How did the Black Death reach Italy?
The Black Death
La peste nera
1348. The plague reached Messina in the autumn of 1347 on Genoese ships from the Black Sea and spread through Italy the next year.
Where: Italy
What happened
The plague reached Messina in the autumn of 1347 on Genoese ships from the Black Sea and spread through Italy the next year. Florence, one of the richest cities in Europe, lost perhaps half its people or more in 1348; the chronicler Giovanni Villani died of it, leaving a blank in his chronicle for the date it would end. Giovanni Boccaccio set his Decameron in that spring: ten young people who escape the city and tell each other a hundred stories. The disease came back again and again for three centuries.
Say it
Nel 1348 la peste ha ucciso circa metà degli abitanti di Firenze.
In 1348 the plague killed about half of Florence's inhabitants.