Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest 1960
| Eurovision Song Contest 1960 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country |
 Italy | |||
| National selection | ||||
| Selection process | Sanremo Music Festival 1960 | |||
| Selected entrant | Renato Rascel | |||
| Selected song | "Romantica" | |||
| Finals performance | ||||
| Final result | 8th=, 5 points | |||
| Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest | ||||
| ||||
Italy was represented by Renato Rascel, with the song '"Romantica", at the 1960 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place on 29 March in London. Broadcaster RAI chose the winning song from the 1960 Sanremo Music Festival as their Eurovision entry: the song had been performed twice at Sanremo and Rascel was chosen over Tony Dallara as the performer.
"Romantica" was less successful internationally after the contest than the two previous Italian Eurovision entries, although a cover version by Dalida topped the French singles chart for a week.
At Eurovision
On the night of the final Rascel performed 12th in the running order, following Germany and preceding eventual contest winners France. Although there was no definite rule yet in place regarding length of song, European Broadcasting Union guidelines recommended that ideally songs should be no more than 3 minutes 30 seconds in duration. Italy (along with several other participants) seemed to have ignored the advice, as "Romantica" timed in at 4 minutes 20 seconds. At the close of the voting "Romantica" had received 5 points (2 from Monaco and 1 each from Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands), placing Italy joint 8th (with Switzerland) of the 13 entries.[1]