Italy celebrates 150th anniversary

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Thursday paid homage to Italy's first king Victor Emmanuel II in celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the country's unification. But a planned boycott by members of regionalist Northern League - the junior partner in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative coalition - threatened to mar the festivities.
Dozens of events were planned around the country to commemorate the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy under Victor Emmanuel on March 17, 1861. Napolitano accompanied by Berlusconi, attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland) - a monument dedicated to Victor Emmanuel in Rome's central Piazza Venezia square. Overhead, air force jets streamed green, white and red smoke in the colours of Italy's flag while a band played the national anthem.
Napolitano then visited Victor Emmanuel's tomb at the ancient Roman Pantheon temple where several other members of Italy's former royal House of Savoy are buried. Italy became a republic following a 1946 referendum. On Rome's Janiculum Hill, the president also unveiled a recently restored statue of Anita Ribeiro, the Brazilian wife of Italy's national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi - a large statue of him on horseback dominates the Janiculum's summit - led many of the military campaigns of the Risorgimento (Resurgence) the patriotic movement that culminated with Italy becoming a unified, independent country.
Napolitano was later scheduled to address a joint sitting of Italy's two houses of parliament - the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. However, reports said that parliamentarians of the Northern League party would not attend the ceremony. Last month the party's three cabinet ministers attempted to block a government decree declaring March 17 a national holiday.
Leaders of the Northern League - which campaigns for greater fiscal and administrative autonomy for Italy's prosperous North - argued that a public holiday would hurt attempts to revive Italy's sluggish economy. But the opposition centre-left accused the party of trying to sow dissent and a lack of patriotism. Also last month, the government of the majority German-speaking autonomous Alpine province of Alto Adige - which borders Austria and is also known as South Tyrol - indicated it would not participate in any of the celebrations.
The province's governor, Luis Durnwalder, said the German-speaking community had "nothing to celebrate," since it had no say in its territory's incorporation into Italy in 1919. For centuries Italy was divided into several states - some of them ruled or controlled by foreign powers, including Austria and Spain - before nationalists led by the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont's then ruling House of Savoy and Prime Minister Camillo Benso di Cavour moved to establish a united kingdom.