Reggio Emilia: the city that gave birth to the tricolor flag

• The Estensi and the Reggian Guilds: At the end of the 18th century Reggio Emilia belonged to the Este family, which had established the capital of their small duchy in Modena. In the early 1500s Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Emilia, had personally sponsored the introduction of the art of silk in the city. Traces of these ancient and very important guilds remain in two palaces in the city: the Palazzo dei Mercanti del Panno and Palazzo Busetti.

• The political dissent and Napoleon’s arrival in Reggio: In the early 1790s, general discontent gave rise to the first manifestations of political dissent. In the spring of 1796, the Duke, having just been informed of the entry of Napoleon's troops into Italy, hastily abandoned Modena. The original design of the Arch of Follo dates back to the year 1797 and is the work of architect Domenico Marchelli. The monument is part of the overall remaking of the north side of the Via Emilia, when the porticoes were torn down and the current alignment of buildings in the neoclassical style was built.

• The freedom tree and the municipal coat of arms: On the morning of August 26, the tree of liberty had appeared on the city's main square as an explicit and definitive garrison. On the facade of some of the buildings appears the coat of arms of the municipality, which has an absolute historical value since it is the only surviving example of the representative symbol of the Municipality of Reggio established at the time of the Reggiana Republic (proclaimed on August 26, 1796).

• The Cispadana Republic and the Jewish ghetto: Between October 16 and 17 of that year the hundred delegates of the Republics met in Modena to vote on the constitution of the Cispadane Republic with the appointment of four representative provisional governments: Reggio, Modena, Bologna and Ferrara. By the next day, in Reggio, the gates of the Jewish Ghetto, in which the Jews of Reggio had been enclosed by ducal will since 1671, had been symbolically torn down.

• The birth of the Tricolor and the colors’ military origins: On December 27, 1796, the Hall that Bolognini had designed to house the ducal archives became the seat of the first Italian Parliament of the modern era, and the Reggio Emilia Republic, one and indivisible, was proclaimed. During the session of January 7, 1797, presided over by the encyclopedist Giuseppe Compagnoni, it was resolved to assume, as the emblem of the republic, the Tricolor (already used in Lombardy as a regimental flag) with horizontal bands, on the French model, bearing in the center the turcasso with four arrows, symbol of the union of the four cities, with the initials of the Cispadana Republic on either side. The regimental banners of the Lombard Military Legion featured colors strongly rooted in the collective heritage of that region. The same colors, then, were also adopted in the banners of the Italian Legion, which gathered soldiers from the lands of Emilia and Romagna, and this was probably the reason that prompted the Cispadana Republic to confirm them in its flag.

• The prohibited flag and the tricolor fresco: In the three decades following the Congress of Vienna (1814/15), the tricolor banner was stifled by the Restoration, but it continued to be raised, as an emblem of freedom, throughout Italy until it was fully established. The vault of Teatro Valli houses eight medallions, painted by Domenico Pellizzi to celebrate the glories of Italian theater.

• The Forty-Eight and Porta Santa Croce: A revolutionary wave swept across Europe, making 1848 "the year of miracles." Almost simultaneously, the Roman Republic was established, which decided to adopt the tricolor as its flag. Tricolored flags resumed flying in many cities of Italy in 1859 and 1860 to accompany Garibaldi's expedition of the Thousand. In 1858 restoration work began on the medieval gate, to which Duke Francesco V d'Este contributed the sum of 15,000 liras. Precisely because of this donation, it was decided to name the gate after the duke and to affix coats of arms with the eagle symbolizing the Este family.

• The history goes on at the Tricolor Museum: The exhibition itinerary is divided along two parallel lines: the history of the national flag, from its origins to the conquest of independence and unity of the country, and the history of the political events of Reggio Emilia. Finally, in 2017, on the occasion of a general revision of the itineraries and the definition of a new dedicated entrance to the Museum, a section dedicated to contemporaneity was inaugurated, which welcomed, alongside new workshop spaces, the important nucleus of works from the Ninety Artists for a Flag project, set up on the ground floor.