From the deposition of Romulus Augustulus to the imperial coronation of Otto the Great — Ostrogothic kings, Byzantine exarchs, Lombard dukes, Carolingian emperors, the rise of the popes, and the Saracen raids that shaped the Italian peninsula in the five centuries between the fall of Rome and the year 1000. Slide across the centuries to read the major events of Italy's early Middle Ages.
The Germanic commander Odoacer deposes the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus and sends the imperial regalia to Constantinople, ending the line of Western Roman emperors.
From the deposition of Romulus Augustulus to the imperial coronation of Otto the Great — Ostrogothic kings, Byzantine exarchs, Lombard dukes, Carolingian emperors, the rise of the popes, and the Saracen raids that shaped the Italian peninsula in the five centuries between the fall of Rome and the year 1000. Slide across the centuries to read the major events of Italy's early Middle Ages.
The Germanic commander Odoacer deposes the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus and sends the imperial regalia to Constantinople, ending the line of Western Roman emperors.
Theodoric, sent westward by Emperor Zeno, defeats and personally kills Odoacer at Ravenna, founding an Ostrogothic kingdom that preserves Roman administration.
After two decades of devastating Gothic Wars, Justinian's Pragmatic Sanction (Sanctio Pragmatica) reincorporates Italy into the Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople through an exarch at Ravenna.
King Alboin leads the Lombards from Pannonia across the Julian Alps, beginning a conquest that fragments Italy between Lombard kings, dukes, and the Byzantine exarchate.
The former prefect of Rome, Gregory I, is elected pope and transforms the bishopric of Rome into the de facto government of central Italy.
The Lombard king Aistulf captures Ravenna, ending two centuries of Byzantine government in northern Italy and forcing the popes to seek a new protector beyond the Alps.
King Pepin the Short hands the lands of the former exarchate over to the pope, creating the temporal Papal States.
Charlemagne takes Pavia, deposes King Desiderius, and assumes the Iron Crown of the Lombards, ending two centuries of Lombard rule in northern Italy.
On Christmas Day, Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor in Saint Peter's Basilica, reviving a western imperial title and binding Italy to a transalpine empire.
An Aghlabid expedition lands at Mazara, opening a long war that will detach Sicily from the Byzantine empire and turn Palermo into one of the great Mediterranean capitals of Islam.
Pope John XII crowns the Saxon king Otto I in Rome, refounding the western empire on a German base and inaugurating the long entanglement of Italy with the Reich.
The Doge of Venice sails the eastern Adriatic in person, securing tributes from the Dalmatian cities and inaugurating Venice's long career as a Mediterranean sea-power.