After some city-states asked for outside help in settling disputes with their neighbours, King Charles VIII of France marched into Italy in 1494; he soon withdrew, showing that the Italian peninsula's delicate equilibrium could be taken advantage of.

Italian[108] explorers and navigators from the dominant maritime republics, eager to find an alternative route to the Indies in order to bypass the Ottoman Empire, offered their services to monarchs of Atlantic countries and played a key role in ushering the Age of Discovery and the European colonization of the Americas.

The most notable among them were: Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo [kriˈstɔːforo koˈlombo]), colonist in the name of Spain, who is credited with discovering the New World and the opening of the Americas for conquest and settlement by Europeans;[109] John Cabot (Italian: Giovanni Caboto [dʒoˈvanni kaˈbɔːto]), sailing for England, who was the first European to set foot in "New Found Land" and explore parts of the North American continent in 1497;[110] Amerigo Vespucci, sailing for Portugal, who first demonstrated in about 1501 that the New World (in particular Brazil) was not Asia as initially conjectured, but a fourth continent previously unknown to people of the Old World (the name of "America" derives from his first name[107]);[111] and Giovanni da Verrazzano, at the service of France, renowned as the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick in 1524.

Pope Pius IX, a longtime rival of Italian kings, stated he had been made a "prisoner" inside the Vatican walls and refused to cooperate with the royal administration.

In the decades following unification, Italy began creating colonies in Africa, and under Benito Mussolini's fascist regime conquered Ethiopia, founding the Italian Empire in 1936.

[138] These great centres of learning presaged the Rinascimento: the European Renaissance began in Italy and was fueled throughout Europe by Italian painters, sculptors, architects, scientists, literature masters and music composers.

Venice, former capital of a major financial and maritime power from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, with its intricate canal system attracts tourists from all over the world especially during the Venetian Carnival and the Biennale.

Famous elements of Italian culture are its opera and music, its iconic gastronomy and food, which are commonly regarded as amongst the most popular in the world,[140] its cinema (with filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Mario Monicelli, Sergio Leone, etc.

Cities with important universities such as Padua, Bologna and Naples, however, also remained great centres of scholarship and the intellect, with several philosophers such as Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) (who is widely regarded as being the founder of modern Italian philosophy)[159] and Antonio Genovesi.

Travelling troupes of players would set up an outdoor stage and provide amusement in the form of juggling, acrobatics and, more typically, humorous plays based on a repertoire of established characters with a rough storyline, called canovaccio.

During the Renaissance, Italian polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72) made important contributions to a variety of fields, including biology, architecture, and engineering.

In biology, Francesco Redi was the first to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies and he described 180 parasites in detail; Marcello Malpighi founded microscopic anatomy; Lazzaro Spallanzani conducted important research in bodily functions, animal reproduction, and cellular theory; Camillo Golgi, whose many achievements include the discovery of the Golgi complex, paved the way to the acceptance of the Neuron doctrine; Rita Levi-Montalcini discovered the nerve growth factor (awarded 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine); Angelo Ruffini first described the Ruffini endings and was known for his work in histology and embryology; Filippo Pacini discovered the Pacinian corpuscles and was the first to isolate the cholera bacillus Vibrio cholerae in 1854, before Robert Koch's more widely accepted discoveries 30 years later.

He and a number of Italian physicists were forced to leave Italy in the 1930s by Fascist laws against Jews, including Emilio G. Segrè (1905–89) (who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton),[191] and Bruno Rossi (1905–93), a pioneer in Cosmic Rays and X-ray astronomy.

[155][156][157] Noteworthy Italian chefs are Bartolomeo Scappi, Gualtiero Marchesi, Lidia Bastianich, Antonio Carluccio, Cesare Casella, Carlo Cracco, Antonino Cannavacciuolo, Gino D'Acampo, Gianfranco Chiarini, Massimiliano Alajmo, Massimo Bottura and Bruno Barbieri.

Futurism was succeeded by the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who exerted a strong influence on the Surrealists and generations of artists to follow like Bruno Caruso and Renato Guttuso.

Singers such as pop diva Mina, classical crossover artist Andrea Bocelli, Grammy winner Laura Pausini, and European chart-topper Eros Ramazzotti have attained international acclaim.

[231] Notable Italian film directors from this period include Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Dussio Tessari and Roberto Rossellini; some of these are recognised among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.

In recent years, directors such as Ermanno Olmi, Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe Tornatore, Gabriele Salvatores, Roberto Benigni, Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino and Luca Guadagnino brought critical acclaim back to Italian cinema.

[250] Notable Italian fashion designers are Guccio Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Valentino, Ottavio Missoni, Nicola Trussardi, Mariuccia Mandelli, Rocco Barocco, Roberto Cavalli, Renato Balestra, Laura Biagiotti, Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce.

Amongst the players who won the FIFA World Cup there are Giuseppe Meazza, Silvio Piola (to date the highest goalscorer in Italian first league history), Dino Zoff, Paolo Rossi, Marco Tardelli, Bruno Conti, Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Del Piero, Andrea Pirlo and Francesco Totti.

Amongst those who did not win the World Cup but laureated as European champions are Gianni Rivera, Luigi Riva (to date Italy's leading scorer of all time), Sandro Salvadore, Giacomo Bulgarelli, Pietro Anastasi and Giacinto Facchetti.

[144] Famous women of the period include politicians Nilde Iotti, Tina Anselmi, and Emma Bonino; actresses Anna Magnani, Sofia Loren, and Gina Lollobrigida; soprano Renata Tebaldi; ballet dancer Carla Fracci; costume designer Milena Canonero; sportwomen Sara Simeoni, Deborah Compagnoni, Valentina Vezzali, and Federica Pellegrini; writers Natalia Ginzburg, Elsa Morante, Alda Merini, and Oriana Fallaci; architect Gae Aulenti; scientist and 1986 Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini; astrophysicist Margherita Hack; astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti; pharmacologist Elena Cattaneo; and CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti.

The Greeks were frequently at war with the native Italic tribes, but nonetheless managed to Hellenize and assimilate a good portion of the indigenous population located along eastern Sicily and the Southern coasts of the Italian mainland.

Speaking about the Alpine region, the Greek historian Strabo, wrote: The Alps are inhabited by numerous nations, but all Keltic with the exception of the Ligurians, and these, though of a different race, closely resemble them in their manner of life.

Between 180 and 179 BC, 47,000 Ligures belonging to the Apuani tribe were removed from their home along the modern Ligurian-Tuscan border and deported to Samnium, an area corresponding to inland Campania, while Latin colonies were established in their place at Pisa, Lucca and Luni.

[372][373] Before them, other Lombards arrived in Sicily, with an expedition departed in 1038, led by the Byzantine commander George Maniakes,[374] which for a very short time managed to snatch Messina and Syracuse from Arab rule.

[392][393] Beside that, minor but significant settlements of Slavs (the so-called Schiavoni) and Arbereshe in Italy have been recorded, while Scottish soldiers - the Garde Ecossaise - who served the French King, Francis I, settled in the mountains of Piedmont.

[406] These ties are shown to be stronger in many cases than the monetary incentive for migration, taking into account a familial base and possibly an Italian migrant community, greater connections to find opportunities for work, housing etc.

[451] From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence.

Examples are Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where Talian is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the nineteenth century.