Italy

Italy, Page (GR-1)

As an extention of my stamp collecting hobby, I decided to set up these web pages related to my Italian stamps. They contained scans of each album, showing the stamps I own so far. On each page, there’s a list of the stamps with descriptions of each and links to the related Colnect page. This helps me to know exactly what I’m missing for when I make purchases.

When I was a boy, the U.S. Post Office sold a book called, U.S. Stamps & Stories. It was a catalog of U.S. stamps made by Scott catalog publisher in 1973. It had stories about most of the stamps, in particular the commemorative ones. I enjoyed that book very much.

In the spirit of Stamps & Stories, I’m adding text about the stamps on each page of this site. The format I’m employing is to start each page with brief comments about the stamp album page: how many stamps I have, my plans for getting the missing ones, etc. Then I’m writing comments about the history behind the stamps: either what was happening at the time of their printing, maybe why these particular stamps were issued, but in particular the history regarding the subjects of the stamps – especially for commemorative stamps. Basically, this web site sub-domain is becoming My Italy Stamps & Stories.

Note

I’ve written text for many of the pages – at least in the album for the Kingdom of Italy. For now, on the remaining pages there is the classic Lorem ipsum text as placeholders. Below is a list of the albums with links to them:

Prior Italian States (1850 - 1868)

Before 1861, the word Italy referred just to the peninsula and its mainland base, a geographical area consisting of several small kingdoms, duchies, city states and other soverign nations. Some of these states issued their first stamps before being conquered a few years later – by Giuseppe Garibaldi from the Kingdom of Sardinia – becoming part of the Kingdom of Italy. As a result, there are only one to three album pages for each.

The Kingdom of Italy (1861 - 1943)

When the Kingdom of Italy first started offering postage stamps, it used the stamps made by Sardinia with the image of its king, Vittorio Emanule II, of the House of Savoy. The kingdom continued until the end of World War II, with a small number of kings during that period: In 1878, Umberto I was crowned king. In 1900, he was succeeded by Vittorio Emanule III. In the final days, in 1946 Umberto II became king before ending the monarchy thirty-four days later. You can see many stamps with the images of these kings.

Italian Colonies (1920 - 43)

Starting in the late 1800s, Italy sought to expand across the Aegean Sea (known as the third coast of Italy) and into east Africa (known as the fourth coast). These colonial ambitions became an obsession of Mussolini and the king during the 1920s and 30s. This album contains stamps that were issued in the Italian colonies.

Italian Occupations (1920 - 43)

The album listed above is for stamps from the colonies. This album contains pages of stamps from territories that Italy occupied, primarily during and after World War I along the eastern show of the Adriatic Sea, and including Greek islands taken during World War II.

Italy in Transition (1943 - 45)

During World War II, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini and the fascists, the country fell apart: Mussolini was arrested and removed from power by the king, who signed an armistice agreement with the invading Allied troops; the Germans resecued Mussolini and formed a socialist republic in the north with him as the leader; and Prince Umberto II eventually took charge while he father withdrew for a time before abdicating. In this album, you’ll see stamps from the socialist republic in the north, ones from the monarchy in the south, along with a few issued by one of the isolated cities. It was a chaotic time, a time of transition: the stamps reflect this.

The Italian Republic (1945 - 1999)

With the end of the war, a republic was formed by the people to replace the kingdom. Gone were stamps with images of kings and fasces. They were replaced with images of the people, common workers, and symbols of democracy. This album is fairly complete up until the end of the 1990s: I haven’t bought yet the remaining album pages to the current day.