>I'm from Italy and here we are taught a linear history shooting like a bullet from the Romans to Renaissance (mostly glossing over the Middle Ages), and that has important political consequences in what it means to identify as an Italian.
As a Frenchman I have always found Italians identifying so strongly to Romans a bit creepy. I've had very heated conversations with people who wouldn't balk from the notion that « they » had conquered Europe at a time « we » lived in trees (notwithstanding Gaul having cities upwards of 40k inhabitants). Italy hasn't been Roman for much longer than Spain or Gaul and the entire peninsula nearly had a civilization « hard reset » with the utter ravage of the Gothic wars and Justinian's plague.
Things might have been simpler if we had kept the medieval demonym and referred to Italians as « Lombards ».