Vilified as a femme fatale, celebrated as a patron of the arts, and ultimately remembered in Ferrara as la buona duchessa, the good duchess, Lucrezia Borgia remains one of the most complex and contested women of the Italian Renaissance.
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While many Italian cities boast Roman foundations, Ferrara is a rarity: a city that came into its own during the Middle Ages and reached its zenith during the Renaissance. Known as the “City of the Bicycle” for its flat terrain and pedal-friendly culture, Ferrara remains one of Europe’s best-preserved examples of “modern” town planning, a […]
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On 17 April 1598, one of the most influential figures of 17th-century science, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, was born in Ferrara. A dedicated Jesuit priest and a meticulous astronomer, Riccioli’s legacy remains visible to anyone who looks at the night sky through a telescope. His nomenclature for lunar features is still the international standard used today.
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The creator of beloved vegetable rebel Cipollino, Gianni Rodari, winner of children’s literature’s highest honour, passed away on 14 April 1980.
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9 April 1454 — On this day, five rival Italian powers signed the Treaty of Lodi, on the banks of the river Adda, that gave the peninsula four decades of relative peace.
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8 April 1492 — Lorenzo the Magnificent, the man who made Florence the centre of the Renaissance world, took his last breath at the villa of Careggi, aged just 43.
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The painter and mosaicist Gino Severini was born on 7 April 1883 in the hilltop Tuscan town of Cortona. A leading figure in early 20th-century Italian art, Severini became one of the most internationally connected members of the Futurist movement, bridging artistic developments in Italy and Paris before moving through Cubism and later Neoclassicism.
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The ruins of Pompeii have once again rewritten the historical record, casting new light on the military technology of the ancient world. A team of Italian researchers has identified impact marks on the city’s northern defensive walls that they believe were made by a polybolos. The Greek-engineered repeating artillery weapon (‘machine gun’) was capable of […]
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Francesco Laparelli was born on 5 April 1521 in Cortona, one of the ancient Etruscan cities of what is now Tuscany, into one of the city’s wealthiest and most distinguished families. It was a beginning that gave him access, education and connections, and the opportunity to create one of Europe’s most extraordinary capital cities – […]
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Born with every gift Florence could bestow, Cosimo I’s brilliant eldest daughter, Maria de’ Medici, was dead at seventeen. Her story casts a long shadow over one of history’s most powerful families.
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