The history of Italy
A guided tour, 753 BCE – 1957 CE, in 10 stops.
From a small town on the Tiber to the Renaissance and a united Italy: the moments that made the peninsula.
The stops
A town on the Tiber (753 BCE)
Etruscan cities ruled central Italy when, by legend in 753 BCE, a small town was founded on hills above the Tiber. Rome would grow to rule the whole peninsula.
Hannibal (216 BCE)
Carthage’s general Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants and, at Cannae in 216 BCE, surrounded and destroyed a Roman army. Rome still won the war.
The first emperor (27 BCE)
Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and seized power. After his murder his adopted heir Octavian, renamed Augustus, ruled alone: the Republic had become an empire.
Pompeii (79 CE)
In 79 CE Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash, preserving streets, houses and their last moments for archaeologists.
The fall of Rome in the west (476 CE)
Visigoths sacked Rome in 410. In 476 the last western emperor was deposed at Ravenna, while the eastern half of the empire lived on from Constantinople.
Florence and the Renaissance (1436 CE)
Rich on banking and cloth, Florence paid for a new art. Brunelleschi’s dome rose over the cathedral, and painters like Botticelli looked back to the ancient world.
The Sistine Chapel (1508 CE)
Between 1508 and 1512 Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome, more than 300 figures from the Book of Genesis.
Galileo (1610 CE)
Galileo turned a telescope to the sky and saw moons circling Jupiter. In 1633 the Church put him on trial for teaching that the Earth moves round the Sun.
One Italy (1861 CE)
Garibaldi’s volunteers took Sicily and Naples in 1860, and in 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed. Rome joined it ten years later.
The Treaty of Rome (1957 CE)
In 1957 Italy and five neighbours signed the Treaty of Rome, founding the European Economic Community, the start of today’s European Union.