The Italian Peninsula has a  staggering and enviable history.   Italy reached its great heights under the  Roman Empire and during the Renaissance in   a powerhouse of art and culture. Fragmented for  most of its history, by the mid-19th century,   Italy was officially united as a Republic,  becoming the great nation we know today. The Italian peninsula is blessed in many ways.  It has unusually rich and fertile soil and easy   access to bot h the European mainland and the  Adriatic and Aegean Seas. During its early   history, many migrants settled in this lush  landscape. While we know little about Italy’s   early Bronze Age civilizations, by around 800  BCE, Italy began to thrive during the Iron Age. In particular, the Etruscan Civilization  – located in the northwest region of what   was then Etruria – grew to become a significant  ancient power. The Etruscans are famous for their   gladiatorial games, their ironworking, and thei r  brightly colored frescos found at archaeological   sites across Italy. Historians are still unsure  where the Etruscans originally came from,   and their language has little in common  with others from the ancient world.  Although Etruscan history is shrouded in myth, we  do know that by the 6th century BCE, the Etruscan   league controlled large parts of Italy. According  to legend, the first three kings of ancient Rome   were also Etruscans, and the Romans themselves  would adopt many aspec ts of Etruscan culture. The ancient Romans were one of several  Latin-speaking peoples who formed an alliance   known as the Latin league. The Romans would  gradually overtake the Etruscans, swallowing the   entire Italian Peninsula by the third century BCE. Although Roman Italy would create a great empire   in time, when it started to expand overseas, it  became locked in a deadly battle for survival   against the North African Empire of  Carthage, the superpower of the day. During the conflict , the Carthaginian general,  Hannibal, marched war elephants over the Alps   into Italy, annihilating the Roman military in a  series of crushing defeats. This was the closest   Rome ever came to destruction, but the Romans were  ultimately victorious after many years of war.  Having destroyed Carthage,  Rome began its great expansion. By the first century BCE, Rome was already  the undisputed master of the Mediterranean,   having absorbed vast areas of  land across three continents.  The Roman army was a formidable fighting  force, and Roman culture flowered as it   absorbed other nations. Contact with  Greece greatly enriched ancient Rome,   which adopted Greek-style architecture,  sculpture, philosophy, and literature.  However, as Rome’s power grew, so  did its political problems at home.  While the Roman Republic was not a democracy,  it initially had many quasi-democratic elements,   including free elections, term limits  for its leaders, and public assemblies. By the Late Republ ic, these institutions  were challenged by increasingly powerful   Roman generals, who controlled large  armies drawn from the landless poor.   Many late Roman commanders broke the rules around  term limits and age restrictions when they stood   for high office, confident that they had the  backing of both the military and the masses. During the first century BCE, three  mighty Roman men had a complete   stranglehold over Roman politics: Pompey  Magnus, Marcus Crassus, and Julius Caesar.  After Crassus died, Caesar and Pompey  would envelop Rome in civil war,   with Caesar coming out on top – making  himself dictator for life in 44 BCE. That same year, Caesar was stabbed to death during  a senate meeting for his outrageous power grab.  Although Caesar had been murdered, the  Republic was by now in its death throes.   Caesar’s right-hand man, Marc Antony, and his  adopted son, Octavian, would form a new political   alliance with the wealthy senator, Marcus Lepidus. This alliance also fe ll apart, and soon Marc   Antony and Octavian faced off against each other  for control of the world’s largest empire. Marc   Antony and his lover Cleopatra lost the Civil  War, and Octavian became Rome’s first Emperor,   renaming himself Augustus Caesar  and ruling peacefully for 40 years.  Rome would remain a monarchy until it fell in  the 5th century CE, and it would go through some   very dark times and some long stretches  of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Some of the best-remembered R oman  Emperors include the mad Emperor Caligula,   who declared war against the Ocean, and Emperor  Nero, who came to power as a teenager and was   more interested in playing his lyre and  reciting poetry than running the Empire.  Rome had many great emperors, including  the formidable conqueror Trajan,   and the philosopher-emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Rome would reach its greatest height and have   some of its best rulers during the 2nd century CE,  drastically improving living standards for many people across the ancient world. Aqueducts,  sewers, long-lasting and sturdy roads,   and enormous marble buildings were just some  of the benefits Rome’s subjects enjoyed.  By the 3rd century, Rome started to decline,  as it was plunged into a seemingly endless   series of civil wars. While Rome was on  the brink, it would have a brief period   of recovery during the 4th century, when several  great emperors helped restore Rome’s strength.  The most important of these Emperors was  Constanti ne the Great, who made the bold   step of converting to Christianity. The Roman  Catholic Church that Constantine helped to create   would long outlive the Empire itself. Rome’s renewed stability would not last long,   and in the late 4th and early 5th centuries  CE, multiple Germanic tribes crossed the   Empire’s Rhine-Danube border within a few  years of each other. The Romans tried to   integrate these invaders into their own  army, but they soon proved uncontrollable.  Rome itself was sacked twice in one century,  in 410 by the Visigoths and 455 by the Vandals. The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus  Augustulus, was finally deposed in 476 CE.  The chaotic European Dark Ages had begun. The Early Medieval Period would be awful   for Italy, as many competing powers  would attempt to conquer the peninsula.  Initially, Italy fell under the control  of the Germanic Ostrogoths, but by the   mid-6th century CE, the clever and militarily  savvy Byzantine emperor, Justinian I, invaded   Ita ly in an attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire. While the Byzantines would successfully wrestle Italy from the Goths, they would struggle  to hold on to the war-ravaged peninsula.   The 20-year conflict so broke Italy,  and it was immediately and successfully   invaded by yet another Germanic tribe, the  Lombard’s, who swept down from the North.  Italy quickly fractured into multiple  pieces, initially splitting between the   Lombards and the Byzantines. The Lombards did  not maintain a single sta ble kingdom in Italy,   but they did create several smaller kingdoms  that would survive for a long time in fragments.  As the Byzantines gradually lost their grip on  power and ceased to administer large parts of   Italy, a series of self-governing independent  kingdoms emerged in the medieval period.  Some of these tiny kingdoms would become  very powerful despite their small size. The Papal States – a narrow corridor of land  stretching from Rome to Ravenna – gradually   fell into the Pope’s hands and became  highly influential in the Middle Ages.  Severely in need of protection, one ruler of the  Papal States, Pope Leo III, received military aid   from the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. Charlemagne  invaded Northern Italy, displacing the Lombards,   and had himself crowned Emperor of Romans  by the Pope on Christmas day in 800 CE.  Although Charlemagne’s empire  began to collapse after his death,   parts of Northern Italy would continually be  absorbed and reabsorbed into the largel y German   Holy Roman Empire, as it fluctuated  wildly in size over many centuries. By the late Middle Ages, as the European  economy gradually expanded, many more Italian   city-states grew in wealth and importance.  Because of Italy’s geographical position,   it became an increasingly significant commercial  hub. Its coastal cities came to the forefront for   their expert shipbuilding, manufacturing, and easy  access to ocean trade. In the southern regions and   in Sicily, this trade was taken up by the invading  Normans, who established several kingdoms there.  The most powerful of these maritime city-states  was Venice, known as the Serene Republic.   Now regarded as one of the most beautiful cities  on Earth, this unusual city-state was built   on a lagoon and created an enormous trading  empire that would make it phenomenally rich. Venice was unusual in many ways, not least  because its rulers, the Doges, were chosen   in aristocratic elections. Venice reached  its absolute heigh t during the Renaissance,   expanding overseas to control parts of Greece  and many coastal cities in the Balkans.  Many other Italian city-states came to  the forefront during the Renaissance,   including Venice’s main rival,  the maritime state of Genoa. Italy was particularly important to  the Renaissance, as many Byzantine   refugees fled to Italy, bringing ancient  documents and artistic techniques with them.  To the south, the Tuscan city of Florence played  a vital role in producing many great thinkers   and artists during the 14th and 15th centuries. Florence was controlled by the incredibly wealthy   Medici banking family, who could afford to spend  their money sponsoring great artists and thinkers.   Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo  Da Vinci are just a few of the distinguished   figures who lived and worked in the city. The splendor of Renaissance Italy gradually   faded away, and by the 16th century, the power of  the Italian Republics was increasingly aff ected by   foreign invasions. For example, the Italian Wars  (fought between 1494 and 1559) saw the Hapsburgs,   the French, and many other European powers  fighting to control various regions of Italy.  During this era, the Papal states also became  embroiled in a power struggle as the Protestant   Reformation began. The Reformation was sparked  by the fiery German preacher Martin Luther,   and the invention of the printing press  helped spread new ideas across Europe. For the first time, many Europeans questioned  Catholic dogma and the authority of the Pope.  In response, the Church launched the  Counter-Reformation, a movement designed to bring   European countries back into the Catholic fold.  It was only modestly successful, but the Papal   States gained a great deal of political power as  an independent state at this time – one determined   to flex its muscles to spread Catholicism. On the whole, however, Italian independence   continued to decline. Parts of Italy fell into  the possession of the mighty Spanish Habsburgs,   the Austrian Habsburgs, and  later the Spanish Bourbons.  This state of affairs would remain essentially  unchanged until after the French revolution in   1789, when the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte,  began his campaigns of conquest across Europe. Napoleon invaded Italy, but he also reorganized  it, transforming its many tiny kingdoms into   several large Republics. Napoleon’s wildly  ambitious empire-building project was   ultimately doomed, but he dramatically changed the  political landscape of Europe while he was alive.  After Napoleon’s puppet states were removed or  reshaped, Europe experienced a power vacuum in   many places. In Italy, the period following  the defeat of Napoleon (between 1814- 1861)   is known as the Risorgimento, or “the resurgence.” While a meeting of European ambassadors – called   Congress of Vienna – attempted to put Italy  back to the way it had been before Napoleon,   this became complicated and contro versial.  Napoleon had introduced modern reformist policies,   and the antiquated aristocracies that had gone  before him could not simply turn the clock back. As the Austrian Habsburgs and the Spanish  Bourbons filtered back into Italy,   calls for national independence grew. By the mid-19th century, ideas about national   identity and ethnicity were on the rise in Europe,  and the dream of a united and independent Italy   spread like wildfire amongst young radicals. The  cry “Viva Italia!” wen n 1848. Garibaldi’s revolutionary  soldiers, the iconic redshirts,   would invade Sicily with only a thousand men  before marching north to unite the peninsula.   Thanks to Garibaldi and Cavour, Italy  was declared a unified Republic in 1861,   although Venice resisted until  1866 and Rome resisted until 1870. The King of Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II,  became the first king of Italy. The new country   would function as a peaceful democratic  republic until after the first world war.  Af and freedom of   expression was temporarily snuffed out. Mussolini claimed to be restoring Italy   to the glory days of ancient Rome. He  spent a lot of time and energy acquiring   colonies for Italy across East Africa in  a short-lived attempt at Empire building.  Mussolini’s regime would be  short-lived and unpopular.   His fascists sided with Hitler during the Second  World War, but when it became clear Italy was   not doing well, Mussolini was removed from power  and arrested in 1943. He was dern  power and member of the EU and G7.  With a reputation for fantastic wine, food, and  art, and staggering and lengthy history, Italy   today is a desirable place to live and one of the  most popular tourist destinations in the world.