According to wikipedia;
The most common recent design is a
rainbow flag representing peace, first used in
Italy at a
peace march in 1961. The flag was inspired by similar multi-coloured flags used in demonstrations against
nuclear weapons. A previous version had featured a dove drawn by
Pablo Picasso.
[13]
The most common variety has seven colours—
purple,
blue,
azure,
green,
yellow,
orange, and
red—and is emblazoned in bold with the
Italian word
PACE, meaning "peace".
It became popular with the
Pace da tutti i balconi ("peace from every balcony") campaign in 2002, started as a protest against the impending
invasion of Iraq. At that time its use was met with criticism from the Italian LGBT community for being too similar to the LGBT six-color
gay pride flag (which was originally created in San Francisco California in 1979) and had started being used regularly in Italy a couple of years earlier during the 2000 inaugural
WorldPride celebration in Rome.
[14] The flag was flown from balconies in all Italian
cities by citizens against the war. Its use spread to other countries too, and the Italian
Pace was sometimes, but not everywhere, replaced with the corresponding translation in the local languages.
According to
Amnesty International, producer Franco Belsito had produced about 1,000 flags per year for 18 years, and suddenly had to cope with a demand in the range of the millions.
[15]
Common variations include moving the purple stripe down below the azure one, and adding a white stripe on top.
The seven-color peace flag is not to be confused with the similar six-color gay pride flag, which does not have
azure, and has the colors in the opposite order with red at the top.
