Italy
The struggle for control of the straits dividing Sicily from southern Italy brought the two great empires of the Mediterranean, Carthage and Rome, head to head. It was a world in which ruthless mercenaries prospered.
The arrival of Napoleon’s troops in Venice in 1797 instigated one of the biggest plunders in the history of art.
Never fully exorcised, the memory of Italy’s fascist past is fading.
On 24 October 1917, the Central Powers launched a massive offensive at Italy’s north-eastern border. The resulting battle – popularly known as Caporetto – has been described as the greatest defeat in Italian military history.
Salò was Mussolini’s German-backed experiment in ‘real Fascism’ and fine living. Italians find it hard to come to terms with its legacy.
Though many writers, film-makers and other artists found it difficult to work in Fascist Italy, modernist architecture flourished under the less than watchful gaze of Mussolini.
Food and drink have a habit of landing Rome’s leaders in trouble.
Larry Gragg investigates the evidence behind ‘Bugsy’ Siegel’s claim that he planned to kill the high-ranking Nazi in 1939.
During the fifteenth century the Medici banking house in Florence ‘almost passed belief’ in power and influence.