If you work in an Italian office, you've probably got the day off on April 25th, as it's a public holiday across the country. But why? The Giorno della Liberazione (Liberation Day), also called Festa della Resistenza (Celebration of the Resistance), is held on April 25th each year and has been a public holiday in Italy since 1946. It celebrates the end of the Italian Civil War and the end of the Nazi Occupation of Italy during World War II.
Why today? This is a good question, since not all of Italy was liberated on April 25th, 1945. So here's the short version of what happened. Italy's partisan resistance movement had been going since the start of the war. It was made up of many different groups, including a wide range of political parties (the Italian Communist Party, the Italian Socialist Party, the Christian Democrats, the Labour Democratic Party and the Italian Liberal Party), which together made up the National Liberation Committee of Upper Italy (CLNAI).
