Italy
The arrival of Napoleon’s troops in Venice in 1797 instigated one of the biggest plunders in the history of art.
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.
Larry Gragg investigates the evidence behind ‘Bugsy’ Siegel’s claim that he planned to kill the high-ranking Nazi in 1939.
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.
During the fifteenth century the Medici banking house in Florence ‘almost passed belief’ in power and influence.
Having been moved to London from Nazi Germany, the esteemed library of Renaissance culture played a key role in restoring links between international scholars after the Second World War.