The book presents a summary of the more than seventy years of the history of the Republic in the light of the essential points of a path marked by the formation of a national, democratic and participatory community, with rights and duties recognized and recognizable in the 1948 Constitution. Pages crossed by interactions between the internal framework and the international dimension: from the decline of the fascism to the cold war, from the European construction to the Atlantic choice, from social movements to the global challenges of our time. The relationship between the Italian political system and the compatibility of the constantly changing world is analyzed starting from the dialectics between continuity and rupture, tradition and innovation. Responsabile Andrea Marino