Editing Unification of Italy (section)

===Tricolour Flag Museum===
{{main|Tricolour Flag Museum}}
[[File:Museo del tricolore 06.JPG|thumb|[[Tricolour Flag Museum]]]]
The [[Tricolour Flag Museum]] is located in [[Reggio nell'Emilia]], the city that saw the birth of the [[Flag of Italy|Italian flag]] in 1797, inside the town hall of the city, adjacent to the [[Sala del Tricolore]], whose collection is made up of relics related to the Italian flag.<ref name="Italiano1998">{{cite book|author=Roma. Museo Centrale del Risorgimento Italiano|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b_wazgEACAAJ|title=Mostra storica del tricolore: 1797-1997 : Museo centrale del Risorgimento italiano : Roma, 7 gennaio-30 aprile 1998|date=1998|publisher=Viviani|isbn=978-88-7993-057-4}}</ref>

The museum reconstructs the history of the [[Flag of Italy|Italian flag]], which was adopted in [[Reggio Emilia]] for the first time, right in the nearby [[Sala del Tricolore]]. On 7 January 1797 it was in fact chosen as the [[national flag]] of the [[Cispadane Republic]]: for the first time the tricolour became the national flag of a sovereign Italian state. In fact, previously, the tricolour was used as a [[war flag]] and as a civic symbol of local authorities. It was inspired by the [[French flag]], which at the time was a symbol of freedom against the states of the ''[[ancien régime]]''.

Inaugurated on 7 January 2004, it preserves documents, relics and Italian flags ranging from the arrival of [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] in Reggio Emilia (1796) to its fall (1814), and others from the subsequent [[Italian unification]] period. The part of the museum that houses the latter was inaugurated on 7 January 2006. The dating of the relics preserved goes back to 1897, the year of the first centenary of the Italian flag. There are also a large number of tricolor flags of the Italian pre-unification States.