Italy 101

So in 8 days, I will board a plane to bound for the journey of a lifetime. Ill be headed to Italy for about 6 months but I wanted to giver everybody a background on Italy. I planned on starting this a while ago and having cool factoids and whatnot on the lead up to my departure, as well as play with this whole blogging thing so i can get used to it but, as Douglas Adams once said, "I love Deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by." But on with the short background...



Italy is old. I dont really know how else to put it but Rome was founded around 750 BCE and people had inhabited it for about 1300 years before that. To put that into perspective, Nevada became a state 150 years ago, in 1861. Rome has been around for over 2,460 years. The Etruscan settled long before the Romans did and have a region of Italy that has been named after them (Tuscany). The Etruscan civilization was probably the first major society to develop in Italy and attacked Rome on several occasions. After Rome finally got on her feet, she began to set herself up as a power, growing to become one of the largest powers in the world. The Roman Empire stretched from Portugal and Spain, to the UK, to Armenia, and down into Africa.

Pretty wide reach. Too wide actually. Diocletian knew that this was too much territory for one man to efficiently handle so he split the empire into two, an East Roman Empire and a West Roman Empire. this split, though it made good geographical since, wasnt totally awesome. Constantinople became the capital of the East Roman Empire and was the trading center for the world. It was where caravans from the east came to barter goods, it is where boats headed through the Mediterranean would stock up... it became the center of the world at the time. This was bad news for Rome, which was the capital of the West Roman Empire. This lead to tough economical times for Rome, which made people less than happy. As times got tougher and tougher, the collapse of the empire seemed imminent. Diocletian had appointed himself Emperor of the East Roman Empire and Constantine the Great as the emperor of the West Roman Empire.

Yep, apparently he had a butt chin. Anyway, Constantine the Great is probably one of the people who most greatly influenced the course of human history. Before splitting the empire, Diocletian was rough on religion, persecuting pretty much everybody, especially Christians. When Constantine rose to power, he relaxed many Diocletian's things to appeal to the masses. The story goes that, during a war with Maxentius in Rome, things weren't going too well for Constantine the great. he was severely out numbered and was about to lose control of the Milvian Bridge. At night, he went to bed and was sent a vision by god. the message was an image of a cross, bearing an inscription on it that said, essentially, believe in this and you will be victorious. In the morning, Constantine told all his men to bear the cross on their gear and they won. This convinced Constantine to convert the entire Roman Empire to Christianity. Though the validity of this story is more that questionable, the fact is that Constantine, by way of the Edict of Milan in 313 (which made Christianity legal to practice) and the victory over Marxentius, made the majority of the worlds population Christians, which was one of the most important moments in human history. 






The collapse of the Roman Empire marked the last time for 1300 years that Italy would be unified. By 1000, there were about 5 major players in the state of Italy, the Kingdom of Lombardy (containing Milan and Torino), the Oligarchy of Venice (containing Venice and sometimes more of the main land. I also find it interesting that it extends down the Adriatic sea quite a ways), The Kingdom of Tuscany (Ruled by the Medici family, contained Florence), the Papal States (Home to Rome and the center of religion) as well as the Kingdom of Naples (pre-mafia of course). These 5 Italian states were not peaceful. They bickered constantly, fighting wars due to aggressive expansionist families (most of this was propagated by I visconti in Milan who repeatedly attacked Toscano) while the Medici, lead by Lorenzo Di Medici- Il Magnifico, tried to broker peace agreements and maintain the status quo. Finally in 1454, the Peace of Lodi was brokered when the Sforza family took over Milano. This peace brought along a great period of economic growth and general prosperity. The peace of Lodi was between Milan, Venice and Toscano and was maintained by Lorenzo di Medici until his death in 1492. By 1494, France and King Charles VIII (the eighth) marched through the north of Italy, initiating the Italian wars and a long period of foreign rule for Italy. The foreign rule came to a close in 1559 when the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was brokered and the king of France (Henry II) renounced any and all claims to Italy. Before this peace could be brokered, the Siege of Rome (or the Sack of Rome) occurred (lead by Charles VI {French and Spanish}). They stole anything and everything, beat up whomever they wanted, executed more than 1000 people, raped and pillaged the town and had such a great impact on Italy that over 50k people civilians were killed in the immediate impact while hundreds of thousands died indirectly because of the war (disease, Famine and other results of this horrific event)

Il Duomo in Florence

A panel from Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise

The Renaissance was, though awesome, not very wide in its impact (at first). It was centered in Florence and generally moved north, leaving the southern part of Italy high and dry. Through the Renaissance, some of the greatest minds came to be, including Leonardo Da vinci, Dante Alighieri,  Francesco Petrarca, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi and Michelangelo. Ghiberti and Brunelleschi famously competed for il Duomo in Florence (Brunelleschi won) and Ghiberti had to settle for the Gates of Paradise (there is copies of these doors in the UNR library). Da vinci did just about everything, from polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Michelangelo was mostly a sculptor and painter, spending 4 years on the Sistine Chapel and working on a ton of other projects for the church. It was a time of great intellectual progress in the north and this divide between the north and south in Italy only continued to grow. (even today, the Northern League, an extreme right political party, is calling for the succession of the north from the south).

During the Renaissance, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote the Prince, which was supposed to be a guide as to how to be the ideal prince. Though the first few parts are a very methodical and almost scientific in its approach to how to properly rule the principality, at the end, he broke from the concrete and broke into a plea for the Medici family to unify Italy. Though his unification pleas went unanswered for a couple hundred years, his dream was answered by the Savoy Family, from Torino. The Savoy Family would continue ruling Italy until it was formally disbanded in 1946 (though during the Second World War and the lead up, Benito Mussolini had the power and the Savoy Family just got to keep the palaces).

I wanted to keep this a little shorter than this but i wanted to try to give a good overview of the history.

Hope you enjoyed reading it!