Italy marks 80 years of the Republic with military ceremony in Rome

Italy marked the 80th anniversary of the birth of the Republic on June 2 with ceremonies, military parades and flypasts in Rome, according to Euronews. The commemoration centred on the 1946 vote that paved the way for democracy, ending the Fascist era and the monarchy that had ruled the peninsula for nearly a century.

The date—June 2—holds constitutional weight in the Italian state. It commemorates the 1946 referendum in which Italian voters chose a republican form of government over the restoration of the House of Savoy. That vote, held in the immediate aftermath of World War II, established the framework for the Constitution adopted two years later and remains the founding act of the modern Italian state.

Rome, as the seat of government and the symbolic centre of the Italian state, hosted the principal national ceremony. The military parade and flypasts underscored the institutional character of the commemoration, framing the Republic as a settled constitutional order rather than a contested political project.