Italian History: States, Cities, and Mediterranean Connections from Late Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century

From the end of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century to the seventeenth century, the Italian peninsula was a patchwork of kingdoms, papal territories, self-governing cities, and larger regional states. Political arrangements varied between the north, centre, and south, and shifted as rulers and alliances changed. From the eleventh century, expanding cities and trade helped communes and maritime republics grow in power. Some later became territorial states, while foreign dynasties gained control over much of the peninsula. These political changes unfolded alongside the growth of urban manufacturing, religious institutions, and Mediterranean commerce.

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After Rome: kingdoms and divided authority

The fall of the Western Roman Empire did not erase Italy’s network of towns. Many settlements continued to occupy sites that had been Etruscan, Umbrian, or Roman, and this urban continuity later helped support the revival of powerful cities. Political control, however, changed repeatedly. Odoacer ruled after the last Western emperor was deposed in 476; the Ostrogoths then took control, followed by a Byzantine campaign to restore imperial rule. The Lombards established power over broad areas, bringing the Byzantine exarchate based at Ravenna to an end in 751.

Authority remained divided. In 756, Frankish forces defeated the Lombards and granted the papacy legal authority over much of central Italy, establishing the Papal States. Elsewhere, Lombard duchies and Byzantine-held territories formed part of a varied political landscape. The Holy Roman Empire also claimed authority in northern Italy, but its reach did not produce a single, durable government across the peninsula.

The south followed its own course. Muslim rule became established in Sicily, while the Normans later took control of territories previously held by Lombards and Byzantines. In 1130, Roger II began his rule as the first king of a Norman Kingdom of Sicily, bringing Norman conquests in southern Italy together under a central government. The southern kingdoms subsequently passed through successive dynastic regimes, including Hohenstaufen, Angevin, Aragonese, and Spanish rule. Central Italy, meanwhile, remained substantially shaped by the Papal States.

Communes and the growth of city government

From the eleventh century, population growth and expanding trade helped cities such as Milan, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, and Siena become major commercial centres. Many gained greater independence from their formal rulers and developed into communes, self-governing urban communities. Their political arrangements were not identical, but they gave cities institutions through which local affairs could be managed rather than directed entirely by distant emperors or lords.

In northern and central Italy, the struggle for urban autonomy unfolded amid conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman emperors. The Investiture Controversy concerned the authority to appoint church officials as well as the relationship between religious and secular power. Communes also formed alliances to defend their interests. The Lombard League, whose membership changed over time, brought together northern cities; its forces defeated Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at Legnano in 1176. The conflict helped secure room for communal self-government, although it did not make the cities permanently free from outside pressure or from one another’s rivalries.

Urban politics joined councils and magistrates with the influence of families and organised trades. Factions labelled Guelph and Ghibelline broadly invoked papal and imperial loyalties, while local disputes shaped their alliances. Some cities retained republican institutions; others concentrated authority in a signore, or lord, whose family could turn office and military support into hereditary rule.

Maritime republics and Mediterranean trade

Some cities built their wealth and power through seaborne commerce. Amalfi, Gaeta, and Venice were autonomous maritime republics by the eleventh century; Genoa, Pisa, and Ancona also emerged as independent maritime republics around 1100. Trade, shipbuilding, and banking supported fleets that served both commerce and defence. These cities connected Italian markets with the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic Mediterranean, and ports across the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

Venice and Genoa became especially powerful, though their histories were not interchangeable. Both used maritime networks to expand their influence, but Venice became pre-eminent at sea in the fifteenth century as Genoese power declined. Venice also gained territory during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The maritime republics show how local governments could draw strength from overseas trade, while also competing with other cities and states for routes, ports, and political influence.

From city republics to territorial states

By around 1300, many communes had come under the rule of a signore, or lord. In some cases, lordship developed into a stable dynasty governing one city or a wider territory. Milan offers an example: Gian Galeazzo Visconti acquired the title of Duke of Milan in 1395. Venice, Florence, and Genoa were among the cities that retained republican forms of government for longer, though republican institutions did not remove competition for power within or between states.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Milan, Venice, and Florence extended their power by conquering neighbouring cities and territories. Their armies were often composed largely of mercenary soldiers, led by captains who could serve different rulers. The Peace of Lodi in 1454 helped establish a balance among the leading powers after a period of conflict. It did not unite Italy, but it marked an effort to limit struggles for dominance among its states.

The peninsula’s geography and political divisions shaped these outcomes. The Po plain offered a broad area for movement, while the Alps and Apennines complicated communications and military campaigns elsewhere. Venice’s lagoon offered protection from attack by land. Such conditions affected the fortunes of particular states, but no single geographical factor determined the political future of the whole peninsula.

Urban economies, workshops, and changing markets

Manufacturing linked merchant capital with dispersed labour. In Florence, wool passed through washing, preparation, spinning, weaving, fulling and finishing, often across several workshops and homes. Guilds regulated recognised members and sponsored public projects, while many hired workers remained outside their political privileges. Venice and Genoa developed different specialisms and overseas connections, including shipbuilding, glass, silk and finance.

Epidemics, war and changing demand repeatedly altered urban economies. The Black Death reached Italian cities in 1347–1348, causing severe mortality and disrupting labour and markets. Industries recovered unevenly, with luxury silks and other specialised manufactures gaining importance in some places. Atlantic and Indian Ocean routes later changed the wider geography of exchange, while Mediterranean shipping and Italian finance continued to serve extensive markets.

Churches, civic life, and urban space

Growing cities changed their built environments as well as their political institutions. The rebuilding of major cathedrals accompanied urban expansion, while communal governments developed civic institutions to manage local affairs. Religious and civic authority could also overlap: the papacy governed territories in central Italy, and disputes over ecclesiastical appointments formed part of the political conflicts that helped shape communal autonomy.

Religious and civic institutions also organised assistance. At Florence’s Santa Maria Nuova, patronage established hospital care from 1288 and supported later expansion. Confraternities gathered lay members for prayer, funerals and aid, drawing on dues, donations and property. Such work connected religious obligations with household needs and urban government.

Foreign dynastic rule and the early modern states

In 1494, a French invasion began the Italian Wars, drawing outside powers into disputes over territories including Milan and Naples. The conflict transformed the balance among the states and brought widespread warfare. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559 ended the period of French claims in Italy. Spanish Habsburg rulers held Milan, Naples, and Sicily in the later early modern period, while the Papal States and other independent or dynastic states continued to exist elsewhere on the peninsula.

By the seventeenth century, Italy remained politically divided, but its political map no longer consisted mainly of independent medieval communes. Maritime republics, territorial states, papal rule, and foreign dynasties had all shaped the peninsula’s development. The result was a changing set of regional powers whose cities remained linked to one another and to wider Mediterranean and European networks.

For the wider setting, see Italian States and Kingdoms: History and Historic Sites.