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.