---
node: early_modern_italy
type: period
slug: early_modern_italy
title: "Early Modern Italy"
lead: "In early modern Italy (1559–1814), much of the peninsula lay under foreign, mainly Spanish Habsburg, control, while states such as the Papal States, Venice, Savoy, and Tuscany remained independent, until Napoleon reorganized Italy and gave it a taste of unity."
published: 2026-07-11
updated: 2026-07-11
---

## Overview

From 1559 much of Italy lay under foreign, mainly Spanish Habsburg, control — Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. The Papal States, a declining Venice, Savoy, and Tuscany remained among the independent states.

## Key developments

Rome led the Counter-Reformation after the Council of Trent (1545–63). The Scientific Revolution had an Italian center in Galileo Galilei, condemned by the Roman Inquisition in 1633. After the War of the Spanish Succession, Austrian Habsburgs replaced the Spanish in Milan and Naples early in the 18th century, and Enlightenment reform reached Italy, as in Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments (1764).

## End and transition

Napoleon invaded in 1796, ended the Republic of Venice (1797), and reorganized the peninsula, including a Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy (1805–14). He spread revolutionary ideas and a taste of unity before his fall in 1814.