The flag of Italy (Italian: Bandiera d’Italia, Italian: [banˈdjɛːra diˈtaːlja]), often referred to in Italian as il Tricolore (Italian: [il trikoˈloːre]); is a tricolour featuring three equally sized vertical pales of green, white and red, with the green at the hoist side. Its current form has been in use since 18 June 1946 and was formally adopted on 1 January 1948.

The Tricolour Day, Flag Day dedicated to the Italian flag, was established by law n. 671 of 31 December 1996, which is held every year on 7 January. This celebration commemorates the first official adoption of the tricolour as a national flag by the Cispadane Republic, a Napoleonic sister republic of Revolutionary France, which took place in Reggio Emilia on 7 January 1797. The Italian national colours appeared for the first time in Genoa on a tricolour cockade on 21 August 1789, anticipating by seven years the first green, white and red Italian military war flag, which was adopted by the Lombard Legion on 11 October 1796.

The Cispadane Republic supplanted the Duchy of Milan after Napoleon’s victorious army crossed Italy in 1796. The colours chosen by the Cispadane Republic were red and white, which were the colours of the flag of recently conquered Milan, and green, which was the colour of the uniform of the Milanese civic guard. During this time, many small French-proxy republics of Jacobin inspiration supplanted the ancient absolute Italian states and almost all, with variants of colour, used flags characterised by three bands of equal size, clearly inspired by the French model of 1790.

After 7 January 1797 popular support for the Italian flag grew steadily, until it became one of the most important symbols of the Risorgimento, which culminated on 17 March 1861 with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, when the tricolour became the national flag. Following its adoption, the tricolour became one of the most recognizable and defining features of united Italian statehood in the following two centuries of the history of Italy.

Italian patriots later identified the three colours with the Mediterranean maquis (Green), the snow-capped Alps (White), and the blood spilt during the Risorgimento (Red). A philosophic and Catholic interpretation associates the tricolour with the theological virtues: Hope (Green), Faith (White), and Love (Red).

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