The GRB010222 optical and near-infrared (NIR) afterglow was monitored at the TNG and other Italian telescopes starting ~ 1 day after the high-energy prompt event. The BVR light curves, which are the best sampled, are continuously steepening and can be described by two power laws, f(t) ~ t-alpha , of indices alpha1 ~ 0.7 and alpha2 ~ 1.3 before and after a break occurring at about 0.5 days after the GRB start time, respectively. This model accounts well also for the flux in the U, I and J bands, which are less well monitored. The temporal break appears to be achromatic. The two K-band points are not consistent with the above behaviour, and rather suggest a constant trend. A low-resolution optical spectrum has also been taken with TNG. In the optical spectrum we found three absorption systems at different redshifts (0.927, 1.155 and 1.475), the highest of which represents a lower limit to, and probably coincides with, the redshift of the GRB. The broad-band optical spectral energy distributions do not appear to vary with time, consistently with the achromatic behaviour of the light curves. We compare our measurements with different afterglow evolution scenarios and we find that they favor a transition from relativistic to non-relativistic conditions in the shock propagation. Based on observations collected at: the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), operated on the island of La Palma by the Centro Galileo Galilei of the CNAA (Consorzio Nazionale per l'Astronomia e l'Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias; the Asiago Astronomical Observatory, Italy; the Bologna Astronomical Observatory in Loiano, Italy; the Campo Imperatore Astronomical Observatory, Italy, and TIRGO infrared observatory, Switzerland.