Il messaggero ideale della Patria: la pedagogia patriottica del Giro d’Italia dalle origini agli anni Sessanta

Abstract

In addition to being a well-known sporting competition, by express will of its founders, the Giro d’Italia has proved to be, since its debut, an effective means of patriotic propaganda. Indulging in this particular vocation, the race will try, in its various editions, to make its own personal contribution to the consolidation of the fragile Italian unification and to the formation of a national discourse in which all Italians can recognize themselves as part of a single people. The essay, which covers a long time span, from the first edition of 1909 to 1961, clearly shows how the Giro, through its routes and the words of the sports press, was, in his own way, an educator of national conscience. A particular messenger of a propaganda which, far from being granitic, will prove to be very sensitive to the changing image of Italy that the Italian political and cultural world intended to convey over the course of those decades.