Italian Renssiance-Begining the Modern World

Some time in the mid 14th century the Renaissance was born among the independent, and wealthy, city-states of Northern Italy.  The combination of wealth, power and a renewed interest in the "Humanities" had set the foundation for the rebirth of knowledge that was the Renaissance.

Florence became one of the great centre's of art for this wondrous time with the likes of Leonardo da Vince and Michelangelo.

The wealth and power of Venice, based on trade, brought great works of art and long forgotten knowledge from the glories of Ancient Rome and Greece to the peoples of Western Europe from the dieing Eastern (Byzantine) Empire and cultural-trade centers of the Muslim Middle East.

The Renaissance touched every aspect of human endeavors, with great writers like Dante (Divina Commedia and De Monarchia) and Niccolò Machiavelli (Il Principe and Dell’Arte della Guerra) challenging long held beliefs.

As time pasted the concepts of the Renaissance would spread throughout the Western World.  The Middle Ages were dead, Europe would no longer be the backwater of World culture and technological advances (a position it had held in most areas since the fall of the Western Roman Empire). Each part of Europe would add their own twists and additions to the forever growing knowledge and changing culture.  Europe and the World would never be the same, for the seeds planted in the Italian Renaissance would grow into the creation of the ever more advanced, complex and smaller World of today.