Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When did Sardinia become part of Italy?
In the Early Middle Ages, through barbarian movements, the waning of the Byzantine Empire influence in the western Mediterranean and the Saracen raids, the island fell out of the sphere of influence of any higher government. This led to the birth of four kingdoms called Judicates (Latin: Judicati; Sardinian: Judicados) in the 8th through 10th centuries. Falling under papal influence, Sardinia became the focus of the rivalry of Genoa and Pisa, the Judicates and the Crown of Aragon, which eventually subsumed the island as the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1324. The Kingdom was to last until 1718, when it was ceded to the Piedmontese House of Savoy; later, in 1861, it would thus become the Kingdom of Italy and finally in 1946 the Italian Republic.
The 90th Light Infantry Division was a light infantry division of the German Army during World War II that served in North Africa as well as Sardinia and Italy. The division played a major role in most of the actions against the British Eighth Army in the Western Desert Campaign and eventually surrendered to the Allies in the final stages of the Tunisia Campaign in May 1943. It was re-constituted later in 1943 and deployed to Sardinia and when the expected Allied invasion of Sardinia failed to materialise, the division was moved to Italy. It was engaged in actions against the Allies in Italy from 1943 to September 1944 when the division was listed as "destroyed" south of Bologna.
At the end of the 18th century, Italy was almost in the same political conditions as in the 16th century; the main differences were that Austria had replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power after the War of Spanish Succession (and that too was not true with regards to Naples and Sicily), and that the dukes of Savoy (a mountainous region between Italy and France) had become kings of Sardinia by increasing their Italian possessions, which now included Sardinia and the north-western region of Piedmont.
Torralba () is a town and "comune" in Sardinia, Italy, administratively part of the province of Sassari.
From 1700 to 1720, the Kingdom of Sardinia, as a part of the Spanish empire, was disputed between two dynasties, the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. With the death of Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, on 1 November 1700, the throne passed to Duke Philip of Anjou (Philip V), although the Emperor Leopold I also had a claim. Leopold was especially desirous of obtaining the Spanish inheritance in the Southern Netherlands and in Italy, which included Sardinia. With the failure of France to abide by the Second Partition Treaty, the other European powers lined up on the side of the Habsburgs. The Treaty of the Hague (7 September 1701) allotted to the Emperor the Spanish possessions in Italy. Imperial troops invaded Italy to seize them, and the War of the Spanish Succession began.
In Sardinia, the "Associazione no-profit Sardegna Canton Marittimo" was formed in April 2014 with the aim of advocating Sardinia's secession from Italy and becoming a "maritime canton" of Switzerland.
In 1507 Monghidoro was annexed to the Papal States, following the fortunes of Bologna and its territories. 
The Olivetan Order of Benedictin monks (Olivetans) began building a monastery in the village centre in 1528. 
In 1796, with the arrival of Napoleon in Italy, the comune became part of the Cispadane Republic until 1815, when the Congress of Vienna decided to return the territory to Bologna and the Papal States. 
From about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, Monghidoro was a mandatory stop-over to rest horses and carriage drivers of the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent on the Grand Tour of Italy on their way to Florence and Rome. 
In 1860 Monghidoro was officially annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia becoming Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
During the period when Freemasonry was first established in Italy, Savoy and Piedmont were part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1749 in Chambery, a lodge was founded on the basis of a license from the provincial grand master for Savoy and Piedmont issued by the Grand Lodge of London in 1739 to the Marquis de Bellegarde François Noyel. In 1752, the same lodge took the name of the Mother Grand Lodge, with the power to create other lodges in all the territories of the Kingdom of Sardinia and, in fact, in 1765 three of them were created, including one in Turin. The latter assumed such importance as to be accorded, in 1773, autonomy from the Grand Lodge at Chambery. In Piedmont, a lodge was also present in Novi Ligure. After French domination, the regions were handed back to Sardinia in 1814, and Freemasonry repressed.
Southern Italy is generally thought to comprise the administrative regions of Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Molise, Sicily, and usually Sardinia. Some also include the southernmost and easternmost parts of Lazio (the Sora, Cassino, Gaeta, Cittaducale, Formia, and Amatrice districts) within the "Mezzogiorno", since they were once part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and southern Italian lects are spoken. The island of Sardinia, although being culturally, linguistically and historically less related to the aforementioned regions than any of them is to each other, is frequently included as Southern Italy or "Mezzogiorno", often for statistical and economical purposes.
Alghero (), also known as L'Alguer (; ; ), is a town of about 44,000 inhabitants in the Italian insular province of Sassari in northwestern Sardinia, next to the Mediterranean Sea. Part of its population descends from Catalan conquerors from the end of the Middle Ages, when Sardinia was part of the Crown of Aragon. Hence, the Catalan language is co-official (a unique situation in Italy) and known as the Alguerès dialect. The name Alghero comes from "Aleguerium", which is a mediaeval Latin word meaning 'stagnation of algae' ("Posidonia oceanica") .
To the west of Italy, the Fascists claimed that the territories of Corsica, Nice and Savoy held by France were Italian lands. During the period of Italian unification in 1860 to 1861, Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, who was leading the unification effort, faced opposition from French Emperor Napoleon III who indicated that France would oppose Italian unification unless France was given Nice and Savoy that were held by Piedmont Sardinia, as France did not want a powerful state having control of all the passages of the Alps. As a result, Piedmont-Sardinia was pressured to concede Nice and Savoy to France in exchange for France accepting the unification of Italy. The Fascist regime produced literature on Corsica that presented evidence of the "italianità" (Italianness) of the island. The Fascist regime produced literature on Nice that justified that Nice was an Italian land based on historic, ethnic and linguistic grounds. The Fascists quoted Medieval Italian scholar Petrarch who said: "The border of Italy is the Var; consequently Nice is a part of Italy". The Fascists quoted Italian national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi who said: "Corsica and Nice must not belong to France; there will come the day when an Italy mindful of its true worth will reclaim its provinces now so shamefully languishing under foreign domination". Mussolini initially pursued promoting annexation of Corsica through political and diplomatic means, believing that Corsica could be annexed to Italy through first encouraging the existing autonomist tendencies in Corsica and then independence of Corsica from France, that would be followed by annexation of Corsica into Italy.
Corsican mint is native to Corsica, Sardinia, France and Italy. It has become naturalised in other parts of the world and is regarded as an invasive species in south eastern United States.
Genoa had been an independent republic for many years, and when Napoleon became Emperor and King of Italy in 1800, it became part of the French Empire. When Napoleon was defeated in 1814, it became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. At that time Genoa was the most important port and trading center in Italy.
At the end of the 18th century, Italy was almost in the same political conditions as in the 16th century; the main differences were that Austria had replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power after the War of Spanish Succession (and that too was not true with regards to Naples and Sicily), and that the dukes of Savoy (a mountainous region between Italy and France) had become kings of Sardinia by increasing their Italian possessions, which now included Sardinia and the north-western region of Piedmont.
The French Revolutionary Wars began in April 1792 when the Austrian Empire and Kingdom of Prussia declared war on the newly instituted French Republic. Although the Kingdom of Sardinia, split between Piedmont in Northern Italy and the large Mediterranean island of Sardinia, was not part of this coalition, it was identified as a primary target of French military operations. The island of Sardinia was agriculturally rich and strategically important in the Mediterranean, and it was felt in France that its capture would intimidate the mainland part of the Kingdom and the other nations of the Italian peninsula, and spread republicanism beyond the borders of France. Moreover, a successful attack on the island was thought to be easily achievable, and orders were given for an expeditionary force to assemble at Toulon, the principal French Mediterranean naval base.
The HVDC Italy–Corsica–Sardinia (also called SACOI; Sardinia–Corsica–Italy) is an HVDC interconnection used for the exchange of electric energy between the Italian mainland, Corsica and Sardinia. It is unusual, having more than two converter stations as part of a single HVDC system, and (as of 2012) is one of only two "Multi-terminal" HVDC systems in operation in the world (the other multi-terminal scheme being the Quebec – New England Transmission system linking northeastern United States with Quebec in Canada). 
Sanluri (, ) is a comune in Sardinia, Italy. It became part of the Province of South Sardinia, following the creation of that local unit in 2016. The territory of Sanluri comprises an area of .
In 1847, a segment of the Sardinian elites from Cagliari and Sassari, guided by the unionist Giovanni Siotto Pintor, demanded the so-called Perfect Fusion, aimed at getting the liberal reforms Sardinia could not have because of its separate legal system. A minority of Sardinian deputies, like Federico Fenu and the federalist Giovanni Battista Tuveri, strongly protested against the merging and warned against the situation Sardinia could potentially find itself in. In the end, the king Charles Albert agreed to the request; however, he also dissolved what political bodies remained that could exert a modicum of control on the king's decisions over the island. Moreover, the later enlargement moves in the Mainland on the Savoyards' part further aggravated the island's peripheral condition: Sardinia would end up being an even less significant overseas departement of the Savoyard domains, whose centre of political power had always been in the Italian peninsula. The episode would lead Pintor himself to regret having made that proposal ("Errammo tutti", "we all made a mistake"), and would raise the "Sardinian Question" ("Questione Sarda") from then on, a broad term used to cover a wide variety of issues regarding the difficult relationship between Sardinia and the mainland. The Savoyard kings then proceeded to expand their domains through the Unification of Italy: Sardinia, being already part of the Piedmontese Kingdom from the very beginning, automatically joined the new polity, that changed its name to become the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
In December 1859, the Grand Duchy effectively ceased to exist, being joined to the Duchies of Modena and Parma to form the United Provinces of Central Italy, which were annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia a few months later. On 22 March 1860, after a referendum that voted overwhelmingly (95%) in favour of a union with Sardinia; Tuscany was formally annexed to Sardinia. Italy was unified in 1870, when the remains of the Papal States were annexed in that September, deposing Pope Pius IX.
On 17 March 1861, law no. 4671 of the Sardinian Parliament proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy, so ratifying the annexations of all other Apennine states, plus Sicily, to the Kingdom of Sardinia. The institutions and laws of the Kingdom were quickly extended to all of Italy, abolishing the administrations of the other regions. Piedmont became the most dominant and wealthiest region in Italy and the capital of Piedmont, Turin, remained the Italian capital until 1865, when the capital was moved to Florence. But many revolts exploded throughout the peninsula, especially in southern Italy, and on the island of Sicily, because of the perceived unfair treatment of the south by the Piedmontese ruling class. The House of Savoy ruled Italy until 1946 when Italy was declared a republic by referendum. In this referendum the southern regions, including Sardinia, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the House of Savoy, with the results being 63.8% in favor of maintaining the monarchy.
Villacidro (Sardinian: Biddacidru or Bidda de Cidru) is a town and "comune" in the province of South Sardinia, Sardinia, Italy. In 2005 it has been the administrative seat of the province 'Medio Campidano', together with Sanluri. Since 2016 it is part of the province of South Sardinia ('provincia Sud Sardegna').
In March 1860, Cavour became the Kingdom of Sardinia's naval minister. He assumed this role at a time when Sardinia was rapidly expanding into Northern and Central Italy. Earlier that month, plebiscites in Tuscany, Modena and Reggio, Parma, and Romagna produced overwhelming majorities in favor of annexation by Sardinia. This expansion of Sardinia likewise resulted in the growth of the kingdom's navy. In April, Cavour oversaw the incorporation of Tuscany's small fleet into the Sardinian Navy. Immediately after the Tuscan fleet had been integrated into the Sardinian Navy, Cavour placed an order with the Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée to construct two armored warships in Toulon. These two ships would become the "Formidabile" class, the first ironclads to serve in the Italian Peninsula. While foreign powers such as Austria watched the growth of Sardinia and the expansion of its army closely, the consolidation of the Sardinian Navy after the incorporation of multiple states across the Italian Peninsula received far less attention. This allowed Cavour to continue his work incorporating the various fleets Sardinia inherited as more and more Italian states joined the growing kingdom.
In the summer of 533 Vandal forces (5000 men and 120 ships), led by Tzazo, arrived in Sardinia to stifle the Godas' rebellion and conquered Caralis, killing Godas and his followers .[28] In the early 534 the Vandals of Sardinia surrendered immediately to the Byzantines when faced with news of the Vandal collapse in Africa;[29] thenceforth the island was part of the Byzantine Empire, included as a province in the Praetorian prefecture of Africa. The local governor sat in Caralis. During the Gothic Wars much of the island fell easily to the Ostrogoths, but the final fall of the Germanic resistance in mainland Italy reassured Byzantine control.[30] Sardinia was subsequently included in the Exarchate of Africa until its end by the Arabs in 698 AD when the island was likely aggregated to the Exarchate of Ravenna.[31] In 599 and during the 7th century the Longobard fleet tried to assault Caralis and Turris Libissonis (Porto Torres) but in vain.[32]
The Kingdom of Italy () was a state which existed from 1861—when King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy—until 1946—when a constitutional referendum led civil discontent to abandon the monarchy and form the modern Italian Republic. The state was founded as a result of the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which can be considered its legal predecessor state.
The administration of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, as well as the Duchy of Milan, was then run by the Council of Italy, while Sardinia kept being an integral part of the Council of Aragon until the first years of the XVIII° century, when it was ceded to Austria and eventually Savoy.