The 'maturità' final high-school exams got under way for around 527,747 Italian students on Wednesday with the Italian test.
    The students have to write an essay choosing from one of seven questions.
    This year's questions included one inviting a reflection on Italian writer Cesare Pavese and unrequited love and another about Mario Calabresi's book 'Alzarsi all'Alba' (Get up at Dawn) and the importance of hard work.
    Another option was a question about the need for borders based on a text by Hungarian-Canadian academic Frank Furedi.
    Students also have the opportunity to write about former Italian president Giuseppe Saragat's speech to the Italian Constituent Assembly, which was tasked with writing a constitution for the Italian Republic after the vote to abolish the monarchy in the 1946 Italian institutional referendum.
    Novelist and poet Vitaliano Brancati's work 'I Piaceri' and an essay on the art of communicating science were also on the paper.

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