Renaissance

We ask four historians whether the great advances of the Renaissance were extended to women.

The most powerful family of Florence and the most powerful man in the world offer a new solution to one of the most notorious crimes of the age.

The conflicts that devastated Renaissance Europe were justified by ancient ideas rooted in natural law and Christianity. Though replaced by legal frameworks for the conduct of war between states, the killing continues.

A rich and complex portrait of the author of The Prince manages to combine scholarly analysis with the imagination of the historical novelist.

What did the indigenous people of the Americas think of Christopher Columbus?

A compelling narrative on the machinations of a Borgia pope and his offspring, with the added spice of Machiavelli’s cool observations.

The reforming Tsar sought to westernise his empire, yet in 1723 he published an uncompromising reassertion of his absolutist doctrine, which has traditionally marked Russia’s national consciousness.

Poor and small, Portugal was at the edge of late medieval Europe. But its seafarers created the age of ‘globalisation’, which continues to this day.

Michael Greenhalgh describes how Roman architecture and Graeco-Roman statues made a profound impression upon the great Renaissance artists.