Chapter 01 · c. 900 BCE – 509 BCE
Italic Peoples and the Rise of Rome
Before Rome, the peninsula was a mosaic of Italic tribes, Etruscan cities and Greek colonies, out of which a small Latin town on the Tiber slowly grew.
Early Italy was a polyglot patchwork. Italic peoples such as the Latins, Samnites and Umbrians shared the peninsula with the Etruscans of central Italy, whose urban, artistic and religious culture deeply influenced their neighbours, and with Greek settlers who, from the 8th century BCE, founded the prosperous coastal cities of Magna Graecia in the south. Carthaginians and others contested the surrounding seas.
Greek colonization brought Hellenic civilization, alphabets, coinage and city planning to southern Italy and Sicily, leaving a lasting imprint that would later flow into Roman culture. The Etruscans, for their part, dominated much of the centre and north and according to tradition gave Rome several of its early kings.
Rome itself began, by legend, as a settlement on the Palatine Hill founded by Romulus in 753 BCE. Historians treat the regal period and its seven kings as largely legendary, but the tradition records a real transition: the expulsion of the last king and the establishment of the Roman Republic, conventionally dated to 509 BCE.
Turning points
- 753 BCE (traditional)Formation
- c. 8th century BCEPeoples & Migration
Greek colonies of Magna Graecia
From around the 8th century BCE Greek city-states founded colonies across southern Italy and Sicily, from Cumae to Tarentum, creating the prosperous Hellenic world of Magna Graecia.
See the data - c. 7th–6th centuries BCEPolitics & Power
Etruscan ascendancy in central Italy
The Etruscans developed a sophisticated urban civilization in central Italy and, by tradition, supplied Rome with several of its kings before being gradually absorbed by the Roman state.
- 509 BCE (traditional)Politics & Power
Figures of the era
RomulusLegendary
Legendary founder and first king of Rome
In Roman myth Romulus, raised with his twin Remus, founded Rome on the Palatine in 753 BCE and became its first king. There is little historical evidence he existed, but the legend was central to Roman identity.
Chapter sources: Ancient Rome, Magna Graecia, Ancient Italic people (Etruscans, Latins, Samnites), Italy (country overview and history)
Chapter 02 · 509 BCE – 476 CE
The Roman Republic and Empire
From a city-state to a Mediterranean superpower, Rome built an empire whose law, language and institutions shaped Western civilization.
Over five centuries the Roman Republic expanded from central Italy to dominate the Mediterranean, defeating Carthage in the Punic Wars and absorbing the Greek east. Government rested on elected magistrates, the Senate and popular assemblies, but the strains of conquest, slavery and factional politics eventually broke the republican system in a century of civil wars.
After the assassination of Julius Caesar, his heir Octavian emerged victorious from the wars of the late Republic. In 27 BCE the Senate granted him the name Augustus, and he refounded the Roman state as the Principate while preserving republican appearances. As the first emperor he inaugurated the Pax Romana, roughly two centuries of relative internal peace and prosperity.
At its height the Empire stretched from Britain to the Near East, bound together by Roman law, roads, cities and Latin. Over the following centuries political instability, economic strain, and pressure on the frontiers weakened the western half of the empire.
By tradition the Western Roman Empire ended in 476 CE, when the Germanic commander Odoacer deposed the young emperor Romulus Augustulus and sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople. The eastern empire endured for nearly a thousand years more, but in Italy the classical order gave way to a fragmented medieval world.
“He found a city of brick and left it a city of marble.”
— Ancient saying about Augustus and Rome
Turning points
- 264–146 BCEWar & Rupture
The Punic Wars and Mediterranean supremacy
In three wars against Carthage, Rome destroyed its great rival and became the dominant power of the western Mediterranean, beginning its rise to imperial dominion.
See the data - 27 BCEPolitics & Power
- 80 CECulture & Ideas
Completion of the Colosseum
The Flavian Amphitheatre, the Colosseum, was inaugurated in Rome, a monument to the engineering and civic spectacle of the imperial city.
- 313 CEReligion
Edict of Milan and the rise of Christianity
Constantine and Licinius granted toleration to Christianity, beginning its transformation from a persecuted faith into the dominant religion of the Roman world.
- 476 CEPolitics & Power
Figures of the era
Chapter sources: Ancient Rome, The Principate of Augustus, Augustus, Roman emperor, Italy (country overview and history)
Chapter 03 · 476 – c. 1300
Medieval Italy: Papacy, Communes and Normans
Fragmented after Rome, Italy became a contested ground of popes and emperors, self-governing communes, and Norman kings in the south.
After the fall of the Western Empire, Italy passed through the rule of Ostrogoths, the Byzantine reconquest, and the Lombard invasions, leaving the peninsula politically divided. The Bishop of Rome, the pope, emerged as both a spiritual authority over Latin Christendom and a temporal ruler over the Papal States in central Italy.
From the 11th century, lacking a single dominant power, the cities of northern and central Italy increasingly governed themselves as communes. Their growing wealth and autonomy brought repeated conflict with the Holy Roman emperors, who claimed lordship over Italy, and divided Italians into Guelph and Ghibelline factions.
Along the coasts, the maritime republics, above all Venice and Genoa, but also Pisa and Amalfi, built commercial empires that linked Europe to the eastern Mediterranean and grew immensely rich on trade.
In the south, Norman adventurers conquered Sicily and southern Italy over the 11th century. In 1130 Roger II was crowned King of Sicily, uniting the region into a powerful, culturally mixed kingdom blending Norman, Greek, Arab and Latin traditions.
Turning points
- 568 CEPeoples & Migration
Lombard invasion of Italy
The Lombards swept into Italy, fragmenting the peninsula into a patchwork of Lombard duchies and Byzantine territories and shaping its long political division.
See the data - Christmas, 800 CEPolitics & Power
Charlemagne crowned emperor in Rome
Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne emperor in Rome, binding Italy to the Frankish and later Holy Roman imperial order and to the papacy.
- Christmas Day, 1130Formation
- 1176War & Rupture
Lombard League defeats Frederick Barbarossa at Legnano
The allied northern communes defeated the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at Legnano, securing recognition of communal liberties in northern Italy.
See the data
Figures of the era
Roger II of Sicily1095 – 1154
First King of Sicily (crowned 1130)
Norman ruler who united southern Italy and Sicily into the Kingdom of Sicily, presiding over an unusually cosmopolitan court that fused Latin, Greek and Arabic culture.
Chapter sources: Italy (country overview and history), Italian Peninsula, 1000–1400 A.D. (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History), Kingdom of Sicily (Norman conquest; coronation of Roger II, 1130)
Chapter 04 · c. 1300 – 1550
The Renaissance and the City-States
In the wealthy city-states of Italy, a rebirth of classical learning and an explosion of art reshaped European culture.
From the 14th century, the prosperous and competitive city-states of Italy, Florence, Venice, Milan, Rome and others, became the cradle of the Renaissance. Drawing on the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts, humanist scholars placed renewed emphasis on human dignity, classical learning and the study of the world.
Florence, an independent republic, is often seen as the birthplace of the movement. Its wealth from banking and trade funded an extraordinary flowering of art and scholarship, much of it under the patronage of leading families, above all the Medici, who became the city's dominant power.
Renaissance Italy produced some of the most influential artists, architects and thinkers in history, while its diplomats and writers, including Machiavelli, helped found modern political thought. Italian art, architecture and ideas spread across Europe.
Yet political fragmentation left Italy vulnerable. From the late 15th century the peninsula became a battleground for the great powers of France and Spain in the Italian Wars, foreshadowing centuries of foreign domination even as its culture reached its height.
“Florence, where the Italian Renaissance began, was an independent republic.”
— On the cradle of the Renaissance
Turning points
- 1401Culture & Ideas
- 1434Politics & Power
Medici ascendancy in Florence
Cosimo de' Medici returned to dominate Florentine politics, beginning the family's long patronage of art and learning that helped define the Renaissance.
- 1494War & Rupture
French invasion and the Italian Wars
The French invasion of 1494 opened decades of warfare in which France and Spain fought for control of Italy, exposing the weakness of its divided states.
See the data - 1508–1512Culture & Ideas
Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel ceiling
Commissioned by the papacy in Rome, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling became one of the supreme achievements of High Renaissance art.
Figures of the era
Lorenzo de' Medici1449 – 1492
Florentine statesman and patron ('the Magnificent')
The effective ruler of Renaissance Florence, Lorenzo was a poet, diplomat and lavish patron whose support helped sustain the city's golden age of art and learning.
Niccolo Machiavelli1469 – 1527
Florentine official and political thinker
A Florentine diplomat whose treatise 'The Prince' analysed power with unsentimental realism, helping to found modern political philosophy.
Chapter sources: Italy from c. 1380 to c. 1500 (Renaissance, city-states, humanism), Florence and Central Italy, 1400–1600 A.D. (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History), Italy (country overview and history)
Chapter 05 · 1550 – 1871
Foreign Domination and the Risorgimento
After centuries divided under foreign crowns, a 19th-century movement for unity, the Risorgimento, forged a single Italian kingdom.
For much of the early modern period Italy remained politically fragmented and largely under foreign control, with Spanish and later Austrian Habsburg power dominant in much of the peninsula and the papacy ruling central Italy. Napoleon's conquests briefly reorganized Italy and spread revolutionary and national ideas before the old order was restored in 1815.
Through the 19th century the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian national revival, gathered force. Its leaders combined diplomacy and war: the statesman Camillo Cavour, prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, manoeuvred among the great powers, while Giuseppe Garibaldi led volunteers who, in 1860, toppled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south.
These efforts converged under the House of Savoy. On 17 March 1861, the first Italian parliament in Turin proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy, uniting most of the peninsula into a single Kingdom of Italy and establishing the modern Italian state.
Unification remained incomplete until Venetia was acquired in 1866 and, after French troops withdrew, Italian forces breached the walls at Porta Pia and captured Rome on 20 September 1870. Following a plebiscite, Rome was made the capital, formally completing unification in 1871.
“On 17 March 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed King of Italy.”
— On the founding of the Italian kingdom
Turning points
- 1796–1814Politics & Power
Napoleonic reorganization of Italy
Napoleon's campaigns swept aside the old states and spread revolutionary, legal and national ideas across Italy, before the powers restored the former rulers in 1815.
- 1860War & Rupture
Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand
Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteers conquered Sicily and southern Italy, bringing down the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and clearing the way for unification.
See the data - 17 March 1861Independence
Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
The first Italian parliament in Turin proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy, the founding act of the unified Italian state and climax of the Risorgimento.
See the data - 20 September 1870Independence
Capture of Rome
Italian troops breached the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pia and took Rome from the Papal States; after a plebiscite, Rome became Italy's capital, completing unification.
See the data
Figures of the era
Giuseppe Garibaldi1807 – 1882
Revolutionary general of the Risorgimento
A charismatic military leader whose 1860 Expedition of the Thousand conquered the south and delivered it to the cause of a united Italy under the House of Savoy.
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour1810 – 1861
Architect of unification, Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia
The leading statesman of the Risorgimento, Cavour used diplomacy and war to expand Piedmont-Sardinia and engineer the unification of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II.
Chapter sources: Italy (country overview and history), Italy Is Proclaimed a Kingdom (1861), Italy: The acquisition of Venetia and Rome
Chapter 06 · 1871 – 1948
Liberal Italy, Fascism, War and the Republic
A young kingdom passed through liberal politics and the First World War into Fascist dictatorship, catastrophic war, and finally a democratic republic.
The unified kingdom faced deep divisions between a wealthier north and poorer south, mass emigration, and the difficult task of building national institutions. Italy fought in the First World War on the Allied side from 1915, but the human cost and disappointment over the peace settlement left bitter discontent.
Amid postwar crisis and fear of socialist revolution, Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party seized the initiative. After the March on Rome in October 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister, and over the following years Mussolini dismantled democracy and established a one-party Fascist dictatorship, the first of its kind in the world.
The regime's record includes the suppression of opposition, the 1938 racial laws against Italy's Jews, colonial aggression in Africa, and alliance with Nazi Germany. Italy entered the Second World War alongside Germany in June 1940. Military failure led to Mussolini's fall in July 1943 and an armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943.
Italy was then torn between an Allied advance from the south and German occupation of the north, where Mussolini headed a puppet Italian Social Republic and an armed Resistance fought a brutal civil war. Mussolini was captured and executed by partisans on 28 April 1945. After liberation, a referendum on 2 June 1946 abolished the monarchy, and the republican constitution took effect on 1 January 1948.
“The March on Rome marked the first fascist takeover of power in the world.”
— On the rise of Italian Fascism
Turning points
- October 1922Politics & Power
- 1938Politics & Power
Fascist racial laws
Mussolini's government enacted antisemitic racial laws that stripped Italian Jews of rights and citizenship, foreshadowing later deportations under German occupation.
- 10 June 1940War & Rupture
Italy enters the Second World War
Italy declared war on Britain and France, entering the Second World War as Germany's Axis ally, a decision that brought defeat, occupation and devastation.
See the data - 8 September 1943War & Rupture
Mussolini's fall and the armistice
Mussolini was ousted in July 1943 and Italy signed an armistice with the Allies on 8 September; Germany then occupied the north, and a violent civil war and Resistance followed.
See the data - 2 June 1946Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Chapter sources: Italy (country overview and history), March on Rome, Italy (Fascism, racial laws and the Second World War), Benito Mussolini, Towards 2 June (1946 referendum and Republic Day)