The Congress of Vienna Restores Italy's Old Rulers
After Napoleon's defeat, the great powers hand the peninsula back to kings, popes, and Habsburg archdukes
Quick facts
- Piedmont-Sardinia enlarged with Genoa
- 1815
- Kingdom of the Two Sicilies created
- December 18, 1815
- Northern Italy
- Lombardy and Venetia under Austrian Habsburg control
- Central Italy
- Papal States restored to the pope
What happened
After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna reorganized Italy back into a patchwork of separate states rather than restoring any single kingdom. The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was reconstituted and enlarged to include Genoa, absorbing the once-independent maritime republic in 1815. Ferdinand of Bourbon consolidated the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies on December 18, 1815. The pope regained the Papal States across central Italy, and the Austrian Habsburgs took direct control of Lombardy and Venetia in the north, extending Habsburg influence into several smaller central Italian duchies as well.
Why it matters
The 1815 settlement deliberately kept Italy divided among competing rulers, with Austria as the dominant power on the peninsula, precisely because a unified Italian state would have threatened the balance of power the Congress of Vienna was designed to preserve. That division, and Austrian domination of the north in particular, became the direct target of the unification movement that built momentum over the following decades.
How we know
The territorial settlements of the Congress of Vienna affecting Italy are documented in the Congress's own treaty texts and corroborated by U.S. diplomatic records describing each restored Italian state, including the specific dates of Piedmont-Sardinia's enlargement and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies' formal creation.
Sources
- U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Piedmont-Sardinia · Primary source (author-declared)history.state.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Two Sicilies · Primary source (author-declared)history.state.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Italy27 events · A peninsula that fractured into rival kingdoms and city-states after Rome fell, then spent thirteen centuries putting itself back together as one countryView all →