ground. They had just emerged from a creeping civil war, they looked at each other with suspicion, but they shared a sacred goal: to ensure that the horror of dictatorship could never return.
The great debate on Article 1
The work of the Assembly was a masterpiece of political architecture. The most famous example of this mediation effort is the debate on Article 1.
Today we recite it from memory: “Italy is a democratic Republic, founded on work”. But getting to these twelve words was an epic battle. The left (communists and socialists) pushed for a more marked definition: they wanted Italy to be defined as a “workers’ republic”. This formula, however, made Catholics and liberals tremble, who saw it as a dangerous opening to the Soviet model and to the class struggle. On the other hand, there were those who wanted a vaguer, purely democratic definition.
In the end, the formula “founded on work” emerged, almost a stroke of genius: the “work” made everyone agree. For Catholics, work was the instrument of moral perfection and personal fulfilment; for socialists, it was the foundation of social dignity and the redemption of the humble. Founding the Republic on work meant saying that citizenship no longer depended on blood, noble title or wealth, but on how much each person contributed to the common good.
The Constitution: a manifesto of hope
On January 1, 1948, the Constitution officially entered into force. It’s not just a legal document; it is the DNA of Italy. It is defined as a “rigid” constitution (because it cannot be changed as easily as an ordinary law) and “long”, because it does not limit itself to explaining how Parliament works, but lists the values that give meaning to being together.
From Article 3, which guarantees the equality of all citizens without distinction of sex, race or religion, to Article 11, where Italy “repudiates war as an instrument of offense against the freedom of other peoples”, every line is a response to the mistakes of the past. The Constitution is the legacy of the Resistance transformed into law.
Why celebrate June 2nd today?
Today, travelling in Italy means immersing yourself in a beauty that is the daughter of that day in 1946. If we can walk through the squares of Florence, discuss freely in a café in Milan or admire the sea of Sicily, we owe it to that generation that had the courage to dream in the midst of the rubble.
June 2nd is not a dusty celebration dedicated to historians. It is a reminder that freedom is not a gift that has fallen from the sky, but a garden that must be watered every day with participation, respect for the rules and awareness of our past.
And the next time you see the Italian flag waving over a town hall or on the bow of a ferry in the Mediterranean, remember that girl smiling in the newspaper in 1946. That smile was a promise. And that promise, after eighty years, is us.
Viva la Repubblica, Viva la Democrazia, Viva l’Italia
Ciao da Marcello