Today marks the 650th anniversary of the death of the medieval Italian poet, scholar and humanist Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch. Acknowledged as one of the most significant figures ...

Welcome to Daily TWiP, your daily dose of all the holidays and history we couldn’t cram into The Week in Preview. Today (April 6th) in 1327, the Italian poet Petrarch began one of the most passionate ...

Six hundred years ago, on the 20th of July, 1304, a little Florentine baby was born into exile in a house on Via deli’ Orto in Arezzo, whither his father, banished from Florence, had fled. Civil war ...

Petrarch gives some precise-seeming pointers to the identity of Laura, though even they may only be another layer of the mordantly playful mythologising which is one aspect of the Canzoniere. The best ...

“ You will perhaps have heard something of me ; though who can tell whether so trivial and obscure a name as mine will have penetrated to remote places and distant times ? But if so, you may desire to ...

The 14th century Italian poet Francesco Petrarch left hundreds of letters detailing his life and thoughts. Now scientists plan to dig up his remains to find out more about his flesh and bones.

Jamie James is a critic and the author of "The Music of the Spheres." When the Modernist magi T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound laid down the canons of literary taste that still hold sway today, largely ...

Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, is one of the tre corone – the ‘three crowns’ – of early Italian literature. There was a brief period when all three were alive: Dante died in 1321, ...