Italian Army

The Italian Army, known in Italian as the Esercito Italiano, is the land force branch of the Italian Armed Forces. It traces its origins to the Royal Army, the Regio Esercito, which dates from the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in the era of the Risorgimento and Italian unification in the 1850s and 1860s. Its first war was the Third Italian War of Independence, and it later sent expeditions to China during the Boxer Rebellion and to Libya, fought along the Italian front against Austria-Hungary in World War I, took part in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the Spanish Civil War, and fought in Albania, the Balkans, North Africa and the Soviet Union in World War II. During the Cold War it prepared to meet a possible Warsaw Pact invasion from the east, and since then it has served in peacekeeping missions and in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its General Staff is headquartered in Rome opposite the Quirinal Palace, and it is an all-volunteer force of active-duty personnel.