Italy

The great opera premiered in Rome on January 14th, 1900.

Stephen Gundle settles in the stalls to re-view the epochal Fellini film that defined the hedonistic spirit of post-war Italy.

Was Britain's reputation as the champion of Italian independence really warranted? Giuseppe Garibaldi was undoubtedly popular with Britons, but Peter Clements is sceptical.

Richard O. Collin tells the story of Italy’s parallel police forces, and how they have contended with Mussolini, the Red Brigades – and the Mafia.

The strange story of the death and posthumous life of Italy's Fascist dictator, and the continuing power of the cult of his body over the Italian imagination.

Valery Rees looks at the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino and finds a man whose work still speaks to us today.

Raymond E Role explores the evolution of the intramural games that began in the Middle Ages and still flourish in Italy today.

Alfio Bernabei discovers evidence of a plot to kill the Italian dictator in the early 1930s.

Robert Hole examines the often misunderstood careers of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, whose power in Renaissance Florence was wielded with great subtlety and skill.

Adrian Seville describes the humble beginnings of the earliest lottery, tracing its development from 16th-century Venice across the Channel to Britain.