Italy

Before the Romans could become masters of the Mediterranean, they had to first conquer the people of their own peninsula.

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....

From Palermo to Castiglione di Sicilia to Alimena, Sicily holds great secrets from the past and unspoken promises. Now, slowly shaking itself free of the Mafia, Sicily is opening itself up to visitors in ways it never has before....

The startling truth behind one of the most notorious dynasties in history is revealed in a remarkable new account by the acclaimed author of The Tudors and A World Undone....

Naples '44 is an unflinching autobiographical account of a year in Naples after the armistice and Allied landings in Sorrento in 1943. Working as a British counterintelligence officer under the Allied occupation, Lewis documents the rich pageant of life in the city and its surrounding areas....

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....

John Hooper's marvelously entertaining and perceptive new book is ideal for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians....

Explore the four cities of Irish legend to which druid Abaris the sky-rider traveled in his flying machine, and from which the Tuatha dé Danann gods of Ireland came prior to their arrival in the British Isles....

Since childhood Helene Stapinski heard lurid tales about her great-great-grandmother, Vita. In Southern Italy she was a loose woman who had murdered someone....

From 1934 until 1944, Mussolini met Hitler numerous times, and the two developed a relationship that affected both countries. While Germany is regarded as the senior power, Christian Goeschel demonstrates just how much history has underrepresented Mussolini's influence on his German ally....

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

From a bestselling author with unprecedented access to Pope Francis, an investigative look at the recent financial scandals at the highest levels of the Vatican A veritable war is waging in the Church: on one side, there is Pope Francis’s strong message for one church of the poor and all; on...

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....

Founded more than 150 years ago by shepherding families in the toe of Italy, the 'Ndrangheta is today the world's most powerful mafia, with a crushing presence in Southern Italy....

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

In this landmark study of Italy from the 14th through the early 16th centuries, Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt chronicles the rise of Florence and Venice as powerful city-states....

No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, “another world.”....

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....

Master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography....

The world is enamored with Italy: its culture, art, food, and fashion, its beautiful landscapes, and famous cities-and, of course, its wine.

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....

Hardly anyone who was educated was unaware of at least some of the more famous stories of Roman myth and history as told by Titus Livius....

The Republic of Venice: The History of the Venetian Empire and Its Influence across the Mediterranean dives into the city's origin story, how it became one of the most important powers in Europe, and its inevitable undoing....

The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate....

The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, nepotism and greed that were rife in Renaissance Italy....