80 Years of the Italian Republic A Celebration of Democracy, Culture, and Friendship

• “The Italian Republic was born from a moment of extraordinary democratic courage in 1946, when women voted for the first time to help shape the nation’s destiny.”
• “Woven into every article of the pluralist Italian Constitution is a fierce anti-fascist conviction, crafted in part by twenty-one visionary ‘Founding Mothers’.”
• “More than just a national tradition, Italian cuisine achieved formal global status in 2025 when it was inscribed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.”
• “The established Sri Lankan diaspora living and working across Italy serves as a vibrant, living bridge of economic and cultural exchange between both nations.”
• “In a fractured world facing climate and economic crises, the strategic partnership between Italy and Sri Lanka models the necessity of multilateral diplomacy.”

On June 2, 1946, emerging from the ruins of war, fascism, and monarchy, the Italian people voted to establish a republic—a watershed moment marked by Italian women casting ballots for the first time. Eighty years on, Italy stands as a premier global democracy and cultural powerhouse whose recent milestones include the 2025 UNESCO recognition of its cuisine as Intangible Cultural Heritage. In Colombo, this anniversary celebrates a deep, strategic friendship with Sri Lanka, anchored by a vibrant diaspora. Amid rising geopolitical and climate challenges, this enduring Mediterranean-Indian Ocean partnership models the vital necessity of global cooperation. 

There is a particular kind of beauty in a nation that chooses, freely and deliberately, to reinvent itself. On the second of June 1946, the Italian people did exactly that — emerging from the ruins of war, the shadow of fascism, and the long reign of monarchy, they walked to the polls and voted for a republic. It was a moment of extraordinary democratic courage. And among those who cast their ballots for the very first time were the women of Italy, who had never before been permitted to shape the destiny of their own country.  

Eighty years on, that act of collective will reverberates still. The Italian Republic stands today as one of the world’s great democracies — a nation that has gifted humanity with art and architecture, philosophy and science, food and fashion, cinema and music. And in the warmth of Colombo, where the Italian Embassy marks this anniversary with pride, the celebration belongs not only to Italy but also to Sri Lanka — a sister nation whose ties with Italy run deep, and whose friendship, in an uncertain world, has never mattered more.  

To understand what Italy chose to become in 1946, one must understand what it had endured. The Kingdom of Italy, established in 1861, had by the 1920s fallen into the grip of fascism under Benito Mussolini. For more than two decades, the Italian people lived under a regime that suppressed free thought, crushed political opposition, silenced women, persecuted minorities, and dragged the nation into a catastrophic alliance with Nazi Germany. By 1945, Italy lay devastated — its cities bombed, its society fractured, its moral fabric in tatters.  

Yet from that devastation emerged something remarkable: a determination to build something new. On June 2, 1946, Italians voted in an institutional referendum that would decide the fate of their state. The result was unambiguous — the monarchy was abolished, and the Italian Republic was born. The king went into exile. A new era began.  

This moment has been tenderly and powerfully captured in cinema. The 2023 Italian film C’è ancora domani (“There Is Still Tomorrow”), directed by Paola Cortellesi, tells the story of a Roman woman in the immediate post-war period who, in a deeply moving finale, discovers the transformative power of the vote. It is at once a portrait of female resilience and a love letter to the birth of Italian democracy — a film that reminds us how extraordinary it was that women, long silenced, would help shape the Republic with their very first ballots.  

An Anti-Fascist Constitution, Written by Many Hands  

What followed the referendum was equally momentous: the formation of the Constituent Assembly, which would draft the Constitution of the Italian Republic. This was no gathering of a single party or ideology. The Assembly was a deliberately, proudly pluralist body — bringing together communists and Christian democrats, socialists and liberals, monarchists and republicans — united by a single shared conviction: that fascism must never return.  

That conviction is woven into every article of the Italian Constitution. It is, at its heart, an anti-fascist document — one that enshrines freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to organise politically, the equality of citizens before the law, and the protection of minorities. These were not abstract principles. They were direct, deliberate responses to twenty years of their suppression. The pluralism that Mussolini had smothered was declared, in the Constitution, to be the very foundation of the new state.  

And yet the Constitution’s most remarkable dimension is perhaps this: it was also written by women. Among the 556 members of the Constituent Assembly, 21 were women — the Madri Costituenti, the Founding Mothers of the Republic. Figures such as Nilde Iotti, Tina Anselmi, Angela Gotelli, and Teresa Mattei brought to the Assembly not only intellect and courage, but the lived experience of women who had resisted fascism, organised in the partisan movement, and suffered under a system that had denied them the most basic civic rights. Their voices shaped a constitution that guaranteed, for the first time in Italian history, the full and equal political participation of women. It was a revolutionary act, written 

quietly into law.  

The Italy That 

the World Loves  

Eight decades after those founding acts, Italy endures as one of the world’s most beloved nations — not primarily because of its economic weight or diplomatic reach, though both are considerable, but because of something more elusive: its culture, which has permeated nearly every corner of the globe.  

Italy is the birthplace of the Renaissance, that extraordinary explosion of human creativity that forever transformed painting, sculpture, architecture, and thought. Leonardo da Vinci imagined machines that would not exist for centuries. Michelangelo gave the Sistine Chapel its heavens. Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the stars and changed humanity’s understanding of the cosmos. These are not merely figures from a textbook. They are monuments to the Italian belief that beauty and knowledge are the highest human pursuits.  

That belief lives on. Italy is a parliamentary republic, governed by a President as Head of State and a Prime Minister as Head of Government, with a robust democratic tradition and a vibrant civil society. Its cities — Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence, Naples — are among the most visited on earth, each a living museum of Western civilisation. Its economy ranks among the world’s largest, with particular strengths in fashion, design, luxury goods, automotive manufacturing, and tourism.  

And then there is the food. Italian cuisine is not merely a national tradition — it is a global language. In 2025, it was formally recognised as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, an honour that acknowledged what much of the world already knew instinctively: that sitting down to pasta al pomodoro, or a plate of risotto, or a slow Sunday lunch with family, is not simply eating. It is a ritual of life, a philosophy of pleasure, a practice of human connection that transcends borders and languages.  

Two Nations, One Friendship  

In Colombo, the celebration of Italian Republic Day is more than a diplomatic formality. It is a genuine expression of a relationship between two peoples that has grown, year by year, into something warm and substantive.  

The Sri Lankan community in Italy is among the most established Asian diasporas in the country, contributing to Italian society through labour, entrepreneurship, and cultural exchange. Thousands of Sri Lankan families have built their lives in Italian cities and towns, and in doing so have become quiet ambassadors of their own nation’s richness — its food, its faith, its remarkable resilience. In return, Italy has been a home, a place of opportunity, and a point of connection to the wider European world.  

Between the two nations, there are ties of education, of tourism, of trade, of people. Italian scholars and institutions have contributed to Sri Lanka’s intellectual and cultural life. Italian tourists are drawn to Sri Lanka’s ancient temples, its tea plantations, its turquoise coastlines. And both nations share, at their foundation, a commitment to democratic governance, the rule of law, and the dignity of the individual.  

Forward Together: The Necessity of Partnership  

We live in a world that has grown at once more connected and more fragile. International diplomacy — once conducted through patient multilateralism and shared institutions — is under strain. The architecture of global cooperation that was built after the Second World War, the same architecture that gave birth to the United Nations, to the European project, to institutions of collective security and economic governance, is being tested by forces of nationalism, unilateralism, and distrust. At the same time, the climate crisis deepens. Oceans rise. Forests burn. Island nations and coastal peoples — and Sri Lanka knows this better than most — face existential threats that no single country can address alone. The global economy, meanwhile, has become so interdependent that a supply chain disruption on one continent ripples across another, that a financial tremor in one market shakes institutions everywhere.  

In this context, the friendship between Italy and Sri Lanka is not merely sentimental. It is strategic. It is necessary. Two nations, one in the Mediterranean and one in the Indian Ocean, both with ancient civilisations and democratic traditions, both committed to multilateralism and international cooperation, both with much to offer and much to learn from one another — these are precisely the partnerships that the world needs more of, not fewer.  

Italy has long been a champion of European integration and global diplomacy. Sri Lanka, occupying a pivotal position in the Indian Ocean, is a bridge between South Asia and the wider world. Together, in education, in climate action, in trade, in cultural exchange, in the quiet work of building mutual understanding, these two nations can model something vital: that friendship across difference is not just possible but necessary.