Teaching history, educating to memory. June 2, 1946. The Republic of the italian women and men arises. Insegnare la storia, educare alla memoria. 2 giugno 1946. Nasce la repubblica delle donne e degli uomini d’Italia

70 years ago, on the 2nd of June 1946, the Italian Republic raised with an institutional referendum. Moreover, a constituent assembly was elected to write the Constitution of a new democratic and social State, not more mono-gender and mono-class. The Constitution was approved on the December 1947 and became law on the 1st of January 1948, after an intense but collaborative debate between the antifascists parties. Keeping in consideration the recent facts of the referendum of the 4th December 2016 on the constitutional reform, occurred in a climate of contrast, the author examines the extraordinary participation of the italian men and women, for the first time called to vote, after the epochal tragedy of the second world war. The author makes also an in-depth reconstruction of the modern and advanced contents of the Constitution, which establishes the copresence and the interrelation among civil, politic and social rights. The figure of the historian avoids the stereotypes and the general interpretative categories, for the inescapable analysis of differences and contexts. However, in order to understand the present of the past, it should be useful to return to the foundative moment of our democratic institutions.