Republic of Alba
The Republic of Alba was a revolutionary municipality proclaimed on 26 April 1796, in Alba, Piedmont, when the town was taken by the French army. The municipality had a very short life of only 2 days because, with the Armistice of Cherasco on 28 April 1796, King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was given back the civil control of all Piedmont.
Lacking any effective control of its land, the municipality is remembered for two reasons, the first being the partisan Republic of Alba which took its name during World War II, the second one is its flag, designed by the jacobin Giovanni Antonio Ranza, who said that the blue and red were for France while the orange is taken to the tree of the Piedmont's shield. The orange was also the personal colour of Mr. Ranza: he fantasised his surname Ranza as a corrupted form of Italian arancia, meaning 'orange', in order to avoid the actual meaning of ranza in his own Piedmontese language, which is "scythe".
The blue, red and orange flag existed in both horizontal and vertical tricolour versions, and it is used nowadays on some occasions by the region Piedmont.
