My annual summer trips to Italy seem to get better every year. I can see the Couplella de Bruneleschi in Florence a millions of times, and still be amazed by its ancient Byzantine architecture, which is just one of many reasons why it is such an irreplaceable landmark of Italy. It fascinates me how ...

A nation is commonly known as a group of people whose common identity creates a psychological bond and a political community. Their political identity usually comprises such characteristics as a common language, culture, ethnicity, and history. What is it that shapes the nation's political inst...

Renaissance in Italy In part three of Jacob Burckhardt's book, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, he writes that the Italian Renaissance was shaped by "..not the revival of antiquity alone, but its union with the spirit of the people..." The spirit of the Italian people re...

Botticelli\'s, \"The Birth of Venus,\" reflects the art of the Italian Renaissance ideals. Many people that lived during the Renaissance were very religious and desired to learn about new aspects of life that were not uncovered yet. The Birth of Venus was based on a classical myth of ancient times. ...

Italy and Greece ReportItaly is located in southern Europe. Rome was once capital of the Roman Empire, but today is the capital of Italy. Nearly all Italians are Roman Catholics, although many do not attend church regularly. There are about 100,000 Protestants. Italy also has a very small Jewish...

Human nature leads us to be curious. Due to this we have acquired a thirst for knowledge about many aspects of life - one of these is the past. The city of Rome was founded in 753 B.C. By 275 B.C., it controlled most of the Italian Peninsula. At its peak, in the A.D. 100's, the Roman Empire covered...

What possible similarity, one might be tempted to ask, could exist between the apparently profoundly secular author of "Letter to Peregrino Zambeccari" the Italian humanist and proto-nationalist Coluccio Salutati, whose life was filled chiefly by political and administrative matters and th...

There was a great crisis in traditional Roman values during the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. After the Punic Wars the traditional values of Rome fell by the wayside for a new way of life that eventually led to the Roman Empire. The Cincinnatus image, rise of violence...

The Republic of Italy is located in Southern Europe. In Italy, the economy of the North and the economy of the South are dramatically different. This difference is reflected in the population breakdown of Italy. In fact, more than two-thirds of Italy's 57.6 million people live in the urban n...

Michelangelo's Tomb of Giuliano de' Medici One of the most famous artists ever known since the 16th century is a man by the name of Michelangelo Buonarroti. He has composed art that is both breathtaking and unmatched in such skills as painting, sculpture, architecture and poetry. Som...

From the ground up, Rome was built on violence. From the hills in Palatine, to the conquests of the Roman Empire at its height; Rome was violent. The Romans reveled in death. Political leaders pitted their own armies against one another as a lifestyle. Violence was not merely a side show in Roman c...

Rome: Once the largest ruling power, now shattered. What happened so many centuries ago, to make such a eminent power crumble to the ground? Powers come and go but their legacies live on. These legacies are our pedagogues; we learn from them and perfect ourselves and our nations. In researching Rome...

ANCIENT (3,000 BC – 476 AD) -Egypt & Sumeria – roots of Western Civilization -The Greece – Golden Age -2 periods: Hellenic & Hellenistic (Alexander the Great & followers) -Sophisticated culture–math, philosophy, etc. -Eventually conquered by Rome -2 periods: Roman Republic & Roman E...

Many would agree that the Roman Empire was truly one of the most superior and complex civilizations of all its time. Those who stood in its path suffered the brutal and bloody consequences and were shown little, to no mercy at all. From the very beginning of its history to the chaos of civil war, t...

'A Period of confusion, unrest, civil strife and violence of all kinds had finally culminated in the emergence of one man as the supreme arbiter of the destinies of the roman world.' Octavian was that man. During his triumph in 29B.C, Octavian (later to become Augustus) had returned to Ro...

Raphael\'s \"School of Athens\" is considered by many art historians to be the absolute masterpiece of the Renaissance. It is the perfect pictorial counterpart to the enormous changes in thinking that came about in the 1300s as a result of economic and technological developments. Its rational perspe...

Throughout history, religion has played perhaps the most important role in the influence of cultural and societal trends. The ethics and values that a society holds dear are a direct result of the faith that binds that society together. Faith is something that governs, something that punishes, and...

One of our progressions in the world is trying to minimize the size of our global village. The world has been made smaller with the means of the internet and air travel. Art, without a doubt, is no exception to the group of contributors of the shrinking world. In some forms, it is the most powerf...

The era known as the Renaissance began approximately around the beginning of the fifteenth century. The philosophy behind the whole movement is one of \"rebirth\" or the re-establishing of ancient classical culture. Following the collapse of the Roman civilization, much of Europe fell into decline,...

Life in Ancient Rome Romans of the Classical era built what was perhaps the greatest empire of all time. Roman civilization has served as a model or basis for much of Western culture. Roman engineers pioneered the use of concrete, glass windows, the dome, central heating, and apartm...

Roman Aqueducts: An Engineering Brilliance Transportation of water is a very important obstacle the world has taken on. Water is a necessity to live; therefore control of water in and out of towns has been going on for thousands of years. Many different ways of moving water from one spot to ...

Italy is the largest religiously country both economically and politically. Italy has the fifth highest population in Europe, about 200 persons per square kilometer. Minority groups are small, the largest is the German speaking people of Bolzano Province and the Slovenes around Trieste. Although Rom...

Construction of the Pantheon commenced in 27 BC by the statesman Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. It was a building of the classical style, rectangular with a gabled roof supported by a colonnade on all sides. I t was completely rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian sometime between AD 118 and 128, with some alte...

The creation of sculptures of Ancient Greece is definitely one of the most influential artistic movements of any ancient culture. Even though Greece itself was influenced visibly in the beginning by strong trade routes, especially with Persia to the East and Egypt to the south, they quickly gathered...

Julius Caesar was a man who took a falling city and made it in to a glorious empire. Caesar did many things that we still use today and that helped shape the western world as we know it today. Those things include many reforms that changed the city of Rome and in changing the city of Rome and its wa...