Approved by the Constituent Assembly on 22 December 1947 and promulgated by the provisional head of the State Enrico De Nicola the following 27 December, it was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 298, extraordinary edition, of the same day, and entered into force on 1 January 1948. It consists of 139 articles (even if articles 115, 124, 128, 129, 130 have been repealed) and 18 transitional and final provisions.

The Constitution of the Italian Republic is the fundamental law of the Italian State and occupies the top of the hierarchy of sources in the legal order of the Republic.

It is considered a written, rigid, long, voted, compromising, secular, democratic and programmatic constitution.

"If you want to go on pilgrimage to the place where our Constitution was born, go to the mountains where the partisans fell, to the prisons where they were imprisoned, to the fields where they were hanged. Wherever an Italian died to redeem freedom and dignity, go there, young people, with thought, because our Constitution was born there. "