'Italian history has always been about resilience and rebirth ... It is a country that for so many centuries has offered up visions of the wonders to which we humans, at our very best, can aspire.'

Italy was the centre of Europe's first worldwide empire and the home of the Renaissance. Its political and cultural influences have encircled the globe. Today it is the fifth most visited country in the world. With a population of 60 million, it welcomes, each year, almost double that number of tourists. No other country has as many UNESCO World Heritage sites: fifty-eight and counting.

The Shortest History of Italy brings these and many other parts of the country alive through a panoramic sweep across some 3,000 years of politics, culture, history and larger-than-life, world-bestriding personalities such as Julius Caesar, St Francis of Assisi and Giuseppe Garibaldi, together with a cast of scheming popes, rampaging barbarians, artistic geniuses, unscrupulous politicians and ambitious mafiosi.

Lively and entertaining, this is the history of one of the world's most fascinating places.