1.

2 History

Italy is spoiled for history of the kind

you can walk amongst, the sort relived

through architecture, paintings or even

old sewerage systems. More recent

history, from the years of Fascism to the

Years of Lead, can be harder to unearth

yet equally relevant to Italian culture.

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 1.2.1 Did you know we used to rule the world?
Ancient Italy
The iceman cometh,
eventually
Europe’s oldest human
mummy was found
in the Italian Alps.
Ötzi (because he was
discovered in the
Ötztal region) poked his
leathery physique out
from a glacier in 1991
after 53 centuries of
hibernation. Analysis
of the body showed
that Ötzi died, aged 45,
from an arrow strike
to the shoulder about
eight hours after he
finished a last meal of
red deer. It also revealed
59 small tattoos on his
back, knees and ankle,
possibly related to some
form of acupunctural
treatment. Perhaps in
tribute, actor Brad Pitt
appears to have a tattoo
of Ötzi on his own arm.
1. Identity: the 2. Literature
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Key dates
Tenth to fifth century BC The Etruscans and Magna Graecia dominate the Italian
peninsula.
753BC Romulus (allegedly) founds Rome, becoming its first king.
510BC to 27BC The Roman Republic rises to dominate Italy and the Mediterranean.
44BC Gaius Julius Caesar, ‘dictator for life’, is killed.
27BC Augustus (né Octavian) becomes the first de facto Emperor of Rome.
Early second century The territory and powers of the Roman Empire reach their
apogee.
324 Constantine adopts Christianity as the official state religion.
476 German general Odoacer declares himself king of Italy as the Empire falls apart.
568 The Lombards swarm into Italy. Some refugees find safety across a lagoon,
where they establish Venice.
It began, as these things usually do, with rocks
Palaeolithic and Neolithic settlers in Italy left behind
the usual array of Stone Age graffiti when the last ice
age retreated. In the Valle Camonica, Lombardy, they
excelled themselves; the Camunni etched over 140,000
petroglyphs into the rock 8,000 years ago. Alongside the
staple hunter-gatherer scenes, they also left cosmological
and ritual images, and scenes of bestiality. Bronze Age
tribes arrived on the peninsula from all directions 4,000
years later and deposited more than artwork and piles of
stone (at their best in the nuraghe buildings of Sardinia):
the Ligures (Liguria), Veneti (Veneto), Latins (Lazio),
Sards (Sardinia), Umbrii (Umbria) and their like also began
shaping the Italian regions.
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 Tuscans from Turks
Temples and tombs: the heady days of Etruria and
Magna Graecia Recent DNA testing
confirmed the assertion
By the seventh century BC, two cultures had pushed their
by fifth century BC Greek
way to the top. Greek trading posts and colonies gathered historian Herodotus that
in the south forming Magna Graecia, or ‘Greater Greece’. the Etruscan civilisation
To the north, from a powerbase between the Arno found its way to Italy
and Tiber rivers, the enigmatic, iron-mining Etruscans across the sea from
Turkey. The scientists
controlled trade and tribes as far north as the Alps.
made the connection
Both cultures were governed by powerful city states. by testing the DNA of
modern Tuscans from
Magna Graecia had Taras (now Taranto) on the mainland and
old Etruscan towns.
Syracuse on Sicily, the rich trading centres whose profits
built the chunky, stately temples that survive in southern
Italy 2,500 years on. Cities in Etruria (as Etruscan territory I saw it in a goat’s
was named), such as Tarquinii (now Tarquinia in Lazio), kidneys…your Sharon’s
with their kings and ruling noble magistrates, were relatively having a boy
self-contained, although they did trade (and sometimes war) It seems the Etruscans
had a fairly formalised
with each other and with foreign states. Very little of the
code of religion based
Etruscan cities survives today. What does remain suggests on divination. Lightning,
they threw a good wake – murals depict dancing, feasting flying birds, the entrails
and games at funerals. The arrangement of Etruscan tombs of freshly killed animals
and the primacy they gave to the female ancestral line also – all were studied for
clues on what the future
suggest a pioneering equality between the sexes. Alas, for
might hold.
Greeks and Etruscans alike, the good times couldn’t last.
War with northern tribes and mainland Greeks weakened
the Etruscans while Magna Graecia was damaged by
infighting. By the fourth century BC, both were being
shoved around by Italy’s rising city star, Rome.

Republican Rome: let the good times roll… for some

So, wrote historian Livy, the twins Romulus and
Remus were sired by Mars, abandoned next to
the Tiber and then suckled by a she wolf. And one,
Romulus, grew up to found Rome in 753BC, killing
his brother along the way. A good story, and perhaps only
fanciful in parts: the lineage of Rome’s Etruscan kings
may have descended from a certain Romulus. That
lineage came to an abrupt end in 509BC when power
was handed to two elected Latin consuls, advised by
the old senate, and the Roman Republic was born.

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Roman birthday
Rome still celebrates
the purported date
of its founding, 21
April. Museums and
archaeological sites let
people in free of charge,
mock gladiatorial battles
are held and locals throw
on a tunic or maybe even
a toga to process through
the streets.
Courtship, Roman style
One event in Rome’s
early history has proved
particularly emotive for
artists ever since. In
the eighth century BC,
women of the Sabine
tribe were snatched by
Roman men after being
invited to Rome for a
festival in Neptune’s
honour. Apparently
there was a shortage
of childbearing women
in the city. As Livy tells
it, after the initial grab,
the women were won
over by the romantic
entreaties of the men.
The ‘Rape of the Sabine
Women’ (with rape
usually interpreted
as kidnap rather than
sexual assault) has been
depicted by countless
artists, from Renaissance
sculptor Giambologna
to the French Classical
painter Nicolas Poussin
and Cubist maestro Pablo
Picasso.
1. Identity: the 2. Literature
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Rome, wedged in relative obscurity between the old
realms of the Etruscans and the Latins, grew rapidly
in strength. By the early fourth century BC it was
mopping up rivals, the remnant tribes around central
and northern Italy, defeating, absorbing and taxing the
Etruscans (Tuscany), Volscians (southern Lazio) and
Samnites (southern Apennines). Magna Graecia folded
next, speeded by the acquisition of Sicily by Rome in
the First Punic War. Victory over Celts in the Po Valley
brought virtually all of Italy under Roman rule circa
200BC. Macedonia, Corinth, bits of Asia Minor, Spain
and Africa were added to the portfolio soon after. The
conquered lands helped nourish a new Roman aristocracy
(drawn from both patrician (noble) and wealthy plebeian
(common) ranks) that indulged in slaves, hedonism and
large country estates. Impoverished Italian farmers gave
up their land (which was recycled into those country
estates), unable to compete with cheap foreign grain
imports, and, with nowhere else to go, flooded from
the land into Rome and its insulae (apartment blocks),
expanding the plebeian ranks and creating the biggest city
in Europe.
Life in the Roman Empire
While Rome’s far-flung territories grew, trouble brewed
at home. The aristocracy entered moral meltdown
and the growing, poor multitude took umbrage at the
nobility’s excesses. A string of political figures tried to
assuage their annoyance and were assassinated, before
a military general, Sulla, established himself as dictator
and crushed any popular resistance to the oligarchy in
83BC. The ‘people’ were avenged, mildly, by the arrival
of Gaius Julius Caesar, a reforming consul who initially
shared power in a triumvirate but ultimately, after military
successes in Gaul and the defeat of his rival, General
Pompey, became sole governor. Caesar’s job spec is
usually headed ‘dictator for life’, but it’s somewhat
misrepresentative: he brought welcome reform to Rome,
bolstering the economy and cleaning up the aristocracy.
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 Caesar made enemies with his new broom and was The Punic Wars
murdered by Brutus, Cassius and friends on the Ides of The Punic Wars of
March, 44BC. Civil wars followed as various pretenders Rome’s republican era
vied for control of the Empire. The power struggle were pitched against
Carthage (Punic means
ended in 31BC when Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian ‘of Carthage’), a North
(confusingly, adopted as a son by Caesar) defeated consul African city that
Mark Antony, who then famously committed suicide dominated trade in the
with his Egyptian queen, Cleopatra. Octavian took the Mediterranean:
title of Augustus, as offered by the now servile senate, First Punic War (264-
became effective emperor and established the lineage 241BC). Rome wins its
of rulers that presided over the Empire, and got through first foreign territory,
Sicily, and becomes
several imperial dynasties, until its stuttering demise five
established as a
centuries later. maritime power.
In the early second century the Empire reached its Second Punic War
height. Territories that stretched from northern Britain, (218-201BC). Having
encircled the Mediterranean on all sides and spread lost naval supremacy,
Carthage sends General
east to Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) fed Rome with
Hannibal up through
fiscal revenue, food, precious metals, slaves and cultural Spain and over the Alps
diversity. While Rome remained imperial master, as to the gates of Rome.
the centuries passed its territories became more like a His defeat transfers
rainbow collective than brutalised dominions (unless you control of the western
Med from Carthage to
were a slave of course), urged to adopt the mechanics
Rome.
of the Roman state but allowed to retain an indigenous
cultural identity. Third Punic War
(149-146BC). Rome
finishes the job with the
The good, the bad and the homicidal:
complete destruction of
five Roman emperors
Carthage.
Caligula (ruled 37-41AD). If Suetonius’ (probably biased)
biography is to be believed, Emperor Caligula was wildly
popular for the first six months, giving out tax rebates
and the like, but ruined it all by becoming a rotten tyrant
who murdered family members, slept with his sisters and
watched people being tortured or beheaded whilst he ate
dinner. Some now think mental illness pushed him off
the rails. Caligula was killed, aged 28, after less than four
years as emperor.

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Good times bard times
Augustus’ relatively
stable, long reign as
Rome’s first emperor
ushered in a ‘Golden
Age’ of culture in the
first century BC. Wealthy
patrons funded artists
and writers, with
Maecenas, Augustus’
trusted adviser, doing
most to promote the
new talent that glorified
the achievements of
Rome. The poets Virgil,
Horace and Ovid all
wrote heroic stuff,
inspired, like so much
Roman culture, by
lessons learned from
the Greeks. The Golden
Age extended beyond
the bounds of culture; it
was a period of financial
stability, of legal and
social reform and the
Pax Romana, a relative
peace throughout the
Empire. A Silver Age
followed Augustus’ rule,
a less original affair in
both title and deed than
its Golden forebear (see
section 2.1.2 for more
on the Golden and Silver
Ages).
1. Identity: the 2. Literature
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Nero (54-68). Rome’s fifth emperor stepped into the role
aged 17. Five years in, after a generous, tolerant start,
he murdered his mother. He also killed his first wife,
may have killed his pregnant mistress, took an interest in
religious sects, was laughed at for acting on stage and,
contrary to the legend, didn’t fiddle while Rome burned
(he actually helped rebuild it). When a coup forced him
out he committed suicide; four different emperors ruled
in the subsequent year of chaos.
Vespasian (69-79).
An ordinary boy-
done-good (his dad
was a tax collector),
Vespasian won his
imperial title through
military skill. Once in
charge, he stabilised
chaotic frontiers
and public coffers,
put Judaea and the
German Batavian tribe
in their place and
built the Colosseum
(then named the
Amphitheatrum
Flavium in honour

of the dynasty he
established).
Hadrian (117-138). Hadrian, a respected poet, acquired a
fondness for the arts while serving in the army in Greece,
and when the same army proclaimed him emperor he
put up some fine buildings (including a rebuilt Pantheon
in Rome and the villa at Tivoli). He reined in the Empire’s
undisciplined expansion, secured its borders (with a
famous wall in Britain) and displayed tolerance if not
affection for his subjects. Always keen to try a new look,
he made beards the big thing in second century Rome.
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 Diocletian (284-305). By the time former soldier Celebrating Caesar
Diocletian became emperor, Rome wasn’t the force Modern day Romans
it was. Battered on all sides by angry tribes, he did, retain a fondness
however, shore it up for a few years, splitting the for Caesar. They lay
wreaths at the feet of
Empire into East and West, ruled by emperors in Milan his statue beside the
and Nicomedia (now Izmit, Turkey). Diocletian is also Via dei Fori Imperiali in
remembered for being beastly (as in burned, decapitated Rome each year on 15
and even slowly boiled) to the Christians, and for being March, and flowers on
the first emperor to voluntarily ‘retire’. the site in the Roman
Forum where his body
was cremated, now just
All good things… a muddy pile of rocks.
After Diocletian, the victimised Christians didn’t have to
wait long for salvation. In 324 his successor, Constantine,
ditched traditional Roman polytheism and adopted What have the Romans
Christianity as the state religion. He also, briefly, patched ever done for us?
the Empire’s two halves (East and West) back into Perhaps the Roman
Empire’s greatest
a single entity before moving the hub from Rome to
legacy, “apart from the
Byzantium on the Bosphorus, or Constantinopolis as he sanitation, medicine,
modestly renamed it. However, the formal East/West education, wine, public
division soon returned and the Italian half of the Empire order, irrigation, roads,
withered over the next century, eaten away from the the fresh water system
and public health” (to
north by Barbarian attacks and from within by infighting, a
quote Reg in Monty
bloated bureaucracy and overstretched resources. As rival Python’s Life of Brian),
factions fought for control, civil war became common, was the Catholic Church.
reducing the ability to fend off external attacks. Constantine’s adopted
religion ensured the
Talent and money ebbed from Rome (often moving survival of Latin and
north, contriving the north/south split that remains in Italy maintained Rome’s role
today) and the once grand city became marginalised and as a cultural centre well
beyond Italy.
weedy. With the army now stocked by foreign recruits,
‘barbarians’ included, their loyalty to Rome wasn’t a
given. When Germanic general Odoacer invaded and
declared himself king of Italy in 476, the Western Empire
was effectively over. Justinian, ruler of the Eastern
Empire that sustained in one form or another for a
thousand years, briefly reclaimed the Italian peninsula in
536 but the Germanic tribes (weirdly, now more ‘Italian’
than the Roman ‘invaders’) soon regained control, led by
the Lombards.

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 1.2.2 From the Dark Ages into the light

Key dates The rise of the popes

754 Frankish king, Pepin
the Short, marches in
and helps to establish
the Papal States.
800 Charlemagne is
crowned Holy Roman
Emperor by Pope Leo III.
877 Saracens begin
the slow process of
conquering and culturing
Sicily.
c.1080 The first comuni,
town or city states,
emerge as a political
force.
1130 Norman ruler
Roger II unites southern
Italy as the Kingdom of
Sicily.
1309 The papacy
relocates to Avignon,
France, where it remains
for 67 years.
1334 Artist Giotto is
made director of public
works in Florence;
the Renaissance is
underway.
1348 Plague wipes out
as much as half of the
population.
1512 Michelangelo
finishes work on the
Sistine Chapel ceiling.
1542 Pope Paul III
speeds the Counter-
Reformation,
establishing the
Inquisition in Rome.
1714 Habsburgs,
Savoyards and Bourbons
all eye up Italian
possessions in the Peace
of Utrecht.
An array of small states evolved from Italy’s fractured
Western Roman Empire, emerging and receding in a
Dark Ages merry-go-round of alliances and disputes.
Throughout, the papacy grew in strength. Pope Gregory
and his considerable personal wealth beefed the Church
up with land in the late sixth century, before Europe’s
rising superpower, the Franks (yes, of France), started
doing deals with the papacy in the eighth century,
offering land and conquered pagan souls in return for
Catholic sponsorship and a role in government.
Officially, Rome was still under the authority of Byzantium,
but when Pope Stephen II rummaged around behind the
sofa in the mid eighth century and found the Donatio
Constantini, the situation changed. The document,
apparently written 400 years earlier by Constantine (but
now assumed a forgery), appeared to transfer power over
Rome and the Western Empire to the pope. Stephen
then asked for Frankish help in clearing Lombard and
Byzantine influence from Rome and its surrounds, a
mission accomplished by King Charlemagne in 774. It all
contributed to the establishment of the Papal States, ruled
temporally by popes
with the assistance of
the Carolingians (the
line of Frankish kings).
On Christmas Day
800, Charlemagne,
king of a sizeable
Carolingian territory,
was crowned Holy
Roman Emperor by
Pope Leo III.

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 Halcyon days for the Muslim south The first pope
While the papacy and the Franks got their teeth into St Peter, the first Bishop
northern Italy in the Middle Ages (only Venice escaped of Rome (which is what
the pope is), in the job
with relative autonomy), the post-Roman south stayed
for 30 years in the first
more loyal to old masters. Calabria and Puglia remained century AD, was actually
loosely in Byzantine and Greek hands while other regions, called Simon before
notably Benevento, a mountainside duchy inland from Jesus renamed him.
Naples, were kept by the Lombards. Kings, dukes and ‘Peter’ means stone,
apparently emblematic
lords in the south paid nominal homage to Carolingian
of the rock on which he
kings but effectively did their own thing. Throughout, the established the Church.
culturally capable Saracens (some Arab, some Berber) Nero supposedly had
of North Africa and Iberia attacked southern cities, even Peter crucified upside
looting Rome in 746. On Sicily they put down roots, down, a scene rendered
by Caravaggio in 1601.
capturing all the main towns by 877 and establishing a
cultural milieu that outstripped anything on the mainland.
They brought learning, a degree of tolerance (Christianity It’s a dirty job…but
was permitted, although its followers were heavily taxed), someone’s got to do it
irrigation and big bags of oranges. Popes used to be
allowed to marry. The
Crusades, Normans and the rise of the comuni last Vicar of Christ with
Charlemagne’s empire crumbled rapidly in his a bride was Adrian, who
died in 872. Some also,
descendants’ hands and, by the late ninth century,
notoriously, fathered
northern and central Italy was a squabbling seigniorial children by the dozen.
mess. Local lords were at the mercy of the northern Perhaps the most
Europeans who fought for control of the peninsula and famously scurrilous,
the coveted Holy Roman Emperor title. In 936 Otto, a Alexander VI, pontiff
from 1492, was accused
Frank, finally won out, but the bloodline didn’t last long.
of incest with his
The papacy was similarly contested and weakened, pulled illegitimate daughter,
this way and that by noble families hoping to gain control. Lucrezia Borgia.
However, in the late 11th century, Pope Gregory VII rebuilt
papal power and demanded that he, not the emperors,
had the power to appoint Church personnel – this, the
so-called Investiture Controversy ended with humbling
defeat for the Emperor in the 1122 Concordat of Worms.

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Sicily ahead of the
learning game
The importance attached
to education by the
medieval Muslim world
ensured that Sicily had
a relatively high literacy
rate during its years
under Saracen rule.
Some estimates suggest
as many as 45 per cent
of the population could
read in the 11th century.
Shocking to think that
800 years later, in the
19th century, only 30 per
cent of Sicilians were
literate.
1. Identity: the 2. Literature
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Flush with power, Rome ploughed men and money into
the First Crusade, helped by a third emerging Italian
power base, the comuni, the independent town or city
states like Milan, Pisa and Venice that were flourishing
on trade and pushing northern Italy’s feeble feudal lords
around (in contrast to the rest of Europe, the rurally
based feudal system never gripped Italy, where the
Roman fondness for city living survived).
Southern Italy maintained its cultural superiority, this time
spurred by Normans who captured land south of Rome
and pushed out Lombards and Byzantines before moving
over to Sicily in 1060 to oust the Saracens. Under Roger
II, the Normans united the whole of southern Italy as the
Kingdom of Sicily in the early 12th century. Where the
Saracens had built latticed Moorish palaces, the Normans
added Romanesque cathedrals and castles, and nurtured
Sicily as one of the wealthiest, most tolerant and cultured
societies in Europe.
In the red corner, the pope…
Successive Germanic emperors (the Hohenstaufen
dynasty, of Swabian origin) continued their efforts to
dominate northern Italy in the later 12th century. Frederick
I came unstuck at Legnano in 1176, defeated by the
Lombard League, an angry consortium of northern cities
who added to their power and independence. Frederick
II had more success, thanks in part to a marriage that
added the Normans, and therefore, control of southern
Italy, to his stock. The rift
between emperor and pope
grew and famous political
factions emerged behind each:
the progressive(ish) Guelphs
cheered for the pope, while
the conservative Ghibellines
got behind the Holy Roman
Emperor.
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 Don’t let the fighting fool you: we’ve never had it so good Feud for thought
By the late 13th century, the oligarchic comuni of northern The Ghibelline faction
and central Italy had grown powerful on trade. With adopted black as their
colour; the Guelphs
growing autonomy, they paid little attention to the pope
chose white. For further
and even less to the Holy Roman Emperor. Florence, clarity, the Guelphs
Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna and other comuni (in all shaped the battlements
there were around 300) flourished, establishing their on their castles to
boundaries by force when necessary. Many evolved a be square, while the
Ghibellines employed a
mildly democratic system of government, forming town
fishtail design. Tuscany
councils led by wealthy families. Within each city, the old saw the worst violence
factions of Guelph and Ghibelline usually vied for control, between Guelph and
often calling on other city states for support. Wars were Ghibelline factions: in
frequent and alliances short-lived as the factions jostled 1260 the triumphant
Ghibellines demolished
for power and territory. As a consequence, the shoots
103 Guelph palaces in
of democratic rule soon withered. Absolute rulers, the Florence, and six years
signori, assumed control on the pretext of ending the later, when the Guelphs
constant squabbles and soon the Guelph and Ghibelline decisively regained
identities became less relevant. The cities continued power, they created
the now famously open
to prosper, ruled by hereditary and frequently despotic
Piazza dell Signoria by
elites. Smaller states were assimilated into larger ones flattening a block of
until, by the late 1300s, Venice and Genoa, both maritime their rivals’ housing.
republics, Milan, a Dante was a politically
duchy, and Florence, active Florentine
Guelph (although he
with its city council, had
was eventually exiled
risen to the top. by his own side) and
While the city states duly portrayed various
Ghibellines in the
grew in the north, the Inferno.
papacy struggled to
control lands in the The Windsor connection
centre. Things got so The Guelph faction of
bad that the pope, medieval Italy took their
name from a princely
reliant on French help,
German clan, aligned,
relocated to Avignon like them, against the
for a period in the 14th Holy Roman Emperors.
century. To the south, The Swabian Guelphs
the old Kingdom of (or Welf in Middle High
German) are antecedents
Sicily fell to the French
of the British Royal
House of Anjou in Family.

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Extreme measures in
Milan
When the Black Death
moved through Italy in
1348, Milan suffered
less than elsewhere.
Perhaps Giovanni
Visconti, the city’s
archbishop, made the
right decision when he
ordered the first three
houses where plague
struck to be bricked up
with the occupants, sick
or healthy, left inside
to die.
Incoming wounded
If the reports of Gabriele
De’ Mussis, a lawyer
from Piacenza, are to be
believed (and perhaps
they shouldn’t be), the
first Italians to catch
the Black Death were
Genovese merchants
besieged by a Mongol
lord, Janibeg, in the
Crimean town of Caffa
in 1347. When Janibeg’s
troops were struck down
by a virulent plague, he
fired their dead bodies
into the city using
catapults; the disease
spread amongst the
Genoese traders and
was carried back to Italy.
1. Identity: the 2. Literature
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1266 but rose up 16 years later during the ‘Sicilian
Vespers’. It began with an angry mob in Palermo (on
cue when the bell rang for vespers) slaughtering French
overlords, and led to rebellion across the island. Pedro III,
king of Aragón, stepped in and established the Kingdom
of Naples, under Spanish control. For all the power shifts,
fights (which usually took place, by clever convention,
beyond city walls) and factions, Italy’s mercantile society,
the most urbanised in the world, flourished between the
12th and 16th centuries, eclipsing the rest of Europe with
its wealth and civilisation.
Yes, ‘Brainfest’ is good, but what about ‘Renaissance’?
In 1348, just when things were going so well, the Black
Death arrived on the peninsula, coming ashore at Genoa
in the north and Messina in the south. For a century
the disease swept back and forth: Siena lost half its
population, Florence and Venice more than half. And
yet culturally it seemed Italy barely broke stride. Indeed,
some contend that the plague and its attendant recession
put wealth into the hands of figures more likely to
patronise the arts.
The intellectual vibe initiated by the Moors on Sicily,
attaching increasing significance to human reason, fed
a wider appetite for Classical learning in central and
northern Italy. The trade routes to the Levant, Spain and
Africa that brought wealth to northern cities, particularly
Florence and its trade guilds, also gave passage to Arabist
and Greek scholars, escaping re-Christianised Spain and
newly Turkish Constantinople respectively. They inspired
Italy’s new, politically strong intelligentsia. Rich patrons
like the Medici, a family of Florentine bankers, funded
the corresponding explosion of cultural activity that artist,
architect and biographer Giorgio Vasari first labelled
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 Rinascita, Renaissance. Initially the Church was less
enthusiastic about self-determination, about Humanism, a
key tenet of the Renaissance, but was making fine use of
the movement’s artists by the 16th century, redecorating
Rome along Classical lines. The Renaissance spread
throughout Europe from the 14th to 17th centuries, building
a bridge from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age.

Spain moves in, and brings the Inquisition

By the 16th century, Italy’s once-powerful states were
stalked by foreign armies, often invited in by the states
themselves to get one up on the neighbours (for
example, Milan asked for French help to snatch Naples).
The Habsburgs (uniting the Austrian and Spanish thrones)
and the French fought for control of the peninsula, and
the Habsburgs won out with Spain, under Charles V, Holy
Roman Emperor (a title he bought), taking charge.
As the Reformation moved through northern Europe,
Rome’s omnipresent papacy liked the look of Spain’s
hysterical response, and in the later 16th century the
liberal Humanist ideas of the Renaissance were crushed
as Rome embraced the Inquisition. Galileo Galilei,
astronomer and physicist, was imprisoned; Giordano
Bruno, a philosopher expounding on the infinite universe,
was burned at the stake.

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s
Ecstasy of St Theresa
The long fall from grace
The 17th century was one of
decline. Economic strength
had moved to the new colonial
powers in northern Europe,
away from Mediterranean cities
like Genoa and Venice, while
political and social growth was
stifled by tax-happy popes and
foreign overlords. There were
some causes for celebration:
despite the strong-arm
suppression of Renaissance
ideals, Catholic cardinals
still managed to sponsor
Bernini and other artists and
architects to build and decorate
sumptuous Baroque churches.
However, by the 18th century
even the artwork had fizzled out. The country languished,
held in docile submission by northern Europeans. Spain
lost most of its Italian possessions to the Austrian
Habsburgs in the War of Spanish Succession in 1713.
In Lombardy and Milan the new rulers brought a slow
upturn in fortunes, but southern Italy, where control
passed to the French House of Bourbon in 1731,
remained shambolic. A third force, the Duchy of Savoy,
grew in strength in the early 18th century; it won Sicily in
the Peace of Utrecht after the War of Spanish Succession
(although swapped it for Sardinia soon after) but more
importantly nurtured its control of Piedmont, bolstering
the new kingdom that would lead Italy to unity 150
years later.

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 1.2.3 United in name at least: the
making of modern Italy

Key dates

1871 Unification is completed, with Vittorio Emanuele II as king.

1915 Italy joins the First World War on the Allies’ side.
“I O FFER NEI TH ER
1922 Mussolini and the Fascists take power. PAY, NO R
QU AR TER S , N OR
1940 Italy joins the Second World War on Hitler’s side. FO O D ; I OFF ER O N LY
1945 Mussolini is shot dead shortly before Italy surrenders to the Allies. H U NG ER , THI R S T,
FO R C ED M A R C H ES ,
1946 Referendum makes Italy a republic; the monarchy is shown the door to B ATTLES A ND
Switzerland. D EATH. LET H I M
1957 Italy is among the six founder members of the EEC. W H O LO V ES H I S
C O U N TR Y W I TH HI S
1978 Former PM Aldo Moro is murdered by left-wingers amid the anni di piombo H EA R T, AN D N O T
(Years of Lead). M ER ELY W I TH H I S
LI PS , FOL LO W M E. ”
1992 The political establishment falls apart under corruption charges.
Hmm, tempting.
2006 Longest serving post-war government (five years), led by Silvio Berlusconi, ends. Garibaldi’s call to arms

Nearly Italy but not quite

Italy had a first taste of unity
under Napoleon when he declared
the Kingdom of Italy in 1805,
establishing a band of regional
puppet rulers operating under
French control. But any semblance
of unity evaporated with the
1815 Congress of Vienna, which
reallocated Napoleon’s territories
(he’d come unstuck fighting Russia)
and left Europe’s old guard –
Austria and the papacy included
– fighting over Italy’s constituent
but un-unified parts. The regions
changed hands frequently during
Europe’s turbulent mid 19th century.
Between the 1820s and 50s,
numerous independent uprisings

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Blood group
Garibaldi’s famous
team kit for invading
Sicily, the Red Shirts,
was apparently inspired
by the outfits of South
American slaughtermen.
New York humility
Garibaldi is the only
figure to turn down
a ticker tape parade
through Manhattan. He
declined the honour for
fear of stirring up New
York’s Irish Catholics.
Vittorio Emanuele II
1. Identity: the 2. Literature
foundations and philosophy
of Italian culture
occurred, many led by secret societies like Giovine Italia,
a nationalist movement instigated in exile by patriot
Giuseppe Mazzini. None achieved their ultimate aim of
national unity. In 1848 Mazzini joined forces with military
man Giuseppe Garibaldi and pushed the papacy from
the capital. Again, however, the Republic of Rome they
established was short-lived, and France soon seized
control for the Pope.
Congratulations Mr and Mrs Italy, it’s a bouncing
baby boot
It took an initiative from outside mainland Italy, from
Sardinia, to finally bond the nation together. The liberal
king of Sardinia, Piedmont and Savoy, Vittorio Emanuele,
created a kind of safe haven on the island for the growing
rabble of malcontents pushing for Italian unity. His
shrewd Piedmont prime minister, Camillo Cavour, did a
deal with the French, who fought and beat the Austrians
and handed Vittorio Emanuele sections of Lombardy in
1859. And with that, il Risorgimento, as the movement
for Italian unity (the Resurgence) was dubbed, was on.
The central northern belt around Romagna and
Tuscany decided to join up with Sardinia by
referendum in 1860. Garibaldi and his Red Shirts
(armed volunteers) then enlisted covert help
from Cavour to kick the Bourbon rulers out of
Sicily; mission accomplished he moved on to
Naples before trying his luck in the Papal States,
at which point Cavour stepped in to make sure
Vittorio Emanuele, not Garibaldi, was in control.
The pope had to make do with Rome. As Umbria
joined up with the king so, on March 17 1861,
Vittorio Emanuele II declared himself ruler of the
new Kingdom of Italy. Cavour was given the post
of prime minister. It took ten further years to
bring Venice (wrested from Austria in 1866) and Rome
(abandoned by Napoleon III in 1870) into the fold. Finally,
by July 1871, Italian unification was complete, and the
capital moved from Florence to Rome.
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 Factions, social strife and land grabs: Italy’s difficult Garibaldi: an Italian hero
teenage years Giuseppe Garibaldi is
The morning after the Risorgimento romp was always still revered in Italy.
going to be something of a let down. Admittedly, by the Every town has its
piazza or street named
late 19th century Italy had a relatively liberal constitutional
for the military leader
monarchy, but the same old landed gentry still held most of the Risorgimento,
of the power. The south, as usual, had it worst: corruption the great Italian patriot
increased and the peasants tried to rebel – Rome sent who was actually born
30,000 troops to quell the farmers in Sicily. in Nice. Condemned to
death for his Giovine
Right and left fought vociferously in Parliament. One Italia activities as a
figure, the progressive Giovanni Giolitti brought some young man, he escaped
stability as well as social and political reform (alongside to South America and
honed a talent for
the usual quota of corruption) in five separate shifts as military leadership.
prime minister between 1892 and 1921, nudging Italy He fled to the USA
(particularly its industrialising northern regions) towards for three years after
modernisation. He gave men over 30 the vote in 1912 the failed 1848 Rome
(women would have to wait until 1945). Despite being occupation, settling
down in Staten Island,
a liberal, Giolitti couldn’t suppress new Italy’s greed for New York, where he
colonialism (‘why not, the rest of Europe’s doing it’): worked making candles.
the humiliating failure to capture Ethiopia in 1896 was After the famous
followed, to general international condemnation, by the assault on Sicily and
more successful annexation of Libya and a few Aegean Naples he was roused
from semi-retirement
Islands in 1911. on various occasions,
employed to piece the
Fighting in the streets Italian jigsaw together.
Italy was on the winning side in the First World War but Garibaldi is traditionally
felt more like it had lost. Perhaps it should have stuck seen as a selfless figure,
with the gut instinct of 1914 and remained neutral; apparently unconcerned
for personal power,
instead, tempted by the promise of new territory to the although dissenting
north and east, Italy joined the Allied cause in 1915. In voices have been raised
1918, with more than 600,000 dead, it received much of in recent years, notably
the land pledged (Trentino, Trieste and Süd Tirol included), among the Lega Nord, a
but saw the main prize, Dalmatia, go to Yugoslavia. political group seeking
autonomy for northern
The loss of face fuelled a growing nationalism, while a Italy (Garibaldi brought
powerful socialist movement emerged amid post-war false unity they say)
economic, social and political trouble. Polarisation was and similarly separatist
swift. Armed gangs, the Fascisti and the Communists, elements in Sicily.
fought pitched battles in city streets. Parliament limped

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 on under old favourite, Giolitti, but the Biennio rosso, the
two red years of 1919-20, in which revolutionaries seized
factories and farms, found the nationalist, predominantly
Catholic brigade looking round for a stronger antidote
to the left. It appeared – bull-necked, uncouth but
charismatic – in the shape of Benito Mussolini.

Black days with the Black Shirts

Mussolini started his political life as a red, editing
Avanti, a well-thumbed Socialist newspaper. But the
First World War reoriented his politics to the right, to a
rabid (but rarely racist) nationalism, to a belief in the rule
of a single, central figure (namely him): it was dubbed
Fascism. Mussolini founded the Fascists in 1919, and
their black-shirted Squadre d’Azione, action squads (or
thugs-for-hire), won support from influential landowners,
industrialists and military figures keen to see socialists
and communists beaten down. Mussolini quickly became
a force in Italian politics. By 1922 he was threatening
to march on Rome to seize power. When King Vittorio
Emanuele III refused to call in the army, there was little
option but to offer Mussolini the prime minister’s job.
Initially, the Fascists governed with
some respect for the constitution, but
by 1926, via rigged elections, bullying
and legislative wangling (new laws
criminalised trade unions and censored
the press), Italy had become a single
party state run by a dictator, with all
the brutal human rights abuses and
restrictions on personal freedom
which that entails. Mussolini wooed
the Catholic Church in 1929 with the
Lateran Treaty, establishing Catholicism
as the state religion and securing papal
recognition for the Kingdom of Italy in
return. The Fascist state had its fingers
in everything, from industry (which

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 Symbol of power
The term Fascist comes
from the Latin fasces,
a ‘bundle’ of rods tied
together and attached
to an axe head. In
Ancient Rome the
fasces symbolised a
magistrate’s power;
Mussolini duly adopted
the axe as an emblem of
authority.

Beware the lies of march

Propaganda maestro
Mussolini built the
myth of the Fascists’
glorious ‘March on
Rome’ in October 1922.
He recalled 300,000
black-shirted devotees
following their leader,
fared comparatively well in the global economic gloom
who rode on horseback
of the early 1930s) to sport to family life (Mussolini gave triumphant into the city.
out medals to fecund mothers). Behind it all, controlling In truth Mussolini and
in their own ways, lay propaganda and an expanding a handful of Fascists
military. travelled to the capital
by train, first class, and
didn’t march anywhere,
Losing on all fronts: Italy’s Second World War
power having been
Fascist Italy fell out with Britain and France (its allies) by already handed over.
invading and annexing Ethiopia in 1936, the same year
that Italian forces helped General Franco’s Nationalists
out in the Spanish Civil War. Adolf Hitler, in need of
European friends, commended Mussolini on his African
acquisition and the Rome-Berlin Axis began to bloom.
By 1939 Italy and Germany had signed a pact of military
agreement (of course, they couldn’t call it that; Mussolini
suggested the suitably belligerent Pact of Steel).
Italy didn’t actually join the Second World War until 1940,
when France was beaten and Britain was on the ropes.
Mussolini sent Italian troops to Africa to take on

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Mussolini and the Jews the British, and then invaded Greece, looking for kudos
Prodded into action by (of the Hitler kind) and new territory. Neither move went
Hitler’s anti-Semitic well. It was all typical of Mussolini’s vanity. He excelled
policies, Mussolini’s
government passed the at bluster, at image building, but rarely backed it up with
first in a series of race substance: the Italian army was poorly trained, equipped
laws in September 1938. and coordinated. Mussolini had to call Hitler for help, and
Jews, a minority with a
by 1941 Italy was a German pawn, its troops sent off
long-established place in
Italian life (many actually to fight (and flounder) against the USSR. Back in Italy,
supported the Fascist rationing, the routine of life in a dictatorship and Allied
party in the 1920s), bombings made for a miserable time.
were barred from all
public office, expelled With the Allied invasion of mainland Italy imminent,
from schools and denied
Mussolini, now aged 60, was confronted by the king and
marriage with non-Jews.
Around 7,000 Italian Jews his own Fascist Grand Council in 1943, asked to resign
were later deported, most and then locked up. His successor, Pietro Badoglio,
of whom died in Nazi commander-in-chief of the army under Mussolini, signed
concentration camps.
an armistice with the Allies, but the majority of Italy now
How the treasures of fell to the Nazis who rushed south to grab land. Along
Rome were spared the way they liberated Mussolini from incarceration at
In July 1943, British Gran Sasso in the Apennines, and set him up as head
planes dropped leaflets
on Rome, warning of of a Republic of Salo, governing from Lake Garda. Two
their plans to bomb years of bitter fighting followed as Allied forces crept
the city but pledging to north, helped by growing bands of Italian partisans. The
spare the city’s cultural
German retreat left burning towns and misery in its wake.
landmarks. Bombers then
targeted strategic points In April 1945, partisans caught up with Mussolini as he
– airfields, factories and attempted to flee for Switzerland. He was shot along with
so on – in and around his mistress and their bodies were strung up in Milan’s
the city. When Allied
soldiers fought their way
Piazzale Loreto. A month later the Germans surrendered
to Rome’s edge almost a Italy to the Allies.
year later, Hitler ordered
the withdrawal from
the city, apparently to
prevent its destruction.
Pope Pius XII addressed
the cheering, liberated
crowds under his balcony
on June 5 1944: “Today
we rejoiced because,
thanks to the joint
goodwill of both sides,
Rome has been saved
from the horrors of war.”

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 Cultivating la dolce vita Facing up to the
On its beam-ends in 1945, Italy slowly began to recover. fascist past
America’s Marshall Plan (a financial aid programme) got Italy worked hard to
forget Benito Mussolini
the economy moving again, while elections brought the and the Fascists after the
first taste of democracy in two decades. In April 1946 war. Schools only taught
the public (or 54 per cent of them) voted for a republic history up to the First
and King Umberto II abdicated. The Christian Democrat World War and fascist
political groups were
governments that ruled (in coalition with myriad elements banned. To be labelled
from left and right) for the next four decades were a fascist, particularly in
usually flawed and short-lived, but in the north it didn’t the political arena, was
the ultimate insult. And
seem to matter – industry boomed in the hands of Fiat,
yet the perceived threat
Olivetti and others. Many of their staff were migrants of communism and the
newly arrived from southern Italy, where the post-war reluctance to root out
desperation was slower to shift. This was the period, old offenders meant
that elements of the far
the 1950s and early 60s, when Italian culture found right remained (and still
modernity, when its cinema, fashion and cars became remain) an important
internationally important. political force. On an
emotional level, Italians
have only begun risking a
collective look back in the
last decade. Mussolini’s
old homes are being
restored and opened
as curios, notably the
Villa Torlonia, his state
residence in Rome. As
Walter Veltroni, Mayor of
Rome, said on the Villa’s
unveiling after years of
restoration: “…a true
democracy has no need
to discard a part of its
history”. Silvio Berlusconi,
in particular, seems keen
to address the difficult
recent past. His move to
grant veteran status to
200,000 volunteer soldiers
who fought for Mussolini
during the Republic of
Salo, suggesting parity
with partisans, brought
lively debate.

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The trouble with The Years of Lead
Italy’s royals In the late 1960s, the factionalism in politics – long held
There’s no enduring at bay by self-interest and double-dealing (compromise
royalism in Italy, no
was easily bought) – bubbled out beyond the corridors
hankering for the
monarchy’s return. The of power. Students and workers began protesting and
vote for a republic in striking for reform, reaching a crescendo in the autunno
1946 reflected public caldo (hot autumn) of 1969. In the same year, neo-
disgust at the royals’ fascists bombed Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people
support for Mussolini
and further stretching the tension between right and left.
and the way in which
they fled Italy when The ensuing period of violent terrorist activity, lasting
the wartime going got through the 1970s and 80s, was dubbed the anni di
tough in 1943. After the piombo (Years of Lead).
vote, a ban was placed
on any male from the
House of Savoy (the
royal Italian house) from
entering Italy. It was
only lifted in 2002, as
per a Berlusconi election
promise. Vittorio
Emanuele (son of King
Vittorio Emanuele III),
the last crown prince of
Italy and still referred
to as the Prince of
Naples, hasn’t done
the restoration cause
many favours. He’s been
tried (and acquitted) for
murder, investigated for
corruption and hasn’t
been as condemnatory
as he might when asked
about Mussolini’s anti-
Semitic laws. In 2007
he demanded Italy pay
him 250 million euros in
damages for the royals’
loss of assets after
abdication.

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 The left had the most notorious faction, the Marxist- Leaden legacy
Leninist Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) that kidnapped and Unanswered questions
killed former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978, but the about the Years of
right committed the worst atrocity when they bombed Lead still hang in the
air. Conspiracy theories
Bologna train station in 1980, killing 85. Mass arrests and abound. Did the police
public revulsion helped end the worst of the violence by collude with the CIA
the early 1990s. Mainstream politics remained laughably and Gladio, the covert
corrupt, until finally, in the early 1990s, a series of mani NATO ‘stay-behind’
pulite (clean hands) judicial investigations attempted operation in post-war
Italy, to exaggerate the
to unravel the web of tangentopoli (kickbacks) with left-wing threat in the
exhaustive trials. As the big historic political parties – the Cold War era? Why
Christian Democrats and the Socialists – fell apart and the didn’t the Government
politicians went on trial (although few of the big names do more to save Aldo
actually went to jail; indeed, many were acquitted), a new Moro (i.e. compromise
with his captors)? Groups
crop of characters filled the void. claiming a connection
to the old Red Brigades
Different millennium, same issues still sporadically commit
Rising from the wreckage of the mani pulite investigations murder, helping to keep
came Silvio Berlusconi, a media mogul (and one of the the bad old days fresh
richest men in Italy) with a talent for whipping up popular in the collective psyche,
as does the enthusiasm
support. His and Italy’s story have been intertwined since for pursuing figures like
1994 when he first became prime minister heading a Cesare Battisti, a left-
rightist coalition. In 2008 he became premier for a third wing extremist wanted
time, having overcome numerous corruption scandals. for murders in the 1970s
On Berlusconi’s watch, Italy gave the USA its help in Iraq but living as a ‘refugee’
in Brazil (he’s now a
(despite massive public protest), endured a continuing successful thriller writer).
economic gloom, adopted the Euro and said goodbye to
Pope John Paul II (see section 8.3 for more on Berlusconi
and Italian politics). “I A M TH E J ES U S
CH R I S T O F
PO LI TI C S . I A M A
PATI ENT V I C TI M,
I PU T UP W I TH
EV ER Y O N E , I
S A C R I FI C E M Y S ELF
FO R EV ER Y ON E. ”
Silvio Berlusconi

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