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Italy, officially the Italian Republic is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe and North Africa.[2] Two countries exist within the borders of Italy: San Marino and Vatican City. Its capital city is Rome.

History

Prehistoric Italy[]

Flag of Italy

Flag of Italy

Etruscan civilization (12th–6th century BC)[]

Aeneas, a survivor of the Trojan War,[3] with the help of the Eternal Forgotten One, united the Etruscan tribes that would one day found Rome.[4] Greek and Etruscan influence in the region waxed and waned from the 9th to 5th century BC.[5]

Magna Graecia (8th–7th century BC)[]

Romulus and Remus were twins hey were abandoned by their parents as babies and put into a basket that was then placed into the River Tiber. The basket ran aground and the twins were discovered by a female wolf. The wolf nursed the babies for a short time before they were found by a shepherd. The shepherd then brought up the twins. When Romulus and Remus became adults, they decided to found a city where the wolf had found them. They quarreled over where the site should be and Remus was killed by Romulus. This left Romulus the sole founder of the new city and he gave his name to it "Rome".[6]

Ancient Rome (753 BC–476 AD)[]

In 625 BC., the city of Rome was founded and expanded to form the Roman Empire.[7] In 476 AD, the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, was defeated by the German Goth Odoacer. This is the start of the Dark Ages in Europe.[8]

Dark Ages[]

For the next thousand years, Italy once again became a patchwork of city-states, with Rome, home to the Catholic Church, being the most powerful. This long period of quiet stagnation was known as the Dark Ages.

The Ennilux a tribe that broke away from the main Inhumans branch in Attilan thousands of years ago. The tribe settled in Venice, has evolved into something of a cross between the mafia and a corporation.[9] Their leader the Capo had been using his powers to transfer his lifeforce into new bodies for centuries.[10]

Byzantine Empire (6th–8th century)[]

Holy Roman Empire (962–1801)[]

12th Century[]

In 1145, A.D.; The demon God Chthon committed most of his evil spells to documents called the Darkhold scrolls. An evil monk named Aelfric eventually gathered them together but he was burned at the stake. The Catholic church came into possession of the scrolls. Paolo Montesi was a monk who was the curator of the Darkhold scrolls and was tasked with translating them. Paolo learned of something called the Malachy Prophecy which told of the tenure of each pope for nearly the next thousand years. Paolo gave this information to Pope Eugene III. The Pope declared that the scrolls and everything related to the Darkhold would be compiled into one book of which Paolo and his family would be entrusted. The Pope allowed Paolo a special dispensation to marry so Paolo's descendants would safe guard the book. Paolo was killed by the first vampire Varnae who had hoped to keep the church from using the book to wipe out all Vampires. Paolo's infant son Giacomo was born soon after and for eight centuries the Montesi family dedicated themselves to destroying vampires.[11]

Crusades[]

From the 11th and 16th centuries, the Catholic Church began military campaigns with aim of capturing Jerusalem from Islamic rule.[12]

Maritime republics and Italian city-states[]

14th Century[]

Prosperity did not return to Italy again until the 14th Century, when city-states such as Florence, Milan, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice became centers of trade. The influx of wealth and increased trade contact with foreign lands, transformed Italy into Europe's premier center of culture.

Renaissance (14th–16th Century)[]

15th Century[]

From the 15th to 16th Century the church was heavily influenced by the Borgia Family who became prominent in ecclesiastical and political affairs. The family producing two popes; Pope Callixtus III, and Pope Alexander VI. One of the worst of the family was Lucrezia Borgia.[13][14]

In 1492 AD, Christopher Columbus left Spain in the Santa Maria and discovered the Americas.[15]

16th Century[]

S.H.I.E.L.D

In the 16th century figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo, among others, revolutionized the fields of art, literature, politics, and science.

Galileo later battled the devourer of worlds Galactus. Leonardo da Vinci was also a prominent member inventing mysterious device which allows him to travel off in an ornithopter. One of the longest reigning leaders of the group was Sir Isaac Newton, who kept his position by murdering Galileo and many others across the centuries. He also tortured Nostradamus to learn future events.[16]

Count Alvise Gianus was a 16th-Century Italian nobleman, skilled scientist and alchemist. Dedicating his life to alchemical glass making, he crossed the line of the dark arts using human blood to obtain more powerful artifacts. Once exposed as a gruesome killer, city authorities dispatched their assassins guild to get rid of him. Thrown in a pot full of molten alchemical glass, disfigured by the heat, Count Alvise rests for centuries in the San Michele Island cemetery in Venice, while his powers were growing, fed by the same unbreakable glass cage.[17]

Foreign domination (1559–1814)[]

18th Century[]

In 1774, religious scholar; Alessandro Di Cagliostro was searching for the secret of immortality. Cagliostro learned the location of the 'Book of Sins', the Darkhold. The Lord of Vampires, Dracula, was then the latest owner. Cagliostro managed to steal the book from the gypsy who the had been sent to the Vatican by Dracula, and earned the vampire's enmity. From the Darkhold, Cagliostro learned the secrets that would enable him to make an elixir of immortality, but needed exotic components unavailable to him.[18]

In 1789, the Vatican ordered the arrest of Cagliostro on the grounds that Freemasonry was a heresy, and he was imprisoned in the Castle of San Leo near Montefeltro. He was reputed to have died in 1795 in a cell in Italy's papal states, but in reality Cagliostro had at some point left to continue his unending quest for occult power.[19]

19th Century[]

Napoleonic Wars[]

Italy remained a patchwork of principalities controlled through proxy by various European powers until the 19th century, when the French leader Napoleon supported the unification of Italy as a way of creating a buffer state against his many enemies.

Italian unification (1815–1861)[]

With the backing of France, Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi led a popular movement that took over much of Italy in 1861 and would be ending in 1870 with the fall of Rome and complete unification of the country.[5]

Kingdom of Italy (1861–1945)[]

20th Century[]

World War I[]

Italy formed an alliance with Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire-called the Triple Alliance, but decided to back the Entente powers instead because they were promised disputed land in the Alps.

Fascist Italy (1918–1945)[]

After 1922, Italy was ruled by a fascist government led by Benito Mussolini.[5]

World War II[]

Mussolini allied himself with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and entered World War II on the side of the Axis. By the end of July, the fascist regime was ousted and continued operating only as a puppet state in the northern part of Italy called the Italian Social Republic.

In 1940, Mussolini's forces attacked Greece. But the invasion failed.[5]

In 1941, Greece eventually fell due to the combined efforts of the Italians and the Nazi's invasion of the Balkans.[5]

On June 10, 1943, Combat Casey and Penny Pennington fought Nazi forces.[20] While on July 10th of that year Combat Kelly and Cookie Novak were actively fighting Nazi forces on the island of Sicily.[21] In December 1943, the United States army led an offensive into Italy to stop the Nazi's Operation: Time Ghost. Dispatched to the region were members of the Invaders. While clashing with Nazi forces members of the Invaders along with Private Paul Anselm were brought forward in time to the 21st Century by the Cosmic Cube.[22] Anselm returned to the past with the Cosmic Cube to save the lives of his fellow soldiers who were wounded in the initial attack, but the Cube instead fell into the hands of the Red Skull who used it to warp reality into a world where the Nazis ruled,[23] however, the combined efforts of the Invaders and future New Avengers and Mighty Avengers restored reality to normal.[24]

In 1944, the soldiers of Camp Lehigh were dispatched to southern Italy to liberate it from Nazi control. The mission was a success thanks to the assistance of Captain America and Bucky.[25] On January 22, 1944, Combat Kelly, Cookie Novak and Captain Thorn helped liberate the town of Anzio[26] and on February 1, 1944, Combat Kelly and Cookie Novak helped Allied Forces remove Nazis camped out at St. Benedict's Cathedral.[27] In May, Combat Casey and Penny Pennington were present during the battle at Monte Cassino.[28] Casey and Pennington were also active along the coast in July of that year,[29] and Combat Kelly and Cookie fought in the town of Leghorn that same month.[30]

Italian Republic[]

Post World War II[]

In 1954, international criminal the Hypnotist attempted to enlist the Italian Mafia into his attempt to overthrow the governments the world, this plot was foiled by the Human Torch and Toro.[31]

During the Cold War, The Confessor assassinated a Communist defector in Venice. Maverick however attacked him, the Yuri broke his arm and knocked him from a church tower with exploding rosary beads stating "I will absolve you of all your sins"[32]

Modern Age[]

The Gamma Mutated Leader began operating in Rome. Until he was defeated by the Hulk.[33]

Daredevil traveled to Venice Italy to take down Emilio Reuss. Murdock arrives in Venice and travels by a gondola to Palazzo Di Pesce where Reuss and his Council of Ten are located. Matt changes into his Daredevil attire and climbs to the roof. He is detected and Reuss sends a robotic "Sir Lancelot" to kill Daredevil. Matt tricks the robot to fall off the roof to its destruction. Reuss and his henchmen capture Daredevil. Daredevil urges Reuss to surrender now and turn himself into the authorities. Instead, they bind Daredevil and seal him into a chamber of the old structure. A priest urges Reiss not to kill Daredevil. When all of the henchmen leave, the priest tells Daredevil "salvation" is beneath his feet. After Reuss and his men leave, Daredevil slips his bonds and takes the priest's tip and digs through a concealed cavern on the ground. He surprises and confronts Reuss and his men and defeats them all. Reuss dies in the battle.[34]

Richard Fisk used his fathers money to travel the world on a playboy lifestyle one of the many exotic place he visited was Venice.[35]

The Italian Hellfire Club Mansion are located in Venice, Italy.[36]

Excalibur battled the Sidri on the streets of Venice.[37]

In modern days, Count Alvise Gianus was freed from his captivity by the touch of Peter Parker. It turns out that the two are tied, being Count Gianus from the ancient "House of Spider". Strong, unstoppable, the deranged nobleman goes on a rampage during the city carnival, vitrifying the bystanders. After a first fight that sees Count Alvise victorious, Spider-Man attacks him in his laboratory managing to trap him again in a glass cocoon and putting him back in the House of Spider's crypt.[17]

Quicksilver in a slump of depression ran across the globe through Paris, down to Venice, and then to a snow-capped mountain at the top of the world.[38]

The Reader was a freelance worker for Inhuman corporation Ennilux, locating NuHumans and bringing them to the Ennilux Headquarters in Venice for a fee.[39] One he brought to them; Xiaoyi was to be the next Capo. The Capo of Ennilux survived for generations by transferring his astral presence from one body to the next, effectively killing each subsequent host. Unwilling to leave Iso to that fate, Reader freed her from the Capo's surgeons and returned his fee before running.[40]

Venice was used as a location for Parker Industries release of the new Webware.[41]

Deadpool was one the many people possessed by evil magic spread across the world. He attacked a group of Gondolier in Venice.[42]

Points of Interest

Residents

See Also

Links and References

References

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