---
node: risorgimento
type: period
slug: risorgimento
title: "Risorgimento"
lead: "The Risorgimento was the 19th-century movement that unified Italy, culminating in the Kingdom of Italy proclaimed in 1861 and completed by 1871."
published: 2026-07-11
updated: 2026-07-11
image_file: risorgimento.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Calatafimi.jpg"
image_author: "Remigio Legat"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

The Risorgimento was the 19th-century movement that unified Italy. After the Congress of Vienna (1815) restored a fragmented, largely Austrian-dominated peninsula, nationalists worked toward a single Italian state.

## Key developments

Early risings in the 1820s–1840s failed, but they spread the idea — through the secret societies and, above all, Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy and the revolutions of 1848. The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont then led unification: its prime minister Cavour used diplomacy and a French alliance to win Lombardy in 1859, and Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand (1860) took Sicily and Naples for the king.

## End and transition

The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed on 17 March 1861 under Victor Emmanuel II; Venetia was added in 1866 and Rome was taken in 1870, ending the popes' temporal power and becoming the capital in 1871 — completing unification.