Italian History

Italy is not one story, it is many worlds stacked on top of each other. This collection follows the peninsula through moments when rule, identity, and ambition were being renegotiated, city by city and century by century. The episodes are arranged in chronological order, so you can listen straight through and feel the long arc of change. The collection begins in the Roman world, where personal power and public institutions keep colliding. You will hear how figures like Julius Caesar and Octavian (Augustus) navigated civil war, loyalty, and legitimacy, and how the stakes of a single career could reshape an entire system. From there it moves into the Italian patchwork of republics, courts, and church authority, where patronage and ideas can be as decisive as armies. Episodes on Lorenzo de’ Medici and Niccolò Machiavelli sit naturally beside stories of Renaissance ingenuity, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Galileo, where craft, rivalry, faith, and politics are always in the room.