Italy in the Middle Ages

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, for centuries symbol of the Kings of Italy.

Castel del Monte, built by German Emperor Frederick II, UNESCOWorld Heritage site

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy was seized by
the Ostrogoths,followed in the 6th century by a brief reconquest
under Byzantine Emperor Justinian.The invasion of another
Germanic tribe, the Lombards, late in the same century, reduced
the Byzantine presence to a rump realm (the Exarchate of
Ravenna) and started the end of political unity of the peninsula
for the next 1,300 years. The Lombard kingdom was subsequently
absorbed into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne in the late 8th
century. The Franks also helped the formation of the Papal States
in central Italy. Until the 13th century, Italian politics was
dominated by the relations between the Holy Roman Emperors
and the Papacy, with most of the Italian city-states siding for the
former (Ghibellines) or for the latter (Guelphs) from momentary
convenience.
It was during this chaotic era that Italian towns saw the rise of a
peculiar institution, the medieval commune. Given the power
vacuum caused by extreme territorial fragmentation and the
struggle between the Empire and the Holy See, local communities
sought autonomous ways to maintain law and order. In 1176 a
league of city-states, the Lombard League, defeated the German
emperor Frederick Barbarossa at theBattle of Legnano, thus
ensuring effective independence for most of northern and central
Italian cities. In coastal and southern areas, themaritime
republics, the most notable being Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi,
heavily involved in the Crusades, grew to eventually dominate the
Mediterranean and monopolise trade routes to the Orient.

In the south, Sicily had become an Islamic emirate in the 9th

century, thriving until the Italo-Normans conquered it in the late
11th century together with most of the Lombard and Byzantine
principalities of southern Italy. Through a complex series of
events, southern Italy developed as a unified kingdom, first under
the House of Hohenstaufen, then under the Capetian House of
Anjou and, from the 15th century, the House of Aragon. In
Sardinia, the former Byzantine provinces became independent
states known as Giudicati, although some parts of the island were
under Genoese or Pisan control until the Aragonese conquered it
in the 15th century. The Black Death pandemic of 1348 left its
mark on Italy by killing perhaps one third of the population.
However, the recovery from the plague led to a resurgence of
cities, trade and economy which allowed the bloom of Humanism
and Renaissance, that later spread in Europe.