Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose statue stands in the middle of the square that bears his name between the old town and the port district.
No official event took place to celebrate this day. A deliberate oversight for reasons that raise questions and cast doubts: why this ostracism? Garibaldi did not want Nice to be annexed to France under an international political agreement between the French Empire and the House of Savoy.
Giuseppe or Pepin Garibaldi is nicknamed the “Hero of the Two Worlds” due to the military exploits he accomplished both in South America and Europe, which earned him considerable fame both in Italy and abroad.
According to Max Gallo, a famous historian from Nice, Giuseppe Garibaldi is “obviously the only person from Nice known worldwide, from Latin America to England.”
He can very well do without a wreath laid in his honor on the day of his birth.
Garibaldi was born in Nice on July 4, 1807. This city, to which Garibaldi remained very attached throughout his life, has experienced many vicissitudes throughout its history. A city of the Kingdom of Sardinia, it became French from 1793 to 1814, during the revolutionary and Napoleonic period (Italian campaigns), then again Sardinian from 1814, before finally becoming French in 1860 despite the opposition of the public man.
During the French period, civil status records were written in French, and the child was therefore registered under the name Joseph-Marie Garibaldi. He was baptized on July 19, 1807, in the Church of Saint-Martin-Saint-Augustin, located in the current district of Old Nice: his godfather was Joseph Garibaldi and his godmother Julie Marie Garibaldi.
He died in Caprera (Kingdom of Italy) on June 2, 1882.
Garibaldi is a fundamental figure of the Italian Risorgimento, for having personally led and fought in a large number of military campaigns that enabled the formation of unified Italy.
He is considered, along with Camillo Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II, and Giuseppe Mazzini, as one of the “founding fathers” of the Italian nation.
