Italy

This audio consists of a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor AD 161-180, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy....

An extraordinary chronicle of Venice, its people, and its grandeur Thomas Madden’s majestic, sprawling history of Venice is the first full portrait of the city in English in almost thirty years....

Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family....

Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius....

From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini....

The rise and fall of the Venetian empire stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty....

What do you really know about Vatican City? The Vatican, comprising the Apostolic Palace, St. Peter’s Basilica, and various other buildings, serves as the headquarters of the Catholic Church. It has done so for nearly two millennium....

The Florentines presents a sweeping and magisterial 400-year history of both the city and the people who gave birth to the Renaissance....

A dark tale of violence, ideals and a country at war, in Blood and Power, historian John Foot draws on decades of research to chart the turbulent years between 1915 and 1945, and beyond....

Tourists, armchair travelers, and historians will all delight in this fluid narrative that can be read straight through, dipped into over time, or used as a reference guide to each period in Sicily's fascinating tale....

This enthralling book charts the family's huge influence on the political, economic and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the early 1430s with the rise of the dynasty....

The riveting history of a beautiful queen, a shocking murder, a papal trial - and a reign as triumphant as any in the Middle Ages....

Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, and the Spanish and the French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot....

It is not an easy job to draw the border between the history of Italy and the history of Rome. In so many places, the two political and geographical entities collide. They wouldn’t be possible without each other, but they each have their own story....

When Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures....

Since its formation in 1861, Italy has struggled to develop an effective political system and a secure sense of national identity. Christopher Duggan's acclaimed introduction charts the country's history from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West to the present day....

"Sicily," said Goethe, "is the key to everything." It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East....

The Brandenburgers were Hitler's Special Forces, a band of mainly foreign German nationals who used disguise and fluency in other languages to complete daring missions into enemy territory. Overshadowed by stories of their Allied equivalents, their history has largely been ignored....

Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned....

Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings....

Beginning with Rodrigo Borgia, Chamberlin charts this intelligent but ruthless man's passage to the top. He uncovers how, as Pope Alexander VI, he directed his family to carve out a Borgia kingdom in the heart of Italy....

Set in the court of Urbino in 1507, Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier presents an invaluable look at court life and culture during the Renaissance. Over four nights of dialogue, the book explores the key question, ‘What should a courtier be like?’ Listen for more....

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo....

The brilliance of the Renaissance laid the foundation of the modern world....

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice, and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy....

Beginning with Rodrigo Borgia, Chamberlin charts this intelligent but ruthless man's passage to the top. He uncovers how, as Pope Alexander VI, he directed his family to carve out a Borgia kingdom in the heart of Italy. The chaotic intrigues, alliances, and wars that Cesare and Lucrezia became embroiled with are exposed in fascinating detail as competing dynasties and cities struggled for survival before the family's fortunes crumbled. 

What do you really know about Vatican City? The Vatican, comprising the Apostolic Palace, St. Peter’s Basilica, and various other buildings, serves as the headquarters of the Catholic Church. It has done so for nearly two millennium--ever since the first Pope, St. Peter, made it his home. Thousands of Catholics flock to the Vatican and its iconic basilica each year. But what do you really know about this great basilica and the city that houses it?

In the aftermath of the First World War, the seeds of fascism were sown in Italy. While the country reeled in shock, a new movement emerged from the chaos: one that preached hatred for politicians and love for the fatherland; one that promised to build a ‘New Roman Empire’, and make Italy a great power again.

In the fifteenth century, even before the city states of the Apennine Peninsula began to coalesce into what would become, several centuries later, a nation, "Italy" exerted enormous influence over all of Europe and throughout the Mediterranean. Viewing the Italy (the many Italies?) of that time through the lens of today allows us to gather a fragmented, multi-faceted, and seemingly contradictory history into a single unifying narrative that speaks to our current reality as much as it does to a specific historical period. This is what the French historian Fernand Braudel achieves here.

The Vatican is a landlocked independent city state and enclave in Rome, Italy. The Vatican City State, also called the Vatican, acquired independence from Italy in the year 1929 with the Lateran Treaty, and it is a different terrain under the Holy See's "full ownership, special rule, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction", which makes sure the city state's temporal, diplomatic, and spiritual independence. This is one of the world’s most unique states/countries, something that is definitely worth understanding.