Italy

Ann Natanson visits an exhibition in Rome that highlights the papacy’s interaction with major figures of European history.

During the Napoleonic Wars Britain occupied the strategically important island of Sicily. Most of its inhabitants, tired of long-distance Bourbon rule, welcomed the arrangement, but their monarch did not, as Graham Darby explains.

During the Second World War many cities were bombed from the air. However Rome, the centre of Christendom but also the capital of Fascism, was left untouched by the Allies until July 1943. Claudia Baldoli looks at the reasons why and examines the views of Italians towards the city.

Alex Keller tells the story of how an unlikely friendship between a Dutch doctor and a young Italian nobleman led to the establishment of the first scientific society, which lent crucial support to the radical ideas of Galileo Galilei.

With Italy on the brink of financial collapse and in deep political crisis, the country’s 150th anniversary has been a dramatic one. It is especially timely, then, to take stock of new research into this most contradictory and enigmatic of countries.

Italian Fascist scouts meet a member of the Hitler Youth in Padua, October 1940: a picture explained by Roger Hudson.

Ann Natanson reports on a new scheme to restore the Roman Colosseum to its former gory glory.

Graham Darby reassesses the contribution of one of the key players in the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy.

The discovery of a letter written by the great physician sheds new light on one of the most dramatic events in Roman history, as Raoul McLaughlin explains.

A series of archaeological discoveries off the coast of Sicily reveal how Rome turned a piece of lethal naval technology pioneered by its enemy, Carthage, to its own advantage, explains Ann Natanson.