Italy

Messalina

Sex, scandal and slander: who was Messalina?

Roman Forum in Rome, Italy (Photo by Olgacov | Dreamstime.com)

General History

Rome history Emperors, popes and Renaissance glory

Engraving depicting the assassination of Julius Caesar

Q&A Why do we need to beware the Ides of March?

Fascist leaders pictured a few days before the March on Rome, October 1922. Benito Mussolini (centre) would soon be the most powerful man in Italy (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)

Mussolini's March on Rome How Italy became the first fascist state

The election of Giorgia Meloni as Italy’s first female prime minister

The rise of Giorgia Meloni “It makes plain the strange way a dictator has retained a positive image in many sectors of Italian society”

Benito Mussolini

Second World War

Mussolini’s willing followers? The Italians devoted to Fascism and the duce

Mussolini salutes in front of the statue of the Roman emperor Nerva, in the 1930s

How Italian dictator Benito Mussolini became the first face of fascism

A portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer, who modern scholars credit for turning Saint Valentine into the patron saint of love.

Saint Valentine Who was the patron saint of love and lovers?

Richard Bosworth answers listener questions on the authoritarian ideology that emerged in Italy a century ago. (Image by Getty Images)

Fascism: everything you wanted to know

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How did pasta come to Europe and when did it first become established in Italy?

An illustration from The Travels of Marco Polo, showing a teenage Marco on the deck of a ship sailing away from Venice

Why are Marco Polo’s travels so famous?

Sophie Hay answers listener questions on the Roman city that was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD 79. (Image by Getty Images)

Pompeii: everything you wanted to know

A mosaic that shows two Roman women exercising, one holds a flower and another holds a leaf

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Roman women

Domitian-2-7abafc4

The death of Domitian: how aristocrats conspired against the Roman emperor

A portrait of a member of the Borgias family

The Borgias: everything you wanted to know