From Venice to Taormina, the G7 in Italy
Through the years, the G7 met in several Italian cities: Venice, Naples, Genoa, L’Aquila, and next year in Sicily.
The Sicilian town of Taormina will be the 5th Italian city to host the G7 since it was first formed in 1975 — then called G6 as Canada officially joined the following year, in 1976.
The first time the G7 leaders met in Italy was in 1980 for the 6th G7 summit, the first chaired by the Italian government. They met again in Venice in 1987 for the 13th summit.
After two summits in Venice, in 1994 the 20th G7 took place in Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Genoa, in the Liguria region, followed in 2001 for the 27th meeting of the then-G8. The Genoa summit, in fact, also included Russia, which became an official full member in 1998 — Russia’s membership however was cancelled in 2014 under the Crimea crisis.
In 2009, the Italian government organized the 35th summit of the then-G8 in the city of L’Aquila. The meeting was originally planned in La Maddalena, Sardinia, but moved to L’Aquila to show support to the city and the region after the terrible earthquake that hit the area on April 6, 2009.
The G8 in l’Aquila was the first summit attended by US President Barack Obama who assumed office earlier that year, on January 20, 2009.
As announced earlier this month by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the 43rd summit of the G7, will take place in Taormina, Sicily, on May 26–27, 2017.
For more on Taormina and our dispatches about the Italian presidency of the G7 in 2017, follow our G7inUS publication here on Medium and Medium Italiano, or follow us on Twitter. For the official channel of the G7 presidency in 2017, follow @G7Italy2017 on Twitter and use hashtag #G7Italy2017.
