Important Italian Culture Dates

1453

Fall of Constantinople (beginning of Renaissance)

1550-1800

Early Modern Italy

1492

'discovery' of America; Lorenzo de Medici dies

1498-1512

Florence ruled by Piedro Soderini (Machiavelli is in his court)

1559

Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (end of Italian Wars)

1600

execution of Giordano Bruno

1866

Venice taken from Austrian forces

1871

Rome becomes the new capital

1896

humiliating Italian defeat in Adwa, Ethiopia

1936

Declaration of Italian Empire

1939

Albania annexed

1974

right to divorce

1252

Minting of the Florentine Florin

1348

Bubonic Plague hits Florence

14th c-16th c

Renaissance in Northern Itay

1494

French King Charles VIII invades Italy (enters Florence; beginning of Italian Wars)

1494-1559

The Italian Wars

1494-1498

Savonarola controls Florence

1512

Medici return to power; Machiavelli is exiled (writes the Prince)

1545-1563

Council of Trent (counter-reformation)

1527

Sack of Rome (marks the end of the Renaissance)

1831

La Giovine Italia (Mazzini)

1848

revolution(s); Garbaldi has a brief republic in Rome

1860

Garibaldi military victory

1861

Formal unification (Cavour & the King)

1870

Italy takes Rome and breaks with the Church

1861-1922

Liberal Italy

1890

Italy colonizes Eritrea

1890s-1920s

Italy colonizes Somalia

1911-1912

Italy colonizes Libya

1915-1918

Italy's participation in WW1

1921

First commemoration to the unknown soldier at the Typewriter (aka the Altar of the Fatherland)--Italian Communist Party Created

1925

Mussolini becomes dictator

1941

Allied forces seize Italian East Africa

1946

Italy declared a Parliamentary Republic

1980

Bologna Train station bombed by right-wingers

1922

March on Rome

1922-1943

Mussolini is Prime Minister

1943-1945

Italian Civil War; Mussolini heads Italian Social Republic in Salo

1919-1921

"Biennio Rosso" (Two Red Years)

1924

Matteotti assassinated

1929

Lateran Accords

1935-1936

Assault on Ethiopia

1937-1938

Creation of racial laws; 1937 in East Africa, 1938 in Italy for Jews

Libya 1923-1932

genocide of Cyrenaican Bedouin

Ethiopia 1935-1940

Mass mustard gas and massacres

1940

Italy enters WWII

1943

Allies invade Italy through Sicily; bombing of Rome; Italy announces itself "non-belligerant"

1944

Bombing of Monte-Cassino; Allies liberate Rome

1945

Mussolini killed by antifascist/communist partisans

1948

women's suffrage

1950s-1960s

"economic miracle" aka "il boom"

1960s-1970s

student uprisings; divisions between communists and Christian democrats

1978

right to abortion; assassination of Moro

1970s-1980s

Years of Lead

1989

Berlin Wall falls and collapse of communism

1994

Christian Democrat party falls