Cockade of Italy

The cockade of Italy (Italian: Coccarda italiana tricolore) is the national ornament of Italy, obtained by folding a green, white and red ribbon into a plissé using the technique called plissage (pleating). It is one of the national symbols of Italy and is composed of the three colours of the Italian flag with the green in the centre, the white immediately outside and the red on the edge. The cockade, a revolutionary symbol, was the protagonist of the uprisings that characterized the Italian unification, being pinned on the jacket or on the hats in its tricolour form by many of the patriots of this period of Italian history. During which, the Italian Peninsula achieved its own national unity, culminating on 17 March 1861 with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. On 14 June 1848, it replaced the azure cockade on the uniforms of some departments of the Royal Sardinian Army (becoming the Royal Italian Army in 1861), while on 1 January 1948, with the birth of the Italian Republic, it took its place as a national ornament.

The Italian tricolour cockade appeared for the first time in Genoa on 21 August 1789, and with it the colours of the three Italian national colours. Seven years later, the first tricolour military banner was adopted by the Lombard Legion in Milan on 11 October 1796, and eight years later, the birth of the flag of Italy had its origins on 7 January 1797, when it became for the first time a national flag of an Italian sovereign State, the Cispadane Republic.

The Italian tricolour cockade is one of the symbols of the Italian Air Force, and is widely used on all Italian state aircraft, not only military. The cockade is the basis of the parade frieze of the Bersaglieri, cavalry regiments, Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza, and a reproduction of it in fabric is sewn on the shirts of the sports teams holding the Coppa Italia (English: Italy Cup) that are organized in various national team sports. It is tradition, for the most important offices of the State, excluding the President of the Italian Republic, to have a tricolour cockade pinned to their jacket during the military parade of the Festa della Repubblica, which is celebrated every 2 June.

The Italian tricolour cockade, by convention, has the green in the centre, the white in an intermediate position and red in the periphery. This custom derives from one of the conceptual characteristics of the cockades, which can be imagined as flags rolled around the flagpole seen from above.

In the case of the Italian tricolour cockade, the green is located in the centre because in the flag of Italy this colour is the one closest to the flagpole. The tricolour cockades with red and green in the opposite position are those of Iran and Suriname. Conversely, the national ornament of Bulgaria and Maldives, starting from the centre, are arranged white, green and red, while that of Madagascar, starting from the centre, is arranged white, red and green.

The Hungarian cockade has the same arrangement of colours as the Italian tricolour cockade, having the colour position reversed like the Iranian cockade and the Surinamese one is an urban legend. Other cockades identical to the Italian one, even in the arrangement of the colours, are the national ornaments of Burundi, Mexico, Lebanon, Seychelles, Algeria and Turkmenistan.

The first cockades were introduced in Europe in the 15th century. The armies of the European states used them to signal the nationality of their soldiers to discern allies from enemies. These first cockades were inspired by the distinctive coloured bands and ribbons that were used in the Late Middle Ages by knights, both in war and in tournaments, which had the same purpose, namely to distinguish the opponent from the fellow soldier.

The Italian tricolour cockade, which later became a revolutionary symbol par excellence during the insurrectional uprisings of the 18th and 19th centuries, was often worn by the patriots who participated in the uprisings that marked the Italian unification that was characterized by those social ferments that led to the political and administrative unity of the Italian peninsula in the 19th century; for this reason it is considered one of the national symbols of Italy.