Kingdom of Sardinia

The state that unified Italy, run from a mainland city and named after an island it mostly ignored. The kingdom was created in 1720 when the House of Savoy exchanged Sicily for Sardinia and attached the royal title to its existing possessions in Piedmont and Savoy - so the capital was Turin, the court spoke French, and the island supplied the crown rather than the government. Savoy's position astride the Alpine passes had made it strategically valuable for centuries and its rulers skilled at changing sides. After 1815 it was the only Italian state with a native dynasty and an army. Charles Albert granted a constitution in 1848 and kept it when every other Italian ruler revoked theirs, which made Turin the refuge for exiled nationalists. Cavour then engineered unification by diplomacy: an alliance with France, a war with Austria in 1859, the annexation of the central duchies by plebiscite, and the absorption of Garibaldi's southern conquest. Nice and Savoy went to France as payment. The kingdom was renamed Italy in 1861. Its statute served as the Italian constitution until 1948. The kingdom covered Piedmont, Savoy, Nice, Liguria after 1815 and the island itself. Turin was the capital and remains a major industrial city. Sardinian is a Romance language distinct enough to be classified separately from Italian. The Savoy dynasty ruled Italy until 1946. Its residences around Turin are a World Heritage site. The kingdom's parliament sat in Turin from 1848 and simply continued as the Italian parliament, with the same king numbered as before.

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