Italy

Alex Keller tells the story of how an unlikely friendship between a Dutch doctor and a young Italian nobleman led to the establishment of the first scientific society, which lent crucial support to the radical ideas of Galileo Galilei.

With Italy on the brink of financial collapse and in deep political crisis, the country’s 150th anniversary has been a dramatic one. It is especially timely, then, to take stock of new research into this most contradictory and enigmatic of countries.

Italian Fascist scouts meet a member of the Hitler Youth in Padua, October 1940: a picture explained by Roger Hudson.

Ann Natanson reports on a new scheme to restore the Roman Colosseum to its former gory glory.

One hundred and fifty years after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, Graham Darby reassesses the contribution of one of the key players.

The discovery of a letter written by the great physician sheds new light on one of the most dramatic events in Roman history, as Raoul McLaughlin explains.

On July 25th, 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III said to Mussolini: 'My dear Duce, my soldiers don't want to fight anymore. At this moment you are the most hated man in Italy.' Mussolini was forced to resign. Here, Alfio Bernabei reveals evidence of an unknown London-based plot to kill the dictator in the early 1930s.

A series of archaeological discoveries off the coast of Sicily reveal how Rome turned a piece of lethal naval technology pioneered by its enemy, Carthage, to its own advantage, explains Ann Natanson.

Guiseppe Garibaldi was born in 1807. In this article from our 1956 archive, Denis Mack Smith offers a portrait of Italy's hero of the Risorgimento.

The Italian Renaissance republics are regarded by many as pioneers of good governance. Yet republican rule often resulted in chaos and it was left to strong despotic rulers to restore order, as Alexander Lee demonstrates.

Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros explores the life and work of Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia, one of the less fortunate and most cantankerous polymaths of the Italian Renaissance.

Richard Cavendish descrives how, following Garibaldi's capture of Palermo, the Neapolitan garrison under General Ferdinando Lanza capitulated on June 6th, 1860.

Richard Bosworth looks at the Vittoriano, the Italian capital’s century-old monument to Victor Emmanuel II and Italian unification and still the focus of competing claims over the country’s history and national identity.