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The Italian city-states were numerous political and independent territorial entities that existed in the Italian Peninsula from antiquity to the formation of the Kingdom of Italy in the late 19th century. The ancient Italian city-states were Etruscan (Dodecapolis), Latin, most famously Rome, and Greek (Magna Graecia), but also of Umbrian ...
Aside from the legendary accounts, Rome was an Italic city-state that changed its form of government from Kingdom to Republic and then grew within the context of a peninsula dominated by the Gauls, Ligures, Veneti, Camunni and Histri in the North, the Etruscans, Latins, Falisci, Picentes and Umbri tribes (such as the Sabines) in the Centre, and ...
All the other Italian states remained independent, with the most powerful being the Venetian Republic, the Medici's Duchy of Tuscany, the Savoyard state, the Republic of Genoa, and the Papal States. The Gonzaga in Mantua, the Este in Modena and Ferrara and the Farnese in Parma and Piacenza continued to be important dynasties.
Since the 13th century, as armies became primarily composed of mercenaries, prosperous city-states could field considerable forces despite their low populations. Over the 15th century, the most powerful city-states annexed their smaller neighbours: Florence took Pisa in 1406, Venice captured Padua and Verona , while the Duchy of Milan annexed ...
The Roman expansion in Italy covers a series of conflicts in which Rome grew from being a small Italian city-state to be the ruler of the Italian region.Roman tradition attributes to the Roman kings the first war against the Sabines and the first conquests around the Alban Hills and down to the coast of Latium.
The cities first demonstrated their increasing power during the reign of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190), whose attempts to restore imperial authority in the peninsula led to a series of wars with the Lombard League, a league of northern Italian cities, most of the times headed by Milan, and ultimately to a decisive ...
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Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Italy (House of Savoy). The Italian nobility (Italian: Nobiltà italiana) comprised individuals and their families of the Italian Peninsula, and the islands linked with it, recognized by the sovereigns of the Italian city-states since the Middle Ages, and by the kings of Italy after the unification of the region into a single state, the Kingdom of Italy.