Italy

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.

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.

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.

One of the last popes to play a major role in international affairs, Innocent XI defied Louis XIV, the Sun King, and played a decisive part in the defence of Christianity against the spread of Islam under the auspices of the Ottoman empire, as Graham Darby explains.

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of St Catherine of Siena's canonisation by Pope Pius II on 29 April 1461.

Though it is immersed in the theological ideas of the Middle Ages, the cosmology of Dante’s Divine Comedy is sophisticated, sceptical and tolerant, argues James Burge.

Berlusconi is a product of the country's incomplete unification, argues Alexander Lee.

Chris Wickham revisits an article by J.B.Morrall, first published in History Today in 1959, on the strange, shortlived emperor who in the tenth century sought to rule the lands we now call Germany and Italy.

During the disturbed tenth century in Western Europe, royal power held its ground and extended its authority only in Germany-whence the Emperor Otto III sallied into Italy with the purpose of reviving Roman classical tradition and combining it with the dream of a Christian Commonwealth under imperial aegis. By J.B. Morrall.