Italy readies for 150 anniversary bash

Mar 16, 2011, 17:09 GMT

Rome - Concerts, late-night museum shows and fireworks displays were Wednesday set to launch celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification.

Dozens of events were also planned around the country on Thursday, which officially commemorates the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II on March 17, 1861.

President Giorgio Napolitano was scheduled to attend a morning flag-raising ceremony at the Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland) - a monument dedicated to Victor Emmanuel in Rome's central Piazza Venezia square.

Napolitano also planned to address a joint sitting of Italy's two houses of parliament - the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

However, a possible boycott by members of the federalist Northern League party threatened to mar the ceremony.

The junior partner in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative coalition has three cabinet ministers. Last month it 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 ruling House of Savoy and Prime Minister Camillo Benso di Cavour moved to establish a united kingdom.

Many of the military campaigns for unification were led by national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi.

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