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General History of Italian Culture

More than half of world historic and artistic heritage is to be found in our country (Unesco data) in the hundreds of archaeological sites and over 3000 museums spread throughout the territory - an inestimable patrimony that bears witness to the development of civilisation itself.

Southern Italy is rich in vestiges of ancient Greece, from the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento to the city of Selinunte - both in Sicily - and on to Paestum and the Homeric charm of the Campi Flegrei in the region of Campania.

Important too are the remains of the most mysterious of populations, the Etruscans, who left numerous necropolises scattered throughout Latium and Tuscany (Cerveteri, Tarquinia and Volterra).

But archaeological Italy is most importantly of all Roman: traces of the Roman Republic abound, but it is the Imperial Age that left its imprint in treasures such as the Forums, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, as well as the sites of Pompei and Herculanaeum - those cities that have been passed down to us through the ages just as they were left after the terrible eruptions of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

These are sites whose fame and majesty has obscured many, many others scattered along the entire peninsula.
The decadence of this great historical period lies, at the same time, at the origins of another, as witnessed at Ravenna in the mosaics by Teodorico and Galla Placidia, and at Acquileia and Grado, by the great Paleo-Christian basilicas erected in rupture as well as in continuity with the Imperial symbols.

As the Saracens sacked the coastal areas they also contributed new architecture (tiled domes and decorated towers in Campania and sumptuous palaces in Sicily) as a prologue, some say, to the imposing Romanesque and Gothic structures of the central-northern cities and the Norman-Swabian castles once again in the south.

Religious-monastic fervor would be central to the Middle Ages, leaving its immortal mark in the many convents and hermitages along the roads leading to Rome (the "Via Fracigena" is surely the most famous). In Tuscany Giotto was to "create" his modern sense of painting, exporting it later to almost every corner of the peninsula (good examples are the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi or the Chapel of the Scrovegni in Padua).

Also in Tuscany, men like Lorenzo de' Medici, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippo Brunelleschi, Sandro Botticelli and many others, would give life to the Renaissance, one of the most exciting cultural movements in the history of humanity which, before going on to influence the entire world, would fill Florence and Italy with its splendid maserpieces, among which the dome of St. Peter's and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel.

Another great contributor to this artistic "rebirth" was Palladio, and the numerous villas he designed in the Veneto Region, a dry-land appendix to the splendor and richness of Venice with its canals, churches and palaces.
Italy would be "emancipated" from the Renaissance in the 17th century, and the absolute paradign of this process would be Caravaggio, who revolutionised painting with a use of light that today we would call "cinemagraphic" and with a realism such as had never been seen before.

The Baroque was a great era in Rome, which, after the Renaissance masterpieces of Michelangelo and Raphael, would host the creative fantasy of Bernini and Borromini, eternal rivals and creators of two of great schools of Italian Baroque the evidence of which is scattered throughout the peninsula.

The 18th century saw the peak and the start of the decline of Naples, at that time the European city second only to Paris, and the initial embyo of national unity under Napoleon.
Unity finally arrived in the century that followed when Italy was able to begin to dedicate itself to a widespread conservation of the immense patrimony accumulated over the centuries, giving rise to the various schools of resoration (mosaic, sculpture, painting) that, thanks to a felicitous marriage of artistic sensibility and sophisticated technologies, have been able to preserve these masterpieces so offended by time.

Important in almost every city are its artisans, which are being increasingly appreciated abroad as well.
Departing from this tradition Italy's primacy shifts into sectors such as design and fashion where figures such as Pininfarina and Giugiaro, Valentino and Armani have become, along with cuisine, wines and the red Farrari sports car, "Made in Italy" icons.

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