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Trace Italy under Spanish, Austrian, and Bourbon rule from Cateau-Cambrésis to Napoleon.

Use the timeline below to navigate through major events and milestones.

Foreign Domination & Early Modern Italy · 1559-1797 AD
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Foreign Domination & Early Modern Italy

From the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis to the fall of the Venetian Republic — Spanish viceroys, Austrian Habsburgs, and Bourbon kings ruled an Italy that nonetheless gave Europe Galileo, the opera, and the Enlightenment of Beccaria. Slide across the centuries to read the major events of the peninsula's long age of foreign hegemony.

1559 AD
Spanish Hegemony
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In the year of Our Lord

1559 AD

Spanish Hegemony
  • Political

    Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis

    Map of Italy after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, 1559
    Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

    France renounces its claims in Italy, sealing nearly a century and a half of Spanish Habsburg dominance over the peninsula.

11 milestones
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Foreign Domination & Early Modern Italy

From the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis to the fall of the Venetian Republic — Spanish viceroys, Austrian Habsburgs, and Bourbon kings ruled an Italy that nonetheless gave Europe Galileo, the opera, and the Enlightenment of Beccaria. Slide across the centuries to read the major events of the peninsula's long age of foreign hegemony.

  1. Spanish Hegemony

    • Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis

      France renounces its claims in Italy, sealing nearly a century and a half of Spanish Habsburg dominance over the peninsula.

  2. Holy League

    • Battle of Lepanto

      A Holy League fleet led by Venice, Spain, and the Papacy crushes the Ottoman navy in the Gulf of Patras, the last great galley battle of the Mediterranean.

  3. Counter-Reformation

    • Birth of Opera in Florence

      Jacopo Peri's Euridice is staged at the Pitti Palace for the wedding of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV, the earliest opera whose music survives.

  4. Roman Inquisition

    • Trial of Galileo Galilei

      Galileo is condemned by the Roman Inquisition for defending Copernican heliocentrism in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.

  5. Revolts of the Iron Century

    • Masaniello's Revolt in Naples

      The fishmonger Tommaso Aniello leads the people of Naples against Spanish taxation, briefly proclaiming a popular republic before his murder.

  6. Decline of the Stato da Mar

    • Fall of Candia

      After a twenty-one-year siege, Venice surrenders the Cretan capital of Candia to the Ottomans, ending its centuries-long maritime empire.

  7. Habsburg Italy

    • Treaty of Rastatt: Italy Passes to Austria

      The settlement of the War of the Spanish Succession transfers Milan, Naples, Sardinia, and the Tuscan ports from the Spanish to the Austrian Habsburgs.

  8. Bourbon Restoration

    • Charles of Bourbon Conquers Naples

      The Spanish Infante Charles wrests Naples and Sicily from Austria, founding an independent Bourbon kingdom in southern Italy.

  9. Lorraine Tuscany

    • Extinction of the Medici

      Gian Gastone, the last Medici Grand Duke, dies childless; the Grand Duchy of Tuscany passes to Francis Stephen of Lorraine, husband of Maria Theresa.

  10. Italian Enlightenment

    • Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments

      The young Milanese marquis Cesare Beccaria publishes Dei delitti e delle pene, founding modern penal reform and arguing against torture and the death penalty.

  11. End of an Old Regime

    • Treaty of Campo Formio: Fall of the Venetian Republic

      Napoleon's Italian campaign culminates in the dissolution of the thousand-year Republic of Venice, partitioned between France and Austria.