Curated playlist
House of Medici
- Pope Clement VIIPope Clement VII was born one month after his father was stabbed to death in a cathedral.
- Marie de' MediciMarie de' Medici scaled a forty-meter prison wall on a rope ladder in 1619. Her own son had jailed her.
- Madeleine de La Tour d'AuvergneMadeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne died at 21, fifteen days after her daughter was born.
- Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of UrbinoLorenzo de' Medici died at 26, yet his daughter became a queen of France. He ruled Florence and fought a war for Urbino.
- Catherine de' MediciCatherine de' Medici lost both parents within a month of her birth. She later outlived three French kings, all her sons.
- Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' MediciAmerigo Vespucci sent most of his famous letters about the New World to a Medici, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco.
- Republic of FlorenceThe Republic of Florence began with one woman's death in 1115. Florence refused her successor and formed a commune.
- Simonetta VespucciIn 1475, a Medici rode into a Florence joust under a banner of Simonetta Vespucci. It called her La Sans Pareille.
- Lorenzo de' MediciLorenzo de' Medici survived a cathedral ambush in 1478 that killed his brother. The assassins had a pope's blessing.
- House of MediciThe Medici family began with wool traders and ended with four popes. Their bank, founded in 1397, grew huge.