Kingdom of Italy

The Apennine peninsula and neighboring islands were composed of several independent duchies, small republics and city states prior to being merged into the one nation of Italia, known as Italy to English speaking people. I have a few stamps from some of these Italian states. It wasn’t until about 1861 that they were conquered by troops from the Kingdom of Sardinia – and Piedmont – led by Giuseppe Garibaldi that they were merged together into one country, a kingdom belonging to the House of Savoy. It wasn’t long afterwards that Italy, as a unified nation, was offering stamps for postage.

The first king of Italy was Vittorio Emanuele II. He reigned until his death in 1878. Umberto I was then crowned king, living until 1900. He was succeeded by Vittorio Emanuele III and ruled for forty-six years. His son, Umberto II became king in 1946, just after World War II ended, for only thirty-four days, before ending the monarchy.

Note

In this album, you can see many stamps with the images of these kings: only a few of Umberto II, though. You can also see many stamps commemorating famous Italians, like the explorer Christopher Columbus, the painter Leonardo da Vinci, the inventor Guglielmo Marconi, and many more. And there are stamps depicting moments in Italian history, and in events of what was then the current day.

There are also some stamps related to various methods tried and used for faster delivery. This includes the use of a pneumatic tube system in a few of the major cities of Italy. There are some stamps which relate to the introduction of flight, the use of air planes for the delivering of mail.

In the later years, the last set of pages of this album, you can see the fascist movement starting and eventually taking control of Italy, under Benito Mussolini. This includes stamps that contain propaganda methods. As a collector from the U.S., this is odd to me since we do not allow this. We also do not allow for stamps of persons living. Some here include the depict the image of the Fascist political party and of Mussolini. That’s so bizarre for me.

Album Pages

In the left margin are links to all of the pages in this album, for the stamps of this period, starting in 1861 until the end of the kingdom in 1943 in the midst of the war. For stamps from 1943 to 1946, until a little after the end of the war, see the next album. Years after that are covered in the Republic album albums.

The pages in this album are listed in the links in the left margin. They’re not necessarily in the order in which they appear in my album, which is basically in date order. They’re first grouped and then put in date order within each group. First, there are stamps for each king, then they’re grouped under Mussolini since he took control until the king removed him. There are some groups afterwards based on types of stamps (e.g., express delivery, air mail, postage due).

On each web page is a scanned image of a page from my stamp album, showing the stamps I own. You may click on that image to see a larger version. There will eventually be on those pages some comments about the stamps.

Below all of that is a table listing the stamps, ordered and numbered based on the rows and spots where the stamps are positioned on the album page – in the scanned image. It includes the ones I don’t yet own. Each listing has a brief description of the stamp and its catalog number from three popular catalogs. If you want to see more information on a particular stamp or a larger color image of it, click on the name of the stamp in the table and you’ll be taken to the corresponding page on Colnect’s site.

remaining stamps & stories in sub-album

page	story	note	used	need

Main Page (Reign of Vittorio Emanuele II)	✓	✓		1°
London Printer (Reign of Vittorio Emanuele II)	✓	✓	5	7
Torino Printing (Reign of Vittorio Emanuele II)	✓	✓	3	3
Definitives (Reign of Vittorio Emanuele III)	✓	✓		1
Main Page (Revenue)	✓	✓		3
Advertisements (Revenue)	✓	✓		5
Postage Due (Revenue)	✓	✓	6	15
Postage Due (Revenue)	✓	✓	1	3°
State & Comune (Revenue)	✓	✓		2
B.L.P. (Revenue)	✓	✓		9
Parcel Post (Special Delivery)	✓	✓		1
Main Page (Semi-State Entities)	✓	✓		12
Libraries (Semi-State Entities)	✓	✓		4
Redeemed & Protected (Semi-State Entities)	✓	✓		8
Unemployment (Semi-State Entities)	✓	✓		8