Medieval and Renaissance Italy

Italy was not unified as a nation-state until the 19th century. From the fall of the Roman Empire, the nation was mostly divided between city-states and regional kingdoms. Still, from the 14th to 16th centuries, Italy experienced a Golden Age, known as the Renaissance, with wondrous feats of art and science, as well as intrigue and conflict.

Understand
Those who lived before AD 1500 obviously did not use the term "Middle Ages" for their own time; the concept of "Middle Ages" or "Dark Ages" was coined in the 17th century, when Europeans often regarded the enlightened ideals of Ancient Greek and the Roman Empire to have been lost with the fall of Rome in the 5th century, and revived in the 14th to 17th centuries; the word renaissance (Italian: rinascimento) means "rebirth".

During this millennium, Europe was dominated by feudal monarchies. Italy was an exception, as city-states held power. Many of them had a prosperous merchant class, who made profit from the Silk Route and other routes.

Nationalism only arose in the late 18th, early 19th century and the states had little to no sense of being "Italian" in any sense but the geographic. The city-states were usually rivals, though the Catholic Church was a unifying force. Although most of the city-states had their own languages, such as Venetian in Venice and Neapolitan in Naples, the popularity of Dante Alighieri's works gradually led to the Tuscan language becoming the lingua franca of the entire Italian peninsula, eventually resulting in the Florentine dialect of the Tuscan language being selected as the basis for standard Italian upon unification.

The period from AD 1000 to the mid-14th century is today described as the High Middle Ages; in Italy and other European countries it saw the rise of cathedrals, universities and castles that have survived until today. Italy became a thoroughfare for the Crusades to the Holy Land. This period of relative progress is held to have ended with the Great Famine in the 1310s and the Black Death of the 1340s.

The Renaissance
While many pieces of lost ancient knowledge were indeed re-invented during the Renaissance (such as perspective painting, concrete casting, and republican government), the periodization is disputed. Graeco-Roman scholarship survived through the Byzantine, Islamic and Ottoman civilizations, and the arts and sciences in Europe made significant progress from at least AD 1000, so some historians today disregard the dichotomic concept of "middle ages" and "renaissance". Still, the continuity with Roman civilization was probably particularly strong in Italy, with relics of ancient Rome all around that people could look at and be influenced by or copy.

Among critical technologies of the 15th century were the printing press (which brought the Bible, ancient literature, legal documents and news stories to common people, and allowed the rise of vernacular written language parallel to Latin), gunpowder weapons (which disrupted the feudal system by obsoleting castles and chivalry) and the mariner's compass (which made navigation easier). These had been known in imperial China for centuries, and it is still unknown whether they were imported from Asia, or independently invented in Europe.

Decimal numbers were indisputably adopted from the east, and are still today known as Arabic numerals. While they were known in southern Europe since the 10th century, the printing press brought them to widespread use in the 15th century.

Oil painting on canvas and wood was developed in the 15th century in the Netherlands and Italy, and became the most iconic legacy of the Renaissance; see European art.

The Renaissance ideals spread to the rest of Europe in the 16th century, and contributed to the Protestant Reformation, in which Christian congregations withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church. While the Protestants were successful in many parts of northern Europe, they failed in Italy, which has remained nearly universally Catholic.

As Vasco da Gama discovered the Cape Route around Africa, commerce between Europe and Asia shifted from the Mediterranean to the high seas, making Italy less important.

Decline
Following the 16th-century Italian Wars, the Italian states lost their cultural and economic dominance, and some of them were conquered by foreign empires, such as Spain and the Kingdom of France, with the Ottomans wresting control of some of their possessions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Austria later occupied much of Northern Italy. Italy was not unified until the 19th century, and the cities and regions maintain strong cultural identities today, often with roots in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

While politically divided, the Italian peninsula has remained a hotspot for fashion, visual arts and classical music to this day. Italy was an important destination on the Grand Tour, the traditional educational journey for the few young men and women who could afford to travel.

Northeast Italy












Northwest Italy




Central Italy


























Itineraries

 * Assassin's Creed Tour: Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood take place in Renaissance Italy.