When did Italy get unified? What was Italy like before the unification?

Native speaker’s answer
Rebecca
This is a bit of a complicated topic. Italian unification, also known as "Risorgimento," was a political and social movement in the 19th century that allowed different states of the Italian Peninsula to become a single state in 1861, the Kingdom of Italy. Before unification, it was extremely fragmented politically and had undergone invasion by the French under Napoleon in previous decades. Prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, it also fought against Austria in the Franco-Austrian War of 1859.