Gli armeni in Italia nella seconda metà del '900

The presence of Armenians in Italy dates back to the Middle Ages, and in the Modern Age it had as its centre the trading colony of Livorno and the city of Venice. Although significant, these presences remained “islands” of an Armenian diaspora that extended from the Mediterranean to Persia to the Indian regions, forming a “commonwealth” structured along the trade routes that connected the Far East to Europe. The crisis of the Ottoman Empire, during the First World War, overwhelmed the plural context of cohabitation, upset by the policies of “demographic engineering” aimed at making Ottoman society more homogeneous. The network of the Armenian diaspora also favoured the arrival of Armenian refugees in Italy where, from the 1920s, a stable community was organized in Milan. The Armenians were the first foreign refugees welcomed by the Italian state, constituting a significant community, albeit numerically limited, up to the present day. The “Italian” Armenians – now in their third generation – have been able, especially after World War II, to be a lively presence in the economic and above all cultural fields.