Baroque bad boy and genius Caravaggio had a knack for inserting squalor into biblical lore.

Mussolini collapsed in 1943, but a neighbor he backed endured far longer.

Tourism is Italy's oldest and most stable industry, providential in times of crisis.

Meet porn forerunners Giulio Romano, Marcantonio Raimondi and Pietro Aretino.

Margaret Fuller's support for Giuseppe Mazzini's independence movement at a price.

For F. Scott Fitzerald, Rome nights in the mid-1920s were anything but tender.

Decorated war heroes, the writer and the dictator took different paths to success.

Gucci rose from Florentine modesty to global pre-eminence — then came the family feuds.

She fell for a Romantic poet at 16, but her life was anything but romantic.

The edgy history of the movie "holiday" that made Audrey Hepburn into a star.

Cy Twombly fell for Rome's romantic ruins and they became part of his life's work.

America's first sex symbol was a silent movie actor from the mountains of Puglia.