1963

January, 1963 - December, 1963 Education reforms of the Italian school system, from elementary school to upper secondary education (gymnasium). The gymnasium and technical schools were made more accessible to the masses of Italian society. The result was an increasing rush to the universities especially among people from the middle class.

1965

January, 1965 - December, 1965 Preliminary tests as admissions control to university studies are removed.

1966

27.04.1966 - 30.04.1966 Following student demonstrations during the election of student representatives at the University of Rome, a neo-fascist attack caused the death of  Socialist student Paolo Rossi. One Faculty was occupied. In solidarity with their Roman colleagues the students of the new Faculty of Sociology in Trento organize an initial sit-in.

1967

March, 1967 The students of the Trento university organize a “Vietnam Week” which includes several activities such as a photo exhibition, lectures, workshops, and seminars to emphasize their protest against the war.
April, 1967 Student demonstrations in Rome, Pisa, and Trento on the occasion of the visit of US Vice President Hubert Humphrey. At the State University of Milan, students hold their first teach-in against the Vietnam War.
June, 1967 The magazine Lavoro politico publishes the “Manifesto for a negative university,” drawn up by the students of the Trento University. Drawing on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and the “sociological imagination” of C. Wright Mills, they denounce the role of the academic system as an instrument of repression in capitalist societies. 
01.11.1967 In Trento students protest against the university reform bill proposed by the Christian Democrat Minister of Education Luigi Gui. Sociology students  try to realize the “negative University”, a kind of alternative institution (counterseminars and counterlectures) similar to the experience of the kritische Univerität in West Berlin.
18.11.1967 Students at the large Catholic university in Milan (La Cattolica) occupy the university in protest against a tuition increase and old-fashioned lecture methods and exams, and in support of social justice. Mario Capanna, a 23-year-old philosophy student, leads the protests. The working part-time students were the most active protestors. The police clear the buildings without use of extreme violence. The Dean closes the university.
19.11.1967 Students at Cattolica University pass resolutions that condemn the police force used to clear the university campus the day before, and in protest against the decision to close the university.
27.11.1967 In Turin students occupy Palazzo Campana, the main seat of the  university. The students protest the university reform bill and want the university to work in favor of a new society. They protest against a decision to move a Faculty from the city to one of the suburbs without giving students a say. Clashes between students and the police result. The police press charges against 487 activists, among them 95 non-students.
27.11.1967 - 27.12.1967 Students at the universities in Trento and Turin occupy their campuses through the end of January 1968.  Student riots spread to Milan, Padoa, Genoa, Venice, Rome, Naples and universities in South Italy.
09.12.1967 The students describe academia’s reactions to the occupations as hostile. The students point out structural problems in academia, e.g. professors more interested in research in obscure fields of science not applicable to lectures and syllabus; professors interested in furthering their own careers as writers rather than lecturers; and low-paid assistants lecturing, resulting in deficient quality.
13.12.1967 The police are called against the student occupation at the university in Genoa.

1968

January, 1968 Practically all Italian universities are on strike or have experienced one or another form of occupation before the start of the new year 1968.
08.01.1968 The first national meeting of representatives of the mobilized students takes place in Turin.
11.01.1968 The police remove students from the occupied Palazzo Campana at the university in Turin. In Padua the police halt a students assembly. Later that evening, students react by occupying five Faculties.
22.01.1968 Occupation of the University of Lecce. Students and professors strike in Pisa.
25.01.1968 Occupation of Faculties in Florence and Siena.
26.01.1968 A student occupation at Liceo Berchet in Milan starts a wave of actions in the gymnasiums. A minority of political active students supports the sporadic actions which follow.
15.02.1968 A neo-fascist group throws a rudimentary bomb at the Faculty of Law at the university in Turin. The newspaper La Stampa in Turin starts to attack the student activists and frame them as “red fascist and Mao supporters.” The coverage in La Stampa makes some of the same presumptions of the radical activists as the Springer Press in West Germany.
17.02.1968 The newspaper Corriere della Sera publishes a “Teachers’ manifesto.” They demand a return to normal and legitimate conditions at the university and an end to occupations by the political extremists. They demand a return to normalcy; this desire is shared by most of the students.
25.02.1968 In Rome three Faculties (Literature, Physic, Political Sciences) are occupied. The first counterseminars and counterlectures  begin at the Literature Faculty on following subjects: the Chinese red guards, the Black Power, the European youth movements, and the relationship between authoritarianism and sexual repression.
26.02.1968 New occupations in Padua. The students at the university in Trieste occupy buildings at the Faculty of Humanities and Philosophy and pass resolutions in protest against the Gui reform plan. Other students pass a resolution against the occupation as a breach of democracy.
26.02.1968 Demonstration by high school students at Liceo Parini in Milan. A National Coordination Committee for the gymnasiums under control by the militant students at the universities is established.
27.02.1968 Catholic dissident groups from across the nation meet in Bologna. They protest the political use of Catholicism to support the capitalist social order.
29.02.1968 The Dean at the university in Rome refuses to accept changes in the exam system passed by the Faculty of Humanities and Philosophy. When neofascist storm troops clash with movement members, the Dean calls in the police to put an end to occupations of the university. Fifteen hundred police officers participate in the action. Several students are injured.
01.03.1968 - 12.03.1968 The university in Rome closes because of student occupations.
01.03.1968 A Faculty Council at the university in Florence passes vague reform plans, but the proposal is met by student criticism.
01.03.1968 A new phase begins in the student revolt in Italy. There are widespread student riots in the streets of Rome in protest against the events of  February 29. Students attack police barriers outside the Architecture Faculty  at Valle Giulia. The students throw stones at the police, overturn cars and set them on fire. Official counts list 200 injured, among them 160 police officers. The students demand that the Parliament pass a new university reform plan, and that the Dean at the university in Rome be replaced. Both demands are repeated in the Parliament by the political Left.
01.03.1968 The Italian press acknowledges that the student unrest is entering a new phase. The conservative right-wing press emphasizes the chaos, while the left-wing press describes a “revolution from the Alps in the North to Sicily in the South.” The conservative newspaper Epoca in Rome publishes an article that discusses the reasons for the student riots. The newspaper claims that the students do not want reforms, but a total upheaval of society. Italian neo-fascists provoke fear of new clashes at the universities. Bomb blast outside the American Consulate in Turin.
06.03.1968 The headmaster of the Parini Gymnasium (Milan) refuses a police intervention to stop the occupation. The following day,  the Minister Gui suspends the headmaster of the Parini and lets the police enter the school and 14 other occupied Gymnasiums in the town.
07.03.1968 Student demonstrations  in Turin to protest the arrest of other students. Windows are broken in the headquarters of the Fiat-owned newspaper La Stampa.  Violent and bloody clashes between students and police last several hours. On the same day there is a strike of the Fiat workers against the retirement system. Students and workers meet on the streets of the town and find common aims in their respective protests.The clashes in Turin, as in Rome, become more and more violent. As in West Germany, the Italian students define the press as their opponent.
10.03.1968 National meeting of all mobilized students in the occupied State University of Milan. The students discuss the development of the protests and the legitimacy of violent action forms.
16.03.1968 Extensive clashes between students and police in Rome. The police block the way of 5000 students in a march to the American Embassy in protest against the American War in Vietnam. The political right wing is mobilizing. Four hundred neo-fascists from North Italy join a similar group in Rome and together take over the occupation of the Faculty of Law at the university in Rome. Left radical students wearing plastic helmets try unsuccessfully to remove the neo-fascists from campus. The police are called. In clashes with different student groups one hundred are injured and among them thirty-four are hospitalized.
17.03.1968 Four thousand students gather at Piazza di Spagna and march to the Faculty of Architecture. The police are waiting and they attack the students. The police brutality in the streets is profound and shocks independent observers. It looks like the police want not only to clear the street but intentionally want to injure and punish the demonstrators.
18.03.1968 Intense student riots in Rome at the Faculty of Law.
25.03.1968 Widespread student strikes in Italy. Extensive clashes between students and police in Milan, where the occupants of the State University were driven out early in the morning. Sit-in of students in front of the Cattolica.
31.03.1968 Under the pressure of the workers, the trade-unions in Turin announce a 24-hour strike by the Fiat company. The aims are the reduction of the weekly schedule and the reform of the wage-system based on piecework (cottimo).
02.04.1968 Twenty-four-hour strike by the Fiat company for reduction of work time, and full disclosure to workers about production organization and personnel management.
04.04.1968 In Pisa students strike against the repression of the movement. In Naples the Institute for Oriental Studies is occupied. 
11.04.1968 Fiat workers strike for twenty-four hours in Turin. The leader, student Guido Viale, is arrested. In the afternoon the police halt an assembly of students and workers in Palazzo Campana.
19.04.1968 In Valdagno in Northern  Italy the workers at the Marzotto textile industry continue a months-long protest against growing production rhythms and personnel reduction. On this day they block producation but are strongly repressed by the police. Students from Trento and Padua participate to the protest action and more than forty persons are arrested.
24.04.1968 Early in the morning in Parma a neo-fascist group attacks the occupied university. The police drive out all occupants from the university. The local trade unions declare a general strike in solidarity with the students. In the evening the university is re-occupied.
27.04.1968 Clashes between police and students in the aftermath of a student demonstration at Piazza Cavour in Rome. Fifty students are injured, one hundred sixty are provisional arrest. Six are arrested.
27.04.1968 Student riots continue in Turin, Milan, Venice, Bologna and Bari. The students try to block the distribution of newspapers in Venice. The action is a copy of the SDS tactics against the Springer Press in West Germany.
28.04.1968 Demonstra­tion in Rome. Fights between police and students. Sixty are arrested. Lawyers protest against the brutal conduct of the Italian police and claim that the brutality leads to new riots and more student violence. The number of arrests and charges increases dramatically.
04.05.1968 The students in Genoa pass a manifesto in support of the French students. They claim that the moment is critical for the class struggle in Genoa and Liguria.
12.05.1968 In Turin the relationship between students and workers becomes more organized through the creation of the “League of students and workers” (Lega studenti e operai). Its aim is to build a solid basis for the relationships between the students' and workers' movement in order to drive their protests and actions to one common goal: the fight against capitalism, the premise of all forms of oppression.
15.05.1968 The students occupy the university in Milan.
18.05.1968 Clashes between students and police in Rome in connection with the closing of the general election campaign. No profound changes in distribution of votes are expected.
19.05.1968 General election in Italy.
22.05.1968 Left radical politicians participate with students in a meeting at the Lega della cultura of Piadena to discuss the French experience.
23.05.1968 Student demonstra­tions all over Italy.
24.05.1968 Student demonstration in Rome in support of making opposite sex visitors in the students’ rooms legal.
29.05.1968 The University of Milan reopens under police protection. Two hundred students occupy the Catholic university, La Cat­to­lica. The students wear mine helmets and are armed with batons and fire extinguishers. Students from Rome, Genoa, Venice and Trento join the occupants. De­mon­strators attack the editorial office of the newspaper Corriere della Sera. The students of the Catholic University demand full right to discuss. Five thousand workers and students join forces in demonstrations in Trento. Widespread fear of a French situation in Italy. Pietro Nenni gives his warnings.
31.05.1968 Demonstrating students and artists interrupt the futuristic exhibition “The World of Tomorrow” in Milan.
31.05.1968 Violent clashes between Left radical students and police close to the French embassy in Rome.
31.05.1968 - 01.06.1968 Radical students occupy the universities in Rome and Milan. Influenced by the development in France, the students hand out pamphlets to the workers and  appeal to cooperation between workers and students in the fight against privileges in the education system. Wild riots in the center of Rome. Five thousand students participate in a demonstration against de Gaulle.
01.06.1968 Student­ demonstration in Rome. Violent clashes between students and police in Turin. The demonstrators attack the newspaper La Stampa’s headquarters. The students wear motorcycle helmets and shout slogans like, “No to social peace in the fabrics” and “Only violence helps where the violence rules.”  The waves of demonstrations slowly diminish as the semester ends.
01.06.1968 Left radical students at the university in Rome are challenged and attacked by students that want to restore normalcy at the university.
03.06.1968 Three hundred right-wing students attack the Left radical students occupying the university in Rome. The police are called in and take possession of the campus area.
03.06.1968 Radical students in Florence condemn French Gaullism. They march with FNL flags and big posters with the picture of Mao. In Genoa 1000 workers and students march together in a demonstration in support of their French colleagues. Black and red flags are hoisted at the main administrative building of the university in Turin. At the end of the semester, ten Italian universities remain occupied. Right-wing radicals use Molotov-cocktails and attempt to run off Left radical students occupying the university in Rome.
04.06.1968 The police use tear gas and batons against the participants at the film festival in Pesaro. Film and reality combine to form a rare mixture as revolt showed on screens while riots occurred in the streets. More than fifty people are arrested in the festival cinema. Fascist groups attack participants in the festival. The Nobel Prize-winner Quasimodo, the author Moravia, Rossellini and de Sica take part in the demonstration. The events in Pesaro become byproducts of the long, hot summer of Europe 1968. Rumors circulate about a general strike in Italy. Italians fear the influence of the French conditions and worry that an Italian government crisis at this moment might start another disaster.
18.06.1968 Demonstration and riots during the Venice Biennale. Students  fight with the police. Demonstrations threaten the presentation of the Biennale.
24.06.1968 Conference of the trade unions of the steel workers (Fiom-Cgil and  Fim-Cisl) and delegates of the student movement occurs in Trento.
24.06.1968 After the general election Aldo Moro resigned (June 5). The new Premier is the Christian Democrat Giovanni Leone.
07.07.1968 In Milan there are protests and riots at the San Vittore prison. A large number of prisoners and police officers are injured.
12.07.1968 Protests and riots at the prison of Poggioreale.
13.07.1968 In Venice, there is a 48-hour strike at the chemical plants of Porto Marghera. The active participation of students (above all from the Universities of Venice and Padua) is strong. Together with radical workers they try to organize the protests refusing the leading role of the unions.  The trade unions condemn the radicalism of the students. Egalitarianism – refusal of hierarchy between the workers – inspires the vindications of the workers.
August, 1968 The student movement takes a holiday. Many students travel through Europe to deepen their connections with their colleagues of other countries.
01.08.1968 Strike at the Montedison plant of Porto Marghera. Massive participation of students near the traffic block between Mestre and Marghera.
22.08.1968 The movement takes up a definite position regarding the events in Prague. The dominant opinion agrees with the Chinese one, that judges the Soviet intervention as the intervention of an imperialist country against a revisionist movement animated from a Social-Democratic vision. 
02.09.1968 - 07.09.1968 In Venice there is a national meeting of the student movement at the University of Ca' Foscari. They discuss strategy to continue the students' mobilization during the new academic year; the relationship with the workers' movement and the refusal to collaborate with the unions, the creation of national organization structures,  and the refusal of parliamentarism.
20.09.1968 For months the workers of the Saint Gobain (glass industry) in Pisa have protested against the production and personnel management. The left-wing group il potere operaio, which is quite influential in the University of Pisa, participates and supports the workers protests from the beginning.  
26.09.1968 National meeting of the high school students takes place in Rome.
28.09.1968 In Reggio Emilia there is a national meeting of dissident Catholics. It is open to all currents and groups that are against the neo-capitalism.
01.10.1968 The anarchists establish their own International. They establish a secret secretariat with intentions to coordinate unrest worldwide.
02.10.1968 In Bologna the student movement disturbs the opening of a conference on work medicine. The police run the students off and they occupy the Anatomy Institute.
03.10.1968 At the Pirelli plant of Bicocca almost the whole personnel is on strike.
06.10.1968 In Rome students demonstrate against repression in Mexico.
10.10.1968 In Rome a group of homeless occupy many council flats in the district of Primavalle. Two days later the occupants are run off by the police.
14.10.1968 In Turin there is a strike at the Lancia car company. Pickets of students and workers are repressed by the police. 
16.10.1968 - 29.10.1968 Protests of high school students throughout the country. At the Mamiani Gymnasium in Rome the students protest against authoritarianism. They receive the solidarity of university students.
26.10.1968 In Messina the police drive out occupants in four Faculties. The students occupy them immediately after.
05.11.1968 In Palermo there is a general strike of  high school students. Ten thousand students participate in a demonstration against authoritarianism and repression at school.
07.11.1968 Demonstrations of high school students in Bari, Palermo, Bologna and Prato.
08.11.1968 In Naples, there is a general strike against the wage-system based on the differentiated regional division of the national territory, so that the same work is compensated differently based on location. (Wages were normally lower in the South than in the North of Italy).
14.11.1968 Twelve million workers participate in a 24-hour general strike in support of demands of social reforms (retirement system). The students join the strike with their own demands for school reforms.
16.11.1968 New student demonstrations spread all over the country (Rome, Turin and Bologna) in support of academic reforms.
19.11.1968 General strike of workers in public sector. Eight thousand students demonstrate in Turin. Students from a technical high school want to take part but they are blocked by the police. Premier Minister Giovanni Leone's government resigns.
20.11.1968 Clashes between police and pro-Panagoulis demonstrators outside the Greek embassy in Rome.
02.12.1968 In Avola (near Syracuse) clashes occur between farm workers and police. Two farm-laborers are killed.
03.12.1968 General strike in Sicily as reaction to the events of Avola. Many spontaneous strikes in solidarity with the Sicilian workers are declared in all the country. The protestors claim that police should not have weapons during demonstrations.    High school student demonstrate outside the Colosseum in Rome. The unrest threatens government discussions and frightens politicians. Intense discussions to establish a new government take place.
09.12.1968 The UNURI – the official student representation's structure – declares its dissolution.  On the basis of the principle of participatory democracy, the movement has created other organization's forms.
10.12.1968 Students and workers in Genua demonstrate together following violent repression of a demonstration of high school students on December 7. 
27.12.1968  A Committee of students and sorkers demonstrate in Parma against the inauguration of the show season at the local Teatro Regio.
31.12.1968 In Pisa students organize a protest against the “bourgeois” guests of the  nightclub La Bussola on the Versilian coast. One student is killed during the clashes with the police.

1969

16.01.1968 The Education Minister Pierluigi Sullo recognizes the high school students’ right of assembly. 
24.01.1969 Demonstration in Rome against the situation in Czechoslovakia.
12.02.1969 Workers in strike to demand the abolition of the regional differences of the wage system.
09.03.1969 Demonstration in Rome against the dictatorship in Greece.
09.04.1969 In Battipaglia (near Salerno) a workers’ protest against the closing of a tobacco industry ends with the death of two persons.
11.04.1969 General strikes in Rome and Naples to protest against the violent repression methods of the police.
25.04.1969 Bombs are found at the Central station and by the Fiat exhibition's pavilion in Milan.
May, 1969 In Turin, after the decline of the Students and Workers League, a group of students interested in supporting the workers’ protests creates an “Assembly of students and workers” (Assemblea studenti e operai). They try to support a mass mobilization for a global protest, but the student movement is weak because they are increasingly divided in different currents.  
03.07.1969 In Turin, for weeks the workers' protests by Fiat have been led by groups external to the unions. The three unions Cgil, Cisl and Uil declare a strike against the increase in already-high rents. An autonomous demonstration of workers and students takes place parallel to that of the unions. Their slogan is, “What do we want? We want all!”  The demonstration is not authorized, and the police attack it. Protestors react with violence and seventy people are injured.
26.07.1969 - 27.07.1969 The “Assembly of students and workers” organizes the first national conference of the workers' vanguards in Turin. It is a meeting of radical political militants that does not represent the interaction between the students' and the workers' movements. The mobilization in the universities is over. Some protests and actions take still place, but the movement as a collective actor no longer exist. Many politically engaged students participate in the creation of radical groups like Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio in September and October.
08.09.1969 In Milan students and workers found a Political Metropolitan Group (Collettivo Politico Metropolitano or CPM) in order to drive social protest out of the schools and plants and transform it into a general global protest.
11.09.1969 Steel workers strike in Rome for the renewal of the work contract. The strike is declared by the main unions Cgil, Cisl and Uil.
12.09.1969 - 13.09.1969 National strike of the building workers.
15.10.1969 General strike in Milan.
19.10.1969 Fires used in protest against the slum area in Rome.
22.10.1969 The first armed city guerilla group established in Genoa and under the name,  “October-22 Group”.
29.10.1969 At Fiat-Mirafiori workers damage the canteen, destroy many cars and beat  workers who do not want to strike.
05.11.1969 Public transportation strike in Rome.
08.11.1969 Strike against raise in high rents in Rome.
19.11.1969 General strike in Milan against the housing problem. During the clashes between police and some protestors a policeman is killed.
December, 1969 - May, 1970 A group of lawyers and militants of the extra-parliamentarian Left institute a counter-inquiry about the events of Piazza Fontana. They focus on the relationship between neo-fascist organizations and part of the Italian Secret Services and judge the slaughter of December 1969 as the result of these kind of  connections. The inquiry is published in 1971 under the title La strage di Stato – The State Slaughter.
07.12.1969 A national labor contract for the workers of the chemical industry is signed. The agreement considers the reduction of the work week to forty hours, wage augmentations, and union rights in the plants.
11.12.1969 The Senate (the high chamber of the Parliament) passes a Workers Constitution (Statuto dei lavoratori), a law that guarantees basic rights to all the workers.
12.12.1969 Bomb explodes at the National Agricultural Bank in Milan. Sixteen people are killed and ninety are injured. Three additional bombs explode in Rome.
15.12.1969 The investigations regarding the bomb of Piazza Fontana focuses on the  anarchist circles. The young anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli falls from the window of the police headquarters in Milan during the interrogation.
17.12.1969 Public transportation strike in Milan and Rome.
21.12.1969 - 22.12.1969 Signature of the national contract of labor for the workers of the steel industry. Unions rights, wage augmentations independent from the qualification level and the 40-hour week are recognized.

1970

15.05.1970 The Senate passes the financial act for the institution of the regions.
20.10.1970 The Left radical magazine Sinistra proletaria announces that autonomous workers' groups like the Brigata rossa have been created and are prepared to pursue the fight against the state.
01.12.1970 The Parliament passes the divorce act.