The National Hymn

Fratelli d'Italia (“Brothers of Italy”)

We owe the “Canto degli Italiani” ("The Song of the Italians"), better known as Mameli’s Anthem, to the city of Genoa. The Song of the Italians was written in the autumn of 1847 by the then 20-year-old student and patriot Goffredo Mameli and shortly after set to music in Turin, by another Genoese, Michele Novaro. It was written in the atmosphere of patriotic fervour that was the prelude to the war against Austria.

The spontaneity of the verses and the impetus of the melody turned it into the best-loved song of the Unification of Italy, not only during the phase of the Risorgimento but also in the following decades. It was not by chance that Giuseppe Verdi, in his Anthem of Nations of 1862, selected The Song of the Italians – and not the Royal March – to be the emblem of Italy, placing it next to God Save the Queen and La Marseillaise.

It was therefore natural for Mameli’s Anthem to be proclaimed the Italian Republic’s national anthem on the 12th of October 1946.

The poet

Goffredo Mameli dei Mannelli was born in Genoa on the 5th of September 1827. He was the son of Adele - or Adelaide - Zoagli, the descendant of one of the most distinguished aristocratic families of Genoa, and Giorgio Mameli, who was born in Cagliari and was the commander of a squadron in the fleet of the Kingdom of Sardinia. A precocious student and poet and a convinced liberal republican, he joined Giuseppe Mazzini’s movement in 1847, when he actively participated in the Genoese protests claiming reforms and composed The Song of the Italians. From that moment on, the poet-soldier would entirely devote his life to the Italian cause: in March 1848, he went to the insurgent Milan at the head of 300 volunteers as captain of the Bersaglieri to fight the Austrians on the Mincio River.

After the armistice of Salasco, he returned to Genoa to work with Garibaldi and, in November of 1848, he went to Rome where the Republic was proclaimed on the 9th of February 1849. Despite a fever, Mameli was always at the forefront of the defence of the city when it was besieged by the French: on the 3rd of June he suffered an injury in his left leg, which was subsequently amputated after gangrene set in.

He died from the infection on the 6th of July, at 7:30 a.m., at only 22 years of age. His remains rest at the Ossuary Mausoleum on the Janiculum Hill.

The musician

Michele Novaro was born on the 23rd of October 1818 in Genoa, where he studied composition and singing. In 1847 he went to Turin with a contract for second tenor in the choir of the Regio and Carignano theatres.

A staunch liberal, he used his talent for composition to set to music dozens of patriotic songs and to organise performances to raise funds for Garibaldi’s endeavours.

Of humble disposition, he drew no advantage from his most famous anthem, not even after the Unification of Italy. After returning to Genoa, between 1864 and 1865 he founded his Scuola Corale Popolare (“People’s Chorus School”), to which he dedicated all his efforts.

He died in poverty on the 21st of October 1885, putting an end to a life marked by financial difficulties and health problems. At the initiative of his former students, he was erected a funerary monument in the cemetery of Staglieno, where he now rests near the grave of Giuseppe Mazzini.

How the anthem was created

The best-known testimony, albeit of many years later, was given by Anton Giulio Barrili, a patriot and poet and a friend and biographer of Giorgio Mameli.

The scene takes place in Turin: “There, in a mid-September evening at the home of Lorenzo Valerio, an outstanding patriot and a renowned writer, we played music and talked politics. Indeed, in order to put them in sync, we read on the piano the scores of the anthems that had mushroomed that year in every corner of Italy, from Del nuovo anno già l'alba primiera by Meucci in Rome, with music by Magazzari, to Bertoldi’s latest proposal from Piedmont, Coll'azzurra coccarda sul petto, with music by Rossi.

At that point a new guest came into the living room: Ulisse Borzino, the illustrious painter that all my Genoese friends will easily remember. He had just arrived from Genoa and, turning towards Novaro, he took a slip of paper out of his pocket and said: “Here; it’s from Goffredo.” Novaro unfolded the sheet of paper, read it and was moved by it. Everybody present asked him what it contained and crowded around him. “Something wonderful!” exclaimed the Maestro and started reading it out loud, raising the enthusiasm of all his audience. When I asked news of the anthem in April of '75 for a commemoration of Mameli that I was organising, he said: “I felt it; I felt deep inside me something extraordinary, which I am not able to define now, despite the 27 years that have elapsed. I remember that I cried, I felt agitated and could not sit still.”

“I sat at the harpsichord, with Goffredo’s verses on the music stand, and strummed away, with my fingers killing the instrument, my eyes fixed on the anthem, creating melodious phrases, one after the other, but never thinking they could ever be adapted to those words. I got up dissatisfied with my work; I stayed at Valerio’s house a while longer but with those verses still before my eyes and in my mind. I saw there was no possible remedy, I took leave and ran home. There, without even taking off my hat, I sat at the piano.

I remembered the tune that I had strummed at Valerio’s house: I immediately jotted it down on a piece of paper, the first I could find: in my agitation, I knocked over the oil lamp on the harpsichord and consequently also over the sheet of paper; it was the original of the Fratelli d’Italia anthem.”

Text of the Anthem

Fratelli d'Italia
L'Italia s'è desta,
Dell'elmo di Scipio
S'è cinta la testa.
Dov'è la vittoria?
Le porga la chioma,
Ché schiava di Roma
Iddio la creò.
Stringiamci a coorte,
Siam pronti alla morte,
L'Italia chiamò.

Noi siamo da secoli
Calpesti, derisi,
Perché non siam popolo,
Perché siam divisi.
Raccolgaci un'unica
Bandiera, una speme;
Di fonderci insieme
Già l'ora suonò.
Stringiamci a coorte,
Siam pronti alla morte,
L'Italia chiamò.

Uniamoci, amiamoci,
l'Unione, e l'amore
Rivelano ai popoli
Le vie del Signore;
Giuriamo far libero
Il suolo natìo:
Uniti per Dio!
Chi vincer ci può?
Stringiamci a coorte,
Siam pronti alla morte,
L'Italia chiamò.

Dall'Alpi a Sicilia
Dovunque è Legnano,
Ogn'uom di Ferruccio
Ha il core, ha la mano;
I bimbi d'Italia
Si chiaman Balilla,
Il suon d'ogni squilla
I vespri suonò.
Stringiamci a coorte,
Siam pronti alla morte,
L'Italia chiamò.

Son giunchi che piegano
Le spade vendute;
Già l'aquila d'Austria
Le penne ha perdute;
Il sangue d'Italia,
Il sangue Polacco,
Bevé, col cosacco,
Ma il sen le bruciò.
Stringiamci a coorte,
Siam pronti alla morte,
L'Italia chiamò.

Evviva l’Italia,
Dal sonno s’è desta,
Dell’elmo di Scipio
S’è cinta la testa.
Dov’è la vittoria?
Le porga la chioma,
Ché schiava di Roma
Iddio la creò.