Italy country profile – BBC News

1970s – Italy experiences a decade of political violence from the left and right.

1978 – Former Prime Minister Aldo Moro is kidnapped and murdered by left-wing armed group, the Red Brigades. Abortion legalised.

1980 – Bombing of Bologna station kills 84, linked to right-wing extremists.

1983 – Bettino Craxi becomes Italy’s first Socialist prime minister since World War Two.

1984 – Roman Catholicism loses status as state religion.

1992 – Revelations of high level corruption spark several years of arrests and investigations. Top anti-Mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards killed in car bomb attack.

1994 – Media magnate Silvio Berlusconi forms first right-wing government after the “clean hands” scandal sweeps away the previous political elite.

2001 – First constitutional referendum since 1946 sees vote in favour of major change giving greater autonomy to the country’s regions in tax, education and environment policies.

2002 – Italy adopts the Euro.

2006 – Italy’s most-wanted man, the suspected head of the Sicilian mafia Bernardo Provenzano, is captured by police.

2022 – Giorgia Meloni becomes country’s first female prime minister and leader of Italy’s most right-wing led government since 1945.