January 7 each year marks Italian National Flag Day. The Italian tricolor as the national flag was born in Reggio Emilia on Jan. 7, 1797, when the Parliament of the Cispadane Republic , at the proposal of deputy Giuseppe Compagnoni, decreed that the Cispadane Standard or Flag of Three Colors Green, White, and Red be made universal, and that these three Colors also be used in the Cispadane Cockade, which should be worn by all.

In the Italy of 1796, traversed by the victorious Napoleonic armies, the numerous Jacobin-inspired republics that had supplanted the ancient absolute states almost all adopted, with variations in color, flags characterized by three bands of equal size, clearly inspired by the French model of 1790. And the "Italian" military units formed at the time to flank Bonaparte's army also had banners that re-proposed the same style.

In particular, the regimental banners of the Lombard Legion featured, precisely, the colors white, red and green, strongly rooted in the collective heritage that region: white and red, in fact, appeared in the very ancient municipal coat of arms of Milan (red cross on a white field), while green had been, since 1782, the uniforms of the Milanese Civic Guard.

The same colors, then, were also adopted in the banners of the Italian Legion, which gathered soldiers from the lands of Emilia and Romagna, and this was probably the reason that prompted the Cispadane Republic to confirm them in its flag. In the center of the white band is the coat of arms of the Republic, a turcasso containing four arrows surrounded by a laurel wreath and adorned with a trophy of arms.

The colors were also given symbolic value: green represented hope, white represented faith, and red represented love. Others, however, believed that Green represented the plains, white the snow of the Alps and Apennines, and red the blood shed by those who fell to liberate Italy from invaders.