Italy

The survival of the papacy has always been dependent on a precarious balancing act between the pope’s religious and secular powers.

The Grammar of Angels: A Search for the Magical Powers of Language by Edward Wilson-Lee finds in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola a case for the Rennaissance as a triumph not of individuality, but of universal experience.

Naples 1343: The Unexpected Origins of the Mafia – Amedeo Feniello’s history of the Camorra – has this much in common with the case against them: it’s all about the evidence.

Ancient Roman election advice suggested some uncomfortable campaign strategies. Evidence from Pompeii suggests many candidates followed it enthusiastically.

On 27 September 1130 a Norman usurper gained a crown from a desperate pope and the Kingdom of Sicily was born.

The Catholic Church’s ban on wigs in the 18th century was as revealing of attitudes towards disability as vanity and sanctity.

In Catherine de’ Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen, Mary Hollingsworth helps the pragmatic queen escape her ‘black legend’.

A community of Ethiopian monk-scholars in Renaissance Rome brought their learning, language and liturgy into the heart of the Roman Church.

Under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, public ceremonies honouring the eternal life of Italy’s far-right dead have grown larger. 

Once Rome’s main artery south, for centuries the Via Appia has been taken as proof of Roman greatness.