History of Italy: a timeline

34 moments in the history of Italy, in order, each with what happened and why it matters.

Eras

  1. Nuraghi, Greeks and early Rome (1800–509 BC)
  2. The Roman Republic (509–27 BC)
  3. The Roman Empire (27 BC–476)
  4. The early Middle Ages (476–1000)
  5. Communes, emperors and popes (1000–1400)
  6. The Renaissance (1400–1559)
  7. Foreign rule and the Baroque (1559–1796)
  8. Napoleon and the Risorgimento (1796–1870)
  9. Liberal Italy and the Great War (1870–1922)
  10. Fascism and the war (1922–1945)
  11. The Republic (1946–)

Nuraghi, Greeks and early Rome (1800–509 BC)

  1. c. 1700 BC: The nuraghi rise in Sardinia — In the Bronze Age, from around 1700 BC, the people of Sardinia began to build nuraghi: cone-shaped stone towers made of huge blocks laid without mortar.
  2. 21 April 753 BC: The founding of Rome — According to legend, Romulus founded Rome on the Palatine hill on 21 April 753 BC, after killing his twin brother Remus.
  3. c. 750 BC: The Greeks settle the south — From the eighth century BC Greek cities sent settlers across the sea to southern Italy and Sicily.

The Roman Republic (509–27 BC)

  1. 509 BC: Rome becomes a republic — Roman tradition says the city was ruled by seven kings, the last of them from the Etruscan family of the Tarquins.
  2. 218–202 BC: Hannibal crosses the Alps — In the Second Punic War, Carthage's general Hannibal marched from Spain over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Italy in 218 BC, with his army and thirty-seven war…
  3. 15 March 44 BC: Julius Caesar is killed — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon with his army in January 49 BC — the start of a civil war — and won it.

The Roman Empire (27 BC–476)

  1. 16 January 27 BC: Octavian becomes Augustus — After defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian, Caesar's adopted heir, was the only master of the Roman world.
  2. 79: Vesuvius buries Pompeii — In AD 79 Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae under ash, stones and hot gas.
  3. 313: The Edict of Milan — In February 313 the emperors Constantine and Licinius met in Milan, then one of the capitals of the empire, and agreed that everybody, Christians included,…

The early Middle Ages (476–1000)

  1. 476: The last emperor of the West — In 476 Odoacer, a Germanic general, deposed the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus in Ravenna and sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople, saying the West no…
  2. 568: The Lombards enter Italy — In 568 the Lombards, a Germanic people led by King Alboin, came into Italy through Friuli and took much of the peninsula, later with Pavia as their capital.
  3. 25 December 800: Charlemagne is crowned in Rome — King Charles of the Franks, Charlemagne, had conquered the Lombard kingdom in 774 and made himself its king.

Communes, emperors and popes (1000–1400)

  1. 25–28 January 1077: The humiliation of Canossa — Pope Gregory VII and the emperor Henry IV were fighting over who should appoint bishops, and the pope had excommunicated the emperor.
  2. 5 June 1224: Frederick II founds a university in Naples — Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, emperor and King of Sicily, grew up in Palermo and spoke several languages; contemporaries called him stupor mundi, the wonder of…
  3. 30 March 1282: The Sicilian Vespers — Sicily was ruled by the French king Charles of Anjou, whose officials and soldiers were hated.
  4. 27 January 1302: Dante is exiled from Florence — Dante Alighieri, a poet and one of Florence's leaders, belonged to the White Guelphs.
  5. 1348: The Black Death — The plague reached Messina in the autumn of 1347 on Genoese ships from the Black Sea and spread through Italy the next year.

The Renaissance (1400–1559)

  1. 1420–1436: Brunelleschi builds the dome of Florence — Florence's cathedral had a hole in its roof more than forty metres wide, and nobody knew how to close it.
  2. 1469–1492: Lorenzo the Magnificent's Florence — Lorenzo de' Medici led Florence from 1469 until his death in 1492, without ever holding a royal title.
  3. 6 May 1527: The Sack of Rome — In the wars between France and the emperor Charles V for control of Italy, an imperial army of German Landsknechts and Spanish soldiers, unpaid and out of…

Foreign rule and the Baroque (1559–1796)

  1. 1610–1633: Galileo and the telescope — In Padua on 7 January 1610 Galileo Galilei turned a telescope he had improved himself towards Jupiter and saw three small 'stars' beside it; a few nights later…

Napoleon and the Risorgimento (1796–1870)

  1. 7 January 1797: The tricolour is born — Napoleon's campaign of 1796 swept the Austrians out of much of northern Italy and set up new republics on the French model.
  2. 11 May 1860: Garibaldi and the Thousand — On the night of 5–6 May 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa, with about a thousand volunteers in red shirts on two steamships, and on 11 May…
  3. 17 March 1861: The Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed — On 17 March 1861 a law passed by the first Italian parliament, meeting in Turin, gave Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy the title of King of Italy.
  4. 20 September 1870: The breach of Porta Pia — Rome was still ruled by the pope, protected by a French garrison.

Liberal Italy and the Great War (1870–1922)

  1. 1876–1915: The great emigration — Between 1876 and the First World War almost fourteen million Italians left the country.
  2. 24 May 1915–1918: Italy in the First World War — Italy went to war against Austria-Hungary on 24 May 1915, after the secret Treaty of London promised it Trento, Trieste and more.

Fascism and the war (1922–1945)

  1. 28 October 1922: The March on Rome — On 28 October 1922 thousands of armed Fascist squads moved on Rome.
  2. 8 September 1943: The armistice of 8 September — Italy entered the Second World War beside Hitler in June 1940 and suffered defeat after defeat.
  3. 25 April 1945: Liberation Day — On 25 April 1945 the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy, based in Milan, called a general insurrection against the Germans and the Fascists,…

The Republic (1946–)

  1. 2 June 1946–1948: Italy chooses the Republic — On 2 and 3 June 1946 Italians voted in a referendum on monarchy or republic — women voting in a national election for the first time — and the Republic won…
  2. 1958–1963: The economic miracle — In the late 1950s and early 1960s Italy changed faster than at any time in its history.
  3. 16 March 1978: Aldo Moro is kidnapped — From the end of the 1960s to the early 1980s, the anni di piombo or years of lead, far-left and far-right terrorists killed hundreds of people.
  4. 17 February 1992: Clean Hands and the mafia massacres — On 17 February 1992 Milan magistrates arrested Mario Chiesa, the Socialist head of a city care home, as he took a bribe.